RealPars turns industrial automation courses into a world-class learning community with Circle

Shahpour Shapournia built RealPars into one of the most recognized names in industrial automation education, with 1.2 million YouTube subscribers and enterprise clients like PepsiCo, Heineken, and Pfizer. But the platform’s course-only model couldn’t deliver the human connection he knew members needed. After migrating more than 1,200 members and 130 courses to Circle, Shahpour’s team launched live classes, a thriving community, and a branded app that feels “world-class” — and the energy across the team and member base has shifted completely.

“The design is so seamless, so professional. It feels like you have a team of 100 developers behind the app. It is world-class. I’m proud to show it to other people — I show it even to my friends that are not from the industry.”

Before

From YouTube side project to global industrial automation brand

Shahpour started RealPars as a side project in 2012, recording videos about industrial automation equipment he had access to through his day job as a systems integration engineer in oil and gas. The problem was simple: online resources for industrial tech were almost nonexistent. “If you want to learn JavaScript or Python, it’s easy to find resources online,” Shahpour explains. “For industrial automation, they just didn’t exist. I always wanted to start my own company, and I thought, hey, maybe this is a good opportunity.”

By 2018, he’d launched RealPars as a full learning platform — essentially a Codecademy for industrial automation. Growth came quickly. The YouTube channel hit 1.2 million subscribers, and the platform attracted engineers and technicians around the world. Enterprise clients followed: companies like PepsiCo, Heineken, Pfizer, and Volvo began using RealPars to train their teams on specific industrial equipment and certifications.

“Pretty much anyone in our industry knows us now. We have 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube.”

With more than 1,200 individual members, over 100 enterprise accounts, and 130-plus courses, RealPars had built a world-class content library. The team of instructors and animators was producing what Shahpour calls “the highest quality technical videos for industrial automation in the world.” The content was proven. But the platform delivering it was starting to hold them back.

Challenge

World-class content trapped in a course-only platform

RealPars’ previous platform worked well enough as a course delivery system, but that’s all it was. Members logged in, watched lessons, and logged out. There was no real connection between learners, no way for instructors to share quick insights outside of formal coursework, and no live interaction. “I was missing the connection between us and our members,” Shahpour says. “You log in, you watch a few lessons, and you’re done. That connection was something that was missing.”

The branded app they’d built on the previous platform made things worse, not better. Shahpour didn’t enjoy using it himself, and he certainly didn’t want to show it off. “The previous app, I didn’t really like to show it to anyone,” he recalls. When the team tried running live classes, they found themselves stitching together Google Meet, an email solution, and signup forms — a fragile patchwork that created a poor experience for everyone involved.

“We already had world-class content. We have a world-class team of instructors and animators. But now we can say this about our platform as well.”

For a platform serving enterprise clients who expected reporting, certifications, and measurable ROI, the limitations were becoming harder to work around. Shahpour knew that RealPars’ content deserved a delivery experience that matched its quality — and that meant going beyond courses.

Solution

An upgrade built on firsthand experience

The decision to move to Circle started with Shahpour’s own experience as a member. He’d joined the Scalable Community by Ryan Dice, which migrated to Circle while he was a member. “I was like, okay, this is really cool — it would be nice if we could do the same thing,” he says. The hesitation was real — years of courses, thousands of users, payment data — but experiencing Circle as a member gave him the confidence to move forward.

RealPars migrated more than 1,200 members and 130 courses onto Circle, and the team rebuilt the learning experience from the ground up. They launched live classes hosted natively in the platform, so members could interact with industry experts in real time without jumping between tools. They stood up a community where instructors could post short videos directly from the factory floor, and they rolled out a branded app on iOS and Android that Shahpour describes as a completely different experience.

“The design is so seamless, so professional. It feels like you have a team of 100 developers behind the app. It is world-class. I’m proud to show it to other people — I show it even to my friends that are not from the industry.”

The team also migrated B2C payments onto Circle during the launch and consolidated their email marketing into the platform, replacing an external tool with native trigger-based emails connected directly to member behavior. The migration itself, Shahpour says, was “one of the best experiences we’ve had” — professional, responsive, and thorough.

Transformation

A platform the whole team is proud to share

Less than two months after the migration, the shift is already tangible — not just in how members use the platform, but in how the RealPars team talks about it. Shahpour found himself at the SPS trade show in Nuremberg, Germany, pulling out his phone to show attendees the new app. At a FIFA night with friends, he was responding to community posts and showing off the experience. “You feel that sense of pride,” he says. “And when you’re proud of what you’ve built, it’s easier to sell it to other people.”

“When you’re proud of what you’ve built, it’s so much easier to sell it and talk about it.”

The community has unlocked an entirely new kind of engagement. Instructors now record short videos from their workstations — one-to-two-minute clips showing real industrial equipment — and post them directly to the app. “We’ve created a medium where someone on one side of the world can share something from their desk with someone on the other side — really easily,” Shahpour explains. “Our instructors, they’re at work, and when they want to show something to our members, they just record a short video and post it into the community.” That kind of spontaneous, peer-driven knowledge sharing simply wasn’t possible before.

The team is tracking daily and monthly active users for the first time, and the early numbers are strong: 37% of members are active monthly, with visible spikes on days when live classes run or active discussions happen in the community. Branded app usage has been climbing steadily too, with session minutes on iOS and Android nearly doubling between the first and fourth months after launch. Shahpour’s vision for what comes next is ambitious: opening the community to free members, pursuing SEO indexing to grow organically, and building an expert reward program that pays contributors for the videos and answers they share — a model inspired by the creator economics of platforms like TikTok, but purpose-built for industrial automation.

“Don’t hesitate. This is one of the best decisions you can make for your community.”

For Shahpour, the upgrade confirmed something he’d been feeling for years. RealPars already had world-class content and a world-class team. Now, with Circle, they have a platform that matches.