Ali, a fifth-year medical student at Cambridge University, is co-founder of SixMed, a small company running courses for medical school applicants, and has taught its BMAT Crash Course for five years.
project history · status: last documented in 2020 (looked back on in 2024) · last event: milestone (2020-05-19) · last mentioned: 2024-05-21
Told alongside: Ali and his friend James try a new money-making business every year at secondary school, and all five fail · Ali promises a video with tips for entrepreneurs, his top 10 lessons (2019)
| date | event | what | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-06-20 | milestone | Ali, a fifth-year medical student at Cambridge University, is co-founder of SixMed, a small company running courses for medical school applicants, and has taught its BMAT Crash Course for five years. | BMAT Section 1 - Everything you need to know · BMAT Tips series 00:00:00 |
| 2017-11-29 | milestone | Ali says that because he and his SixMed colleagues graduate next year (2018) and may not have time to run the courses, he is slowly putting the interview course content on YouTube. | Medicine Interview Questions - How to answer "Why should we choose you?" 00:13:32 |
| 2018-03-21 | looked back | Ali says he got into medical education to make some money: in his first year at university he ran a BMAT course for students at his school, then built a website for the BMAT Crash Course and marketed it nationally, and it grew beyond what he imagined. | Q & A - 5,000 Subscribers! 00:06:05 |
| 2018-05-01 | setback | Ali says SixMed made him a reasonable amount in the past but is declining: the Medic Portal advertises everywhere and has the private schools, new companies charge £20 a course, and at SixMed's size VAT and corporation tax rule such prices out. | First Live Hangout + Rapid-fire Q&A 00:22:34 |
| 2018-05-01 | milestone | Ali is about to run Google AdWords ads for SixMed's BMAT and UKCAT courses the next day (2 May 2018) to try to beat the Medic Portal. | First Live Hangout + Rapid-fire Q&A 00:44:29 |
| 2018-05-07 | looked back | Another reason for starting YouTube was driving traffic to SixMed, which Ali had run for about four years and was bored of; he wanted to do medical education, and few doctors were on YouTube. | Live Q&A + Hangout - Bank Holiday vibes - Ali Abdaal, Cambridge medical student 00:53:42 |
| 2018-07-23 | milestone | Ali has run SixMed for five or six years, teaching the BMAT in classrooms in the UK, Singapore and the Netherlands; with no time to teach in person as a doctor, he has put everything he knows into an online video course. | A year on YouTube - Channel / life update 00:06:56 |
| 2018-08-03 | milestone | Ali has recently released an online BMAT video course, a series of more than 70 videos he spent about three or four days making. | Life Advice - 50k subs Q&A 00:05:37 |
| 2018-10-01 | looked back | Ali set up SixMed with friends from university and some school friends, making the materials for its BMAT, UKCAT and interview courses; he thinks it succeeded because it was a collaboration of so many students and friends. | Is university worth it? The non-academic value of university 00:06:47 |
| 2018-10-04 | milestone | Ali's online BMAT crash course is a series of more than 75 videos covering the technique and theory needed for the BMAT, to be put into practice with practice papers. | BMAT Physics - Electricity + Formulae · BMAT Crash Course Online 00:00:00 |
| 2018-11-05 | milestone | Ali says he has run an education company (SixMed) for five years, with "x hundred thousand" in revenue and teaching all over the world, but did not want to say so because it felt like it sounded bad; in hindsight it has to be said. | AFP Interview Preparation - The personal interview · Academic Foundation Programme 00:04:21 |
| 2019-02-11 (happened 2013) | looked back | Ali says The 4-Hour Workweek pretty much single-handedly let him set up his company SixMed in medical school in 2013: courses for medical school applicants, then an online question bank and online courses. | 3 Books that Changed my Life 00:02:22 |
| 2019-02-11 (happened 2016) | setback | Near the end of his fourth year of medical school Ali had run SixMed for about three years, growing in revenue and student numbers each year; around 2016 its growth stagnated and dipped a little. | 3 Books that Changed my Life 00:07:08 |
| 2019-08-16 (happened 2013) | looked back | SixMed began in 2013 teaching BMAT courses to UK medical school applicants, then added UKCAT and interview courses and question banks; Ali has run it on the side as a Cambridge medical student and doctor. | Money, Relationships and Hair Loss - Answering your Assumptions 00:04:17 |
| 2019-10-09 | milestone | Ali, now a junior doctor in Cambridge, has run SixMed for six years since he was a Cambridge medical student; it has made about £800,000 in top-line revenue, about a million dollars. | How I Built a Million Dollar Business in Medical School - 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs 00:00:00 |
| 2019-10-09 | looked back | In their second year of medical school Ali and friends decided to run a BMAT course: the big companies' courses seemed poor and expensive, so they would do better, charge less and give free places to low-income students. | How I Built a Million Dollar Business in Medical School - 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs 00:00:29 |
| 2019-12-27 (said on 2019-12-20, implied) | milestone | Ali lists launching an online UKCAT course among his accomplishments of 2019. | My Annual Review using Notion 00:04:24 |
| 2020-04-17 (happened 2013) | looked back | Ali started his own business in his second year of medical school, in 2013, and it was really fun for the first few years while it was growing. | Answering your Questions 00:24:25 |
| 2020-04-29 (happened 2012) | looked back | SixMed, Ali's company running courses for UK medical school applicants, began to do well in his first year of medical school; the lessons from the poor websites he had made over the previous five or six years went into its 2012-2013 website. | Productivity, Books and Careers Advice - Ali Abdaal x Noah Kagan // Deep Dive 00:05:00 |
| 2020-05-01 | looked back | Ali set up SixMed in medical school; it runs classroom courses and question banks for medical school applicants, has run since about 2013, and is its own company, so he leaves its money out of his personal income. | How Much Money I Earn in a Week as a Doctor & YouTuber 00:08:16 |
| 2020-05-19 (happened 2015) | looked back | In summer 2015 Ali and his brother, who both code, built an online question bank for UK medical school applicants taking admissions exams. | How To Make Money Online - The 3 Levels 00:10:13 |
| 2020-05-19 | milestone | Ali has a series of online courses for medical school applicants on doing well in admissions exams and interviews, which make money every week and month without more effort. | How To Make Money Online - The 3 Levels 00:11:02 |
| 2020-10-04 | looked back | Ali's 2012 Evernote brainstorm morphed into SixMed, the company he founded a year later, in 2013. | My BIGGEST Rejections in Life 00:18:01 |
| 2020-12-28 (said on 2020-12-15, implied) | looked back | At 19, in his second year of medical school, Ali built the first business of his that succeeded; he credits luck, unfair advantages and seven years of trying before it. | How Much Money I Earn as a Doctor + YouTuber 00:04:06 |
| 2024-05-21 | looked back | Ali says that from 2014 to about 2019 he made around £150,000 a year from SixMed's classroom courses. | A Beginner's Guide to Making Money with Online Courses 00:03:26 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).
What is said about it
34 statements, by date (the events above are the turns of the thread; these are the details).
- 2017-06-20 · BMAT Section 1 - Everything you need to know · BMAT Tips series — Ali: SixMed's BMAT Crash Course, its classroom course, has run for five years in the UK, Amsterdam, Singapore and Hong Kong. — video description
- 2017-11-29 · Medicine Interview Questions - How to answer "Why should we choose you?" — Ali says he has been teaching interview courses for the last five years with his company SixMed, the Interview Crash Course. — 00:13:03
- 2018-05-01 · First Live Hangout + Rapid-fire Q&A — Ali says the Medic Portal pays about £3 a click on Google searches for BMAT Crash Course, the name of the BMAT course he made five years ago, and calls its own course BMAT Crash Course. — 00:45:00
- 2018-05-29 · Live Stream - Hangout — Ali: Charlotte is coming over for a takeaway in a couple of hours, and she and Ali will discuss SixMed matters. — 00:12:31
- 2018-07-23 · A year on YouTube - Channel / life update — Ali has filmed and edited a series of more than 75 videos on how to do well in the BMAT, the BioMedical Admissions Test. — 00:06:45
- 2018-07-23 · A year on YouTube - Channel / life update — announcement: Ali's online BMAT video course costs money, but it will be free of charge for anyone in financial difficulty. — 00:07:14
- 2018-10-04 · BMAT Physics - Electricity + Formulae · BMAT Crash Course Online — Ali, a junior doctor in Cambridge, is co-founder of SixMed, which has run BMAT, UKCAT and interview courses for hundreds of medical school applicants every year since 2013. — 00:00:00
- 2018-10-04 · BMAT Physics - Electricity + Formulae · BMAT Crash Course Online — Ali's online BMAT crash course has exactly 20 videos on physics, including this one on electricity. — 00:00:29
- 2018-10-04 · BMAT Physics - Electricity + Formulae · BMAT Crash Course Online — Ali: Access to all videos of Ali's online BMAT crash course costs money, but it has many bursaries for low-income students, and about half of buyers get a discount or bursary. — 00:00:58
- 2019-02-11 · 3 Books that Changed my Life — Ali says SixMed has made six figures in revenue pretty much every year since it started in 2013, with five-figure corporation tax bills. — 00:02:22
- 2019-02-11 · 3 Books that Changed my Life — Ali credits The 4-Hour Workweek's productivity tips, such as outsourcing to remote workers, for running SixMed alongside medicine at Cambridge: they made its question banks successful and protected his mental health. — 00:02:22
- 2019-05-02 · Monthly Favourites #8 - Ali Abdaal — Ali has run his own company for the last six years, very much as a small-scale operation of him and his friends. — 00:05:38
- 2019-08-16 · Money, Relationships and Hair Loss - Answering your Assumptions — Ali: At 18 or 19 Ali took the lessons from those failed internet businesses into SixMed, which did very well. — 00:06:04
- 2019-10-09 · How I Built a Million Dollar Business in Medical School - 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs — Ali says his company SixMed does around £150,000 in annual revenue and was built by him and his friends while they were medical students at Cambridge University. — video description
- 2019-10-09 · How I Built a Million Dollar Business in Medical School - 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs — Ali: SixMed was meant to be a course at their local mosque, but Ali, who had made websites since about 12, built a website to market it nationally; that year they ran five sold-out courses for about 120 students. — 00:00:58
- 2019-10-09 · How I Built a Million Dollar Business in Medical School - 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs — Ali: In its second year SixMed expanded into a UKCAT (UCAT) course and then a course for medical school interviews, and both did really well. — 00:00:58
- 2019-10-09 · How I Built a Million Dollar Business in Medical School - 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs — Ali: SixMed then made question banks for the BMAT and UCAT and kept growing every year, with more students and locations, teaching courses in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Netherlands. — 00:01:27
- 2019-10-09 · How I Built a Million Dollar Business in Medical School - 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs — Ali: Without Ali's ability to make a website, SixMed's course would have had 12 people at the local mosque in Southend-on-Sea; the website made it a national and then international business. — 00:04:46
- 2019-10-09 · How I Built a Million Dollar Business in Medical School - 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs — Ali says a big part of SixMed's early success against the big names was its pretty, legit-looking website, at a time (2012–2013) when Squarespace or Wix did not yet make that easy. — 00:05:42
- 2019-10-09 · How I Built a Million Dollar Business in Medical School - 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs — Ali: About half the medics in Ali's college taught SixMed courses; its team of 20 to 25 were all friends of the founders, which made a really fun environment. — 00:08:22
- 2019-10-09 · How I Built a Million Dollar Business in Medical School - 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs — Ali: For SixMed's first couple of years Ali personally emailed every new customer, introducing the team and offering to answer any question about medicine applications, A-levels or studying; customers found them very personable. — 00:11:08
- 2019-10-09 · How I Built a Million Dollar Business in Medical School - 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs — Ali: Around 2015–2016 SixMed's revenue stagnated and dipped and competitors arrived; Ali no longer enjoyed running it, until he found Derek Sivers's book Anything You Want. — 00:13:26
- 2020-04-17 · Answering your Questions — Ali: Before starting YouTube Ali did not really know what he wanted to do there; he knew he wanted to make educational content for medical students to help market his business teaching courses for medical applicants. — 00:00:29
- 2020-05-01 · How Much Money I Earn in a Week as a Doctor & YouTuber — Ali: A couple of years ago Ali made his own online video courses for the UCAT, the BMAT and medical school interviews. — 00:08:16
- 2020-05-01 · How Much Money I Earn in a Week as a Doctor & YouTuber — Ali: Each sign-up to Ali's UCAT crash course online brings in £99, about $123; one person signed up on Tuesday 24 March 2020. — 00:08:45
- 2020-10-04 · My BIGGEST Rejections in Life — Ali: Since 2013 SixMed has made roughly six figures in revenue every year, helped thousands of students into medical school and given bursaries to hundreds who could not otherwise afford its courses. — 00:18:01
- 2020-10-14 · Revamping My Living Room - Day In The Life — Ali: James is the co-founder of SixMed, Ali's first business, which they started in 2013. — 00:01:56
- 2024-05-21 · A Beginner's Guide to Making Money with Online Courses — Ali: In 2012 Ali ran his first BMAT course for about seven friends from the year below at his school, beaming a PowerPoint to the TV in his living room, and made perhaps £300. (hedged) — 00:02:46
- 2024-05-21 · A Beginner's Guide to Making Money with Online Courses — Ali: In 2013, when he started medical school, Ali decided to go big with the BMAT course: he built a proper website and started marketing it nationally. — 00:02:46
- 2024-05-21 · A Beginner's Guide to Making Money with Online Courses — Ali says the BMAT courses made around £6,000 in 2013, teaching about 150 students across five courses. (hedged) — 00:03:26
- 2024-05-21 · A Beginner's Guide to Making Money with Online Courses — Ali: On one final day SixMed taught a lecture theatre of 150 students and made about £10,000 in a day. — 00:03:26
- 2024-05-21 · A Beginner's Guide to Making Money with Online Courses — Ali: In the month of summer holidays between graduating in 2018 and starting work as a doctor, Ali filmed the BMAT Crash Course as an online course and hosted it on Podia. — 00:04:06
- 2024-05-21 · A Beginner's Guide to Making Money with Online Courses — Ali says the online BMAT Crash Course made a few tens of thousands of pounds in its first year, 2018. — 00:04:52
- 2024-05-21 · A Beginner's Guide to Making Money with Online Courses — Ali: The following year Ali partnered with his friend Akib on a UKCAT course, and the year after he filmed the Interview Crash Course for medical school interviews. — 00:04:52