From Thinkific to Momen: How Leon Petrou Rebuilt his AI & Automation Community
Introduction
In today’s digital era, knowledge is one of the most valuable assets you can own. Creators, educators, and professionals are monetizing what they know — building digital products, launching memberships, and growing learning communities around their expertise.
But turning insight into income isn’t always easy. Most platforms for “knowledge entrepreneurs” come with painful trade-offs. They limit customization, take a cut of your profits, and lock essential features behind expensive paywalls—making it hard to build a flexible, branded learning experience.
That’s exactly the problem Leon Petrou set out to solve. With a growing audience and a clear vision, he used Momen to build Futurise—a full-featured AI and automation learning hub, entirely no-code and 100% his own.
The Story of Leon
From Educator to Ecosystem Builder
Leon Petrou has spent the last several years helping people work smarter, not harder—with automation and AI as his toolkit of choice. As an industrial engineer and the 2023 UiPath AI Ambassador of the Year, he’s become a trusted voice in the productivity space, teaching hundreds of thousands of students through hands-on courses on platforms like Udemy and YouTube.
But Leon isn’t just a teacher. He’s a builder. And as his following grew, so did the gap between what his students needed—and what existing platforms could offer.
A Community Looking for More
Leon’s journey began with tutorials: quick wins, step-by-step guides, and bite-sized lessons designed to empower anyone—from office workers to solopreneurs. He launched his course library on Thinkific to organize his growing catalog and offer structured learning.
But as his student base expanded and the vision behind his brand matured, it became clear: static videos and linear modules weren’t enough.
His learners wanted more:
Downloadable templates and real-world AI workflows
Interactive learning paths
A space to collaborate, share progress, and grow together
Yet course platforms like Thinkific weren’t built for that. They were designed to sell courses — not to build communities. Features like custom memberships, gated templates, SEO-friendly blog content, and user-driven collaboration were either rigid, expensive, or missing altogether. And while Thinkific served its purpose early on, it couldn’t keep up with what Leon wanted to build next: a flexible, branded, AI-powered ecosystem.
Leon had the audience. He had the content. He even had the no-code mindset. All he needed now was the right platform to bring his vision to life. That’s when he turned to Momen — and began building Futurise.
Finding the Right Tool to Build Without Limits
I decided to build my SaaS app with Momen, and I couldn’t be happier with my choice.
In just a few weeks, Leon rebuilt Futurise from the ground up using Momen. He had full control over his platform, from design, database structure to backend logic, AI integration and paywall. And best of all — everything was connected, under one roof, with one seamless user experience.
He didn’t just replicate what he had on Thinkific. He upgraded it.
All-in-One: Forum, Courses, Templates, and More
With Momen, Leon was able to combine the full learning journey into one platform:
Interactive forum for student Q&A, tool discussions, and community sharing
Custom course pages that support modular content, gated lessons, and flexible enrollment
AI automation templates that learners can explore and reuse
Livestream and event tools to support workshops and real-time sessions
Momen’s flexible architecture allowed Leon to add new sections—like a forum or content hub—without changing the core system. He could build and customize new pages on top of a stable foundation.
The structured backend also gave him fine-grained control over user roles — from visitor to member, from content creator to admin — with built-in tracking for engagement, purchases, and subscriptions.
Business-Ready: Marketing, Monetization, and Integration
With Momen, Leon didn’t just build a learning platform — he built a real business. With built-in SEO controls—like structured URLs, meta tags, and page-level TDK—plus a robust blog system and email-ready page templates, his content became highly discoverable and brandable.
He also integrated third-party tools directly:
ActiveCampaign for CRM and email marketing
Postmark for transactional emails
Stripe for handling payments, subscriptions, and premium memberships
This gave him full freedom to design and scale his own monetization model — including premium content, gated templates, and personalized onboarding journeys.
Smarter Learning with AI-Powered Search
As an automation expert, Leon knew AI couldn’t be an afterthought — it had to be baked into the experience.
With Momen’s agent builder's RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) capabilities, he added a smart search assistant that dynamically pulls from his own materials. Now, users can ask natural questions like “What AI tool is best for marketing automation?” . The assistant instantly responds with answers based on relevant content retrieved from Leon’s blogs, videos, and forum threads, making learning faster, more contextual, and personalized.
It’s not just a chatbot. It’s like having a personal AI assistant trained on his expertise, providing responses grounded in the actual content Leon has published.
Even better, Momen’s open API let Leon go further — triggering backend workflows, integrating external automation tools, and extending Futurise into the broader ecosystem he teaches every day.
Built to Scale — Without Scaling Costs
For Leon, one of the biggest unlocks with Momen wasn’t just flexibility — it was how much he could do without breaking the bank.
'Significantly lower running costs. Momen is far more affordable than Bubble, especially as your app scales to hundreds or thousands of users. It’s not just about the monthly subscription, usage-based costs can add up fast with Bubble. With Momen, you’ll save an order of magnitude in operating expenses.' —— Leon
Platforms like Thinkific and Bubble often come with steep scaling costs:
Thinkific’s basic plan starts at $149/month, just to remove branding and access essential APIs
Bubble’s usage-based pricing adds up fast as your app grows — especially with complex workflows, plugin dependencies, and data load
With Momen, Leon runs the entire Futurise platform — including courses, templates, subscriptions, automation workflows, and AI — on a $99/month Pro Plan.
Even better, Momen’s team helped him optimize performance and backend flow logic, meaning faster load times, fewer redundant runs, and less infrastructure bloat.
That kind of cost efficiency means more budget for content, community, and growth — not platform overhead.
Launched in 4 Weeks. Monetized in 3 Days.
Leon launched new Futurise.com in just 4 weeks. He migrated over 1,000 active members from Thinkific, got his first paid customer in the first week, and continues to expand with weekly courses, templates, and live sessions.
But he didn’t stop there. With Momen’s visual builder and structured backend, he can:
Add new models or features without breaking existing ones
Drag-and-drop workflows, not backend headaches
Minimal bugs—most are tied to business logic, not system issues
No engineers. No downtime. Just momentum.
Built It Your Way
The only limit is my creativity.
Leon’s journey proves what’s possible when expertise meets the right platform. You don’t need to be a developer to build something powerful. You just need a clear vision — and the freedom to bring it to life without limits.
With Momen, you control the structure, the experience, and the business model. No code. No compromises. Just creation on your terms.
