Some considerations: - From the mission of making education affordable by combating rising tuition, Edtech surprisingly isn't thriving as we thought it would (e.g. Coursera, Chegg not great this year, etc.) - China educational stocks collapsed (e.g. TAL, EDU, etc.) summer of 2021 and hasn't recovered, showing indication of what happens if public sector steps in this industry - You would think that COVID and lockdown would result in demands in online education as well, but that has proven to be false With above considerations, what are your predictions for Udemy's IPO and the future of edtech, are the 'proprietary' implementations in this field innovative? Has Udemy figured it all out by creating a new revenue stream via B2B that generated $100mm in ARR? I'd like to ask finance bros but their eyes are on the $$, so I think builders/engineers' opinions are much more preferable/insightful (we don't discriminate, though, everyone has the comment feature afterall)
edtech is changing fast, udemy is the same thing as zoom university imo from a product perspective: online education needs to be engaging -> more creator based cohort-based helps too bootcamps, CBCs, creator-based courses if udemy can somehow go after those verticals then maybe i’ll believe in them check out Maven by fmr Udemy cofounder
Ah is maven the one that created millionaire instructor overnight phenomenon? Ill research this more. I know that udemy is building out hubs globally to be more instructor-friendly, with hopes of providing creators with tools and necessary assistance
yep, some big influencers are creating courses on maven. not sure if maven itself will beat udemy but it does seem like the industry is expanding to more mediums
There’s a perception problem that can’t be fixed in the short term. People believe that big name universities have some sort of magic recipe, as though learning CS sitting in a lecture hall with 200 people is somehow superior to watching a recording of that lecture. I doubt the pandemic changes this. If I were one of these Ed tech companies, I’d try partnering with a large hiring org (ideally many) and try to do iterative curriculum improvements: build a program, monitor graduate performance, keep tweaking the program based on feedback. If you can show your cohort outperforming traditional hires, you can change minds. This is difficult for a variety of reasons, primarily privacy, so I’m not sure anybody will crack it. Anybody who thinks the quality of the content is the main problem has probably not attended a lot of college CS lectures, imho. Oh also the evaluation piece needs work. Personally, I think the Ed tech companies should help students build a strong online portfolio and they need some sort of exam system with project work to validate learning. My two cents as somebody who’s had one foot in tech and one in learning for over a decade.
I like the insight on perception. We'd be hypocrite the moment we get asked if we should choose between a kid who finished 10 courses of Udemy with an amazing repository vs. a kid that graduated from MIT The partnership idea seems to be effective for boot camps, something I hope Udemy looks into
Last I checked with boot camps, a “good” placement rate was in the 16% range. My wife did one and she ended up getting a bit of a raise, but it was meant to be a data science boot camp and it really only helped her hit business analyst. And that’s with significant outside effort. (Plus about $9k in tuition.)
Covid really helped accelerate our business and helped shed a light on online learning. There are a lot of areas of growth and partnerships we're working on, and hopefully long term more people will focus on learning skills instead of the need to go to college. There have been plenty of self taught users who can change careers due to udemy courses. I agree b2b is growing crazy fast, I think a lot of companies see the need to offer extra learning and resources to their employees to keep them educated and up to date on everything. I'm excited for the IPO and hope to see growth like Upstart ;)
Yeah I literally changed my life with Udemy courses. Don't want to reveal which to mask my identity, but I'm so thankful for Udemy. Good luck next Friday :) 🚀🚀🚀
I started to look into EdTech industry as I am interviewing with a company in this sector. I noticed people are quite bullish on the B2B side of the business. Apart from the size of the company and financial state (private vs public), what do you guys think of its competitors like Coursera(B2C) and Degreed(B2B)?
B2B is the successful play here, IMO. I think most individuals see *most* udemy, udacity, etc courses as low quality - either practically (don’t teach you anything in a useful way) or reputationaly (even if it did teach you something, it’s not considered a useful credential). I also don’t think there’s any meaningful comparative advantage between them outside of UI and B2B focus. Chegg, though, I think has a lot of room to grow their business with the move to online learning more broadly. Also surprised they didn’t see growth.
Great insight. Cheers to Chegg management tho honestly. They reinvented themselves so many times. I think when I first used, I bought cheap books? Lol
Chegg s stock grew too quickly. I think they grew by as much as 10x in 3 years. Having said that they are all about digital learning and study aids at the undergrad level. I wouldn’t say their management had any bright ideas. All they did was bought out a bunch of small companies that have very specialized solutions and grouped them under the Chegg study umbrella