8 ms·

Udacity Raises $105M Series D, Bringing Valuation to $1B

126 points by doppp 11y ago

Alex3917 11y ago
I taught myself to code on Udacity, and in a couple weeks I'm going to be launching a social network that I built with one other person. Shit works. There's no reason why everyone shouldn't be on there. edit: Obligatory link to sign up for the private beta: http://fwdeveryone.com/ http://fwdeveryone.com/ Also, here is what I wrote about the experience at the time: http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/11/2012-my-year-of-code.html http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/11/2012-my-yea...
- ChicagoBoy11 11y ago
  Man your blog post brought back so many memories. I went through just about the same learning path, and in 2012 as well. Like you I'd done CS in HS and taken one class in college, but couldn't build anything real if my life depended on it. To me what really made me transition is their WebDev course In all seriousness, though, is their CS253 the greatest course ever or is it the greatest course ever?! Huffman was just brilliant in providing a nice framework with which to think about development. After I took that course, it was if Googling my way through problems and learning from the available resources on the internet became that much easier, because now I could see how all of these little parts fit into a broader context. That's one thing that definitely disappointed me about how Udacity has grown. That course taught by Huffman was so good in that he explained so much of the theory and reasoning, and not just tools. Peter Norvig's advanced Python course is another one of their offerings which feel very similar. Lately, though, I think their courses have resembled much more what you find on CodeAcademy or places like that: A lot more focused on tools, content, etc., and less so on the broader picture.
  - didgeoridoo 11y ago
    CS253 all the way. I still have Steve Huffman's "pretty neat, huh?" echoing in my brain. Whenever anyone asks me "how can I learn to build web applications", it's the first place I point them. He even goes over basic crypto and security, yet doesn't oversell what he's teaching. Just perfect. I agree that the Udacity classes available today just don't measure up, sadly.
  - Alex3917 11y ago
    Yeah CS253 definitely is the greatest class ever. The problem with web development is that to even make a hello world page there are like 10 completely different and unrelated technologies you need to know. So you can know a little Python, a little HTML, and some js, but if you've never used a web framework or SQL then you're out of luck. CS253 really combines all these technologies, getting you just far enough into each of them that you can make something that actually works — and then be able to understand (albeit with difficulty at first) the rest of the documentation on your own.
  - trymas 11y ago
    Udacity is awesome, I got hooked on programming and use python as my go to language due to udacity's programming 101 class. I still have a lot of subscribed courses which are not finished :) and take a look at them from time to time. Though with Huffman's webdev course I would disagree. I do not know when you took it, but myself, I did it just as it was released, and at that time it was not fully complete. I mean in a sense of extra helping material. Huffman discussed some basics, which were great (especially about how not to make noob mistakes), but for a complete python and webdev noob exercises were really opaque. I remember how flooded forums were of how to setup your app for google app engine or how to complete some exercises to fit it (GAE).
- josu 11y ago
  I'm learning to code myself too. What courses did you take on Udacity?
  - Alex3917 11y ago
    CS101 and CS253. I've taken a couple others, but those were the most important ones. C.f. the blog post.
    - josu 11y ago
      Oh, thanks, I totally missed the link to your blog post. EDIT: Great post! Thanks for sharing.
ghaff 11y ago
Mind. Boggles. "Nanodegrees"? "now recognized by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies, including Google and Salesforce"? What does that even mean? And this is a company that has essentially "pivoted" to being a sort of vocational training in the CS space. There may be a business model there but it doesn't seem like anything particularly unique or deserving of out-sized evaluations.
- dgritsko 11y ago
  Nanodegrees aren't the only thing Udacity does; they're also the content delivery platform for Georgia Tech's OMSCS program (http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/ http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/) that was in the news not so long ago (the "$7,000 master's degree"). I'm not sure how much revenue that partnership generates, but maybe they plan on having similar relationships with other universities in the future?
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Some of the mixed education initiatives actually make a lot of sense. There are aspects of many classes where one-to-many broadcast and automated grading serve a useful role. Not sure they're "unicorn" valuable, but they're valuable.
- hawkice 11y ago
  I assume "recognized" means that when a recruiter for those company sees that, their reaction is: "Nanodegree in... what the what? Oh, wait a second. Yeah, this is that PR from the Khan Academy or whatever. Sure, I recognize that from the other wave of applications." Depending on the savvy of the recruiters they might start to figure that nano = one billionth, so a nano degree is roughly an eight of a second of a four year degree.
- dthal 11y ago
  I wouldn't be so down on vocational training for software...It is a field that has an unusually high requirement for ongoing learning. And when you have to learn some new tech, usually you have to do it now, and in-place, not next September, in the nearest college town. Given the high ongoing learning requirements that software has, I think there is a pretty clear need for training that's delivered where you are and when you need it, and traditional schools won't be able to do that.
TheMagicHorsey 11y ago
I used to think these online educational companies wouldn't be very profitable in the long run. Then I discovered Udemy. In the last two months I've bought three courses on Udemy (at about $10-$20 each). The courses aren't your conventional CS classes. I bought a course on Photoshop mastery. Another on Android programming, and another on Adobe Illustrator skills. I've enjoyed the material so far. I have undergrad and grad degrees from respected US schools, so I don't really need certification, but I still find myself taking these online courses. In the case of Photoshop and Illustrator, its not even for the sake of employment (although it might be useful in the long run). There's something satisfying about acquiring skills in an area you are really deficient in.
- rahimnathwani 11y ago
  I've bought several courses on Udemy (which hosts some awesome content), and am part way through my second Udacity nanodegree. These sites seem to serve slightly different purposes: - Udacity: help you get a job in a new field - Udemy: help you learn a new set of techniques, that can help with what you're currently trying to do (e.g. in your current job)
- heyrhett 11y ago
  I'm in a similar boat. I've been a software engineer for 15 years, but I'm able to learn new languages and tools by watching videos on 2X speed on Udemy. It's much harder to find good quality videos on Youtube. I'm happy to pay the $10-20
- deleted 11y ago
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- _delirium 11y ago
  I like a good deal of what's on Udemy, but it feels like for reasons totally different from the marketing. For me it's more like the online version of those video lecture series you used to buy on VHS or DVD through a "distance learning" mailorder catalog, and not so much like an online classroom. There's some course-like content in it beyond the lectures (quizzes and such), but imo the main value is really just the lectures, and the quality of the lectures is what differentiates good courses on there from bad ones. Which is fine, video lectures are a model that's worked for a few decades, but now online and more convenient to shop for. And a good video-lecture course is certainly worth at least $10. I guess I can see why they don't brand it that way (the "disrupting education" hype train has money/press, while "mail-order video lectures, but on the internet" is a harder sell). But for me, their courses made a lot more sense to me once I started thinking of it as a place to buy a video lecture course, like the way you might order DVDs of the Feynman physics lectures.
dhruvp 11y ago
Relevant interview with Sebastian Thrun(CEO) on the raise: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-11-12/sebastian-thrun-s-udacity-becomes-a-unicorn http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-11-12/sebastian-th...
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dthal 11y ago
A lot of people are going to dump on this billion dollar valuation, but we don't have the terms. Presumably there is liquidation preference. According to Crunchbase [1], the total capital raised is about $160 million after this money, so the investors don't need this company to be worth $1 billion to come out fine. Sam Altman made the point a few days ago that a lot of these late-stage private financings are kind of debt-like [2, about paragraph 8-9 and footnote #2], with the result that the valuations aren't really meaningful. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/udacity#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/udacity#/entity [2] http://blog.samaltman.com/the-tech-bust-of-2015 http://blog.samaltman.com/the-tech-bust-of-2015
sotojuan 11y ago
The JavaScript Design Patterns course[1] kickstarted by web dev knowledge. Not sure how the rest of the catalog is, but that course was useful for a newbie. [1] https://www.udacity.com/course/javascript-design-patterns--ud989 https://www.udacity.com/course/javascript-design-patterns--u...
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Everhusk 11y ago
Awesome, Udacity is awesome! Any time my friends ask me how I learned coding I always refer them to Udacity. The quality is just as good as University courses, and you don't have to wait months to finish because you can go on a 2x speed binge watch and crush it in days/weeks.
rezashirazian 11y ago
Udacity is great for picking up specific skills but if a nanodegree is all you got on your resume, I doubt you would be taken seriously by employers.
- yeukhon 11y ago
  I wouldn't put it on the resume either. I would instead just build something at work or after work using the skill I have. If someone asked me how I manage to write a simple chatbot I would say I learned it from Coursera and the Internet.
mattbillenstein 11y ago
I interviewed at this place -- comically bad. They're all clearly drinking the koolaid around a fire of VC money -- their CEO's ties to Google and resume will let them raise whatever funds they desire, but the people I talked to seemed elitist and really concerned about everything but the end product. We'll be talking about a "unicorn" failing in 2017 when they burn through this $105M...
- makeramen 11y ago
  How long ago did you interview? There have been some pretty big changes internally and things should have improved quite a bit over the past year or so.
  - mattbillenstein 11y ago
    End of Sept 2015
- heyrhett 11y ago
  Did they give you a job offer?
  - mattbillenstein 11y ago
    No, it was obvious we were not right for one another.
- askafriend 11y ago
  I curious what you mean by "everything but the end product". Care to elaborate?
- pclark 11y ago
  i chatted with these guys and one of my good friends works there and can assure you your impression is mistaken. udacity will be a big company with a product that works and a healthy business model.
  - 11y ago
goldenkey 11y ago
There is a ton of astroturfing going on in this thread. The article looks like an ad... Where are the contrasting opinions?
- spectrum1234 11y ago
  TechCrunch is known for being "in" with VCs...you know, the ones who fund the companies they write articles for.
bigtunacan 11y ago
I've used quite a few other (pay) MOOC services; subscription based, pay by class, free, etc... Pluralsight, Udemy, Lynda, Coursera, Code School, Stack Skills I've also used some small independent ones as well (Bitfountain is just one example). The thing I would be really curious to see (but unfortunately don't think we will see any time soon) is how the profit numbers stack up on these different pay models. For the subscription based services I will pay a monthly fee for no more than one service at a time and I will make heavy use of it during that time period. This is what I did with Pluralsight, Code School, and Lynda. Got a subscription and used it for awhile then canceled when I was done with the material I was interested in or I didn't have enough time to spend for it to be worth the money. I also cap the value at about $50/month max. Not that Udacity has bad content, but there is great content on the competitors too. I can sign up for Pluralsight + Lynda + Code School every month and still have money left over to buy some courses outright on Udemy or Stack Skills. In total I've spent a lot more money on buying courses outright from sources like Udemy. Originally I was looking there for some specific technical classes, but they have so much variety I have spent more money on things like art, photography, and design classes. Wow... I went off on a bit of a tangent there. Anyway; really would be interested in seeing how much money is being made by these different services as well as seeing percentages/dollars of how much of that passes through to individual content creators etc...
- el_benhameen 11y ago
  As someone who wants to use perhaps one or two--but certainly not all-- of these services, I'm curious which of these services you've found most valuable. I'm asking generally, though I'm mostly interested in compsci/dev topics, if that's helpful.
  - bigtunacan 11y ago
    It depends a bit what specific stacks you are interested in. Pluralsight and Lynda's "all you can eat" monthly subscriptions are probably the best since they just have more classes all around. Lynda by and far has the most classes available. They have more tech classes than Pluralsight, but they also have classes in many unrelated categories as well. The flip side; I think Pluralsight holds content authors to a higher standard. Once Pluralsight was heavily focuses on .NET, but they've branched out a lot more. Coursera has some good stuff and it's free if you don't care about the cert. Their Functional Programming in Scala class is excellent.
dhruvsodumb 11y ago
GOT EM
rdlecler1 11y ago
No they raised $105M in preferred shares with 1x or more liquidity preferences. The common stock is worth no more than the value of a way out of the money penny option that is only excercised in the case of a liquidity event. Meaning the real valuation of the company is maybe two or three hundred million. Of course founders don't tell employees that because they can get talent for pennies on the dollar this way.
- judk 11y ago
  How do you get to 300M? Is is possible that someone like University of Phoenix might offer $1B for the company? If so, might it be accepted? If so, how much are shares worth? At my old job, whenever investors bought in they offers to buy out employee shares at the stated valuation.
  - rdlecler1 11y ago
    Yes possible. It's possible my $2 lottery ticket will also be worth $100m but until it is, it is still worth only $2 or maybe even less. Until then the value of each share class is not the same and so it would be a mathematical mistake to calculate valuation as the sum of all shares multiplied by the highest price paid for the most senior share class.
subrat_rout 11y ago
I am one of the first cohort of Udacity to complete Front End Web Developer Nanodegree. However, when I applied for a developer job(something called Udacity Experience Program) on their career site, few weeks after I got an email describing I am not a good fit for the role. I have been looking for an entry level developer job for last couple of months. During job interviews when I mention regarding the Certification Program from Udacity or discuss on the projects that I did it does not ring a bell to most of interviewers. Agreed I learned a ton on front-end development from the program but so far the nanodegree has not really helped me in my job search. It will be interesting to see if Udacity can gather and publish data on number of nanodegree holders getting developer jobs after completion.
- Alex3917 11y ago
  Are you looking for jobs at startups? If so, it's going to be difficult to get hired regardless of your training if you've never worked in the field before. This is just due to some quirks about the economics of the industry. It's much easier to get hired at a dev shop, work there for a year or two, and then apply to work at a startup or large company after that.
  - subrat_rout 11y ago
    Right. Few startups and dev shops that I have interviewed in SF Bay area are looking for those developers (2-5 years experience) and the market here is crazy for experienced ones. Few days ago I posted on HN (Who wants to be hired) even to work for free as an intern for couple of weeks but so far has not received any response.
    - Alex3917 11y ago
      Interesting, maybe it's different in NYC due to all the money in media, fashion, healthcare, and other industries where tech is more peripheral. Recently I've also seen some folks have success after regularly attending the weekly hack nights for their technology of choice, and then get hired after a couple months of that.
- 11y ago
fierycatnet 11y ago
I think Udacity is great but I don't know about efficacy of it. I think it's going to face the same challenges as any other online education site. I think one of the founders had some doubts a few months back about direction of the site, it didn't prove to be what it set out to be. In any case I wish Udacity all the best because I like them.
calebm 11y ago
Udacity has the absolute best online CS classes I've seen. My brother used Udacity to learn software development, and is now employed.
- subrat_rout 11y ago
  Hi Caleb, Care to elaborate a bit more about your brother's scenario? I am interested as I am a recent graduate from Udacity and looking for a junior developer position in SF Bay area.
netcan 11y ago
One worrying aspect of this sort of thing is that it obligates them to go after really big revenue potential as an end game. We don't know much about where online education is going yet, how it works. It may be the case that a MOOC could change the way education works fundamentally and still have revenue that does not justify a valuation like this. The field is still young and feels like the potential is much bigger than the current state. We don't know what achieving that potential looks like. I hope they aren't taking important options off the table.

126 points by doppp 11y ago

I taught myself to code on Udacity, and in a couple weeks I'm going to be launching a social network that I built with one other person. Shit works. There's no reason why everyone shouldn't be on there. edit: Obligatory link to sign up for the private beta: http://fwdeveryone.com/ http://fwdeveryone.com/ Also, here is what I wrote about the experience at the time: http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/11/2012-my-year-of-code.html http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/11/2012-my-yea...

ChicagoBoy11 11y ago
Man your blog post brought back so many memories. I went through just about the same learning path, and in 2012 as well. Like you I'd done CS in HS and taken one class in college, but couldn't build anything real if my life depended on it. To me what really made me transition is their WebDev course In all seriousness, though, is their CS253 the greatest course ever or is it the greatest course ever?! Huffman was just brilliant in providing a nice framework with which to think about development. After I took that course, it was if Googling my way through problems and learning from the available resources on the internet became that much easier, because now I could see how all of these little parts fit into a broader context. That's one thing that definitely disappointed me about how Udacity has grown. That course taught by Huffman was so good in that he explained so much of the theory and reasoning, and not just tools. Peter Norvig's advanced Python course is another one of their offerings which feel very similar. Lately, though, I think their courses have resembled much more what you find on CodeAcademy or places like that: A lot more focused on tools, content, etc., and less so on the broader picture.
- didgeoridoo 11y ago
  CS253 all the way. I still have Steve Huffman's "pretty neat, huh?" echoing in my brain. Whenever anyone asks me "how can I learn to build web applications", it's the first place I point them. He even goes over basic crypto and security, yet doesn't oversell what he's teaching. Just perfect. I agree that the Udacity classes available today just don't measure up, sadly.
- Alex3917 11y ago
  Yeah CS253 definitely is the greatest class ever. The problem with web development is that to even make a hello world page there are like 10 completely different and unrelated technologies you need to know. So you can know a little Python, a little HTML, and some js, but if you've never used a web framework or SQL then you're out of luck. CS253 really combines all these technologies, getting you just far enough into each of them that you can make something that actually works — and then be able to understand (albeit with difficulty at first) the rest of the documentation on your own.
- trymas 11y ago
  Udacity is awesome, I got hooked on programming and use python as my go to language due to udacity's programming 101 class. I still have a lot of subscribed courses which are not finished :) and take a look at them from time to time. Though with Huffman's webdev course I would disagree. I do not know when you took it, but myself, I did it just as it was released, and at that time it was not fully complete. I mean in a sense of extra helping material. Huffman discussed some basics, which were great (especially about how not to make noob mistakes), but for a complete python and webdev noob exercises were really opaque. I remember how flooded forums were of how to setup your app for google app engine or how to complete some exercises to fit it (GAE).
josu 11y ago
I'm learning to code myself too. What courses did you take on Udacity?
- Alex3917 11y ago
  CS101 and CS253. I've taken a couple others, but those were the most important ones. C.f. the blog post.
  - josu 11y ago
    Oh, thanks, I totally missed the link to your blog post. EDIT: Great post! Thanks for sharing.

ghaff 11y ago

Mind. Boggles. "Nanodegrees"? "now recognized by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies, including Google and Salesforce"? What does that even mean? And this is a company that has essentially "pivoted" to being a sort of vocational training in the CS space. There may be a business model there but it doesn't seem like anything particularly unique or deserving of out-sized evaluations.

dgritsko 11y ago
Nanodegrees aren't the only thing Udacity does; they're also the content delivery platform for Georgia Tech's OMSCS program (http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/ http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/) that was in the news not so long ago (the "$7,000 master's degree"). I'm not sure how much revenue that partnership generates, but maybe they plan on having similar relationships with other universities in the future?
- ghaff 11y ago
  Some of the mixed education initiatives actually make a lot of sense. There are aspects of many classes where one-to-many broadcast and automated grading serve a useful role. Not sure they're "unicorn" valuable, but they're valuable.
hawkice 11y ago
I assume "recognized" means that when a recruiter for those company sees that, their reaction is: "Nanodegree in... what the what? Oh, wait a second. Yeah, this is that PR from the Khan Academy or whatever. Sure, I recognize that from the other wave of applications." Depending on the savvy of the recruiters they might start to figure that nano = one billionth, so a nano degree is roughly an eight of a second of a four year degree.
dthal 11y ago
I wouldn't be so down on vocational training for software...It is a field that has an unusually high requirement for ongoing learning. And when you have to learn some new tech, usually you have to do it now, and in-place, not next September, in the nearest college town. Given the high ongoing learning requirements that software has, I think there is a pretty clear need for training that's delivered where you are and when you need it, and traditional schools won't be able to do that.

TheMagicHorsey 11y ago

I used to think these online educational companies wouldn't be very profitable in the long run. Then I discovered Udemy. In the last two months I've bought three courses on Udemy (at about $10-$20 each). The courses aren't your conventional CS classes. I bought a course on Photoshop mastery. Another on Android programming, and another on Adobe Illustrator skills. I've enjoyed the material so far. I have undergrad and grad degrees from respected US schools, so I don't really need certification, but I still find myself taking these online courses. In the case of Photoshop and Illustrator, its not even for the sake of employment (although it might be useful in the long run). There's something satisfying about acquiring skills in an area you are really deficient in.

rahimnathwani 11y ago
I've bought several courses on Udemy (which hosts some awesome content), and am part way through my second Udacity nanodegree. These sites seem to serve slightly different purposes: - Udacity: help you get a job in a new field - Udemy: help you learn a new set of techniques, that can help with what you're currently trying to do (e.g. in your current job)
heyrhett 11y ago
I'm in a similar boat. I've been a software engineer for 15 years, but I'm able to learn new languages and tools by watching videos on 2X speed on Udemy. It's much harder to find good quality videos on Youtube. I'm happy to pay the $10-20
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_delirium 11y ago
I like a good deal of what's on Udemy, but it feels like for reasons totally different from the marketing. For me it's more like the online version of those video lecture series you used to buy on VHS or DVD through a "distance learning" mailorder catalog, and not so much like an online classroom. There's some course-like content in it beyond the lectures (quizzes and such), but imo the main value is really just the lectures, and the quality of the lectures is what differentiates good courses on there from bad ones. Which is fine, video lectures are a model that's worked for a few decades, but now online and more convenient to shop for. And a good video-lecture course is certainly worth at least $10. I guess I can see why they don't brand it that way (the "disrupting education" hype train has money/press, while "mail-order video lectures, but on the internet" is a harder sell). But for me, their courses made a lot more sense to me once I started thinking of it as a place to buy a video lecture course, like the way you might order DVDs of the Feynman physics lectures.

dhruvp 11y ago

Relevant interview with Sebastian Thrun(CEO) on the raise: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-11-12/sebastian-thrun-s-udacity-becomes-a-unicorn http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-11-12/sebastian-th...

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dthal 11y ago

A lot of people are going to dump on this billion dollar valuation, but we don't have the terms. Presumably there is liquidation preference. According to Crunchbase [1], the total capital raised is about $160 million after this money, so the investors don't need this company to be worth $1 billion to come out fine. Sam Altman made the point a few days ago that a lot of these late-stage private financings are kind of debt-like [2, about paragraph 8-9 and footnote #2], with the result that the valuations aren't really meaningful. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/udacity#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/udacity#/entity [2] http://blog.samaltman.com/the-tech-bust-of-2015 http://blog.samaltman.com/the-tech-bust-of-2015

sotojuan 11y ago

The JavaScript Design Patterns course[1] kickstarted by web dev knowledge. Not sure how the rest of the catalog is, but that course was useful for a newbie. [1] https://www.udacity.com/course/javascript-design-patterns--ud989 https://www.udacity.com/course/javascript-design-patterns--u...

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Everhusk 11y ago

Awesome, Udacity is awesome! Any time my friends ask me how I learned coding I always refer them to Udacity. The quality is just as good as University courses, and you don't have to wait months to finish because you can go on a 2x speed binge watch and crush it in days/weeks.

rezashirazian 11y ago

Udacity is great for picking up specific skills but if a nanodegree is all you got on your resume, I doubt you would be taken seriously by employers.

yeukhon 11y ago
I wouldn't put it on the resume either. I would instead just build something at work or after work using the skill I have. If someone asked me how I manage to write a simple chatbot I would say I learned it from Coursera and the Internet.

mattbillenstein 11y ago

I interviewed at this place -- comically bad. They're all clearly drinking the koolaid around a fire of VC money -- their CEO's ties to Google and resume will let them raise whatever funds they desire, but the people I talked to seemed elitist and really concerned about everything but the end product. We'll be talking about a "unicorn" failing in 2017 when they burn through this $105M...

makeramen 11y ago
How long ago did you interview? There have been some pretty big changes internally and things should have improved quite a bit over the past year or so.
- mattbillenstein 11y ago
  End of Sept 2015
heyrhett 11y ago
Did they give you a job offer?
- mattbillenstein 11y ago
  No, it was obvious we were not right for one another.
askafriend 11y ago
I curious what you mean by "everything but the end product". Care to elaborate?
pclark 11y ago
i chatted with these guys and one of my good friends works there and can assure you your impression is mistaken. udacity will be a big company with a product that works and a healthy business model.
- 11y ago

goldenkey 11y ago

There is a ton of astroturfing going on in this thread. The article looks like an ad... Where are the contrasting opinions?

spectrum1234 11y ago
TechCrunch is known for being "in" with VCs...you know, the ones who fund the companies they write articles for.

bigtunacan 11y ago

I've used quite a few other (pay) MOOC services; subscription based, pay by class, free, etc... Pluralsight, Udemy, Lynda, Coursera, Code School, Stack Skills I've also used some small independent ones as well (Bitfountain is just one example). The thing I would be really curious to see (but unfortunately don't think we will see any time soon) is how the profit numbers stack up on these different pay models. For the subscription based services I will pay a monthly fee for no more than one service at a time and I will make heavy use of it during that time period. This is what I did with Pluralsight, Code School, and Lynda. Got a subscription and used it for awhile then canceled when I was done with the material I was interested in or I didn't have enough time to spend for it to be worth the money. I also cap the value at about $50/month max. Not that Udacity has bad content, but there is great content on the competitors too. I can sign up for Pluralsight + Lynda + Code School every month and still have money left over to buy some courses outright on Udemy or Stack Skills. In total I've spent a lot more money on buying courses outright from sources like Udemy. Originally I was looking there for some specific technical classes, but they have so much variety I have spent more money on things like art, photography, and design classes. Wow... I went off on a bit of a tangent there. Anyway; really would be interested in seeing how much money is being made by these different services as well as seeing percentages/dollars of how much of that passes through to individual content creators etc...

el_benhameen 11y ago
As someone who wants to use perhaps one or two--but certainly not all-- of these services, I'm curious which of these services you've found most valuable. I'm asking generally, though I'm mostly interested in compsci/dev topics, if that's helpful.
- bigtunacan 11y ago
  It depends a bit what specific stacks you are interested in. Pluralsight and Lynda's "all you can eat" monthly subscriptions are probably the best since they just have more classes all around. Lynda by and far has the most classes available. They have more tech classes than Pluralsight, but they also have classes in many unrelated categories as well. The flip side; I think Pluralsight holds content authors to a higher standard. Once Pluralsight was heavily focuses on .NET, but they've branched out a lot more. Coursera has some good stuff and it's free if you don't care about the cert. Their Functional Programming in Scala class is excellent.

dhruvsodumb 11y ago

GOT EM

rdlecler1 11y ago

No they raised $105M in preferred shares with 1x or more liquidity preferences. The common stock is worth no more than the value of a way out of the money penny option that is only excercised in the case of a liquidity event. Meaning the real valuation of the company is maybe two or three hundred million. Of course founders don't tell employees that because they can get talent for pennies on the dollar this way.

judk 11y ago
How do you get to 300M? Is is possible that someone like University of Phoenix might offer $1B for the company? If so, might it be accepted? If so, how much are shares worth? At my old job, whenever investors bought in they offers to buy out employee shares at the stated valuation.
- rdlecler1 11y ago
  Yes possible. It's possible my $2 lottery ticket will also be worth $100m but until it is, it is still worth only $2 or maybe even less. Until then the value of each share class is not the same and so it would be a mathematical mistake to calculate valuation as the sum of all shares multiplied by the highest price paid for the most senior share class.

subrat_rout 11y ago

I am one of the first cohort of Udacity to complete Front End Web Developer Nanodegree. However, when I applied for a developer job(something called Udacity Experience Program) on their career site, few weeks after I got an email describing I am not a good fit for the role. I have been looking for an entry level developer job for last couple of months. During job interviews when I mention regarding the Certification Program from Udacity or discuss on the projects that I did it does not ring a bell to most of interviewers. Agreed I learned a ton on front-end development from the program but so far the nanodegree has not really helped me in my job search. It will be interesting to see if Udacity can gather and publish data on number of nanodegree holders getting developer jobs after completion.

Alex3917 11y ago
Are you looking for jobs at startups? If so, it's going to be difficult to get hired regardless of your training if you've never worked in the field before. This is just due to some quirks about the economics of the industry. It's much easier to get hired at a dev shop, work there for a year or two, and then apply to work at a startup or large company after that.
- subrat_rout 11y ago
  Right. Few startups and dev shops that I have interviewed in SF Bay area are looking for those developers (2-5 years experience) and the market here is crazy for experienced ones. Few days ago I posted on HN (Who wants to be hired) even to work for free as an intern for couple of weeks but so far has not received any response.
  - Alex3917 11y ago
    Interesting, maybe it's different in NYC due to all the money in media, fashion, healthcare, and other industries where tech is more peripheral. Recently I've also seen some folks have success after regularly attending the weekly hack nights for their technology of choice, and then get hired after a couple months of that.
11y ago

fierycatnet 11y ago

I think Udacity is great but I don't know about efficacy of it. I think it's going to face the same challenges as any other online education site. I think one of the founders had some doubts a few months back about direction of the site, it didn't prove to be what it set out to be. In any case I wish Udacity all the best because I like them.

calebm 11y ago

Udacity has the absolute best online CS classes I've seen. My brother used Udacity to learn software development, and is now employed.

subrat_rout 11y ago
Hi Caleb, Care to elaborate a bit more about your brother's scenario? I am interested as I am a recent graduate from Udacity and looking for a junior developer position in SF Bay area.

netcan 11y ago

One worrying aspect of this sort of thing is that it obligates them to go after really big revenue potential as an end game. We don't know much about where online education is going yet, how it works. It may be the case that a MOOC could change the way education works fundamentally and still have revenue that does not justify a valuation like this. The field is still young and feels like the potential is much bigger than the current state. We don't know what achieving that potential looks like. I hope they aren't taking important options off the table.