13 ms·

Sebastian Thrun Steps Down as Udacity's CEO

190 points by datawrangler 10y ago

yeukhon 10y ago
> Thrun, who will remain as president and chairman of Udacity, said that he will continue to work full-time at Udacity, but he will take on a role focused on what he is passionate about—innovation. Just personal interpretation whenever someone says he or she is focusing on innovation without too much information: "I am not sure what I want to do, I am going to pretend I know what I want to do with the company's money here." What is innovation these days?
- argonaut 10y ago
  A bit too cynical, I think. This kind of arrangement, where one of the cofounders steps down to let someone else run the company, is very very common. Especially when the person stepping down is more technical/scientific. Remember that Thrun used to be a professor and used to do/lead research at Google.
  - Bombthecat 10y ago
    Yeah running a business is a complete different story.
- xorgar831 10y ago
  I disagree, I'd say it means there's too much day to day running of the org that their key people aren't able to focus on the longer term. That's pretty common.
- facepalm 10y ago
  Except that Thrun has a pretty good track record so far.
Artoemius 10y ago
I wonder what is hidden behind the phrase "the college partnerships failed". I took some great courses on Udacity, Coursera, and edX back in the days when they regularly offered amazing comprehensive college courses for free. They do still offer free courses. However, it seems that the atmosphere of free accessible education is somehow lost, with the advent of the "specializations" and "nanodegrees" and the like. Or maybe I just got older and more cynical, I'm not sure.
- argonaut 10y ago
  They need to make money? We should be thankful they haven't resorted to advertising or selling our information.
  - abecedarius 10y ago
    An idea floated around the time of their very first courses was that they'd double as a recruiter, like Stockfighter now (by my vague impression of both). I wonder what happened to that.
- geomark 10y ago
  I feel somewhat the same. I took a couple Udacity courses that were great and quite a few from Coursera. Coursera's free offerings are now partially gutted by restricting non-paying students from taking tests and submitting assignments.
  - cinquemb 10y ago
    Who would have guessed that the new online education revolution™, where effectiveness is measured in similar status/signaling games, would pander to the status quo? That being said, there's an amazing wealth of knowledge on the internet completely free to consume not locked behind any particular walled garden awaiting those who dare step out of their comfort zones of consumption/absorption, but its not nicely packaged in the latest fad de jour… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - RyanZAG 10y ago
      The issue here is that going through a professional institution is the difference between being a 'self taught amateur' and a 'well studied professional'. Even if both people are equally capable, the one with the paperwork is going to have a far easier time getting a job through traditional channels. Even if you plan on being an entrepreneur, your first media coverage is either going to say 'the Harvard graduate' or 'the self taught .. '. So it's an indicator even then. For Apple and Microsoft, 'college dropout' featured in nearly every early article. It became something of a compliment after a bit though and helped them stand out somehow. Nothing is ever simple, but just being accepted is probably enough even if you don't finish.
deepnet 10y ago
Professor Thrun changed my life, I and many tens of thousands around the world graduated from his classes, gaining an education that would have been impossible for many of us. I am forever in his debt for his tireless work as an educator and his work on SLAM & Self Driving Cars. Being taught by practitioners at the cutting edge of research like Thrun, Norvig, Ng, & Hinton is the education I dreamed of. I hope that Udacity develops into a full research vehicle and offers its own qualifications, the UKs Open University is a good model for this. His 2015 talk on democratising education is visionary, practical and disruptive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=898S7o9UnPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=898S7o9UnPA
- Gargoyle 10y ago
  It's interesting that the HN community thinks this comment should be downvoted. There's nothing wrong with it in any way.
a_small_island 10y ago
$24mm annual run rate and 30% m/m revenue growth (2015) with a $1B valuation (2015) Per the article...
kumarski 10y ago
I don't think technology will revolutionize education the way everyone in Silicon Valley thinks it will. Accessibility issues, yes. Disrupting traditional teaching, learning, practicing....hmmm?
- Niksko 10y ago
  Accessibility definitely, but I think it's naive to assume that just because the centralized teacher-student model of education has been around for a long time necessarily means it will never be supplanted. I think the evolution of education is probably technology supporting traditional teaching, along with some way of easily varying the curriculum or the learning mode to accommodate different learning styles. For that to happen I would guess that making designing curricula, lesson plans and activities easier to do would be a good start.
- kayoone 10y ago
  Agree, technology will (and already has to some extent) revolutionize learning on your own, but there still is a lot of value in going to a class, learning together with real people and listening to an experienced teacher. It is kind of similar as to why virtual meetings will never fully supplant real life meetings. Our mind just reacts differently in real conversations and i think peer pressure actually makes some sense in a learning environment. It's similar to how i feel about working at home after years of doing it and now working in an office again. It's just a different feeling of commitment to a project.
- qq66 10y ago
  But "accessibility issues" could completely change the way people learn. What if each student could access the kind of instruction one gets at Philips Exeter or Princeton University? Or what if the tailored aspect of private instruction could be scaled up? For example, if you give a tough math problem to 1,000,000 students, and want to have a tutor walk them through the problem, you'd need to have 1,000,000 tutors. But there are probably only 20 types of mistake one can make on a given math problem. So if you had a "choose your own adventure" solution, one math teacher could, in a month, record lessons that reach a hundred million students at a personalized level. Or, one could make a cost-effective way to learn from the absolute top practitioners in a field. Most people cannot afford private basketball lessons with an NBA basketball coach, for example. But let's say such a coach watched 10,000 people play basketball for five minutes each, and recorded five minutes of feedback for each person (about one year of full-time work). Then, you could upload a video of you playing, you could algorithmically analyze the user's playing style, and match them to the person in the set of 10,000 that matches them best. The five minutes of feedback might be really useful to that person, and can be delivered at scale.
erikb 10y ago
Happy to see that they are doing so well. I was so excited when I joined (one of) their first class(es), A.I. At the time I was still a university student and had a hard time going to class, seeing how far technology was ahead of our teaching methods. Learning online is a much better method for me.
- gedrap 10y ago
  So maybe it's not that learning online is a better method but that you found better teaching material and online is obviously a easier method to do so?
  - erikb 10y ago
    No, I mean it's a much better method. I can start when I want (not Monday morning, 8 am), I can make a break when I want (if just to google something that I didn't understand), I can repeat stuff that I didn't understand at first, and I can continue with homework directly after the lecture (I don't have to switch rooms and thereby mental context).
Fede_V 10y ago
The original business model of coursera/udacity was to offer the option to take most courses for free, but require people to pay for credentials. This is not obviously a bad idea: the quality of teaching at Harvard or Stanford is probably better than that you obtain in most universities, but the one of the main added values are the network of people you meet, and the credential of having attended a very prestigious university. However: the kind of person that takes a lot of online courses is probably already an educated professional, and for her, the main added value is the joy of learning new things, and the credentials themselves are near worthless. I'm sure they have lots of very smart people who thought hard about how to best monetize their offerings, but, for me, I would definitely pay a flat fee per month just to be able to keep sampling every course I want.
- pj_mukh 10y ago
  Maybe they could've focussed on making the credentials valuable (maybe they did and it didn't work). AFAIK, if you told an employer you have a "nanodegree" in something or other, its glossed over. Usually, you have to back it up with real-world projects. In which case why would I pay for the degree, I should just go out and build something with the stuff I learn for free.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Oh, I'm pretty sure they were all aware that credential value was ultimately going to have to be a pretty important component of getting people to pay more than a token amount. But the value of credentials is much more something that others confer on the credential than something the credentialing organization can confer on itself. Sure, the organization can attempt to explain and promote how its credential provides evidence of X, Y, Z skills or knowledge. Which works reasonably for both well-established institutions and narrow vocational training (including in IT). But it's a lot harder to make a case that random MOOC course provides evidence of much other than a generalized interest in continuing education (for which you don't really need a credential to prove).
  - coredog64 10y ago
    I started on a Udacity cert program, but had to drop it due to time constraints. The capstone of the program is/was a real-world project. While I never signed up for the nanodegree track, it appears those are similar.

190 points by datawrangler 10y ago

> Thrun, who will remain as president and chairman of Udacity, said that he will continue to work full-time at Udacity, but he will take on a role focused on what he is passionate about—innovation. Just personal interpretation whenever someone says he or she is focusing on innovation without too much information: "I am not sure what I want to do, I am going to pretend I know what I want to do with the company's money here." What is innovation these days?

argonaut 10y ago
A bit too cynical, I think. This kind of arrangement, where one of the cofounders steps down to let someone else run the company, is very very common. Especially when the person stepping down is more technical/scientific. Remember that Thrun used to be a professor and used to do/lead research at Google.
- Bombthecat 10y ago
  Yeah running a business is a complete different story.
xorgar831 10y ago
I disagree, I'd say it means there's too much day to day running of the org that their key people aren't able to focus on the longer term. That's pretty common.
facepalm 10y ago
Except that Thrun has a pretty good track record so far.

Artoemius 10y ago

I wonder what is hidden behind the phrase "the college partnerships failed". I took some great courses on Udacity, Coursera, and edX back in the days when they regularly offered amazing comprehensive college courses for free. They do still offer free courses. However, it seems that the atmosphere of free accessible education is somehow lost, with the advent of the "specializations" and "nanodegrees" and the like. Or maybe I just got older and more cynical, I'm not sure.

argonaut 10y ago
They need to make money? We should be thankful they haven't resorted to advertising or selling our information.
- abecedarius 10y ago
  An idea floated around the time of their very first courses was that they'd double as a recruiter, like Stockfighter now (by my vague impression of both). I wonder what happened to that.
geomark 10y ago
I feel somewhat the same. I took a couple Udacity courses that were great and quite a few from Coursera. Coursera's free offerings are now partially gutted by restricting non-paying students from taking tests and submitting assignments.
- cinquemb 10y ago
  Who would have guessed that the new online education revolution™, where effectiveness is measured in similar status/signaling games, would pander to the status quo? That being said, there's an amazing wealth of knowledge on the internet completely free to consume not locked behind any particular walled garden awaiting those who dare step out of their comfort zones of consumption/absorption, but its not nicely packaged in the latest fad de jour… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - RyanZAG 10y ago
    The issue here is that going through a professional institution is the difference between being a 'self taught amateur' and a 'well studied professional'. Even if both people are equally capable, the one with the paperwork is going to have a far easier time getting a job through traditional channels. Even if you plan on being an entrepreneur, your first media coverage is either going to say 'the Harvard graduate' or 'the self taught .. '. So it's an indicator even then. For Apple and Microsoft, 'college dropout' featured in nearly every early article. It became something of a compliment after a bit though and helped them stand out somehow. Nothing is ever simple, but just being accepted is probably enough even if you don't finish.

deepnet 10y ago

Professor Thrun changed my life, I and many tens of thousands around the world graduated from his classes, gaining an education that would have been impossible for many of us. I am forever in his debt for his tireless work as an educator and his work on SLAM & Self Driving Cars. Being taught by practitioners at the cutting edge of research like Thrun, Norvig, Ng, & Hinton is the education I dreamed of. I hope that Udacity develops into a full research vehicle and offers its own qualifications, the UKs Open University is a good model for this. His 2015 talk on democratising education is visionary, practical and disruptive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=898S7o9UnPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=898S7o9UnPA

Gargoyle 10y ago
It's interesting that the HN community thinks this comment should be downvoted. There's nothing wrong with it in any way.

a_small_island 10y ago

$24mm annual run rate and 30% m/m revenue growth (2015) with a $1B valuation (2015) Per the article...

kumarski 10y ago

I don't think technology will revolutionize education the way everyone in Silicon Valley thinks it will. Accessibility issues, yes. Disrupting traditional teaching, learning, practicing....hmmm?

Niksko 10y ago
Accessibility definitely, but I think it's naive to assume that just because the centralized teacher-student model of education has been around for a long time necessarily means it will never be supplanted. I think the evolution of education is probably technology supporting traditional teaching, along with some way of easily varying the curriculum or the learning mode to accommodate different learning styles. For that to happen I would guess that making designing curricula, lesson plans and activities easier to do would be a good start.
kayoone 10y ago
Agree, technology will (and already has to some extent) revolutionize learning on your own, but there still is a lot of value in going to a class, learning together with real people and listening to an experienced teacher. It is kind of similar as to why virtual meetings will never fully supplant real life meetings. Our mind just reacts differently in real conversations and i think peer pressure actually makes some sense in a learning environment. It's similar to how i feel about working at home after years of doing it and now working in an office again. It's just a different feeling of commitment to a project.
qq66 10y ago
But "accessibility issues" could completely change the way people learn. What if each student could access the kind of instruction one gets at Philips Exeter or Princeton University? Or what if the tailored aspect of private instruction could be scaled up? For example, if you give a tough math problem to 1,000,000 students, and want to have a tutor walk them through the problem, you'd need to have 1,000,000 tutors. But there are probably only 20 types of mistake one can make on a given math problem. So if you had a "choose your own adventure" solution, one math teacher could, in a month, record lessons that reach a hundred million students at a personalized level. Or, one could make a cost-effective way to learn from the absolute top practitioners in a field. Most people cannot afford private basketball lessons with an NBA basketball coach, for example. But let's say such a coach watched 10,000 people play basketball for five minutes each, and recorded five minutes of feedback for each person (about one year of full-time work). Then, you could upload a video of you playing, you could algorithmically analyze the user's playing style, and match them to the person in the set of 10,000 that matches them best. The five minutes of feedback might be really useful to that person, and can be delivered at scale.

erikb 10y ago

Happy to see that they are doing so well. I was so excited when I joined (one of) their first class(es), A.I. At the time I was still a university student and had a hard time going to class, seeing how far technology was ahead of our teaching methods. Learning online is a much better method for me.

gedrap 10y ago
So maybe it's not that learning online is a better method but that you found better teaching material and online is obviously a easier method to do so?
- erikb 10y ago
  No, I mean it's a much better method. I can start when I want (not Monday morning, 8 am), I can make a break when I want (if just to google something that I didn't understand), I can repeat stuff that I didn't understand at first, and I can continue with homework directly after the lecture (I don't have to switch rooms and thereby mental context).

Fede_V 10y ago

The original business model of coursera/udacity was to offer the option to take most courses for free, but require people to pay for credentials. This is not obviously a bad idea: the quality of teaching at Harvard or Stanford is probably better than that you obtain in most universities, but the one of the main added values are the network of people you meet, and the credential of having attended a very prestigious university. However: the kind of person that takes a lot of online courses is probably already an educated professional, and for her, the main added value is the joy of learning new things, and the credentials themselves are near worthless. I'm sure they have lots of very smart people who thought hard about how to best monetize their offerings, but, for me, I would definitely pay a flat fee per month just to be able to keep sampling every course I want.

pj_mukh 10y ago
Maybe they could've focussed on making the credentials valuable (maybe they did and it didn't work). AFAIK, if you told an employer you have a "nanodegree" in something or other, its glossed over. Usually, you have to back it up with real-world projects. In which case why would I pay for the degree, I should just go out and build something with the stuff I learn for free.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Oh, I'm pretty sure they were all aware that credential value was ultimately going to have to be a pretty important component of getting people to pay more than a token amount. But the value of credentials is much more something that others confer on the credential than something the credentialing organization can confer on itself. Sure, the organization can attempt to explain and promote how its credential provides evidence of X, Y, Z skills or knowledge. Which works reasonably for both well-established institutions and narrow vocational training (including in IT). But it's a lot harder to make a case that random MOOC course provides evidence of much other than a generalized interest in continuing education (for which you don't really need a credential to prove).
- coredog64 10y ago
  I started on a Udacity cert program, but had to drop it due to time constraints. The capstone of the program is/was a real-world project. While I never signed up for the nanodegree track, it appears those are similar.