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The main trouble was Byju (the founder) was never a tech person or a product builder. Byju was a tutor (at mass scale), he at best was an excellent service pers

by achow 3y ago

The main trouble was Byju (the founder) was never a tech person or a product builder. Byju was a tutor (at mass scale), he at best was an excellent service person. The VCs (Sequoia, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Tencent, Lightspeed, Naspers...) had ONE JOB - founder evaluation - should have seen it coming from far that Byju will not be able to create a scalable tech product worth $22 Billion.

thisislife2 3y ago
Doesn't the fact that the founder managed to raise so much money and create a company that was once worth $22 billion suggest that in certain aspects, of being a businessman, he was quite good?
fakedang 3y ago
Byju is a product builder - he delivered tutoring services as a service. He was a fairly good tutor, going by his early stuff - he made YouTube videos for competitive exams that were fairly successful in their own right. I would go so far to state that Byjus pioneered the coaching at mass scale model for education in India, specifically for competitive exams. Where he floundered, was falling to the VC-led growth at all costs trap. Byjus are notorious for unscrupulous marketing tactics geared towards parents and abuse of employees to further their bottom line. They spent way too much on marketing, including at the FIFA World Cup and the IPL. After all of this growth, hubris caught up with Byju and brought him down.
- achow 3y ago
  Making youtube video with thoughtful animation etc. however good is not tech product building, it is content creation. Instead of creating content for YouTube, becoming YouTube platform itself is product building. One could sense how far they are from product culture was by looking at their senior Product, Engg, Design staff, when they could have hired anyone from the market.
  - fakedang 3y ago
    >One could sense how far they are from product culture was by looking at their senior Product, Engg, Design staff, when they could have hired anyone from the market. Can you explain? The core Byjus product, the app, was far more polished than its competition in EdTech. They started off as a product for the Indian market, and literally trounced their competition in the early stages (before they got VC addicted). >Making youtube video with thoughtful animation etc. however good is not tech product building, it is content creation. And here I realize that you are barely familiar with Byjus. Because if you were, you would have known that they relied on lecture videos by instructors, mostly Byju himself, and not on animations and glitter. When Byjus started, there was no app or internet tool for coaching for competitive examinations, only expensive coaching institutes. Byju's free YouTube videos were a handy tool for diligent students without resources. When they launched their app, it was basically just the same YouTube lectures mixed with internal lesson quizzes, but that itself was a huge step up for students from the competition who were basically brick and mortar coaching centers (where the guarantee of coaching was a big question mark). They began failing when they, funded by VC, began overpricing their product (which lacked an in person component, unlike the status quo) and marketing aggressively in all media, in search of mega valuations. Even then, they would have succeeded in a win for investors, if they had IPO'd around the boom period.
    - achow 3y ago
      > ..you would have known that they relied on lecture videos by instructors, mostly Byju himself, and not on animations and glitter. That is the same - content creation. Not disagreeing to the fact that he perhaps did much better job than the others in test-prep market of at that time, but content creation startup is not worth $22B by any stretch of imagination. There is no moat. Sal Khan (Khan Academy) started much earlier, has deep & rich content, much more globally respected, but did it have valuation anywhere close to Byju's? Read this book to get "familiar with Byjus".. very well written The Learning Trap: How Byju’S Took Indian Edtech For A Ride https://www.amazon.in/Learning-Trap-ByjuS-Indian-Edtech/dp/9353452325 https://www.amazon.in/Learning-Trap-ByjuS-Indian-Edtech/dp/9...

by achow 3y ago

thisislife2 3y ago

Doesn't the fact that the founder managed to raise so much money and create a company that was once worth $22 billion suggest that in certain aspects, of being a businessman, he was quite good?

fakedang 3y ago

Byju is a product builder - he delivered tutoring services as a service. He was a fairly good tutor, going by his early stuff - he made YouTube videos for competitive exams that were fairly successful in their own right. I would go so far to state that Byjus pioneered the coaching at mass scale model for education in India, specifically for competitive exams. Where he floundered, was falling to the VC-led growth at all costs trap. Byjus are notorious for unscrupulous marketing tactics geared towards parents and abuse of employees to further their bottom line. They spent way too much on marketing, including at the FIFA World Cup and the IPL. After all of this growth, hubris caught up with Byju and brought him down.

achow 3y ago
Making youtube video with thoughtful animation etc. however good is not tech product building, it is content creation. Instead of creating content for YouTube, becoming YouTube platform itself is product building. One could sense how far they are from product culture was by looking at their senior Product, Engg, Design staff, when they could have hired anyone from the market.
- fakedang 3y ago
  >One could sense how far they are from product culture was by looking at their senior Product, Engg, Design staff, when they could have hired anyone from the market. Can you explain? The core Byjus product, the app, was far more polished than its competition in EdTech. They started off as a product for the Indian market, and literally trounced their competition in the early stages (before they got VC addicted). >Making youtube video with thoughtful animation etc. however good is not tech product building, it is content creation. And here I realize that you are barely familiar with Byjus. Because if you were, you would have known that they relied on lecture videos by instructors, mostly Byju himself, and not on animations and glitter. When Byjus started, there was no app or internet tool for coaching for competitive examinations, only expensive coaching institutes. Byju's free YouTube videos were a handy tool for diligent students without resources. When they launched their app, it was basically just the same YouTube lectures mixed with internal lesson quizzes, but that itself was a huge step up for students from the competition who were basically brick and mortar coaching centers (where the guarantee of coaching was a big question mark). They began failing when they, funded by VC, began overpricing their product (which lacked an in person component, unlike the status quo) and marketing aggressively in all media, in search of mega valuations. Even then, they would have succeeded in a win for investors, if they had IPO'd around the boom period.
  - achow 3y ago
    > ..you would have known that they relied on lecture videos by instructors, mostly Byju himself, and not on animations and glitter. That is the same - content creation. Not disagreeing to the fact that he perhaps did much better job than the others in test-prep market of at that time, but content creation startup is not worth $22B by any stretch of imagination. There is no moat. Sal Khan (Khan Academy) started much earlier, has deep & rich content, much more globally respected, but did it have valuation anywhere close to Byju's? Read this book to get "familiar with Byjus".. very well written The Learning Trap: How Byju’S Took Indian Edtech For A Ride https://www.amazon.in/Learning-Trap-ByjuS-Indian-Edtech/dp/9353452325 https://www.amazon.in/Learning-Trap-ByjuS-Indian-Edtech/dp/9...