Eren Bali and Gagan Biyani, Graduates of the Silicon Valley Founder Institute, had an idea for online education where students could learn about anything from learning how to write a verse of music or create an Excel spreadsheet build a website or bake a cake, and everything in between. The realization of their idea was Udemy, where people can go online and learn, well, just about anything.
Part of what makes Udemy so special is its ability to adapt to the way technology constantly affects the ways people learn. Here's what Udemy CEO, Dennis Yang, has to say on the matter:
The world around us is changing faster and faster, and traditional education systems are not keeping up. There are great instructors all around the world, but they're not necessarily standing in front of a classroom."
Recently, Udemy has pulled in 65 million dollars in new venture funding led by Stripes Group, a New York firm with an illustrious portfolio that also includes Odesk, Elance, Grubhub, and Blue Apron. This brings Udemy's total funding to 113 million dollars since their launch in 2010.
As previously highlighted, Udemy offers a diverse selection of courses even including courses that teach students how to rap. Udemy boasts over 17,000 global instructors teaching over 30,000 different courses in 80 different languages. Instructors have the ability to set their own prices for classes. The average price per course fluctuates between 20 and 100 dollars.
The most popular course the service offers is "The Complete Web Developer Course." Currently, there are over 111,000 students enrolled in this course. They will learn a variety of coding skills over 29 hours. After the Apple Watch was released over 130 courses in six different languages were submitted to teach developers how to build applications for the new technology.
While Udemy does review the courses that are submitted, the most stringent review process is done by the 7 million global users. The best courses quickly rise to the top of the pack, and competition for solid reviews means that instructors are always honing their lesson plans and materials so that they can offer students the best possible courses.
What makes Udemy so incredibly interesting and powerful is that you do not have to be affiliated with an educational institution to submit courses to the site. It allows the students to decide who they can learn the most from. This is especially helpful to the users who may not have access to quality education systems at home. Currently, more than two-thirds of Udemy users are based outside of the United States, and half of their revenue comes from outside the United States. Udemy has plans to expand more globally and have more diverse course offerings for non-English speakers.
Interestingly, the majority of the current funding is going to be used to develop Udemy for Business. This is a customizable feature for businesses to create educational portals for their employees. Right now there are 200 corporate customers already using customizable Udemy education portals to train or teach employees. A notable example of this is Goldman Sachs. They have started using Udemy to train analysts. They use a combination of custom created course as well as a selection from the public marketplace.
Udemy is a great way for professionals to keep pace with a constantly evolving tech and business world. The majority of users take courses that will help them develop their professional skills in some way. This is a great service for people in the workplace to keep their resumes and skills sharp.
There are competitors out there. Most notably, Coursera and Khan Academy. The difference between Udemy and the competition in the eyes of Dennis Yang is the fact that Udemy is aimed more toward professional users and people who want to achieve personal goals. Udemy is not meant to be a supplement or a replacement for higher education like Coursera and Khan Academy.
There are already 7 million people using Udemy, and there will probably only be more as the service continues to improve and offer more courses in more languages.
