[HN Gopher] Coursera S-1 IPO
___________________________________________________________________
Coursera S-1 IPO
Author : marc__1
Score : 73 points
Date : 2021-03-05 21:37 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sec.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sec.gov)
| sgpl wrote:
| I've actually enjoyed taking courses on Coursera, some paid, but
| I've mostly audited stuff I've found interesting. Really hoping
| that they're able to find a way towards profitability and exist
| as a public company in the long run. Looking at the numbers it
| doesn't seem like it'll be that hard.
|
| They definitely seemed to have benefitted from covid in terms of
| registered users which isn't a huge surprise. Registered users
| from 2019 to 2020 grew by 67%, averaging around 23-24% for the
| few prior years.
|
| Revenue jumps at a similar rate from 2019 to 2020, from about
| $184m to 293m, 59% growth.
|
| 11,900 degree students at the end of 2020, with degree segment
| revenue doubling from $15m in 2019 to $30m in 2020.
|
| Some stats from the filing: year users
| revenue 2020 - 77m users / $293m 2019 - 46m users
| / $184m 2018 - 37m users / $141m 2017 - 30m users
| / $95m
|
| 25+ degrees offered in the price range: $9k to $45k
| vmception wrote:
| IPO Fridays are back! Except it's everyday
| awaythro15234 wrote:
| Anyone know how different Coursera is from Udemy?
|
| I recently took a course on Flutter from Udemy and was pretty
| disappointed. Not with the platform per se, but with the entire
| _idea_ of video courses on programmatic concepts. I only took it
| because for Flutter most of the resources are videos, and not
| books or articles.
|
| I find that video courses do not invite the same level of
| interactivity I feel when I learn from, say, a textbook. There
| are also of course a horrible reference as one has to dig in to
| find a specific video, then find the time within that video to
| learn a concept, while with a book I can merely do a text search.
|
| Videos also are frustrating in the fact that one cannot fluidly
| control the pace. One can pause and resume and increase from 1x
| to 2x and back again, sure, but with text I can merely... stop
| reading to code something up and then when I am ready to proceed
| I can... resume reading. I hate fiddling with a mouse or a
| keyboard to pause/resume/pause/resume/rewind, etc.
|
| Needless to say I will not be taking a video course for anything
| programming related again.
| segmondy wrote:
| I hate videos too, but they are useful. If you're taking a
| course that's GUI heavy it pays off. First time I decide to
| learn iOS programming, it was great. Figuring out the exactly
| 10 locations I have to click and in which order is faster with
| video than any other way. So it depends exactly on what you're
| trying to achieve. Before acloud guru had it's site, they were
| on udemy. It was great for getting my AWS cert back then, I
| just watched the videos and didn't have to wade around AWS
| console to find out where things are. So for tech stuff, it's
| really useful if what you're learning is more GUI heavy than
| CLI heavy.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, it depends. I've taken some LinkedIn (formerly Lynda)
| courses on video editing and the like and it works far better
| than text with photos would. But video for something that
| could simply be explained with some bullet points is awful.
| puddingnomeat wrote:
| I also used to be very excited about online courses until I
| experienced them as superficial when compared to books and
| self-checks. I think the best way to learn some things ends up
| being experiential, so something more like an apprenticeship
| than a lecture would be the most efficient. But in reality, it
| seems hard to find that.
|
| You also find the same in, for example, college. Where a tutor
| may be able to get you up to speed faster by 'debugging' your
| learning.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| While I agree, I find I learn best by watching _then_ doing.
| grumple wrote:
| Coursera is significantly better in my experience with their
| deep learning specialization. Lots of good jupyter notebook
| work and quizzes.
| granzymes wrote:
| FY Ended December 31, in millions except percentage
| | 2019 | 2020 | YoY
| ---------------|--------|--------|------- revenue |
| $184 | $294 | 60% gross profit | $95 | $155 |
| 63% op ex | $143 | $221 | 55% net
| (loss) | $(47) | $(67) | (43)% (loss) ex SBC |
| $(31) | $(50) | (61)% free cash flow | $(31) | $(27)
| | 15% total users | 46 | 77 | 67%
| net retention | 106% | 114% | --
| f430 wrote:
| Price to earnings ratio is at an all time high, once the credit
| bubble bursts, so will the investors appetite for such
| companies.
| vallas wrote:
| The real value of education is what students do with it. I wish
| Coursera put all the content free for users and make a living on
| income share agreement based on a small part of users.
| alexashka wrote:
| Or maybe they can die, burn in hell and let universities record
| their lectures with a phone and a 50$ microphone, upload them
| to youtube, post pdfs of slides, lecture notes, etc and be done
| with it?
|
| Coursera and other 'education' companies are mostly attempts to
| put themselves in-between government subsidized higher
| education and citizens who already fucking pay for higher
| education institutions through taxes.
|
| This company is pure scum, let's be honest about what it is.
| echelon wrote:
| You could apply your perspective to any industry and company.
|
| I think you should reframe what's being done here.
|
| Coursera sees an opportunity to make money by creating a
| market for affordable educational content. Universities do
| not feel compelled to offer their educations for free or at
| reduced costs, because that's how they sell their expensive
| services to students and wealthy families.
|
| You have many forces acting in a complex, multi-dimensional
| market. Don't assume evil. Different brains, different angles
| of attack. Lots of offenses, defenses, and interesting state
| space landscapes.
| breck wrote:
| Key numbers in millions: 2019 2020
| Revenue. 184 293 Profi. -46 -66
|
| Cash in the bank: 285
|
| Disclosure: IAN good at reading S-1s.
| totaldude87 wrote:
| any debt? i wonder what do they do with that much of cash in
| hand
| echelon wrote:
| I don't see a compelling story for their product. There's great
| educational content all over the web, much of it freely
| available. Their credentials are worthless, and in some
| industries may actually have negative value.
|
| They lucked out with coronavirus, as that sent people
| scrambling for distance learning. That won't last.
|
| edit: Apparently folks disagree. We don't all see the same
| things or interpret the future the same way. I think education
| as an industry is going to go into decline, but I don't see
| companies like Coursera as being able to thrive by feeding off
| the corpses.
| grumple wrote:
| Companies like Coursera are the reason there is going to be a
| corpse. I went to university, but I've also taken many online
| courses from Coursera, Udemy, and others. Coursera's classes
| in particular were far better than my classes at that top 25
| university.
| justicezyx wrote:
| What's the valuation?
| bschne wrote:
| Coursera has definitely aggregated some great content, but the
| evaluations on most of the courses if you go for the certificate
| are ridiculous -- it works well for auto-graded programming
| assignments, but so much of the other stuff is peer-graded with
| lots of spammy submissions, so it's barely more meaningful than
| e.g. a microsoft certification.
|
| Does anyone have some experiences with their degree programmes?
| Curious to hear if these are more promising...
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I'd be inclined to trust the degree programs, but can't speak
| from personal experience. There are reputable universities
| putting their names on the line and giving out degrees. They're
| also cheaper than in-person degrees but way more expensive than
| the specialization certificates. There is clearly effort there
| and I'm sure you get real TAs grading your work and giving
| feedback, not peers, and the classmates are people who
| qualified to get into a MS program, not literally anyone who
| clicked a sign up button. UIUC and Penn aren't going to give
| you a MS if you didn't earn it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Based on my experience in a couple courses a while back, the
| programming auto-graders were pretty good. Not perfect, your
| code could presumably be a total tire fire but so long as it
| produced the right answer it was OK--which is admittedly a good
| part of the battle.
|
| But, yeah, every peer-reviewed assignment and use of discussion
| board was awful. This isn't a university where everyone is more
| or less on at least roughly the same footing with respect to
| language, educational level, and commitment. At least company
| certs have to maintain some quality floor if they're going to
| have some value for employers and therefore of interest to
| would-be employees. As soon as they become viewed as diploma
| mill trash they're done.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-05 23:00 UTC)