[HN Gopher] Udemy S-1 IPO
___________________________________________________________________
Udemy S-1 IPO
Author : marc__1
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-10-05 12:03 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sec.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sec.gov)
| nickjj wrote:
| One thing that's worth mentioning is Udemy is a completely
| different type of company based on you being a watcher of courses
| vs being an instructor on Udemy.
|
| I was an instructor there for 5+ years (with ~30k enrollments)
| and in my entire professional career I've never met a worse
| company in terms of how corrupt they are and how little they
| actually care about instructors unless you happen to be one of
| the few instructors they reach out to privately and sign a
| contract with in which case they do extra things for you like
| promote and rank your course more so than related courses in your
| category. Their entire platform is based on manipulating both
| instructors and watchers of courses.
|
| I would seriously suggest anyone thinking about creating courses
| to avoid using any type of course marketplaces (ACG is especially
| bad too). It's worth it to build your own audience because on
| Udemy and other platforms you're actually not building your own
| business, you're building their business because you won't
| receive any information about anyone who signs up which means
| your students are 100% locked into that platform. If you leave
| you're essentially starting at ground zero in which case you
| might as well start at ground zero on your own terms.
| dhimes wrote:
| I think you've warned us off before-- you and I may have even
| communicated privately. Thank you.
| ironmagma wrote:
| As someone who has thought about becoming an instructor, what
| platforms are better?
| dominotw wrote:
| youtube is better.
| boplicity wrote:
| I run a company that sells courses. We've built our own
| audience, which is what makes this possible. We hire
| instructors with the goal of working with them in the long
| term. (Basically, for them, our goal is for it to be the
| perfect part-time job.) I would recommend looking for a
| publication in your niche that also runs courses, and
| approach them about the possibility of hiring you. You could
| also approach an established publication, and offer a
| partnership, in terms of establishing a course-based
| business. Don't look for a platform, look for a company that
| you can have an actual relationship with.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Guess you did not read his comment very thoroughly. He
| answered your question.
| ironmagma wrote:
| It just says what not to do, not what to do instead.
| dbetteridge wrote:
| > I would seriously suggest anyone thinking about
| creating courses to avoid using any type of course
| marketplaces (ACG is especially bad too). It's worth it
| to build your own audience
|
| - Youtube + mailing list
|
| - Build your own site
|
| - ??
| ai_ia wrote:
| - Blog on the niche and build reputation It's amazing to
| see how instructors like Wes Bos, Kent C Dodds and Josh
| Comameu's CSS Course pulled off.
|
| - Create youtube channel and drive traffic from their to
| your course
| ironmagma wrote:
| YouTube has a lot of the same issues as Udemy with regard
| to creator treatment. Building your own audience sounds
| like the ideal, but obviously there are network effects
| to being on a platform and those can't be simply written
| off.
| ai_ia wrote:
| I agree 100%.
|
| What does, in your opinion, an ideal course platform look
| like though?
|
| Genuinely curious.
| ironmagma wrote:
| I've never been a course instructor, but I imagine the
| best would be something where the creators own a slice of
| the overall pie (share in the company).
| joshwcomeau wrote:
| Thanks for the shout-out!
| open-source-ux wrote:
| The self-publish course route works best when the instructor
| has a following on social media and can appeal to their
| followers (Twitter, YouTube or even on GitHub). Without
| followers in some form, course discovery can be hard via the
| self-publish route. That's why Udemy remains an attractive
| option (despite how badly Udemy treat authors as you say). It's
| a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation.
| nickjj wrote:
| > That's why Udemy remains an attractive option (despite how
| badly Udemy treat authors as you say). It's a bit of a
| chicken-and-egg situation.
|
| It is but at the same time it's not.
|
| If you make a course in a category where there's 500 other
| courses which is the norm for a lot of tech niches you'll be
| on page 30 and no one will ever find you. For new courses
| Udemy might decide to show your course to a tiny percent of
| traffic in a higher search ranking to see if you gain
| traction but unless you drive your own traffic to Udemy from
| your own site / resources you're going to have a hard time
| competing with folks who do. Their algorithm very much
| prefers instructors who send their own audience to Udemy.
|
| If you don't gain that initial traction you're basically dead
| in the water. Plus it's going to be a hard sell to get
| someone to sign up for your course with 4 enrollments and no
| review vs courses who have 100,000+ enrollments and a 4.4+
| rating.
|
| With that said, having no audience won't help much on Udemy
| vs being on your own platform. You're still going to need to
| grow an audience and send traffic to your course landing
| pages no matter which platform you use (a 3rd party
| marketplace or your own site).
| joshwcomeau wrote:
| Yeah, building on what Nick said: I think it was possible at
| one time, 7-8 years ago, to launch a course on Udemy with no
| audience, and let them handle the marketing for you.
|
| I heard a podcast recently and a successful Udemy instructor
| had said that these days, the SEO required to succeed on
| Udemy is even harder than the SEO to rank in Google. When you
| search for a topic on Udemy (eg. React, Go), there are dozens
| of highly-reviewed courses, and it's impossible to show up in
| those results unless you already have a huge audience or want
| to spend lots of money on paid traffic.
|
| So yeah, I think it's true that you need an audience to
| succeed with a self-published course, but honestly I think
| that's true no matter which route you take.
| duxup wrote:
| > I've never met a worse company in terms of how corrupt they
| are and how little they actually care about instructors
|
| Can you explain how?
|
| The general world of being a content creator for someone else's
| platform is ... well the bar is pretty low. You're pretty much
| on your own everywhere aren't you? Most of these sites are
| ultra top heavy with the top creators also generating the most
| revenue.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _Most of these sites are ultra top heavy with the top
| creators also generating the most revenue._
|
| You won't find this anywhere else, on any system that relies
| on networks. Pareto being what it is consolidation toward the
| top is all but a certainty.
| [deleted]
| dceddia wrote:
| See also, this article from 2015 where a few well-known
| creators have problems getting pirated courses taken off the
| platform.
|
| https://robconery.medium.com/how-udemy-is-profiting-from-pir...
| plondon514 wrote:
| If anyone is thinking of creating an interactive coding course
| I'm working on https://codeamigo.dev/ to help. I want to create
| a free and open marketplace for coding courses. I'd love to
| talk with anyone about good/bad experiences at other course
| platforms. My email is in my profile.
| ai_ia wrote:
| I checked out your application. Looks cool.
|
| Are you planning to add other languages interactive
| environments as well?
| plondon514 wrote:
| Hey Siddarth! Yes I have support for C, Elixir, Java,
| Python, Ruby, and Rust at the moment. I'm going to be
| adding more courses and languages over the next few weeks!
| If you'd like to follow along with the progress checkout
| https://twitter.com/codeamigo_dev
| ai_ia wrote:
| Awesome. Followed you on twitter. Will be following your
| progress.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| If you're ever looking to support TypeScript eventually,
| the Monaco editor (https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-
| editor) is your place to go. This is the same codebase
| that powers VS Code, yet is browser compatible and can
| come with all the Intellisense you need!
|
| EDIT: Actually it probably supports a variety languages
| plondon514 wrote:
| Hi Chris! Yes codeamigo does use the monaco editor,
| although I think I need to spend a few more cycles on
| improving the error highlighting.
| joshwcomeau wrote:
| This is such a good point, and impossible to overstate.
|
| I decided about a year ago I wanted to create my own course
| (https://css-for-js.dev/). After exploring the options and
| hearing about the Udemy horror stories, I decided to build my
| own platform.
|
| It's gone better than I ever could have hoped, and it's set me
| up well for a lucrative career I'm passionate about.
|
| You don't have to create your own platform from scratch,
| either; I haven't personally tried them, but there are SaaS
| companies like Kajabi and Teachable that look like white-label
| course platforms, so you can build your own course on your own
| domain. If I wasn't such a perfectionist, I would have started
| with a smaller course on one of these services.
| richlandlord wrote:
| You must have made 5~10k on this post alone. Kudos!
| arnvald wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I'm planning to create a couple of courses
| next year and I considered using Udemy, because I use it quite
| a bit as a student, but I see I need to do some research before
| I lock myself in some platform.
|
| By the way: ACG = A Cloud Guru?
| nickjj wrote:
| > By the way: ACG = A Cloud Guru?
|
| Yep. I don't want to get into it here but their founders are
| some of the worst people I've ever encountered in my life as
| a human being. This is only my opinion of course based on
| having had a fairly long term business relationship with them
| in the past.
|
| I don't like negatively talking about folks in public but
| yeah out of 20+ years of freelancing and dealing with dozens
| of companies ACG's founders are at the top of my list of
| folks I never want to think about or encounter again for the
| rest of my life.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| For anyone interested, I'm also a Udemy instructor of a best
| selling course with 13K students.
|
| My course is priced at $54.99 and I've made $44,000 from the
| course in total. So that comes to about $3.50 per student.
|
| To be fair a good chunk of the money I make is from their Udemy
| for Business program.
|
| The results aren't the best, but I do appreciate being able to
| make money with zero effort in marketing on my end.
|
| That being said, I'm working on a new course. This time I'm
| building out my own platform - which will actually be a 100x
| better experience for students, and I'll be sure to do my own
| marketing this time round.
| [deleted]
| 41209 wrote:
| As a student I had a very similar experience.
|
| Very rarely do you find something better on Udemy than you
| would on YouTube. YouTube often is a bit better since you don't
| have the sunk cost of paying 30$ for a class to realize it's
| trash.
|
| Unity Learn is a much better alternative to any Unity content
| you'll find on Udemy. And with Unity deciding to make it free(
| I doubt anyone was really paying for it when it was a premium
| service), it's a great way to get started.
|
| For most tech, take Flutter or React as good examples, the
| official websites tend to have tons of quality educational
| content.
| GoldenMonkey wrote:
| Agreed. Similar experience as an instructor with them.
| lotophage wrote:
| Amazing to think that 10 years ago that there were two new format
| Stanford open access courses that launched at the same time: AI
| Class (Peter Norvig, Sebastian Thrun) and ML Class (Andrew Ng).
| Thrun and Ng went on to launch Udemy and Coursera, respectively.
| forkLding wrote:
| Sebastian Thrun founded Udacity. Udemy was founded by other
| people.
| lotophage wrote:
| Well, I got that amazingly wrong
| falcor84 wrote:
| There was actually a third excellent course launched at the
| same time - Jennifer Widom's Introduction to Databases. The
| original version is no longer available, but there are mini-
| courses in its stead. Highly recommended -
| https://cs.stanford.edu/people/widom/DB-mooc.html
| 1cvmask wrote:
| According to wikipedia:
|
| It was founded in May 2010 by Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and
| Oktay Caglar.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udemy
| avelis wrote:
| Wow. Crazy journey for Eren Bali. I remember when he was a Sr.
| Engineer at SpeedDate. When I was let go he was casually
| discussing Udemy around the office. At least the beginning ideas
| for it.
| jstx1 wrote:
| I'll wait for the 90% discount on the stock.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Isn't the reason they can do these discounts that that is their
| margin?
| belter wrote:
| I was going to say they it all would be at 9.95 for the next 24
| hours...But _interestingly_ I just checked, and it seems there
| are no promotions, and courses that were sold days ago at 9.95
| are now 120 and up. Is there maybe an IPO coming up? :-)
| roel_v wrote:
| Their promotions are usually time limited. And you'll have to
| make a separate account because the promotions are for new
| users only. So now you have your content spread over multiple
| accounts. But you can use Udeler so that you have local
| copies of everything, much better anyway.
| jstx1 wrote:
| I think it's more than just new users - I've gotten larger
| discounts from logging into the same account through a
| different browser.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| yep. open the same page in a private session and watch
| prices plummet 90%+. Pretty annoying.
| belter wrote:
| Grounds for a lawsuit?
|
| "Price discrimination is a commonplace practice that is
| presumptively lawful, save under special circumstances
| discussed below. It occurs when a seller of products
| regularly offers lower prices to its preferred customers
| and higher prices to the others when selling them the
| same or similar products at around the same time."
|
| https://www.markhamlawfirm.com/law-articles/unlawful-
| price-d...
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| you dont even need a new browser or private window.
|
| I just add the courses I want to the wishlist, logout,
| wait a few days, and when I sign back in, I get all my
| wishlisted courses for 90% off
| weiliddat wrote:
| I'm curious as to how payouts to instructors work when Udemy
| has 90% off courses every other week?
| anyfactor wrote:
| A reasonable buying point would -30%. Then sell when it
| rebounds +20% from that point. Then do that a few more times
| until softbank gets involved.
| qaq wrote:
| so you plan to add to your position every other week?
| arnvald wrote:
| I've literally never paid a full price for a Udemy course. I'd
| only do it if I was in rush to start some course quickly, but
| otherwise I just wait, usually less than 2 weeks, and I can pay
| 70-90% less
| FlacoJones wrote:
| I just create a new account with a new email and you'll see
| the "flash sales" again.
|
| Just use a temp email: https://temp-mail.org/en/
| sergiotapia wrote:
| just open the window in incognito to get the 90% discounts
| and log in with your regular account after adding to cart.
| lquist wrote:
| Interesting that the founding CEO owns only 1.5% of the company
| while the current CEO owns 2.5%. Wonder if this is because of
| secondary or dilution? How much does the other cofounder (Gagan)
| hold? I would have thought this was a huge success story for
| founders but it might not be?
| htrp wrote:
| They probably required massive rounds of dilution in each round
| to fund all the user acquisition to get to the next round.
|
| Per Crunchbase, it looks like they raise every quarter or so,
| and they lose anywhere between 10-20 million a quarter (amateur
| numbers compared to something like uber).
| alangibson wrote:
| Middling quality, many good competitors, substantial I'll will
| from creators, no customer lock-in. I'm feeling there's a good
| short opportunity here
| mywittyname wrote:
| Alternatively, they could go on a spending spree with all their
| new-found capital and effectively corner the market.
|
| I'm in agreement with you, but I've also noticed that company
| with a bad product isn't necessarily poorly run.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Is the online course market not over saturated with LinkedIn
| Learning, Pluralsight etc
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| I don't think that's as relevant as the current demand for VCs
| to unload their investments as fast as possible before the next
| major economic catastrophe.
|
| It boggles my mind that we're set to nearly double the record
| number of IPOs this year, and last year was the highest number
| since 1999, yet in general no one finds this at all interesting
| or alarming.
| duxup wrote:
| >as fast as possible before the next major economic
| catastrophe
|
| I'm trying to think of a time where this wasn't being
| predicted ... I'm not sure it really makes a lot of sense.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I don't think I have any special insight here, but it seems
| like a lot of the companies this time have actual products,
| revenue, and a plausible path forward. I've also read that
| during the period from 2008 until about 2019 there was an
| unusually low number of IPOs.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah Udemy does a thing. Profitable and at what scale? I
| don't know, but it's hardly some weird pump and dump style
| IPO you see from time to time.
| forkLding wrote:
| I just bought 300 dollars worth of courses couple days ago on
| Udemy, I've used all these companies and I have to say Udemy is
| better than them. There is definitely a market based on
| teaching quality difference and the teaching tools provided.
| afs27 wrote:
| I noticed a lot of the courses I was looking at on Coursera
| seemed to be from universities and the ones on Udemy looked
| like they were more from companies (Google, etc.) or
| professionals from different organizations. Is that a fair
| assessment?
| abhi_arora wrote:
| I'm in Tech Consulting with a background in Computer
| Science (specifically Data Science) and I'd have to say
| that the courses on Udemy are much more aligned with how
| things are done in the industry.
|
| And yes, most of the courses that I have taken there are
| taught by professionals with industry experience.
| arnvald wrote:
| Coursera also has a number of courses provided by
| companies, even by Google (https://www.coursera.org/google-
| career-certificates).
|
| You're right that Coursera has content from universities,
| on the other hand Udemy has individual instructors (and
| anyone can become an instructor). Also Coursera has a lot
| of free content - not sure if 100%, but a large number of
| courses offers the content for free, you only need to pay
| if you want to do assignments and get a certificate.
|
| Oh, and Coursera does not have 90% off promos every other
| week, unlike Udemy
| tylfin wrote:
| This is actually something they address in the Risk Factors
| section (here: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1607939/
| 000119312521...) if you're curious about what they have to say.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm impressed how much "plain English" there is there.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| _Is the online course market not over saturated with LinkedIn
| Learning, Pluralsight etc_
|
| The market is saturated with computing-related courses aimed
| mostly at beginners (programming languages, software tools
| etc). Despite that, there is still space for well-structured,
| well-narrated (scripted or semi-scripted) courses with clear
| instruction aimed at beginners, intermediate and advanced
| users.
|
| An expert in a subject is not necessary a good teacher. This is
| why the course quality on Udemy varies enormously. It's also
| why, for example, so many programming courses follow the
| bullet-point slides and voiceover template. There are so many
| more imaginative ways to teach online - but that takes more
| time and effort.
|
| Udemy also encourages long courses because it gives users the
| impression of depth or breadth of content (and thus better
| value-for-money). This is why so many courses are 10, 20, and
| even 30+ hours - even though length is not a marker of quality.
|
| I'm sure many readers on Hacker News have already seen the link
| below which is a parody of programming tutorials. (And which
| applies equally to free and paid tutorials.)
|
| _Every programming tutorial_ :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAlSjtxy5ak
| omarhaneef wrote:
| That is a great question.
|
| I mean in the physical world, we have lots of schools because
| we were constrained by distance. But we don't consider all the
| schools interchangeable. A farm kid from Iowa would happily
| travel to Georgia to study at Georgia Tech because it was
| recognized that the experience was superior even if they had
| the same materials and curriculum.
|
| So I think there is a role for different versions of the same
| class. Some people may even mix and match: multi variate
| calculus from Coursera, machine learning from Udacity,
| presentations from linkedin and Angular from pluralsight or
| whatever.
| robomartin wrote:
| I see a lot of negative comments on this thread. Fair enough. I
| have seen the good, bad and ugly of Udemy. I have never tried to
| publish a course (thought about it). I am sure the instructor-
| side view of reality is less than ideal. Frankly, this is true
| even of massive platforms like Amazon. Ask any Amazon seller what
| the world looks like from their perspective. It can be horrific
| and surreal.
|
| Udemy (and Amazon) do not create value by developing top-notch
| back-end applications for instructors and sellers. Nor do they
| add value by having the best process for behind the scenes
| participants. Their value comes from what consumers see and
| experience.
|
| Yes, Udemy has a bunch of junk courses. I probably bought a few
| hundred courses from them. I am very careful about watching as
| much of the free material as possible before making a decision.
| Once you've seen and experienced a few courses you get a sense of
| how to evaluate quality.
|
| You can also do research on the instructors outside of Udemy. For
| example, a while ago I decided to take Robert Feranec's Altium
| Designer course on Udemy. I wanted a refresher. I use the
| software daily but I do so many things I haven't really kept up
| with the latest and greatest.
|
| https://home.fedevel.com/other/about-robert
|
| Robert's course is top notch. I really enjoyed it. I will likely
| take some of his advanced classes off-platform.
|
| I've also had my kids go through various courses on Udemy. From
| software development to handwriting, math, languages and using
| GIMP. All great courses. No complaints whatsoever.
|
| One of my kids is currently going through the excellent "100 Days
| of Code - The Complete Python Pro Bootcamp for 2021" from App
| Brewery. It is amazing to see just how engaged she is.
|
| One of my other kids is currently going through MIT's 6.00.1x on
| EdX while simultaneously using the "100 days of Code" course on
| Udemy to shore-up holes in his Python knowledge. He is doing
| great.
|
| From there I plan to move them to higher level courses on either
| (or both) EdX and Coursera. These kids are going to finish high
| school with actual marketable skills that will lead to nice jobs
| during college (rather than the useless shit they are being fed
| in school...don't get me started). If it was possible to take
| these courses for credit they could graduate high school and
| obtain a BS in CS within a year. Sadly the only path I have been
| able to identify has a starting age requirement of 17, which I
| think is ridiculous. They are a couple of years younger than that
| and can already code circles around most first and second year
| university CS students. Age is irrelevant.
|
| Anyhow, I guess I am saying that there's a lot of good on the
| platform for learners. You just have to be careful about
| evaluating courses and instructors.
| arboghast wrote:
| One thing I particularly appreciate from Udemy compared to other
| platforms is that there are many great (and not so great) courses
| covering obscure topics that are not available in Coursera, Edx,
| etc.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| I agree. If you want to pick something brand spanking new, your
| best bet is Udemy. I remember when Vue first hit the scene and
| Udemy had 3 courses on it but the others did not. The same with
| a "small" topic like containers when they first came out and so
| forth.
|
| They can't match the depth of Udacity -- which, in my
| experience, is as deep as top graduate level courses -- they do
| have coverage.
| WA wrote:
| Like what?
| FlacoJones wrote:
| Like deep diving TLS: https://www.udemy.com/course/ssl-tls-
| intro/
| cute_boi wrote:
| its not deep dive looks like some superficial tls course. 2
| hour seems very less imo.
| mlengineerio wrote:
| What do you guys think about educative? It's getting more popular
| in for people who focus on interviewing.
|
| I've been told a good author can earn about 20k during 6 months.
| It's pretty good ROI given it's all passive. As an author myself,
| what I really want to a direct communication channel with readers
| to answer their questions.
| millerm wrote:
| I wonder if they'll have a flash sale on stocks every three days.
| buf wrote:
| Udemy is the reason why I helped start Reforge and Closing
| Credits. I can't believe I'm seeing the S1 and it fuels me even
| more.
|
| Curated cohort-based live instructors that give revshare to
| industry experts > static unqualified mess.
| chrisfrantz wrote:
| Reforge has far better content for the overlapping disciplines,
| it's not even close.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| I had not heard of these before but Reforge looks very cooked.
|
| I was impressed by the names you got on there, and that you are
| actually selective and seem to say no to some people. (For
| those who are wondering: I am not a plant, and I do not know
| buf.)
|
| Can you say a little about the placement rates, and what people
| end up doing after the program.
| lyime wrote:
| How come the founders have so little equity?
| Ecstatify wrote:
| I find that the courses on Udemy are very amateurish. I was
| following a course, what the guy was saying was wrong, I was
| seconding guessing myself and then towards the end of the course
| he corrected his mistake.
|
| Coursera and Pluralsight are much better at least they have some
| quality standards.
| ai_ia wrote:
| > Coursera and Pluralsight are much better at least they have
| some quality standards.
|
| I agree 100% with Pluralsight. My previous company had given me
| access to entire Pluralsight courses and I really completed a
| lot of courses.
| duxup wrote:
| That was my experience a few years ago with taking some courses
| from some folks who were some of their top instructors... but
| it was very much "guy who knows this like the back of his hand
| rushes through a thing and maybe mentions one or two tips ...
| and here's the rest of the **** owl".
|
| Yeah I could reproduce his work but not with an understanding
| of what is going on / any kind of pathway to try new things,
| and I felt like there was no effort to communicate more than
| that.
|
| A few courses I really got the feeling that the instructor was
| taking an inaccurate approach to the whole topic. Not wrong...
| but not how the concept of the language or code works.
| crackinmalackin wrote:
| Josh Comeaus css course is one of the most amazing courses I've
| ever purchased. I also wouldn't be a web dev without Wes Bos and
| his courses. Brad Traversy, Max Depps sorry I know I'm spelling
| your name wrong, also Stephen Grider. Also can't forget the
| amazing Scott Tolinkski and level tuts. These guys are amazing
| instructors and I'm happy to give them my money, more so if
| they're on their own platforms
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