Udacity Raises $105M Series D, Bringing Valuation to $1B
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
There's no reason why everyone shouldn't be on there.
edit: Obligatory link to sign up for the private beta: http://fwdeveryone.com/
Also, here is what I wrote about the experience at the time: http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/11/2012-my-yea...
To me what really made me transition is their WebDev course In all seriousness, though, is their CS253 the greatest course ever or is it the greatest course ever?! Huffman was just brilliant in providing a nice framework with which to think about development. After I took that course, it was if Googling my way through problems and learning from the available resources on the internet became that much easier, because now I could see how all of these little parts fit into a broader context.
That's one thing that definitely disappointed me about how Udacity has grown. That course taught by Huffman was so good in that he explained so much of the theory and reasoning, and not just tools. Peter Norvig's advanced Python course is another one of their offerings which feel very similar. Lately, though, I think their courses have resembled much more what you find on CodeAcademy or places like that: A lot more focused on tools, content, etc., and less so on the broader picture.
I agree that the Udacity classes available today just don't measure up, sadly.
Though with Huffman's webdev course I would disagree. I do not know when you took it, but myself, I did it just as it was released, and at that time it was not fully complete. I mean in a sense of extra helping material. Huffman discussed some basics, which were great (especially about how not to make noob mistakes), but for a complete python and webdev noob exercises were really opaque. I remember how flooded forums were of how to setup your app for google app engine or how to complete some exercises to fit it (GAE).
EDIT: Great post! Thanks for sharing.
Pluralsight, Udemy, Lynda, Coursera, Code School, Stack Skills
I've also used some small independent ones as well (Bitfountain is just one example).
The thing I would be really curious to see (but unfortunately don't think we will see any time soon) is how the profit numbers stack up on these different pay models.
For the subscription based services I will pay a monthly fee for no more than one service at a time and I will make heavy use of it during that time period. This is what I did with Pluralsight, Code School, and Lynda. Got a subscription and used it for awhile then canceled when I was done with the material I was interested in or I didn't have enough time to spend for it to be worth the money.
I also cap the value at about $50/month max. Not that Udacity has bad content, but there is great content on the competitors too. I can sign up for Pluralsight + Lynda + Code School every month and still have money left over to buy some courses outright on Udemy or Stack Skills.
In total I've spent a lot more money on buying courses outright from sources like Udemy. Originally I was looking there for some specific technical classes, but they have so much variety I have spent more money on things like art, photography, and design classes.
Wow... I went off on a bit of a tangent there. Anyway; really would be interested in seeing how much money is being made by these different services as well as seeing percentages/dollars of how much of that passes through to individual content creators etc...
Coursera has some good stuff and it's free if you don't care about the cert. Their Functional Programming in Scala class is excellent.
Assuming you are looking for primarily video content:
- Go deep into some recent-ish tech stack, e.g. React/Flux: Udemy
- Learn foundational stuff, like math: Coursera
- iOS: Bitfountain if you can afford it. Otherwise Udacity or Udemy.
- Android: Udacity
- Frequently need access to 'how do I do this thing that I know should take only 10 mins in app Y?' help: Lynda
- ELI5: Code School or Treehouse
- Anything teachable that's non-tech: Udemy
https://fedora.bitfountain.io/courses/android
It's normally $149 for lifetime access, but they runs sales on it as low as $49.
I believe he still has those courses but he intially opted out of their discount program. A course he sold for $200 would have been sold for far less which undermined his own brand but also didn't give him a fair shot at earning from it, especially since he was helpful in responding to any questions I had.
I was lucky and took the course when it was $200, it shortly after went up to $300 due to changes in revenue sharing based around coupon codes. This also meant he stopped offering for free a really helpful free course on technical testing.
(The source of this information is through course announcements made at the time, I can publish them in full here.)
This post from udemy to instructors is interesting reading: https://blog.udemy.com/announcement/
One benefit of the udemy over the pluralsight model is that years later I still have access to the course and can revisit it, without paying an on-going subscription.
Pluralsight overall seems to have better content, at least from a software developer perspective.
As an example of a non technical class; The Secrets to Drawing on Udemy is Amazing. I am a (bad) hobby artist in my spare time and this class has done more to help me with my drawing skills than any other book or class I've tried in the past; my kids have been going through it too and they absolutely love it.
https://www.udemy.com/the-secrets-to-drawing/#/
This is two of the benefits of Udemy over Pluralsight
1) On Pluralsight I would never see this class (well not currently anyway) because it doesn't fall within their accepted domain of classes.
2) I paid the $30 one time for this class and I can go back and review whenever I want and let my kids go back and use it a year later and not have to pay another subscription fee.
This assumes that Udemy still exists at that time. The Udemy mobile apps allow offline caching, but the Udemy site does not allow you to download videos to store them permanently on your computer. An open source tool to help users do this themselves was served a DMCA notice: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2015-08-12-Udemy....
I also subscribe to the BGR Store mailing list which sends out notifications of discounted classes across a wide range of MOOC offerings. It's a bit tedious to wade through the emails, but it's worth it to keep track of the discounts available.
I have been looking for an entry level developer job for last couple of months. During job interviews when I mention regarding the Certification Program from Udacity or discuss on the projects that I did it does not ring a bell to most of interviewers.
Agreed I learned a ton on front-end development from the program but so far the nanodegree has not really helped me in my job search.
It will be interesting to see if Udacity can gather and publish data on number of nanodegree holders getting developer jobs after completion.
Few days ago I posted on HN (Who wants to be hired) even to work for free as an intern for couple of weeks but so far has not received any response.
If it's the latter then I am not surprised, since you can't really get a job based on just one finished course, it's best to showcase what you've learned by building stuff and putting it on github or alike.
I have undergrad and grad degrees from respected US schools, so I don't really need certification, but I still find myself taking these online courses.
In the case of Photoshop and Illustrator, its not even for the sake of employment (although it might be useful in the long run). There's something satisfying about acquiring skills in an area you are really deficient in.
- Udacity: help you get a job in a new field
- Udemy: help you learn a new set of techniques, that can help with what you're currently trying to do (e.g. in your current job)
Which is fine, video lectures are a model that's worked for a few decades, but now online and more convenient to shop for. And a good video-lecture course is certainly worth at least $10. I guess I can see why they don't brand it that way (the "disrupting education" hype train has money/press, while "mail-order video lectures, but on the internet" is a harder sell). But for me, their courses made a lot more sense to me once I started thinking of it as a place to buy a video lecture course, like the way you might order DVDs of the Feynman physics lectures.
I usually buy courses for 10$, which are good. But there are some awesome courses which costed a lot more, from 99$ to 199$. I used to add them to my wishlist so that I can buy them later when I save enough money, but sooner or later, all those wishlisted courses would be on sale for 10$. No idea if this is intentional, or if I picked the most popular courses and hence were on sale.
And this is a company that has essentially "pivoted" to being a sort of vocational training in the CS space. There may be a business model there but it doesn't seem like anything particularly unique or deserving of out-sized evaluations.
"Nanodegree in... what the what? Oh, wait a second. Yeah, this is that PR from the Khan Academy or whatever. Sure, I recognize that from the other wave of applications."
Depending on the savvy of the recruiters they might start to figure that nano = one billionth, so a nano degree is roughly an eight of a second of a four year degree.
Personally, I hate organized forms of education (and I spent 5 years teaching English as a foreign language in a high school!) Point me a text book, or blog posts or whatever and I will work through it at my own pace and in the order that I prefer. But I have to admit that it's pretty hard for me to put anything on my CV. The Coursera certificates (and I suppose these "nanodegrees" -- I haven't looked into this and know nothing about it) have a lot of value in that sense. From my experience hiring, I think it's certainly worth a few hundred dollars to have things like that on your CV. If it catches on (as it appears to be doing), then the bar will be raised and you will have to spend more to stand out. There is definite opportunity.
Similarly for non-traditional education, custom-tuned and branded platforms for companies, non-profits, public agencies and the like. Helping build packages of courses and hosting self-developed content for internal development programs (lots of engineering firms have a learning component in career progression, for example).
It feels like there should be a huge market something that does all this ^^ simply, provides useful reporting and basic information analysis, and for a good price.
We don't know much about where online education is going yet, how it works. It may be the case that a MOOC could change the way education works fundamentally and still have revenue that does not justify a valuation like this.
The field is still young and feels like the potential is much bigger than the current state. We don't know what achieving that potential looks like. I hope they aren't taking important options off the table.
At my old job, whenever investors bought in they offers to buy out employee shares at the stated valuation.
[1] https://www.udacity.com/course/javascript-design-patterns--u...
They're all clearly drinking the koolaid around a fire of VC money -- their CEO's ties to Google and resume will let them raise whatever funds they desire, but the people I talked to seemed elitist and really concerned about everything but the end product. We'll be talking about a "unicorn" failing in 2017 when they burn through this $105M...