Not the addressee but it's spectacular all around. There are a few classes that have a reputation for being poorly designed/maintained and a few with somewhat "unreasonable" time requirements (ie 50 hours a week for a single class). There are classes where you only interact with TAs/students (which is fine) and some where the professor is seemingly on a 24-hour modafinil drip, there to answer any question posed at any time.

For the most part it's intensive and immersive with enough learn-at-your-own-pace aspects to accommodate full-time jobs, families, hobbies, etc. I feel like I come away from every class like I've actually learned something that's embedded in me.

Udacity is what it is: a platform for watching videos with some minor ability to interact with coding examples / quizzes throughout. I have no issue with it, but agree that most of the meat of the courses come from other parts of the classes.

My hunch here, through Thrun's quotes and some in this, is that there were some aspects of CEO at this level that really didn't appeal to him. How many CEOs truly get to be personally creative in their position?