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Udemy S-1 IPO

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Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#41

Post by duxup »

nickjj wrote: post #18

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 instruc…

> 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.

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#42

Post by dceddia »

nickjj wrote: post #18

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 instruc…

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...

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#43

Post by duxup »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #17
moneywoes wrote: post #3

Is the online course market not over saturated with LinkedIn Learning, Pluralsight etc

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.

>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.

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#44

Post by duxup »

tylfin wrote: post #9
moneywoes wrote: post #3

Is the online course market not over saturated with LinkedIn Learning, Pluralsight etc

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.

I'm impressed how much "plain English" there is there.

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#45

Post by falcor84 »

lotophage wrote: post #5

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.

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

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#46

Post by duxup »

Ecstatify wrote: post #31

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.

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.

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#47

Post by duxup »

ch4s3 wrote: post #23
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#48

Post by dbetteridge »

ironmagma wrote: post #37
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess you did not read his comment very thoroughly. He answered your question.

It just says what not to do, not what to do instead.

> 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

- ??

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#49

Post by skeeter2020 »

jstx1 wrote: post #30
roel_v wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's more than just new users - I've gotten larger discounts from logging into the same account through a different browser.

yep. open the same page in a private session and watch prices plummet 90%+. Pretty annoying.

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#50

Post by ai_ia »

dbetteridge wrote: post #48
ironmagma wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just says what not to do, not what to do instead.

> 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 - ??

- 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

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