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Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

techcrunch.com

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Re: Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

#31

Post by mirkonasato »

jstummbillig wrote: post #19

Udemy is selling a dream, more so, than an education. They mostly target lower income internet natives, who have heard of coding, not enough to do anything dangerous but certainly enough to long for the good money and great perks. You are not really committed to switching up your life, but a "premium product" at 90% off down to 20$, how could you not give it a try? It's an affordable dream and makes for an easy sale.

> They mostly target lower income internet natives

Seems to me they're increasingly targeting businesses, with their Udemy for Business offering that is a subscription service. I have a course published there and currently get about half of the revenue from the Udemy for Business share.

The TechCrunch article also mentions this: "It also has, in more recent years, expanded to enterprise services, where Udemy works with companies like Adidas, General Mills, Toyota, Wipro, Pinterest and Lyft and others — 5,000 in all — to develop and administer subscription-based professional development courses."

Re: Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

#32

Post by tiew9Vii »

blowski wrote: post #2

Anyone recommend any Udemy courses, on any topic? My experience is that there are very few where both delivery and content are good. My own recommendations would be Stephen Grider’s React courses, and Chris Croft’s management courses.

https://www.udemy.com/user/stephane-maarek/

His Kafka course https://www.udemy.com/course/apache-kafka/ is highly rated and AWS courses get good feedback. A lot of effort gone in to the production and is knowledgeable on the topics.

Given the Kafka course has 56,023 registered students alone even at the lowest offer price minus Udemy fee's he's done alright out of it.

Re: Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

#33

Post by akuji1993 »

Pandabob wrote: post #8

I've never taken an Udemy class, but am sure there's quality content on the website. However, I've always felt that the way they show their prices is a little fishy. Looking at their offering now, all of the courses are priced between 10 - 13 euros, but each one seems to be "on sale" with the actual price being in the hundreds of euros.

There actually is a German DIY store that went bankrupt because of this practice. Their slogan was "20% off everything except animal food." Since it was pretty much always 20% off, nobody bothered going for any sale. Instead they only went when they really needed something or chose a different store because of their stupid slogan. Closed down a few years back. Having a constant sale doesn't seem to help your sales apparently.

Re: Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

#34

Post by polymatter »

orangefarm wrote: post #7
blowski wrote: post #2

Anyone recommend any Udemy courses, on any topic? My experience is that there are very few where both delivery and content are good. My own recommendations would be Stephen Grider’s React courses, and Chris Croft’s management courses.

I studied Vue and Nuxt through Maximilian Schwarzmüller’s courses, which I liked. He has a very beginner-friendly teaching style, which was right for me at the time but might not work for everyone.

Cam here to recommend Maximilian Schwarzmüller’s courses. I started on the Advanced Javascript and once I compeleted that have gone and done a few more with him (including Vue). It was instrumental in getting me competent enough to be a developer today.

Its worth pointing out he is not only on udemy though.

Re: Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

#35

Post by tilolebo »

blowski wrote: post #2

Anyone recommend any Udemy courses, on any topic? My experience is that there are very few where both delivery and content are good. My own recommendations would be Stephen Grider’s React courses, and Chris Croft’s management courses.

I'm half into Colt Steele's "Web Developer Bootcamp", it's been really good so far.

But according to some reviews it's also above average for Udemy content.

Re: Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

#36

Post by pritambarhate »

I take a lot of Udemy courses. When I want to learn something new I generally buy a course (look for at least 4 stars and a minimum 500 votes, though popular topics will have thousands of ratings) and binge-watch the entire thing in a couple of days. It gives me an idea of what's possible with this particular technology. Later when I really need to use that technology I spend futher time doing code examples etc. Has worked really well for me to keep abreast of multiple technologies in my CTO job.

One main issue is that most of the courses only cover bigginner and intermediate level tasks only. I think the reason for this is that an instructor needs thousands of sales to be profitable on Udemy. Even for relatively popular topics like Magento and Salesforce development, one sees very less enrollment numbers. Only core popular techonolgies like Python, Node.js, AI/ML, etc see thousands of sales.

Re: Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

#37

Post by 0x1221 »

matsemann wrote: post #16
Pandabob wrote: post #8

I've never taken an Udemy class, but am sure there's quality content on the website. However, I've always felt that the way they show their prices is a little fishy. Looking at their offering now, all of the courses are priced between 10 - 13 euros, but each one seems to be "on sale" with the actual price being in the hundreds of euros.

I noticed a course this weekend I was a bit interested in. And they said it was 94% off. 150 NOK ($16) instead of 2350 NOK ($250). It was some kind of offer that would expire this weekend, and I had "9 hours left" or something to get it at that price. I actually wrote it down because I had the same feeling of being manipulated. You made me check, it's still 94% off at the 150 NOK price. Now it's some kind of offer th…

Also, opening their front page at the same time from different browsers can show completely different discount levels. And those will be different still from the prices that you see when you log into your account.

Re: Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

#38

Post by pritambarhate »

tiew9Vii wrote: post #32
blowski wrote: post #2

Anyone recommend any Udemy courses, on any topic? My experience is that there are very few where both delivery and content are good. My own recommendations would be Stephen Grider’s React courses, and Chris Croft’s management courses.

https://www.udemy.com/user/stephane-maarek/ His Kafka course https://www.udemy.com/course/apache-kafka/ is highly rated and AWS courses get good feedback. A lot of effort gone in to the production and is knowledgeable on the topics. Given the Kafka course has 56,023 registered students alone even at the lowest offer price minus Udemy fee's he's done alright out of it.

Sometimes authors give away a course for free for a few days and post on places like Reddit. This helps them to get the initial mass and ratings. So we can't always assume that all registered students have paid for the course. I have taken a few free courses like these when I saw them on reddit.

Re: Udemy raises $50M at a $2B valuation from Japanese publisher Benesse

#39

Post by zerr »

ing33k wrote: post #4
blowski wrote: post #2

Anyone recommend any Udemy courses, on any topic? My experience is that there are very few where both delivery and content are good. My own recommendations would be Stephen Grider’s React courses, and Chris Croft’s management courses.

depends, there was a Golang course that I really liked, but it was deleted and lost access to it !

Which one? It should be archived in torrents.
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