The Unbundling of Udemy

Online education 1.0 featured MOOCs, which were akin to banner ads in the early days of the internet - a clumsy attempt to bring the offline paradigm online. 1.0 was the Wild West - fragmented, scam-ridden, noisy, and uncredentialed. A much-cited MIT study highlighted MOOCs’ abysmal 4% completion rate.

We’re already seeing this unbundling of consumer platforms starting within communities that have a deep affinity and sense of identity, and are not well served by general purpose social networks – for example, gaming communities assembling in virtual worlds such as Minecraft and Roblox and using Discord to communicate, communities that coalesce aro... See more

The biggest education companies built this decade, in my mind, will be personalized learning and tutoring businesses.

Even as the cost of tuition increased, the value of university went unquestioned. Colleges bundled education and signaling. Students who thrived in boring classes signaled traits to employers, like conscientiousness, intelligence and conformity. Now, due to the proliferation of information on the internet and the rise of affordable and effective al... See more

But the college bundle has always more than the sum of its individual parts. In COVID era, colleges are forced to unbundle, so now college is competing with other unbundled alternatives.