Why MasterClass Isn’t Really About Mastery

Small bets lead to bigger bets. In hindsight, this idea seems obvious. But when the company started, nothing like this really existed (recall that Cameo was started a full two years after MasterClass launched). And while MasterClass has nearly $240 million in outside funding now, they tested the idea in 2015 with about $5 million. After getting mor... See more

Advertisements shouldn’t be an afterthought. Several direct-to-consumer fashion and lifestyle brands know this already — they live and die on their social media presence. However, advertisement quality matters a lot more for industries like education, software, and media than you might think. In the words of Matthew Ball: “[I]f media matters to con... See more

Borrowing social capital is easier than creating it. MasterClass took people who were already famous and gave their fans even more access to them (without much burden on the celebrities). It’s tricky to create a world-class talent. The MasterClass model skipped the line of building a large audience and lots of credibility and instead, they purchase... See more

I bring this up to compare MasterClass to another large media experiment — Quibi. They had similarities: both of their products had high production costs. They also both leveraged some of the most talented and famous people in the world. But MasterClass did something different than Quibi: it took things step by step. Raise enough to test a hypothes... See more