cohort-based-courses
(5)
Maven learned that followers do not fill classrooms
The course marketplace began with internet celebrities. Its more durable business came from working experts, live practice, and the unglamorous job of finding them students.
GroupApp
Everything you need to run group learning programs, retain your members, and grow your revenue - in one platform.
Nas Company
Nas Company is the parent of the Nas Daily media brand and the creator-economy platforms Nas Academy and Nas.io, founded by viral one-minute video maker Nuseir Yassin. Its mission is to 'Bring People Together' by giving creators and community leaders the tools to teach, build memberships, sell digital products, and own their audience instead of renting it from social platforms. The ecosystem reaches hundreds of millions of people monthly and has raised more than $23M to date, beginning with an $11M Series A in 2021.
Gagan Biyani
Gagan Biyani is a three-time startup founder and serial entrepreneur best known for co-founding Udemy (now a multi-billion dollar public edtech company) and Maven, a cohort-based online learning platform backed by Andreessen Horowitz. Born and raised in Fremont, California, Biyani studied Economics at UC Berkeley before co-founding Udemy in 2009, which he built to 400,000 students before being fired as president in 2012. He then founded Sprig, a food-delivery startup that raised $57M before shutting down in 2017. He co-founded Maven in 2020 with Wes Kao and Shreyans Bhansali, raising $30M to build the leading platform for live cohort-based expert courses. Biyani is widely known for his radical transparency about startup failures, his viral 2020 Twitter thread about being fired from Udemy, and his philosophy that most startup ideas come from living normally rather than deliberate analysis.
Wes Kao
Wes Kao is an executive coach, co-founder of Maven (the cohort-based learning platform backed by a16z and First Round), and co-creator of the altMBA with Seth Godin. She pioneered the cohort-based course category, scaled altMBA to 550 cities in 45 countries, and now helps senior tech operators at companies like Google, Amazon, and Shopify sharpen their executive communication and influence. Her biweekly newsletter reaches 300,000+ readers across platforms.