online-education
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DMM Quit Robots. Now It’s Putting ¥5 Billion Into a Return.
Anime, currency trading, English lessons and an aquarium already share the DMM name. Its return to robotics reveals how this Japanese conglomerate decides which failures deserve another chance.
VK has the audience. Now comes the arithmetic.
From Mail.ru to video feeds and business software, VK has built a place in millions of Russian daily routines. A costly expansion and a major share issue explain why its next test is turning attention into durable earnings.
Sameer Sadana Built the Business Behind the Creator
The AppX founder turned a teacher’s frustration into infrastructure for independent educators - then learned to compete on product, patience, and profit.
Cakap Is Turning Indonesia's Language Gap Into a Skills Business
The Jakarta company started with live language lessons. Now it sells a broader promise: skills that travel from the classroom to the workplace.
The Company Behind the Checkout Button
Digital Planet began selling computers online before South Africa was ready. Twenty-seven years later, it runs the quiet machinery that helps banks and telcos turn customer relationships into delivered devices, learning products and repeat business.
Pierre Dubuc
He was 11 when he started building a website to teach people how to code. Two decades later that hobby is OpenClassrooms, and Pierre Dubuc still measures its worth in one thing - jobs.
Boundless Learning
Boundless Learning is a Boston-headquartered education technology company that designs and manages online degree programs, short courses, and workforce-aligned learning for universities and organizations worldwide. Spun out of Pearson Online Learning Services after private-equity firm Regent LP acquired the unit in 2023, the company builds and operates more than 450 online programs serving roughly 17,000 learners across 150-plus countries, with marquee short-course partnerships including three schools at the University of Oxford. Led by CEO Joshua Richards, it operates in the Online Program Management (OPM) market, handling everything from recruitment and course design to technology and learner support so academic partners can extend their reach online.
OpenClassrooms
OpenClassrooms is a Paris-based online education company that turns coursework into jobs. Founded in 2013 by Pierre Dubuc and Mathieu Nebra out of the tutorial site Le Site du Zéro, it offers hundreds of free courses plus accredited, mentor-supported degree and apprenticeship programs in fields like data, AI, cybersecurity and web development. A certified B Corp with roughly 2.5 million monthly users, the company pairs project-based online learning with real-world work placements and a network of thousands of expert mentors, positioning itself as an education-to-employment platform rather than a video-course catalog.
LinguaTrip
LinguaTrip is a Silicon Valley-based edtech company that helps people around the world learn English and study abroad. What began in 2015 as a marketplace for booking language-immersion trips grew into an online platform for English courses, TOEFL and IELTS exam prep, university enrollment help, and visa support. Co-founded by YouTube creator Marina Mogilko - whose linguamarina channel has millions of subscribers - LinguaTrip pairs its courses with a massive free content engine, and says it has served 160,000+ students across 25+ countries.
Northeastern University
Northeastern University is a private research university founded in 1898 in Boston, best known for pioneering large-scale cooperative education (co-op), where students alternate semesters of classroom study with paid, full-time professional work. Under president Joseph E. Aoun, it has grown into a 13-campus global system spanning the U.S., Canada and the U.K., enrolling roughly 38,000 students and earning R1 doctoral research status. Its model fuses experiential learning, industry partnership and applied research in fields from AI to network science.
Polygence
Polygence is an online research mentorship platform that pairs ambitious high school students one-on-one with PhD-level mentors from institutions like Stanford, MIT, Harvard and Oxford to design and complete an independent research project over roughly 10 sessions. Founded in 2019 by two Stanford PhDs, Janos Perczel and Jin Chow, it turns curiosity into tangible outcomes - published papers, apps, novels, podcasts - and gives students a distinctive credential for college applications. The company now spans a network of 2,000+ mentors across 40+ fields and runs a biannual Symposium of Rising Scholars where students present their work to a global audience.
Risepoint
Risepoint (formerly Academic Partnerships) is a U.S.-based online program management (OPM) company that partners with regional, mostly public universities to develop, launch, market, and scale affordable, workforce-focused online degree programs. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas and owned by the Vistria Group, the company provides marketing, enrollment, student support, faculty support, and technology services so that universities can reach working-adult learners at scale. It works with 100+ university partners across the U.S., UK, and Australia and says it has supported hundreds of thousands of students.
Southern New Hampshire University
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is a private, nonprofit, regionally accredited university based in Manchester/Hooksett, New Hampshire. Founded in 1932 as a small accounting school, it reinvented itself under president Paul LeBlanc into the largest nonprofit provider of online higher education in the United States, serving more than 200,000 learners through over 200 degree and certificate programs while keeping a roughly 3,000-student traditional campus.
Fernando Bleichmar
Fernando Bleichmar is the CEO of Risepoint, the online program management company formerly known as Academic Partnerships, which helps regional universities build and grow online degree programs for working adults. He joined in 2022 after running the U.S. higher education business at Cengage, serving on the leadership team at Elsevier Health Sciences, and spending his first decade in strategy consulting at Boston Consulting Group. The son of educators who founded a school in Mexico City, he frames the company's work around closing the access and affordability gap in American higher education.
Kenneth Lee
Kenneth Lee is the Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, and Executive Vice President of Finance and Administration, at Southern New Hampshire University, one of the largest nonprofit providers of online higher education in the United States. Since 2018 he has steered the money behind a 16,000-employee institution that turned a small regional college into a national online powerhouse, overseeing finance, accounting, financial planning, treasury, tax, internal controls, procurement, and the campus and facilities themselves. A two-time Harvard graduate and former A.T. Kearney partner, Lee spent seventeen years in consulting and senior corporate roles before deciding the most interesting balance sheets were the ones attached to a mission.
Stepful
Stepful is a New York-based healthcare education company that trains people for entry-level allied-health jobs - medical assistants, pharmacy technicians, surgical techs and more - through fast, affordable, AI-supported online programs. Roughly four months and about $2,500 replace a two-year, $20,000 community-college track, and graduates are funneled toward clinical hours and full-time jobs through a network of partner clinics and hospitals. The company pairs a B2C learner business with a growing B2B arm that helps health systems build their own talent pipelines, positioning itself as an end-to-end answer to the U.S. healthcare worker shortage.
Carl Madi
Carl Madi is the co-founder and CEO of Stepful, a New York healthtech and edtech company that trains people for allied healthcare careers in weeks instead of years. After scaling operations at Uber, Airbnb, Handy, and Amino Apps and earning an MBA from Wharton, he started Stepful in 2021 with Tressia Hobeika and Edoardo Serra. The company runs AI-assisted, cohort-based programs for medical assistants, pharmacy techs, and other frontline roles, places graduates through a network of 8,000+ clinical partners, and was ranked the #1 EdTech company in the U.S. by TIME in 2025.
Alex Tabarrok
Alex Tabarrok is a Canadian-American economist, the Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center and a professor of economics at George Mason University. With Tyler Cowen he co-writes the influential blog Marginal Revolution and co-founded Marginal Revolution University, one of the largest free online libraries of economics education. His work spans patent reform, the economics of innovation, high-skilled immigration, bounty hunters, and voting theory, and he became a prominent public voice during the COVID-19 pandemic advising the US government on incentives to accelerate vaccine production.
Strayer University
Strayer University is an accredited, primarily online institution founded in 1892 to prepare working adults for careers in business and the professions. Owned by Nasdaq-listed Strategic Education, Inc. (STRA), Strayer offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, certificates, and the Jack Welch Management Institute online EMBA, serving tens of thousands of students across roughly 35 campuses and a large online program.
Adriene Mishler
Adriene Mishler is the Austin, Texas-based yoga instructor, actress, and entrepreneur behind Yoga With Adriene, the largest yoga channel on YouTube with over 13.4 million subscribers and 1.7 billion views. Since launching the channel in 2012 with business partner Chris Sharpe, she has democratized yoga through her philosophy of 'Find What Feels Good,' building a global community around accessible, authentic practice. In 2015 she co-founded the FWFG subscription platform, and in 2026 launched Veta, her own yoga gear brand.
Adrian Ridner
Adrian Ridner is the CEO and Co-Founder of Study.com, one of the world's most visited online education platforms serving 34+ million monthly users. An Argentine-Jewish immigrant who navigated multiple countries before settling in California, Ridner built Study.com from a bootstrapped startup in 2002 into a 4,100-person company offering 20,000+ micro-video lessons and 200+ transferable college courses. His Working Scholars program has saved graduates $20 million in tuition and is particularly focused on first-generation college students and students of color. Ridner is a recipient of the ASU+GSV 2022 Innovator of Color Award and Silicon Valley Business Journal's 40 Under 40.
Cindy Mi
Cindy Mi is the founder and CEO of VIPKid, a Beijing-based edtech unicorn that connects Chinese children aged 4-12 with North American English teachers through live one-on-one video lessons. A high-school dropout turned billionaire builder, she started tutoring English peers at age 15, co-founded an English academy chain at 17, and by 2020 had grown VIPKid to over 800,000 students, 100,000 teachers, and a $4 billion-plus valuation - backed by Tencent, Sequoia, and the late Kobe Bryant.
Vicky Wang
Vicky Wang is the founder and CEO of WuKong Education, a Silicon Valley-based online learning platform serving 300,000+ families across 118 countries. She built the company from Auckland, New Zealand in 2016 into a Series B-backed edtech brand with 4,000 employees, offering Chinese language, math, and English programs for students aged 3-18. Recognized by Fortune China as one of the Most Influential Business Women in 2021 and 2022, named among HolonIQ's 144 global EdTech Women Leaders, and awarded the 2024 Cognia School of Distinction, Wang is redefining how the world's children learn Mandarin and mathematics.
Iman Gadzhi
Iman Gadzhi is a British entrepreneur who turned a teenage hustle selling Instagram accounts into a portfolio of companies spanning marketing, education, software, eyewear, and electrolyte drinks. Born in Dagestan, raised in London by a single mother, he built IAG Media at 17 and went on to found GrowYourAgency, Educate.io, Flozy, Gadzhi Eyewear, and Big Day - all while becoming one of the most recognized creators in the agency-owner space on YouTube.
Thomas Frank
Thomas Frank is a productivity YouTuber, entrepreneur, and Notion expert who built a multi-million dollar business helping students and professionals work smarter. Starting with College Info Geek in 2010, he grew to 2.9 million YouTube subscribers, generated $2.1 million in Notion template sales in two years, and co-founded Flylighter, a web clipper SaaS. He runs two YouTube channels, a podcast, and continues to build tools and systems for the creator economy.
来Offer (LaiOffer)
LaiOffer is a Silicon Valley-based career and technical training company founded in 2013 that prepares software engineers, data scientists, and AI practitioners for jobs at top tech companies. Through project-based courses, mock interviews, and mentorship from FAANG engineers, it has helped more than 8,000 candidates land roles at Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and similar firms.
Craig Swanson
Craig Swanson is a Seattle-born serial entrepreneur who co-founded CreativeLive with photographer Chase Jarvis in 2010, helping build the platform into a $60M-backed live-streaming education company that served 10 million creators before being acquired by Fiverr. Now based in San Francisco and working as CEO of a stealth-mode startup, Swanson has spent his career operating quietly behind high-profile brands - turning influencers and educators into multimillion-dollar businesses while accumulating $92.5 million in digital goods sold across all ventures.
Joaquin Olmedo
Joaquin Olmedo is the co-founder and CEO of Filadd (YC S21), a Córdoba-born edtech platform helping students across Latin America get into — and through — university. What began in 2016 as an online prep course for Argentine university entrance exams has grown into a four-country operation serving over 25,000 students annually, with 90% year-over-year growth and recognition as one of Holon IQ's 100 Leading LatAm EdTechs. An industrial engineer by training, Olmedo applied to Y Combinator on a Mexican investor's offhand suggestion and was accepted — with metrics that caught the partners' attention immediately.
Molly Pittman
Molly Pittman is the CEO and Managing Partner of Smart Marketer, a leading digital marketing education and agency company. She rose from an unpaid intern at DigitalMarketer to VP of Marketing by age 24, personally managing over $16 million in profitable ad spend and generating 500,000+ leads. Co-host of the Perpetual Traffic Podcast (5M+ downloads), author of 'Click Happy' (2020), and founder of Fields of Freedom Dog Rescue - a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has saved 2,500+ dogs from euthanasia in Kentucky.
Dan Koe
Dan Koe is an American solopreneur, writer, and digital philosopher who went from sharing a rundown apartment with 7 roommates in 2018 to building a $2.6M+ per-year one-person business by 2023. Known for 'The Koe Letter' newsletter, his 2-Hour Writer course, and his book 'The Art of Focus', he has amassed nearly 4 million followers across platforms. He champions the idea that a single person, equipped with writing skills and a personal brand, can build a high-margin business working just 2-4 hours a day - and he lives the proof. He is also co-founder of Eden, a knowledge management app for creators.