Thread by @gaganbiyani

It's been a year in the making...

Today, @wes_kao and I are announcing a $4.32M seed round led by @firstround for our new company

We're building a platform for Cohort-Based Courses (CBCs): bit.ly/wk-gb

The backstory 👇🏾

In 2009 @erenbali, @caglaroktay shared the Udemy vision w/ me. Back then it was a marketplace for live online classes.

They wow'ed me with a Zoom-like product that was ahead of its time (built on Adobe Flash 😅)

I tried to market it for 1 year but couldn't get any traction.

In order to get traction, we pivoted into video-based courses (now known as “MOOCs”). They took off and the rest is history.

I'm really proud of what the Udemy team has done - 400M course enrollments and counting! 👀

https://twitter.com/gaganbiyani/status/1230281635423227904?lang=en

I spent 6 yrs away from education: built @Sprig, closed it (

https://twitter.com/gaganbiyani/status/1265755248922157066?lang=en

) and took a sabbatical.

In 2019, I started to explore online courses again.

Everything had changed. Zoom + Slack offered new possibilities, and live education is ready for prime time.

In an effort to improve my writing, I took "best in class" courses from @TuckerMax and @david_perell.

These courses were different. I cried on a Zoom during a session with Tucker. I made friends during David's Write of Passage.

Immersive, community-based education works.

I also partnered with @matthlerner and @theSamParr to teach a course, which I later shared at @beondeck.

OnDeck was an incredible inspiration. What @david__booth and @eriktorenberg are building is dope.

A seed was planted in my head...

It was like peering into the future!

These are "Cohort-Based Courses" (CBCs)

CBCs are different from MOOCs because they are highly interactive and have clear start/end dates.

They are more akin to MBA courses: full, immersive experiences.

Turns out it's more engaging to learn with a community of peers!

Yet almost all CBC providers build their own technology and the experience feels pretty janky.

I scoured the Internet to find a good tech solution and nobody had one.

So I decided to build it. That's my next company.

While looking for experts to learn from, one name came up over and over...

@wes_kao!

I knew that name. We went to high school and college together, and had lost touch since then.

I looked her up. Holy shit. @alt_MBA was like the godfather of all of these courses.

After spending a few months with Wes, I realized there was nobody smarter on Cohort-Based Courses out there. On top of that, I felt like talking with her was just fun, easy, fluid.

We decided to co-found the company together.

I wrote up a memo (I felt so 2020) and started to talk to some investors, including the inimitable @btrenchard at @firstround.

We signed a term sheet and then reached out to some of our favorite online influencers and angels to invest.

We have so much more to do, and yet it feels like the start of something.

We created this doc on our story and company: bit.ly/wk-gb

And TC's @nmasc_ has an amazing post here: techcrunch.com/2020/11/12/ude…

P.S. We're looking for a product/technical co-founder! DM me! :)