Coursera

“We envision a world where anyone, anywhere can transform their life by accessing the world’s best learning experience”

Founded: 2012 in San Francisco, USA Category: Cybersecurity Primary office: Mountain View, CA (USA) Core technical team: San Francisco, USA Status: Private Employees: 315 (Core) Amount raised: $313.1 million (9 rounds – April 2019)

OVERVIEW Provides universal access to the world’s best education, partnering with top universities and organizations to offer courses online Allows for employees/individuals to achieve educational goals at their own pace, without leaving their jobs, and at a lower cost Combination of courses from free short courses to full university degrees (undergraduate and graduate) with a cost starting at $15,000   PERFORMANCE METRICS Valuation – Over $1 billion Revenue – $170 million (2019)   ACHIEVEMENTS Online courses, certificates and degrees from over 200 world-class companies and companies Offers almost 4,000 courses across 48 countries Over 390 specializations 40 million online users (2019) 1,900 businesses upskilling their employees (2019) 4 million monthly visits Over 15 certificates and 14 degrees

Sells

• Course subscriptions and specializations
• Signature tracks to earn official certificate of completion
• Corporate e-training/e-learning
• Degree programs (undergraduate and graduate)

Channels

• Partners with over 200 world-class and highly rated universities and organizations to deliver online courses
• Online discussion forum and “Study buddies” to further aid comprehension
• Partnership with Google to offer subsidized subscriptions – Grow with Google program

Competencies

• Global translator community to provide high-quality translation of delivered courses online in over 30 languages
• Founders – Andrew NG and Daphne Koller – former Stanford University computer science professors
• Platform that uniquely brings together clients, stakeholders, courses, etc., in support of skills development

Resources

Assertions That Best Describe What the Company Did to Scale Early, Rapidly & Securely

1. Develop and sell products that address a problem, job to be done or a need that is shared by a large and growing number of individuals and organizations in various regions to increase sales.
2. Increase value by using a compelling image of the desired future company to convince others to provide the funding and resources the company requires
3. Sell high quality products at lower prices compared to competitors to gain market share
4. Increase profitability by applying processes that make products and services easier to understand, produce and deliver
5. Continuously improve the user interfaces and applications that directly influence the entirety of the customer experience including personalized content, quality messaging, and the delivery and returns process to increase sales
6. Increase value by arranging and directing a community comprised of groups that are external and internal to the company and connect everything needed to scale.
7. Increase demand of products and services by combining two or more resources in a way that the value created from them exceeds the sum of the value created from each resource separately
8. Dedicate teams with strong mix of marketing and technical skills to increase the number of new customers and the retention rate of existing customers
9. Arrange and apply resources from different regions to increase profitability
10. Increase sales by applying big-data analytics to produce information about users, suppliers and customers

References

• Cousera website. https://www.coursera.org/
• Crunchbase. 2019. Cousera. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coursera#section-funding-rounds
• Eckstein, J. 2019. How cousera makes money. [online]. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042815/how-coursera-works-makes-money.asp

Contributors

• Yinka Olanrewaju-Olawepo
• Dan Craigen