
Udacity Raises Funds From Andreessen Horowitz - dbh937
http://allthingsd.com/20121025/education-start-up-udacity-raises-funds-from-andreessen-horowitz/
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confluence
Udacity will win by disintermediating HR, which I think is a great
development. I really hate HR, because frankly - they suck - hard.

An example?

I can't remember which company this story was from (I think it was Lotus
Software).

Basically the HR team of a multi-billion dollar startup were given the
anonymised resumes of the first 10-20 founding team members.

HR rejected them all. Not one founding team member was accepted even for a
short interview.

Tells you something about HR doesn't it?

First class universities are really great at bringing together smart people,
money and difficult problems all into one area.

For the vast majority of non-smart people however it frankly just isn't worth
it. The vast majority of jobs held by people from third and second tier
universities do not need a degree - they just need to be qualified to do a
specific job.

Udacity will stand in between second/third tier students and second/third tier
business and match them like eBay does with buyers and sellers. This is worth
a lot of money.

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gms
Founder-types don't tend to be 'good' employees at established companies. I
think it's unlikely HR did anything wrong in the Lotus example.

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confluence
Well then - maybe we should reevaluate what makes "good" employees.

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francesca
I think they stated the main point really well: “I don’t think this is about
putting universities out of business. Educating millions of individuals, to me
that’s a radical idea, but a positive radical idea.”

Most people taking these courses are not college-aged students. Universities
continue to be valuable, but it's important to constantly renew your skill set
and make this knowledge and resources accessible to as many people as
possible.

I'm thrilled to see VC funding go into this. I've taken 1 Udacity and 1
Stanford course and both have been a great experience (although I prefer
udacity). It might not help me get my next job, but the structure is excellent
and definitely promotes more hands-on learning than I have seen in the
classroom.

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0003
>It started out matching students and employers — and has placed about 20
people in new jobs, total. But what really seems to be working is sponsored
courses, Thrun said.

>So, for instance, Google will offer an HTML5 game development course co-
taught by two of its employees. HTML5 game development is a skill that’s
useful in industry but not deeply academic, and something slow-moving
universities are unlikely to offer for a while, Thrun noted.

I am really curious to see how this works out.

Does anyone know if udacity is modeling for a connected-learning experience?
From the course requirements for the above course[1], it seems to be going
this way:

>Basic knowledge of HTML, Javascript, and how the web works is necessary for
this course. There is an optional unit on HTML and Javascript to help get you
up-to-speed. If you have a basic understanding of how the web is structured at
the level of CS253: Web Application Engineering, you should be fine.

[1]<http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs255/CourseRev/1>

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trekkin
Honestly, Udacity seems to be losing it. It has only had 14 courses for a
while, while Coursera has 200 courses, and counting. And the universities
represented at Coursera have better recognition/ranking that at Udacity.

Why would somebody invest in Udacity now?

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robrenaud
Coursera is awesome, don't get me wrong. I am on my fourth Coursera class (if
you count the pre-Coursera ML class, and Quantum Mech that I gave up on a
couple weeks in), and I haven't had any real interest in anything Udacity has
had to offer. Their offerings seem more basic and less academic; I am happy to
get hands on experience at work.

But Coursera fundamentally has the same problem that Hulu has, they are just a
platform for distributing content. Hulu is toally at the mercy of the media
industry, likewise, Coursera is totally at the mercy of the universities. Now,
it is possible that universities will be more giving to Coursera than the big
media studios are to Hulu and this won't actually be a problem for Coursera.
But it really might actually be a problem if Coursera starts biting into their
bottom line.

Thrun, on the other hand, is happy to blow the whole higher ed system up if he
can. He is way more outwardly ambitious[1]. This adversarial relationship with
the universities might end up killing his strategy, as is consistent with your
200 vs 14 courses number. But it might not, Udacity might just carve up enough
of the territory that they really own that they aren't held hostage by the
university system they are trying to replace.

[1] When I watch Andrew Ng or Daphne Koller talk about Coursera I notice their
unwillingness to say the word "disrupt". I wonder if they are actually equally
ambitious as Thurn, just unwilling to admit it, for the sake of not biting the
hand that is currently feeding them very well.

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brandnewlow
Thank you for pinpointing the fundamental difference between these two
companies for someone who's not followed the space super carefully.

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salimmadjd
I took Sebastian's AI class at Stanford and signed up for more classes at
Coursera (NLP, image processing). However, I think both of them lacking in
student engagement and need building up additional infrastructure to keep
student motivated. Self-pace study or self study requires a lot of discipline
and a little bit of push via game mechanics, daily emails etc. can go a long
way.

I think their metrics should not be just based on total signup or total
classes offered but how many students graduate with high level competency.
It's the total graduates and their skillsets that have HR value at the end.

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ExpiredLink
What is Thrun's share on Udacity now?

