
LinkedIn to Buy Online Education Site Lynda.com for $1.5B - qnk
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/09/linkedin-to-buy-online-education-site-lynda-com-for-1-5-billion/
======
calinet6
Congratulations Lynda.com!

Story time. When I was in high school, I worked in a little computer lab in my
small hometown of Ojai, California, that taught classes in Photoshop,
Fireworks, web design and development, Flash, and more. That little technology
education company was just called "Lynda," and classes were taught directly by
Lynda Weinman, Bruce Heavin, and others. There were maybe ten or twelve
employees. I learned a lot from them over two summers about the intersection
of development and design, about teaching and working with people, and so much
more. It launched my interest in user experience design and development. Not
to mention the epic LAN parties we used to have in that computer lab with all
the top-of-the-line graphics workstations... good times.

I have a lot to be thankful for, and I'm so genuinely happy to see their
success. They were the nicest people to work with, and I'm sure that remained
true as they grew. Congrats to these guys, and I hope they find a good place
with LinkedIn.

~~~
72deluxe
I remember reading her "creative html design" book back about 20 years ago (it
was from 1997); that book was a work of art. The techniques may have changed
somewhat but the sites in there would likely be acceptable today I suspect
(which either shows how little progress we have made, or how well the book was
written!)

~~~
neovive
That was a very inspiring book. She was a pioneer in the field of web design
and it's great to see their success. I'm a long time Lynda.com member and I
hope they continue to produce the same quality courses going forward.

------
kirinan
This is a pretty interesting acquisition. Linkedin is trying to position
themselves as a full service job market. If you want a particular job, go to
Linkedin and even if you are missing a few skills you can pick it up on their
site and get "Linkedin Certified". This provides Linkedin with a series of
"Linkedin Certified Professionals" that recruiters need to pay to get access
to. It's an interesting position to be in: desired from both sides of the
equation (Job Seekers and Recruiters/Talent Sourcers).

~~~
alexashka
It's quite terrible, I mean, amazing for Lynda :)

Now that we have free Stanford, MIT, etc courses online, for free, what has
Lynda got to offer? It's a sinking ship. The 'one-stop for all your learning
needs' is simply a bad model - all programmers know this. You have to go and
seek out different resources that work for you and now we CAN, more than ever.
The only reason to choose Lynda is out of ignorance or laziness. Both of which
are indicators of somebody you don't want to hire!

LinkedIn's head must be operating in oldschool mode of certificates actually
meaning something. They don't. Unless they're HARD to get, really hard. And if
they are, then you are better off going to a real college/university where you
can get realtime feedback and support.

What few skills can a working programmer get from Lynda? Honestly...

~~~
rosser
_> What few skills can a working programmer get from Lynda? Honestly..._

The myopia some technologists display is really staggering sometimes.

I mean, it's not like people who _aren 't_ technologists would ever want to
learn new skills or anything, would they? They should totally just stay at
their menial, paper-shuffling desk jobs, or serve lattes to programmers, or
something.

~~~
alexashka
"Now that we have free Stanford, MIT, etc courses online, for free, what has
Lynda got to offer?"

I'm not saying people shouldn't learn. I'm saying there are superior
alternatives for every area Lynda is offering to teach.

Not sure whose point of view you're disagreeing with really.

~~~
unreal37
Lynda.com currently makes a $150 million per year in revenue. With all those
free sources you mention, how are they doing that? Why are companies paying
for education for their employees?

People pay for education. People will continue to pay for good education,
forever. Education will never ever be free, because it has value.

Oh you can pick up some Ruby on Rails skills with a manual and some free
tutorials. Not really what we're talking about here though.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
Really shortsighted to think of the value as in the cash extracted from the
student. The real value is that more people are educated. Ways that an
educator can see the cash from that created value are various. They can make
job referrals, they can do credentialing signaling, they can do ads, they can
sell premium tools while providing free education on how the use the tools. So
yeah, education can be free, should be free, and will be free (and in most
cases are already free if you consider public schooling).

------
Someone1234
This, to me, is terrible news. I am a big fan of Lynda.com. They've always had
a great library (both for tech' stuff but are also one of few sites that offer
non-tech video training (business courses, photography, etc) and their prices
were always very reasonable.

LinkedIn can only make the site worse as far as I am concerned, and I already
avoid LinkedIn due to the fact that they've essentially become spammers who
work to allow other spammers to spam you. That's all they are, a giant spam
platform at this point.

So too bad about Lynda. It will be greatly missed (by me).

~~~
jasallen
Totally agree. I simply cannot see Lynda.com's current (amazing) setup
blending well with LinkedIn. Lynda.com is going the way of the History
Channel.

~~~
brazzledazzle
I think it's less about changing Lynda.com and more about driving people
towards it as a revenue stream for LinkedIn. "LinkedIn Trained and Certified
with <X>". Promote those profiles and stick a fat enough badge on them and
people will pay. Some money and a few hours to sit through some videos and
maybe a test will be seen as a small price to pay for someone looking for an
edge.

------
jasode
As an outsider looking in, LinkedIn's purchase of Lynda.com looks like an odd
duck in comparison to their previous acquisitions[1].

As far as I can tell, the Lynda.com brand name isn't that well known outside
of tech circles. (Virtually all of their courses are Adobe, Microsoft Office,
and web development, etc) I'm guessing those computer courses are relevant to
less than 5% of LinkedIn's user base. It was very recently (last year or so)
that Lynda started doing more business courses[2] (how to calculate ROI, how
to write a business plan, etc) Since those business courses are probably their
thinnest and weakest offerings, I can only speculate that it was a partly a
"proof-of-concept" to show a prospective acquirer (such as LinkedIn) the
breadth of topics the content platform could deliver.

In that case, LinkedIn is really buying Lynda's content delivery platform (
_the technology_ ) as opposed to seeing value in the existing portfolio of
courses ( _the copyrights_ ).

It will be interesting to see how it plays out. I'm somewhat saddened that a
controversial company like LinkedIn (UI dark patterns, creepy privacy
invasions) was the one who bought them. I would have preferred a company like
github (synergy with code sharing) or Apple (enhance iTunesU) to do it.
Unfortunately, github doesn't have the cash/stock and Apple is busy with more
grandiose plans.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Acquisitions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Acquisitions)

[2][http://www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-training-
tutorials/484-...](http://www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-training-
tutorials/484-0.html?previousCategory=29)

~~~
nly
How can their technology possibly be worth $1.5B?

~~~
danvoell
Linkedin is paying for the content and ongoing business model. Lynda had $100M
in revenue in 2014. Sure LinkedIn could have replicated the content but they
are taking an existing business that works, building on it, and assuming that
by marketing it via linkedin.com they can expand Lynda to a larger audience.

~~~
martin-adams
Plus, they have one less key competitor in that space if they buy Lynda than
to build it themselves

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gz5
One of the many steps we will see that will have a net effect of
disintermediating traditional secondary education. With companies like
LinkedIn filling an Uber type role.

It used to be that the secondary degree was the middle man between employee
and employer (for many professions).

Certifications from companies like Microsoft and Cisco changed this in some
realms.

MOOCs and companies like Lynda expanded to different sectors.

Now layers like LinkedIn can essentially be the Uber between employers and the
myriad of certifications and degrees that will be available to employees. An
Uber layer for connection, credibility, aggregation, certification, etc.

I don't believe traditional secondary education gets completely
disintermediated. But I believe the landscape becomes much more heterogeneous,
which is a good thing.

------
whatok
No idea on valuations on this but seems kinda crazy to pay so much when all of
the various free MOOC offerings seem to be getting better and better. Realize
there's a difference motivation-wise when you actually have to pay and that
"learn how to do x" vs "learn about the subject x is under" has value but
don't know if $1.5bn is that difference.

I see great value for Linkedin users if there's some "official" certification
for skills learned through Lynda services that leads to them being more
marketable. That's pretty exciting.

~~~
rtpg
The Lynda.com courses aren't like MOOCs. They're not classes on theory, but
rather condensed practical things, to get you up and running quickly. They're
really aimed at working people catching up on new tech/learning the bases of
new skills.

I do recommend the service if you want to figure out how to get started
quickly with things like final cut or whatnot. It's realllly high quality
stuff condensed into 2h or so

~~~
whatok
I realize what Lynda courses are like and have done some in the past which is
why I mentioned the "learn how to do x" concept in my post. Other non-
traditional MOOC services offered by non-college institutions have a lot of
programs mirroring or closely resembling the Lynda approach. There's also zero
reason why Coursera and the like would not be able to pivot into this area.

~~~
rtpg
Ah, sorry, I misread how you wrote that.

My impression has been that Coursera is really about applying Socrate's (or is
it Aristotle's) dream: free classical education for all.

Learning about Final Cut Pro is great, but getting classes on general machine
learning ( at least ones that are worth more than a 2000 word blog post)
generally require going to a school with a 5 digit price tag. I think Coursera
and Lynda aren't trying to compete with each other on that end.

------
dd367
I'm 100% sure LinkedIn probably offered to buy Coursera at a similar price:
1\. A lot of Coursera's engineers are LinkedIn veterans. 2\. Coursera is
arguably a much better quality and more highly regarded education platform
than Lynda. 3\. Coursera certifications were something LinkedIn and Coursera
were actively working on.

I would imagine that Coursera refused because their vision of education is
much broader than what they might have been able to achieve within LinkedIn.
What do you guys think?

~~~
GCA10
Coursera doesn't monetize nearly as well.

------
brudgers
To me, this is another sign of most Linkedin profiles gradually becoming just
another resume on the web and LinkedIn as the next web generation's soft-core
version of Monster.com.

LinkedIn isn't a social network because having a LinkedIn profile is mostly
about required maintenance. The main activity is updating [and rolling back
spurious skill endorsements]. Integrating online education is just another
recruiter platform service. Professional colleagues don't care if I took a
PhotoShop class online.

------
fillskills
This is a very bad day for me. I was working on the integration of skills and
education at fillskills.com. Serves me well since I gave up on it because of
various reasons. Mostly because I was afraid of what people would say when I
launched.

This is great for education in general though. Imagine finding the skills to
you need to build your career and then the exact education to build it with.

------
neovive
A wonder if it's a coincidence that the latest video published today is: Up
and Running with LinkedIn.

Seriously, as a long time Lynda.com subscriber, I've noticed a steady increase
in the volume of courses in the "business" category. As a designer/developer,
I find some of the business videos quite interesting and a nice expansion
beyond their core design-centric courses.

I definitely see the synergies, but am a bit concerned that a company the size
of LI is going to slowly move away from the designer/developer focused videos
to certification-oriented courses; more of a direct competitor to Udacity's
Nanodegrees and Coursera's Specialization Certificates. However, there are
much better options these days for targeted developer video courses (e.g.
Egghead, Tuts+, Laracasts, etc.). This was a great exit for Lynda.com--they
have built up an amazing brand over many years.

LI brings such a massive scale with great channels to monetize courses beyond
subscriptions. Enticing a relatively small percentage of the LI user base to
upgrade to a new paid subscription tier justifies the cost; not even
considering the additional opportunities this creates for both employers and
job seekers.

~~~
aoakenfo
Same. I was just looking at the new courses last night on Lynda...all
business-oriented. I left the site with relief that I had canceled my
membership. With the acquisition news this morning I see now why new developer
courses have been lacking.

------
caseysoftware
At first, I was thinking the same as many others "this is terrible news!" but
then I started thinking about the data that LinkedIn has and how they could
apply it to Lynda.com

Imagine some scenarios:

\- You are looking at a job. Based on the requirements, LinkedIn can recommend
different Lynda courses you may take. Now, instead of meeting some of the
requirements and not knowing the next step, you can fill those gaps.

\- LinkedIn knows what people are endorsed for and who is "similar" to you.
Based on that, they can make recommendations for courses that may
improve/expand your skills to become more like the other person.. or
potentially stand out from that person.

\- You're posting a job. Instead of broadcasting it to the world, you can
filter it to "promote to people who have skill X listed or who have taken one
of these Y courses." Now you're more likely to get a better qualified set of
candidates.

Disclosure: Two time Lynda author here.

------
junto
I wonder if Pluralsight is also on their target list?

~~~
petercooper
Maybe, but Pluralsight looks more like it's aiming for an IPO to me. They've
made quite a few acquisitions but then not really integrated them much into
the core product - mostly adding big lumps of subscribers and revenue to their
numbers which looks better for an IPO than an acquisition.

------
tosh
Very smart move. LinkedIn == career. This might mean heavy competition for
Coursera & others going forward.

~~~
S4M
They could very well partner. Let's say you are a recruiter looking for
someone who knows machine learning and is based (or wiling to move to) a
certain place. A quick search on linkedin and you are shown, amongst others,
all the candidates who completed the Machine Learning course on Coursera and
match your location criteria. And the other way works as well: if you
completed an online course and tell linkedin about it, it can indicate you
positions in your area were your new skills could be useful.

------
smackfu
Wonder if they will cut their podcast ad budget... they are one of the big
advertisers on tech podcasts.

------
ThomPete
Congrats to Lynda.com a service I can't recommend enough if you want to get
started with programming.

It's been around forever and the quality is amazing. I learned to program
using it and I always recommend people to use it if they can afford it.

Going to be interesting to see where they will take this.

~~~
DanAndersen
I'm also a fan of Lynda.com's tutorials. One thing to mention to anyone out
there is to see if your workplace offers access to Lynda to employees. The
university I work at does, and it's nice to have that as a resource.

~~~
ThomPete
Agree. I used to run a design agency, we offered that to our employees it was
a great way for people to keep up with various trends and actually much more
effective than to send them at courses (which we also offered).

------
Htsthbjig
oh, sh*t, no!

I loved the site. Now I will have to add it to the long list of companies that
got bought and lost their essence, like cdbaby, reddit, or digg.

I started using whassapp in order to scape facebook. Now those bubble monsters
are acquiring everything they can while money is free.

~~~
UUMMUU
Honestly, I am one of the masses who thinks LinkedIn is Monster 2.0 but you
can't say it's going to be crap just because a crap company bought it. Just
wait and see, keep being an active supporter until they change something you
don't like and stop. Them losing users is the best way to affect change. Also,
throwing Reddit into that category is unfair, true reddit changed but it's
grown into something useful if you know where to go (avoid /r/funny aka
/r/thingshighschoolersthinkarefunny)

------
ausjke
Why not udemy/coursera/udacity? Lynda is great but seems a bit "old-style",
but anyway I think this is the right move, a job site companied by training

~~~
UUMMUU
Dunno udemy.

Coursera seems to offer more of an academic lesson plan (learn linear algebra,
algorithms, history of modern China) which doesn't seem very applicable to a
specific tech job. These are more for people who want to learn for the joy of
learning. (Same thing would be said about edX although I think it's owned by
the schools (could be wrong))

I would say they didn't go after Udacity most likely because of the small, and
also younger, user base where as Lynda.com seems to appeal to more of the
people who want to transition out of a job into another job.

This is all pure speculation though as I've only done a few courses on udacity
and coursera and actually never done any on Lynda.com but have known people
who have.

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bstar77
Linda.com is one of those rare companies that has tempered assaults on their
business model from every flank by sticking to what they do best and have
somehow managed to come out shining.

Seriously, these guys were founded in 1995, they've been through all of the
web turmoil and still managed to improve their technology offerings and stay
relevant. Not sure what this acquisition means, but I hope things don't change
much.

~~~
btzll
*Lynda.com

~~~
bstar77
thanks, stupid autocorrect

------
onhopwood
This could be interesting if you of it think from the ideal, that college
traditional education is becoming an outdated format and project based
learning is leading the way to gain real world experience. Now job seekers are
creating a blank linked-in profile, taking and finishing some online course to
show there skills, while automatically generating their resumes and profiles
for employers to see.

------
alejoriveralara
Really happy to see big exits in the Edtech space. Hope this brings more
entrepreneurs to the industry!

------
SloopJon
Much has been made of online education's mini bubble, with an emphasis on
MOOcs like Coursera, Udacity, and edX. Having taken several of these classes,
it all seemed kind of silly to me. They're great for curiosity and continuing
education, but nowhere near replacing a college degree.

Seeing the kind of money that's going into these ventures, there are obviously
people still betting big. I think they face a real challenge marketing these
classes and certifications as valuable to the students and employers. Coursera
used to award a free statement of accomplishment (a PDF, basically). The
classes that I've taken recently only recognize students who pay for a
verified certificate. The fee is really small, but it's not really worth
anything to me.

I've very much enjoyed having free access to so many different classes. I
don't know whether it's sustainable as is, but I fear that an acquisition like
this may step up the pressure to monetize, show a profit, etc.

------
aurora72
Wonder how they will be able to compete with free online courses, there are
plenty of them and they're just as quality. I also wonder how Linked-in itself
can compete with other social networks.

~~~
jonknee
Considering Lynda has been competing with them for two decades, I'm sure
they'll do OK.

~~~
aurora72
Didn't know they were for 20 years, I've just taken a look at Lynda'a
wikipedia entry and oh yes they've been for 20 years, that's interesting. But
revenue at $100M/year and acquisiton at $1,5B is more interesting. Still
wonder how they'll compete with hundreds of good quality and free online
courses, free badges, Mozilla certifications, etc. Good luck to them.

------
Aoyagi
Isn't this a good time to recapitulate the things why LinkedIn is not exactly
ideal social network? I forgot most of it, other than how they scour through
people's address books.

------
chocksy
Whaaattt? What are they going to do with it? It seems like linkedin is trying
to get into teamtreehouse + facebook.

------
shahocean
What can be LinkedIn's take on this?

~~~
kjw
From LinkedIn's conference call:

Strategic rationale:

\- Believes that the acquisition of lynda.com will be an important step to
fulfilling LinkedIn's vision of developing an "economic graph"

\- Views lynda.com as essential for professionals to advance their skill sets

\- Believes that acquisition of lynda.com will expand the addressable
opportunity by 30B into corporate employee education and professional
certifications market

\- Believes that by leveraging LinkedIn's professional context, content
distribution platform and channel focused base of customers, LinkedIn is well
positioned to become leader in learning and development market

\- Believes the mission and strategy of lynda.com is aligned with LinkedIn and
will help integrate lynda.com into their business

\- Sees lynda.com having large traction on university campuses which overlaps
with LinkedIn's strength looks to capitalize on overlapping presence

Financial details:

\- Primary focus will be maximizing long-term member and business value over
short term financial results

\- Views lynda.com revenue mix as 2/3 consumer driven subscriptions and 1/3
corporate enterprise

\- 50% of customer base is higher education in government and other 50% is
corporate enterprise

\- Sees lynda.com business model made up of 70% gross margin, ~20% content /
engineering and ~35% Sales and marketing with EBITDA margins of 5-10%

~~~
_sword
What's good StreetAccounts highlights

------
jonknee
Seems like there is room for some integration (not sure about $1.5B worth of
integration, but hey).

------
jordhy
I'm so happy for Linda. I think most old timers like me learned with her
books! She rocks.

------
z3t4
Whenever I want to learn something I just search on the Internet or ask
experiences people to recommend a book. Or lookup what course literature the
well known schools are using.

What are the benefit of online courses more then that you get a badge or paper
that says you have taken the course?

~~~
edgarvaldes
Some people prefer an structured learning path. You can build it yourself, or
you can go to sites like Lynda.com.

------
Nktakumi
Codeschool acquired by Pluralsight, Lynda acquired by LinkedIn.

What's next, Treehouse?

~~~
stephen
That's the goal of startups, right? (Or IPO, but that is rare.)

------
lydialiu
linked in buy lynda.com, and it provides online training based on the skill
categories. It is innovative.Actually I never use lynda.com before. Hope the
sessions will be continuous, informative and effective.

------
aerialcombat
RIP Lynda.com

------
rasz_pl
Daphne Koller must be happy today, this is a huge validation for Coursera
business model.

~~~
aikah
> Daphne Koller must be happy today, this is a huge validation for Coursera
> business model.

makes no sense. It would be like saying Facebook success validates Twitter
business model, just because they are both social networks. Lynda doesn't
issue certificates if you complete their courses. And AFAIK they don't work
directly with universities or colleges.

Coursera content is academic, while Lynda.com is practical and focus on
specific software and/or technology. Sure they have a few "theory courses",
but that's not their core business.

~~~
Zelphyr
From a business standpoint it makes total sense. Investors see Coursera and
Lynda as being in the same or similar market so Lynda getting bought helps
them clarify the valuation of Coursera if its for sale _.

_ If Coursera has taken investment money then it is for sale.

~~~
aikah
> From a business standpoint it makes total sense.

Investors are not idiots. Not saying you are, you might be just misguided.
Lynda and Coursera are nothing alike.

------
ahmedali972
ahmedali972

