Udacity Restructures Operations, Lays Off 20 Percent of Its Workforce (techcrunch.com) 30
Udacity, the $1 billion online education startup, has laid off about 20 percent of its workforce and is restructuring its operations as the company's co-founder Sebastian Thrun seeks to bring costs in line with revenue without curbing growth, TechCrunch has learned. From the report: The objective is to do more than simply keep the company afloat, Thrun told TechCrunch in a phone interview. Instead, Thrun says these measures will allow Udacity from a money-losing operation to a "break-even or profitable company by next quarter and then moving forward." The 75 employees, including a handful of people in leadership positions, were laid off earlier today as part of a broader plan to restructure operations at Udacity. The startup now employs 300 full-time equivalent employees. It also employs about 60 contractors.
Udacity, which specializes in "nanodegrees" on a range of technical subjects that include AI, deep learning, digital marketing, VR and computer vision, has been struggling for months now, due in part to runaway costs and other inefficiencies. The company grew in 2017, with revenue increasing 100 percent year-over-year thanks to some popular programs like its self-driving car and deep learning nanodegrees, and the culmination of a previous turnaround plan architected by former CMO Shernaz Daver. New programming was added in 2018, but the volume slowed. Those degrees that were added lacked the popularity of some of its other degrees. Meanwhile, costs expanded and their employee ranks swelled.
Udacity, which specializes in "nanodegrees" on a range of technical subjects that include AI, deep learning, digital marketing, VR and computer vision, has been struggling for months now, due in part to runaway costs and other inefficiencies. The company grew in 2017, with revenue increasing 100 percent year-over-year thanks to some popular programs like its self-driving car and deep learning nanodegrees, and the culmination of a previous turnaround plan architected by former CMO Shernaz Daver. New programming was added in 2018, but the volume slowed. Those degrees that were added lacked the popularity of some of its other degrees. Meanwhile, costs expanded and their employee ranks swelled.
Be wary of rapid growth. (Score:2)
A company that is growing quickly is also normally creating a lot of debt. Unfortunately this field of dreams style of business is very risky. Besides Debt, a fast growing company is getting stuck in the way they use to do business when they are small compared to how the need to do business when they are larger. These changes also mess up their growth and profit projections and often creat more stress because the investments from their debts are not paying off.
It is possible for a company to grow fast an
On the other hand, do you want to stay tiny? (Score:4, Interesting)
Your comment sounds like something I would have written ten years ago. What you say is true. There is also the other side of the same coin.
I've started a few businesses. One in particular had a product well ahead its time, the best product in a billion dollar market. The product technology was five years ahead of the competition. My modus operandi was always to grow organically without debt, re-investing profit. I also offered a very good value price point, meaning there was little money for marketing or growth.
Other companies who took on a little debt were able to catch up on technology, while getting far more market share. Those companies dominate that market, earning many times the debt, while my company slowly withered away. Being slow to grow cost me literally millions of dollars. Higher prices and a little debt probably would have been a very good idea.
If I start another company* I may very well focus more on growth, including taking on a little debt -after- proving the business model. I'm very wary of personal debt, but it was probably a mistake to not take out debt equal to the previous three months profit, at least, as long as the company continued to grow.
Again not disagreeing with you, just saying that while a lot of debt can be bad for a business, so can no debt, in a new market or a growing company. Next time I'll save "no debt" for my personal finances.
* I'm thinking here about starting a -company- as opposed to "owning my job". When I retire I might have an LLC or S-corp through which I offer consulting services or something, where the "company" is me. In that case I wouldn't do debt. If I intend to build a company with 50 or more employees, some debt or equity financing is probably a good idea in order to go from nothing to a company in a reasonable time. I won't have another company with two employees - it's not worth the legal and tax hassles of being an "employer" unless you have five or more employees.
Re: (Score:2)
You made your mistake early one. If you'd chosen better parents you might have had enough of a cushion that you could have funded the business from that or at least not been so worried about taking on the debt.
Re: (Score:2)
but that requires real company leadership not just some guys who is playing by ear, and just feels vindicated from their past success.
This is a common problem I have seen when contracting for small/medium businesses starting to hit enterprise scale. The kind of risk it takes to build a company can be very dangerous when it starts significantly growing. I worked with a VP who built the company's largest business unit from nothing, but was then resistant to ever care about calculating estimated ROI or performing risk analysis for large strategic initiatives because he never did that 10 years ago and succeeded anyway. The ability to recogniz
Models and Comparisons of Education Sites (Score:5, Informative)
Udemy
* Buy a class, own forever with no other fees (forever = Udemy exists).
* Learn on demand.
* Tons of course across all learning (I do drawing and writing courses with my kids, Unity, piano, and more advanced drawing/art for myself). This is a major selling point. They have the tech courses as well (data mining, etc.)
* $10 gets most courses (always on sale)
PluralSight
* Monthly fees for complete access ($35 USD/month for personal).
* Corporate approved (my company provides access).
* Tech oriented (wide range of offerings, but for adults).
* Learn on demand.
Udacity (first heard of them today)
* I can't tell the fee structure or the fees as they require signup first (no thank you).
* Tech and business stuff only.
* Time structured, not on demand. This is a massive detriment in my opinion. Deal killer.
* What's a nanodegree again? (Udacity made that word up)
Conclusions
Udacity is too narrowly focused and I'm not clear what the benefits of a nanodegree are. I can demonstrate knowledge on a topic, I don't need a made up degree.
Udemy wins it from my experience (best instructor interaction and very good course structure, better than Pluarsight which I have had access to for years).
Udemy also has the best fee structure/prices.
Udemy FTW. I've bought about 50 courses from them.
A walue in a wariable (Score:2)
Udemy should rename themselves Urdume. I got given a stickfull of random courses by a friend and a fair few are completely useless because of the instructors' accents.
Didn't notice this with the pluralsight or CBTnuggets ones so much. Quantity versus quality?
Re: (Score:2)
If they were free what's the complaint?
I always watch a bit before purchasing to check quality (and English/Aussie/South African accents are fine with me, and very common).
I read reviews, check quality, , review syllabus/course overview, and then determine whether to purchase.
I'm not familiar with CBNuggets. I'll check it out.
Udemy also offers completely offline downloads as well, not sure about the others. I've used that to do drawing courses while out camping.
I like the breadth of the topics (pretty muc
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Udemy and Udacity are satisfying two different niches. Nothing on Udemy is accredited, for example, and won't be recognized by other universities. If that's not important to you, fair enough.
Way back in the before times, around 2012, there was an explosion of MOOCs (massively open online courses) which saw the birth of Udacity, Coursera, and EdX. The idea was to put the university experience online. That means something more than just "watch a video and perform the exercises" but instead to develop cohor
Re: Models and Comparisons of Education Sites (Score:1)
You missed some moocs:
https://www.khanacademy.org/
https://www.coursera.org/
https://www.edx.org/
And now, almost every university is putting stuff online, just google your favorite
Teach code (Score:1)
Nanodegrees? (Score:2)
These nanodegrees sound worthless.
By my math, four years * 1e-9 = 125ms. How much can you possibly learn in that amount of time?
Startup schmartup (Score:2)
Don't know if that $1 billion is market cap, revenue or whatever, but that's hardly what I think of as a startup.