Thought Leaders in Online Education: Andrew Grauer, CEO of Course Hero (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The bulk of your revenue, however, is coming from subscription. It’s a pure subscription-based business model at this point, right?

Andrew Grauer: Correct. Our belief is that over the next decade, we believe that hundreds of millions of people will need to be able to learn and prove that they learned what they learned. That’s something that we believe will not change over the next 10 years. That’s really important for us because it’s something that we can hang our hat on – that we can dedicate our human capital or our cash capital to invest in it.

What we think might change in that framework is the institutions. Some may stay the same. Some may evolve. Some may disappear and many will come to new existence.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s pursue that line of thought for a second. Millions of students will need to learn online and prove that they have learned online. Your point is absolutely consistent with some of the things coming out of the employers including large employers who are no longer necessitating degrees. They want to see skills.

People are looking for some way to validate that somebody who has done an online course on machine learning has learned something. What kind of accreditation are we talking about? In your scenario, how do you address that?

Andrew Grauer: It’s the signal that matters. That signal might come in the form of a certificate, a degree, a Master’s. Maybe it’s online. Maybe it’s offline. Maybe it’s an extension school. Maybe it’s done in a new way with a new type of assessment. Who knows? Our job is to understand that evolution and that we should be adapting and evolving to be able to help students with whatever their assessment is. We should be able to help them get prepped.

Sramana Mitra: You don’t really have the issue of accreditation because you are helping students enrolled in accredited programs prepare and enhance their learning and understanding of the material and complete those courses. You don’t really need to worry about any kind of certification or accreditation. You’re just plugging into the workflow of that learning.

Andrew Grauer: You got it. We want to be supplemental and complementary to help any educator with their current goals and be that platform rather than being another accredited institution or school. That’s our goal. We can have a subscription model where we just offer a Netflix-type subscription and gain more and more subscribers.

Sramana Mitra: What are the numbers currently? You said 300 million visits per year?

Andrew Grauer: Yes, in 2018.

Sramana Mitra: What is the unique user base that that user base represents?

Andrew Grauer: We’re in the single-digit millions of contributing and paid members. In 2019, we’re going to continue to grow fast like we did in 2018 and prior years.

Sramana Mitra: What is the subscription cost? How much are people paying to subscribe?

Andrew Grauer: For the paid members, it’s about $120 for a year or $40 a month. The engagement and retention is strong in those memberships.

Sramana Mitra: You’re saying you have single-digit millions of paying customers.

Andrew Grauer: Of contributing and paid members combined. At this point in time, we aren’t breaking out the numbers publicly.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Online Education: Andrew Grauer, CEO of Course Hero
1 2 3 4 5 6