Thought Leaders in Online Education: Andrew Grauer, CEO of Course Hero (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What are we talking? When I talked to you five years ago, you were about a $10 million company. You had bootstrapped the company with a little bit of outside financing to almost $10 million in revenue in 2014. In 2018, what range are we talking?

Andrew Grauer: In 2018, we’re in the range of $50 million to $100 million in revenue. We’re growing fast in 2019 to reach over $100 million.

Sramana Mitra: What have you done financing strategy-wise since we talked?

Andrew Grauer: In 2014, we raised a little over $15 million with GSB as our lead investor.

Sramana Mitra: That’s it?

Andrew Grauer: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic. Have you done any acquisitions? I know Pluralsight did a roll-up. They acquired a lot of companies in the process of going public from $16 million to $100 million. Are you also doing acquisitions?

Andrew Grauer: There’s a fantastic amount of innovation that’s happening in EdTech.

Sramana Mitra: This segment that you’re talking about, I think Pluralsight is a very good comparable to you. Having a good comparable that’s considered as a success story in any segment is very helpful. I’m sure you’re finding that very helpful.

Andrew Grauer: It is very helpful to look at that model. Knowing that there’re so many students to help them practice in whatever they’re learning, and then there’s opportunity to always be thinking about how we can help these students better and make the subscription offering truly better. Every quarter and every year, let’s just make it better for current subscribers and future members. Then we get to hold constant effectively the price of the subscription.

Continuing to make accessible more and better education is exciting. That’s what’s so exciting about this. It’s aligned towards our mission and vision. To have every single student graduate and have it be aligned with the business model that makes sense in every comparable category is really exciting and motivating.

Sramana Mitra: Do you have any metrics to track how many people are graduating college using your technology?

Andrew Grauer: It’s a really exciting opportunity for us to consider publishing externally over time like job placement and graduation rates. That is our north star as a company.

Sramana Mitra: How many schools are in the program now?

Andrew Grauer: In the database, there are tens of thousands of schools listed. The idea is to be able to help students in any course, in any school around the world. At this point in time, there’s a list of tens of thousands of institutions listed on the platform.

Sramana Mitra: How are they finding you? Do you go after schools and recruit contributors and students or do you just let if flow organically? How is your customer acquisition organized?

Andrew Grauer: At this point in time, a lot of people are finding us online. They are finding us directly through Course Hero as well as our apps. Then in terms of reaching out to students and educators, we do that and engage with them on different campuses around the nation.

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