Eren Bali: Encouraging Alternative Yet Effective Education

With Gagan Biyani and Oktay Caglar, Eren Bali launched Udemy in 2012 as an online teaching and learning bazaar where teachers can create their own curriculum and students can choose their own courses – truly, as personalized an education as can be in the digital world.

Udemy is not a conventional MOOC but a digital platform for online learning where experts can create their own curriculum, which are then offered to the general public. The courses are usually not driven by conventional college coursework but are determined by their designers’ view about useful coursework in the real world (i.e., improvement of job-related skills). For example, if students enrolled in the course due to the instructor’s reputation or marketing efforts, Udemy only gets 3% while the instructor gets 95% of the tuition.

The coursework designers can charge interested individuals for enrollment fees, typical fees range from $29 to $99, or offer the coursework for free. Both the designers and Udemy earn income from the arrangement with the profit-sharing ratio depending on several factors.

Udemy’s platform provides coursework designers with the essential tools and technologies for creating and promoting their coursework as well as earning money from the tuition charges. While Udemy courses are not yet credentialed as college credits, these can provide several benefits for students, such as the acquisition of job-related skills and the generation of credits for a technical certification.

At present, Udemy offers over 22,000 coursework alternatives – and growing – as well as served more than 5 million students. With the growing popularity of alternative education for the real world, Bali’s brainchild continues to live up to its branding of “The Academy of You”.

But the path toward its present success has not been without its challenges. Bali and his co-founders were rejected at least 30 times by investors before hitting a series of jackpots, such as Series A funding by Groupon investors, Series B funding by Insight Venture Partners, and Series C funding by Nortwest Venture Partners.