Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ in Revenue Without Dropping Out: Course Hero CEO Andrew Grauer (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: That’s actually great. We love these stories of student entrepreneurs who didn’t drop out. Going back to the subscription model, how did the revenue ramp?

Andrew Grauer: It ramped really well in terms of growth rate but we were starting on a really small figure. I don’t remember the specifics. I do know that in 2010 we eventually got to a million dollars in sales. Then, we doubled every year after that. That was about $2.5 million in 2011, $5 million in 2012 and over $10 million last year. We hope to do between $15 to $20 million this year.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get to a bit more granular detail about how you built that revenue up. Talk to me about the highlights of customer acquisition and conversion rates during the early times. It sounds like the advertising revenue was a non-event. >>>

Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ in Revenue Without Dropping Out: Course Hero CEO Andrew Grauer (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Explain to me the value proposition of your concept.

Andrew Grauer: The best way to understand it is to think about tutoring. The first version of this was a content version of tutoring – getting supplemental help for people to learn and succeed effectively in their specific course at their school. We really started out at Cornell and then extended to a number of other schools. We thought about it a lot like Airbnb – letting people rent space anywhere in the world that has an address and is recognizable by the Google Maps API. We wanted some thing where you can upload your educational resources and tag it to any course at any school in the world.

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ in Revenue Without Dropping Out: Course Hero CEO Andrew Grauer (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

We love student entrepreneurs who have managed to not only build successful businesses but have done so without dropping out of school. We also love entrepreneurs who have the discipline to get to a strong and sustainable monetization model early on in their evolution. Andrew Grauer scores on all fronts, and there is much to learn from this entrepreneur’s journey.

Sramana Mitra: Andrew, let’s start with your personal beginning. Tell us where you were born, raised, and in what circumstances. What’s the back story of Course Hero?

Andrew Grauer: I’m from the Bay Area of California. I grew up there my whole life. I went to college in Ithaca, New York at Cornell University. After graduating at Cornell, I came back to the Bay Area and continued working on Course Hero here.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. What are your thoughts about liberal arts colleges? I went to a liberal arts college as well. I went to Smith College. About five years ago, Smith started this big investment on a new engineering building. It was very plush. They invited me to speak at the opening. It was clear that the college was going through a lot of soul-searching like most other liberal arts colleges. What is the future of liberal arts education?

Karen Francis: I have a grand vision for what a liberal arts college experience could be. I say those words very precisely. Just because technology is enabling things to open up, doesn’t mean that the college campus can’t do that. I actually think that the real opportunity here is to look at places like Smith and Dartmouth and say, “You go there, but you’re not bound by the boundaries of the geography or the professors who choose to teach there for what you’re going to learn and experience.” >>>

Thought leaders in Online Education: Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education, UC Irvine (Part 7)

Sramana: What are some of the other trends occurring in this space now?

Gary Matkin: In general, there is a very large gap in the technology that is presently being offered. That gap is conventionally called content management. Publishers are doing more and more to create content that is quite well managed. Learning management systems are using some of that stuff, but learning management systems and content management systems the way the publishers are doing it are fighting a bit. I have seen that those communities are starting to work together a bit better. >>>

The Funding of Avaz: Some Reflections

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Do you work with a lot of for-profit colleges?

Karen Francis: We work with any content providers. Some people are not institutions in the way that you and I would think of it.

Sramana Mitra: Your marketing service is for any kind of online or educational program?

Karen Francis: Yes. On the Academix Direct site, we work with any post-secondary institutions whether it’s traditional brick-and-mortar, online, or blended – which most of them are. Even the ones you think are traditional have online components now. The CourseTalk site is all online.

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Thought leaders in Online Education: Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education, UC Irvine (Part 6)

Sramana: Even in the future, this is something that will have to be done with technology. Teachers need to be empowered to use that technology. I just don’t see how teachers can be required to architect the design.

Gary Matkin: It is going to have to be done more and more by teachers. They are going to have to get more involved with the design of courses than they are now.

Sramana: They may be involved in the course design process but that does not necessarily mean that they are going to have to do learning architecture design. I think we disagree here. I just don’t see ‘teachers as architects’ being scalable.

Gary Matkin: I don’t agree with you on that point of view. The most effective teachers we have right now are those who are involved with design. They are coming up with very creative solutions to convey information that our designers would not have otherwise conveyed. Our designers do not have the domain expertise to know that the content should have been there. Teachers, when they understand what the design elements are, can produce some wonderful stuff. >>>