Last week, the Edtech platform Udemy went public. The IPO did not go quite as well as investors hoped. Nonetheless, it was a big day for the 11-year-old company and its co-founder Eren Bali (who stepped down from CEO to chairman and later started a newer company) and an inspiring story for many. Udemy was Bali’s second attempt at an online learning company after his first in his home country of Turkey failed.
Udemy is one in a string of Edtech companies (Coursera, Duolingo, Nerdy, Powerschool) to have IPO’ed this year. While Edtech companies going public isn’t new, Crunchbase notes that it indicates a potential shift towards US-based Edtech since Chinese-based companies have been dominating the US IPO market in recent years. Online education and distanced learning have been popular in China for quite some time, but the US saw a boost because of the pandemic.
A number of startups (ClassDojo, CourseHero, Quizlet, Codeacademy) have also closed big funding rounds after going years without doing so. Codeacademy raised a $40M Series D earlier this year, though founder Zach Sims didn’t attribute that to the pandemic. The company has achieved $50 million in annual recurring revenue and has been steadily doubling its growth since 2018.
This week, Codeacademy launched its newest product: Docs, a free coding documentation site for popular programming languages and frameworks.
“Codecademy Docs is a low-key big step for the team because it's our very first step into the realm of open contribution and UGC (user-generated content),” maker Sonny Li shared on launch day.
Li also shared that the site has surpassed 700 entries across 18 different topics. A leaderboard on the homepage highlights contributors and the entries they've authored.
Codeacademy had previously said it would be using some of its funding to grow internationally in India and invest in its Codeacademy for Business product, which competes with Udemy’s enterprise product.
We’ll be on the lookout for updates. 👀
Our San Francisco event is approaching fast and this guest list is looking sharp!
You don’t want to miss this — yes, you. You don’t have to be in San Francisco to take part in the fun, meet amazing people, and nerd out about your favorite new products.
You can do that all in our virtual world on Topia!
Same time (November 9 at 6pm PST), virtual place.
Make sure to get it on your calendar now by heading over to Eventbrite and clicking “Add to calendar.” Then when it’s time for the event, you’re only a click away from the party.
Storyblok, the world's first headless CMS that works for both developers & business users. It provides developers with all the flexibility they need to build reliable and fast websites while giving content creators with no coding skills the ability to edit content independently of the developer.
54,000+ developers & marketers use Storybloks CMS to deliver powerful content experiences on any platform: corporate websites, e-commerce sites, mobile apps, and screen displays.
