[HN Gopher] Coursera S-1 IPO ___________________________________________________________________ Coursera S-1 IPO Author : marc__1 Score : 73 points Date : 2021-03-05 21:37 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.sec.gov) (TXT) w3m dump (www.sec.gov) | sgpl wrote: | I've actually enjoyed taking courses on Coursera, some paid, but | I've mostly audited stuff I've found interesting. Really hoping | that they're able to find a way towards profitability and exist | as a public company in the long run. Looking at the numbers it | doesn't seem like it'll be that hard. | | They definitely seemed to have benefitted from covid in terms of | registered users which isn't a huge surprise. Registered users | from 2019 to 2020 grew by 67%, averaging around 23-24% for the | few prior years. | | Revenue jumps at a similar rate from 2019 to 2020, from about | $184m to 293m, 59% growth. | | 11,900 degree students at the end of 2020, with degree segment | revenue doubling from $15m in 2019 to $30m in 2020. | | Some stats from the filing: year users | revenue 2020 - 77m users / $293m 2019 - 46m users | / $184m 2018 - 37m users / $141m 2017 - 30m users | / $95m | | 25+ degrees offered in the price range: $9k to $45k | vmception wrote: | IPO Fridays are back! Except it's everyday | awaythro15234 wrote: | Anyone know how different Coursera is from Udemy? | | I recently took a course on Flutter from Udemy and was pretty | disappointed. Not with the platform per se, but with the entire | _idea_ of video courses on programmatic concepts. I only took it | because for Flutter most of the resources are videos, and not | books or articles. | | I find that video courses do not invite the same level of | interactivity I feel when I learn from, say, a textbook. There | are also of course a horrible reference as one has to dig in to | find a specific video, then find the time within that video to | learn a concept, while with a book I can merely do a text search. | | Videos also are frustrating in the fact that one cannot fluidly | control the pace. One can pause and resume and increase from 1x | to 2x and back again, sure, but with text I can merely... stop | reading to code something up and then when I am ready to proceed | I can... resume reading. I hate fiddling with a mouse or a | keyboard to pause/resume/pause/resume/rewind, etc. | | Needless to say I will not be taking a video course for anything | programming related again. | segmondy wrote: | I hate videos too, but they are useful. If you're taking a | course that's GUI heavy it pays off. First time I decide to | learn iOS programming, it was great. Figuring out the exactly | 10 locations I have to click and in which order is faster with | video than any other way. So it depends exactly on what you're | trying to achieve. Before acloud guru had it's site, they were | on udemy. It was great for getting my AWS cert back then, I | just watched the videos and didn't have to wade around AWS | console to find out where things are. So for tech stuff, it's | really useful if what you're learning is more GUI heavy than | CLI heavy. | ghaff wrote: | Yeah, it depends. I've taken some LinkedIn (formerly Lynda) | courses on video editing and the like and it works far better | than text with photos would. But video for something that | could simply be explained with some bullet points is awful. | puddingnomeat wrote: | I also used to be very excited about online courses until I | experienced them as superficial when compared to books and | self-checks. I think the best way to learn some things ends up | being experiential, so something more like an apprenticeship | than a lecture would be the most efficient. But in reality, it | seems hard to find that. | | You also find the same in, for example, college. Where a tutor | may be able to get you up to speed faster by 'debugging' your | learning. | kilroy123 wrote: | While I agree, I find I learn best by watching _then_ doing. | grumple wrote: | Coursera is significantly better in my experience with their | deep learning specialization. Lots of good jupyter notebook | work and quizzes. | granzymes wrote: | FY Ended December 31, in millions except percentage | | 2019 | 2020 | YoY | ---------------|--------|--------|------- revenue | | $184 | $294 | 60% gross profit | $95 | $155 | | 63% op ex | $143 | $221 | 55% net | (loss) | $(47) | $(67) | (43)% (loss) ex SBC | | $(31) | $(50) | (61)% free cash flow | $(31) | $(27) | | 15% total users | 46 | 77 | 67% | net retention | 106% | 114% | -- | f430 wrote: | Price to earnings ratio is at an all time high, once the credit | bubble bursts, so will the investors appetite for such | companies. | vallas wrote: | The real value of education is what students do with it. I wish | Coursera put all the content free for users and make a living on | income share agreement based on a small part of users. | alexashka wrote: | Or maybe they can die, burn in hell and let universities record | their lectures with a phone and a 50$ microphone, upload them | to youtube, post pdfs of slides, lecture notes, etc and be done | with it? | | Coursera and other 'education' companies are mostly attempts to | put themselves in-between government subsidized higher | education and citizens who already fucking pay for higher | education institutions through taxes. | | This company is pure scum, let's be honest about what it is. | echelon wrote: | You could apply your perspective to any industry and company. | | I think you should reframe what's being done here. | | Coursera sees an opportunity to make money by creating a | market for affordable educational content. Universities do | not feel compelled to offer their educations for free or at | reduced costs, because that's how they sell their expensive | services to students and wealthy families. | | You have many forces acting in a complex, multi-dimensional | market. Don't assume evil. Different brains, different angles | of attack. Lots of offenses, defenses, and interesting state | space landscapes. | breck wrote: | Key numbers in millions: 2019 2020 | Revenue. 184 293 Profi. -46 -66 | | Cash in the bank: 285 | | Disclosure: IAN good at reading S-1s. | totaldude87 wrote: | any debt? i wonder what do they do with that much of cash in | hand | echelon wrote: | I don't see a compelling story for their product. There's great | educational content all over the web, much of it freely | available. Their credentials are worthless, and in some | industries may actually have negative value. | | They lucked out with coronavirus, as that sent people | scrambling for distance learning. That won't last. | | edit: Apparently folks disagree. We don't all see the same | things or interpret the future the same way. I think education | as an industry is going to go into decline, but I don't see | companies like Coursera as being able to thrive by feeding off | the corpses. | grumple wrote: | Companies like Coursera are the reason there is going to be a | corpse. I went to university, but I've also taken many online | courses from Coursera, Udemy, and others. Coursera's classes | in particular were far better than my classes at that top 25 | university. | justicezyx wrote: | What's the valuation? | bschne wrote: | Coursera has definitely aggregated some great content, but the | evaluations on most of the courses if you go for the certificate | are ridiculous -- it works well for auto-graded programming | assignments, but so much of the other stuff is peer-graded with | lots of spammy submissions, so it's barely more meaningful than | e.g. a microsoft certification. | | Does anyone have some experiences with their degree programmes? | Curious to hear if these are more promising... | nonameiguess wrote: | I'd be inclined to trust the degree programs, but can't speak | from personal experience. There are reputable universities | putting their names on the line and giving out degrees. They're | also cheaper than in-person degrees but way more expensive than | the specialization certificates. There is clearly effort there | and I'm sure you get real TAs grading your work and giving | feedback, not peers, and the classmates are people who | qualified to get into a MS program, not literally anyone who | clicked a sign up button. UIUC and Penn aren't going to give | you a MS if you didn't earn it. | ghaff wrote: | Based on my experience in a couple courses a while back, the | programming auto-graders were pretty good. Not perfect, your | code could presumably be a total tire fire but so long as it | produced the right answer it was OK--which is admittedly a good | part of the battle. | | But, yeah, every peer-reviewed assignment and use of discussion | board was awful. This isn't a university where everyone is more | or less on at least roughly the same footing with respect to | language, educational level, and commitment. At least company | certs have to maintain some quality floor if they're going to | have some value for employers and therefore of interest to | would-be employees. As soon as they become viewed as diploma | mill trash they're done. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-05 23:00 UTC)