The Story of Udemy: From a Small Village to a Big Online School
Eren started Udemy with a big dream. He wanted to make learning easy for everyone using the internet. This is the story of how Udemy grew from a small idea in Turkey to a global online education platform. It shows how hard work, smart decisions, and passion can create something amazing.
Eren’s Early Life and Love for Learning
Eren grew up in a small village in southeastern Turkey. His school had only one teacher for all the grades. This meant Eren had to learn a lot on his own. He was very good at math, but there were not many places to go to learn more.
When his sister went to college, Eren’s parents bought her a computer. Eren used the internet to teach himself math. He joined websites and online groups where people talked about hard math problems. By teaching himself online, Eren won a gold medal in Turkey’s math competition and a silver medal in an international one. These successes showed him that the internet could be a great place to learn.
Starting the First Company
In 2007, Eren was studying computer science and math in Ankara, Turkey. He and his friends decided to start a company. Their first idea was to create a tool for live online teaching. They also tried building a 3D simulation company, but it was too hard and not very fun.
What They Learned from Early Failures
- Find the Right Market: Their first education tool was too expensive and hard to use. They realized it was important to make sure their product matched what people needed.
- Location is Important: Being in Turkey made it hard to find good teachers. They saw that being in a place with many teachers was better.
- Choose the Right Way to Teach: Live teaching made it hard to get both teachers and students at the same time. This was a big problem they had to solve.
These lessons made Eren and his team rethink their idea. They wanted to create a place where anyone could teach and learn online easily.
Moving to Silicon Valley and Rebuilding Udemy
Eren moved to Silicon Valley and joined a startup called Speed Dat. There, he learned a lot about growing a business and getting more users. This experience was very helpful for his next steps with Udemy.
Trying Again with Udemy
With new energy, Eren and his team started Udemy again. They wanted to make it an on-demand learning platform, where people could take courses anytime. They tried to raise money but faced many rejections. Finally, an angel investor gave them $50,000. This helped them raise $1 million, allowing them to work on Udemy full-time.
Growing Udemy Despite Challenges
Many investors did not believe people would pay for online courses. But Udemy focused on creating useful and practical courses. Slowly, more people started using Udemy, and it began to grow.
Important Steps in Udemy’s Growth
- Raising More Money: Udemy raised $48 million in total, which helped them grow and improve their platform.
- More Students: Today, Udemy has over 4 million students. About 25% of them pay for courses.
- Successful Teachers: With 15,000 instructors, some have earned over a million dollars. Udemy created new jobs for people to teach online.
Lessons for New Entrepreneurs
Eren’s journey with Udemy teaches us many important things for starting a business:
1. Keep It Simple with One Way to Make Money
Udemy focused on selling courses instead of trying many different ways to make money. This made their business easy to understand and manage.
2. Look at Growth Rates, Not Just Numbers
Instead of only looking at how many users they had, Udemy focused on how fast they were growing and how much money they made from each user. This helped them make better decisions.
3. Make a Great Product
Udemy always worked on making their courses and website better. This made users happy and kept them coming back.
4. Choose a Big Market
Eren chose online education because it has a lot of potential. This allowed Udemy to grow and reach more people around the world.
5. Don’t Listen to All the Critics
Even when many people said Udemy wouldn’t work, Eren kept going. They believed in their idea and proved the critics wrong.
Conclusion:
Eren’s story is about using technology to make education available to everyone. Despite many challenges, Udemy became a successful online learning platform. It shows that with determination and the right ideas, anyone can create something that helps millions of people.
