MasterClass
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Becca and Dom are joined by David Rogier, the founder and…
The growing trends of hiring and running remote workforces, and more recently the major upheaval of restructuring across a number of industries, have redefined and disrupted the concept of teams…
Yes, you read that right. Serena Williams, widely recognized as the greatest of all time (GOAT) to ever step onto a tennis court — or any other playing field —…
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. Just as one company’s success shouldn’t cast…
Changes within a particular startup can be used as benchmark questions for their larger market; in other words, we can use the micro to better understand the macro.
It’s nearly been two months since we started this accidental weekly column about layoffs happening within startups. Workforce reductions have impacted startup employees in every massive sector, from crypto to…
MasterClass, an education platform that sells subscriptions to celebrity-taught classes, has cut 20% of its team to “adapt to the worsening macro environment and get to self-sustainability faster,” CEO David…
Etsy was the inspiration for DishDivvy’s marketplace, which aims to reduce the additional overhead costs for its home cooks.
It was in 2017 that I covered the emergence and first funding of Learnerbly, a SaaS marketplace for professional development. Quite a lot has happened since then, not the least…
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Employers are consumer edtech’s next beta test
Entrepreneurs need to convince employers to turn to edtech for a solution more elusive than even education: motivation.
Duolingo is now targeting a $95 to $100 per share IPO price range, up from $85 to $95 per share, or a gain of around 12% at the bottom and…
More doesn’t necessarily mean better — and that’s a lesson for life and for tech. To focus on the latter, the startup ecosystem is experiencing a boggling influx of capital…
Renegade Partners — a Bay Area-based venture firm co-founded by veteran VCs Renata Quintini and Roseanne Wincek — is taking the wraps off a $100 million debut venture fund that’s…
Trade schools are nothing new, but a new startup called Copeland thinks it can build a big business by bringing education about plumbing, drywall, cabinetry and more to the masses…
Edtech has realized it needs to build for the TikTok generation. It’s part of the reason we’re seeing a rise in supplemental, aspirational companies such as Outschool and MasterClass, which…
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. First and foremost, Equity was nominated for a…
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What the MasterClass effect means for edtech
MasterClass, which sells a subscription to celebrity-taught classes, sits on the cusp of entertainment and education. It offers virtual, yet aspirational learning: an online tennis class with Serena Williams, a cooking session with Gordon Ramsay. While there’s the off chance that an instructor might actually talk to you — it…
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Garry Kasparov launches a community-first chess platform
Four years ago, MasterClass, a platform that sells celebrity-taught classes, invited chess legend Garry Kasparov to teach a class. He said yes, but soon realized that creating a message that could satisfy a majority of players was a “struggle throughout the process.” While the class did pretty well, Kasparov found…
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Creator economy’s slow burn
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Natasha and Danny and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s rigamarole of news. Alex took some well-deserved time off, but that meant we got to poke a little fun at him and create a Special Edition segment to…
Polish startup Tylko, a modular furniture company that employs augmented reality as part of its sales cycle, has closed a €22 million ($26 million) investment Series C funding round, led…
BeGreatTV, an online education platform featuring Black and brown instructors, recently closed a $450K pre-seed round from Stand Together Ventures Lab, Arlan Hamilton, Tiffany Haddish and others. The goal with…
Conventional wisdom says your company should be up and running and have some traction before you raise, but MasterClass co-founder David Rogier says entrepreneurs should try to raise funds before…
Edtech just keeps on booming. Today, Owl Ventures, a San Francisco-based education technology fund whose portfolio includes Byju’s, Labster, MasterClass and Quizlet, announced that it has closed a pair of…
While the pace of layoffs might be slowing down, an extended recession is forcing companies to get smarter about the way they grow. One way to stay lean and stealthy?…
MasterClass, a startup that sells celebrity-taught classes to people, has raised $100 million in a Series E round. The round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company with participation…
MasterClass is known for selling access to pre-recorded online classes by a long list of people who are among the best at what they do, from tennis great Serena Williams…
Graphite is part of a new wave of growth marketing consultancies launched by former product leaders at successful startups. With a specialization in SEO, and a client list that has…
Education is a $4 trillion market globally in urgent need of an overhaul — so where within education are top venture capitalists optimistic about startups building large businesses by providing…
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MasterClass founder launches Outlier, offering online courses for college credit
Aaron Rasmussen, co-founder and former creative director of MasterClass, has a new startup called Outlier.org. Like MasterClass, Outlier is bringing education online, but with a key difference — these are college classes offering real college credit. The startup is launching a pilot version of its first two courses, Calculus I and…
MasterClass, the education platform featuring all-star instructors, will soon teach you how to run for office, too
In 2015, the San Francisco-based education platform MasterClass was founded to provide everyone access to “genius,” whether it be in filmmaking, directing, book writing, cooking, tennis, basketball, comedy, acting, screenwriting,…
