Skillshare is an online learning community platform offering educational videos through subscriptions. The idea for the platform came from Michael Karnjanaprakorn, who lamented that his college degrees had no real-world application.
Skillshare also earns referral fees from the related products it shows to consumers on annual subscriptions. Some of these products are high-margin and subscription-based, which represents a lucrative source of income.
History of Skillshare
Skillshare is an online learning community platform offering educational videos through subscriptions.
The platform was created by Michael Karnjanaprakorn and Malcolm Ong in 2010. Karnjanaprakorn got the idea for Skillshare after earning two college degrees and realizing that most of what he learned did not apply to the real world.
This idea was strengthened after he visited a school in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He saw that the education system failed disadvantaged children whose parents could not afford private tutoring.
After brief periods at Hot Potato and Behance, Karnjanaprakorn met Ong at an NYC-based meetup and invited him to be eventual CTO.
Skillshare was born soon after, with the first lessons about how to play poker taught by Karnjanaprakorn himself on Eventbrite.
Having validated their idea, seed round and subsequent investment funding were secured.
Although thousands of people started attending in-person classes, the co-founders noted the only way to scale the business was by shifting them online.
In 2013, Skillshare moved toward becoming an entirely online-based learning platform.
Three years later, the company had amassed over 3 million course enrolments with millions more in funding raised.
As people became stuck at home in lockdown, they found themselves investing spare time and money into education.
Skillshare utilizes a marketplacemodel of revenue generation as a facilitator of learning between teachers and students.
To explore this revenuemodel in more detail, continue reading below.
Subscriptions
Skillshare Premium membership gives students unlimited access to more than 27,000 classes taught by working creatives and industry experts.
In addition, the premium membership is an ad-free experience and can be accessed offline.
Each plan comes with a 7-day free trial. But for those who want to upgrade, there are three options:
Annual – the most popular plan which is billed annually at $168. This equates to $13.99/month.
Monthly – the monthly plan is $32/month or $384 annually.
For teams – an option for enterprises billed annually where the cost is based on the number of users.
It’s important to note that 30% of all subscriptionrevenue is paid into a royalty pool where it is then distributed to teachers. The share each teacher receives is based on the number of hours their courses have been watched.
Referrals
The company also makes money by recommending related products and earning a referral fee.
When a student subscribes to an annual membership, they are entitled to special offers.
For example, a photography student may receive a discounted price for Adobe Creative Cloud. A design student may receive a similar offer for Canva.
Skillshare does not claim to make any money through these recommendations, though it can be assumed it is collecting some sort of commission.
This is likely to be quite a lucrative arrangement for the company. Many of the related products are high-margin, while others are subscription-based meaning the company can earn a commission for months or even years.
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Skillshare is an online learning community platform offering educational videos through subscriptions. The idea for the platform came from Michael Karnjanaprakorn, who lamented that his college degrees had no real-world application. Skillshare employs a marketplacemodel of revenue generation. The bulk of its revenue comes from monthly, annual, and enterprise subscriptions. Skillshare also earns referral fees from the related products it shows to consumers on annual subscriptions. Some of these products are high-margin and subscription-based, representing a lucrative income source.
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Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
