Lessons from EdTech founder David Rogier.
If you look at MasterClass from a business perspective, itâs a clear success story.
In 2015 David Rogier founded the company. Five years later, he closed a Series E financing round with a post-money valuation of $500M to $1B. In a recent interview, Rogier said MasterClass is on the path to an IPO.
In short: MasterClass is one of the few emerging unicorns in EdTech.
Yet, if you look at the education platform from a learnerâs perspective, its success story is less clear. After all, mastery of complex skills and processes is the result of deliberate practice.
Michaelangelo, the painter of 5,000 square feet in the Sistine Chapel, once wrote:
âIf people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldnât seem so wonderful after all.â
MasterClass Isnât About Mastery
In December, a friend asked whether Iâd share a 2-for-1 subscription. I read on their website, âMasterClass delivers a world-class online learning experience.â
I said yes. $90 a year for learning from world-class performers like James Patterson, Sara Blakely, and Yotam Ottolenghi seemed like an incredible deal.
The two-sided business model
Customers pay for accessing pre-recorded courses, and instructors get paid for recording them. The value proposition: âGetting the best in the world to teach and share and make it a price point that is affordable.â
From the consumer side, it works like Netflixâââa streaming platform with a subscription model. For $180 per year, consumers have access to all classes.
Instructors receive a one-time payment and a revenue cut. In 2017, a source reported MasterClass teachers get at least $100,000 per course plus a 30% revenue cut. In 2018, Bloomberg wrote instructors get a guaranteed sum, plus up to a 25% cut. However, in a later interview, Rogier shared contracts vary by individuals.
Hence MasterClass’s key activities are:
- Recruiting world-class talent and turning them into instructors.
- Recording Hollywood-like videos.
- Providing and maintaining the streaming platform and an online community thread.
- Marketing activities to win paying customers.
What MasterClass got wrong about learning
According to Rogier, instructors design their classes. But education researchers agree: Masters might not be the best teachers. Likely, theyâre beginners when it comes to instructional design and the science of learning.
Most MasterClasses build on the thesis that online, low-touch courses are for skill-building. But our brains donât work like recording devices. We donât absorb information and knowledge by consuming content. Instead, learning is at least a three-step processâââwe acquire, encode, and retrieve.
I wonât bore you with the specifics. Barbara Oakley, Roediger, et al., and Lieberman have done a prolific job explaining how we learn and remember. But as a simplified rule of thumb:
âLearning thatâs easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow. Learning is deeper and more durable when itâs effortful.â
Learning through passive content consumption isnât truly effortful.
How humans acquire mastery
Anders Ericsson, author of âPeakâ studied high performing-individuals and found that the best among them spent thousands of hours practicing in solitary, deliberate practice. Mastery is a product of practice quantity and quality.
Think about frequent fliers. Before every start, they watch a video of a flight attendant putting on the life vest. But as this study shows, actually putting on the inflatable life vest a single time would be more valuable than repeatedly watching another person doing it.
You acquire true mastery by performing the procedure yourself. MasterClass instructors have surely not gotten where they are by sitting on the couch, watching videos about their craft.
The author of âUltralearneringâ calls this principle directness. It is essential for mastering any skill.
Yet, with a few exceptions, classes are as far away from direct practice as they can get. Itâs like someone studying the guitar but not holding a guitarâââjust looking at videos of how to play the guitar.
Donât get me wrong; I like MasterClass. With its tips and anecdotes, it inspires millions of people to become lifelong learners. But as a learning expert, I cry when I read on the website of an emerging EdTech Unicorn that they offer a âworld-class online learning experience.â
Because they donât.
Key Entrepreneurship Lessons
When you spend hours researching MasterClass, you canât help but admire founder and CEO David Rogier. His humble and authentic stories make him one of the most sympathetic founders Iâve listened to.
Hereâs what we can learn from his entrepreneurial journey.
#1 Build something you can be proud of even if it fails
Rogier was raised in part by his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. When he was at her house as an 8-year-old, she told a story that changed him forever.
When his grandma fled to the States, her dream was to become a doctor. She sent applications to 25 medical schoolsâââand got 25 rejections. When calling the deans to ask why they rejected her, all hang-up except for one, who said:
âYou have three strikes against you:
Youâre a woman. Youâre an immigrant. Youâre Jewish.â
She reapplied the next year. One school accepted her. Ultimately, she became a doctor. Hereâs her lesson she shared with 8-year-old Rogier:
âEducation is the only thing someone canât take from youâ
When Rogier graduated from Stanford Business School, he had so many ideas about starting up. He couldnât decide. The advice that ultimately helped him decide was to pick something that, even if it fails, youâre gonna be proud of.
For Rogier, this meant building a product in education. He shared in an interview about his grandmaâs story: âItâs what propelled me to create MasterClass, and to try to democratize mastery.â
So if thereâs a lesson here for future entrepreneurs, itâs this: Donât create a product based on market growth. Instead, build something you can be proud of, even if it fails.
#2 Donât stop when people say your idea is unachievable
In 2014, Rogier told a former classmate about his MasterClass idea. The friend said it would be too difficult to get the instructors to sign up, especially in the beginning. How can you possibly attract world-class masters without having an existing customer base?
His friend was surprised Rogier presented the signed letters of world-class masters like Serena Williams. Yet, this journey wasnât predestined.
Signing the best in the world wasnât easy. He cold-called and e-mailed hundreds of masters in their craft. He says years went by without getting any yes.
Recruiting the first instructors was challenging, but Rogier says he rejects nine out of 10 people who want to become instructors.
Undoubtedly as a Stanford Graduate with an initial seed funding helped gave him credibility. Yet, he has one of the most important traits of founders: resilience.
#3 Reach out to people who can help you
Rogier decided he wanted to do something with education. Yet, he wasnât sure what exactly this would be.
As a result, he posted ads on Craigslist to pay people $10 an hour to talk about their educational experiences. He asked his interview partners questions like:
- Who did you learn the most from?
- Which topics would you have loved to study more?
- What things do you want to learn now? And how do you want to learn them?
These initial conversations helped him sharpen his vision. Plus, when he recorded the first videos, they looked like crap.
So Rogier reached out to a professor from his grad school who won two Oscars for filming. His professor offered to film the videos, and thatâs how the courses started looking like high-class Hollywood movies.
Of course, most people donât have Oscar winners in their direct network. Yet, asking for help when things donât go your way certainly increases the chances of reaching the ultimate goal.
In Conclusion
Rogier said learning doesnât have to be boring, and it doesnât have to involve a classroom. And itâs true: When done right, education can be entertaining and online.
MasterClass managed to bring the quality of Netflix to the $100 billion e-learning industry. Yet, it failed to bring along state-of-art learning science.
Polished videos donât lead to mastery. What matters more than lighting and sound are whether consumers really learn new skills. And without using evidence-based techniques for learning, this goal is out of reach.
If you want to feel inspired and listen to masterâs success stories, go ahead and subscribe to MasterClass.
If you, however, want to achieve mastery, take courses that really help you learn new skills. Look out for features like:
- Offering real-time feedback on learning progress.
(And no, not like MasterClass with collecting product feedback channel). - Giving direct access to instructors.
(And again, no, not like MasterClass offering contests to get a 1:1 in exchange for giving the instructors feedback). - Having assignments that are directly linked to your desired skill.
- Including structured access to a fellow community.
- Deploying spaced repetition features.
- Using testing as a tool.
Whatever you choose, keep education researcher Terry Doyleâs words in mind who said:
âThe one who does the work does the learning.â
Are you a life-long learner? Join my E-Mail List and check out how the Feynman technique can help you remember everything you read.