Maven, co-founded by Udemy’s Gagan Biyani and AltMBA’s Wes Kao, began in 2020 with a startup idea that perfectly combined two booming sectors: the creator economy and edtech. The startup sold cohort-based classes, led by creators and influencers, to students. The small-group classes were created by instructors and powered by classmates, a bet on the idea that anyone with expertise could be a teacher.
Now, two years after launching, and with $25 million in known funding from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Naval Ravikant, Sahil Lavingia, Li Jin, Arlan Hamilton and more, Maven is pivoting its offering away from that original pitch.
The startup’s co-founders tell TechCrunch that it will now begin focusing less on courses built by creators who have multiple revenue streams and commitments to balance, and more on courses built by star employees within tech organizations. It’s a shift that comes after Maven students completed over 300 cohorts, leading up to $9 million in course sales after 18 months.
“We had the hypothesis that a creator with a big audience will have a great course and be able to fill it and we were surprised that this hypothesis was wrong,” Kao said in an interview with TechCrunch. “Just because somebody is a creator doesn’t mean that they will run a successful course. Instead, we were seeing tons of smaller instructors who were subject matter experts in their field and didn’t necessarily have big audiences, who wanted to put in the hustle and put in the effort…doing really well on the platform.”
Biyani added: “Maven needed to be a place where students could come and take courses and find courses from experts, and not necessarily creators.”
The co-founders’ realization, which they say came from organic behavior on the platform, addresses some of the concerns that first existed when the edtech world began leaning into the creator economy. Around a year ago, two vocal sides began forming: some feared that turning creators into educators could bring in a rush of unqualified teachers with no understanding of true pedagogy, while others think that the true democratization of education requires a disruption of who is traditionally given the right to educate.
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