{"id":297,"date":"2015-11-28T23:22:20","date_gmt":"2015-11-29T04:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/skillshare-an-effective-alignment\/"},"modified":"2015-12-02T23:46:14","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T04:46:14","slug":"skillshare-the-future-belongs-to-the-curious","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/skillshare-the-future-belongs-to-the-curious\/","title":{"rendered":"Skillshare: The Future Belongs to the Curious"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Business<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Founded in 2011 out of New York City, Skillshare is an online learning community where students can take pre-recorded, project-based, self-paced classes on a myriad of topics they might find interesting, from \u201cCalligraphy for Beginners: The Foundational Styles of Calligraphy\u201d to \u201ciOS Design III: Prototyping and Testing.\u201d Students pay ~$10\/month for unlimited access to Skillshare\u2019s thousands of classes. The decision to use this payment model, which is akin to that used by media companies like Netflix and Spotify, is \u201ckey for us as we move to a lifelong learning model,\u201d CEO Michael Karnjanaprakorn has said. \u201cWe want Skillshare to be the place where you can keep learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skillshare seeks to effect a philosophy that \u201canyone can learn anything, at any age, at an affordable cost, anywhere in the world.\u201d While this mission in and of itself is not unique \u2013 one might immediately think of MOOCs like Coursera and Udacity, which offer courses from elite universities like 性视界 and Stanford to internet users \u2013 Skillshare is differentiated in its approach to sourcing content: anyone<\/em> can sign up to teach a course on Skillshare. As the founders see it, a freelance motion-graphics artist can teach a terrific course on digital visual effects, even if he has no formal teacher training. In fact, almost anyone in the world can teach a class under one of Skillshare\u2019s diverse categories, which range from Design or Business to Technology or Writing. By widening the funnel for potential teachers and providing the resources to help those teachers set up classes, Skillshare accesses a previously untapped resource and offers it to students around the world for a small subscription fee.<\/p>\n

Several other advantages accrue to the business from its operating model as well. For example, since classes are pre-recorded, once the content has been created, it is permanently a part of Skillshare\u2019s portfolio of classes, replacing the highly labor-intensive, repetitive, and ethereal process of traditional teaching. Additionally, since a network effect underlies the community of teachers and students on the platform \u2013 teachers come on Skillshare because there is a large student audience, and students come Skillshare because there is a significant teacher presence \u2013 the \u201cgo to\u201d brand that Skillshare has built as the first mover in this space represents a significant competitive advantage.<\/p>\n

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Business and Operating Model Alignment<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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The most elegant alignment of the operating model and the business model occurs around the Skillshare teacher, who is paid according to how successful his\/her class becomes. Skillshare sets 50% of total membership revenues aside for a royalty pool that goes to teachers. Once a class has enrolled at least 25 students, teachers begin earning monthly payments from this royalty pool, in directly proportion to the number of monthly enrollments and student projects in their classes.<\/p>\n

Of note, Skillshare chose not to pay a teacher for his\/her class until at least 25 students had enrolled in the class. In fact, before that threshold is reached, the class is not even posted in Skillshare\u2019s Trending page, where students browse and discover popular classes. According to Skillshare’s Teacher Handbook:<\/p>\n

Once your class is live on Skillshare, the best way to make it trend is to market it to your own networks throughout the first 2 weeks to increase your number of trending points from enrollments, projects, and positive reviews\u2026<\/em>Here are the 3 easy steps to market your class: <\/em><\/p>\n