- In the online education market, there are two new trends. The first one allows teams of techies and business people to earn on platforms for individual educational courses made from ready-made content. And the second one – it’s even cooler!
- It enables the creation of educational courses where almost 100% of students can achieve results. This will make such courses massive and popular, and their creators – wealthy đ
- The coolest thing is that this secret is very simple. But the trick is that technically it has become possible only now. And here’s an example of a startup that managed to combine both these trends:
Project essence
Studio is a service offering video courses by renowned individuals on topics such as music production, filmmaking, acting, cooking, crafting, and vlogging.
In this regard, it is an analog and competitor to the MasterClass service, which has already raised $461.4 million in investments.
However, Studio has recently launched a new product they call the “music school of the future.” The first session of the school will open this February.
This music school is not intended for complete beginners; applicants must already have experience in songwriting, music composition, or production. The startup claims that their school will be beneficial for “serious enthusiasts,” “rising stars,” and “seasoned professionals.”
The enticing offer of the school is that its creators promise that students will be able to create one “amazing song” each month.
However, subscribing to the school for a long term is not obligatory – one can pay $199 per month and then see how it goes. If there’s motivation and funds, one can pay $1,799 upfront for a year, saving 30% on the monthly payment. Nevertheless, in either option, an active subscription can be paused for some time.
After purchasing participation, students must undergo an online interview with the school’s AI instructor, who will ask questions about the student’s experience and the results they want to achieve from the training.
After determining the student’s initial level and their goals, the AI instructor will provide them with an individualized learning program for the next month. The program will include:
a set of necessary lessons, “extracted” from Studio’s course catalog, dedicated to music, a list of tasks to complete, a schedule with deadlines by which the student must watch specific lessons or complete specific tasks to achieve results within a month of training.
In addition, the AI instructor will select a group for each student, where they will study for the month. The group is selected based on the similarity of the initial level and the goals set by the students. Each group consists of approximately 20 students, and there can be many such groups in one school stream.
The monthly “educational race” of each group begins and ends on the same day. The composition of the groups may be reshuffled for the next month, as some students may drop out, but new ones may join.
Training is conducted in weekly “sprints.” The sprint starts on Monday, and by Sunday, group members must submit their interim results – for which they must receive feedback from the AI instructor and other group members.
Throughout the week, they can communicate with the AI instructor and each other about current tasks, asking questions and receiving advice in the group chat.
During the month, students can experiment with different approaches or work diligently on a single song. In any case, the course creators promise that by the end of the month, they will have at least one finished song that they can publish on their social media or music service.
After that, the student can start a new race for a new month to create a new song or take a break.
As long as the subscription is active and not paused, students have access not only to the lessons included in their individual program but also to all the lessons of all 110 music courses from Studio’s catalog.
The latest investment of $50 million Studio attracted in April 2022, becoming the largest round out of $60 million in total investments. If the school launch proves successful, Studio has a chance to raise another significant round in the near future.
What’s interesting
The old principle of online education was to create a new online course for every whim and goal of potential students. As a result, the internet became flooded with courses on related topics, where literally the same or slightly adapted lessons were used manually to slightly adjust the educational goal and/or level of the students.
The new principle of online education is automatic assembly of a course tailored to the student from ready-made “bricks” based on the Lego principle. These “bricks” can be chapters from books, articles, podcasts, videos, and other types of content, which are assembled in the necessary sequence so that a student with a certain initial level can achieve their desired learning goal.
The creators of such educational platforms license content directly from producers, creating a large catalog of “bricks” that can be used to assemble various courses on different topics for students of different initial levels.
AI-powered machines can also, and already do, engage in such assembly, creating what is now called “learning tracks” as opposed to “monolithic” courses specifically tailored to a particular learning goal.
One startup using this approach called such a teaching principle “non-linear” – meaning that the learning program tailored to a specific student may differ from the “linear” logic of the content from which the pieces required for a specific program are “pulled.”
Here are a few startups that have created similar platforms:
Go1 – raised $413.7 million in investments.
Odilo – raised $84.9 million.
Obrizium – raised ÂŖ12.4 million.
Quench – raised $10 million.
Innential – raised âŦ1.05 million. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of such startups are B2B startups that sell companies the opportunity to train their employees. Studio is one of the few examples that continue to focus on private users. Moreover, it’s in a non-business-related topic like music – because very, very few musicians manage to make a living from music đ
However, Studio with its new school decided to delve into the same trend of creating individual learning tracks from existing content bricks. However, Studio doesn’t need to license third-party content for this, as they already have 110 music courses in their catalog.
So, they probably decided to repackage the existing content in a more trending format of individual learning programs to attract more subscribers. And that’s also an interesting point. Because again, it used to be thought that the main driver of growth for educational services was increasing the number of courses they offered.
However, looking at Studio as an example, we see that it makes sense to explore another approach – not increasing the number of courses but creating individual courses. Indeed, in a sense, this can also be considered an increase in the number of courses – because each individual course can be considered a separate course, although it is created from existing content đ
But this approach with individual courses, in my opinion, wouldn’t have a chance to bring tangible revenue growth if Studio didn’t promise that every student starting to learn would be able to create a song “they can be proud of” in a month.
The website states that this result is possible because students “will follow a proven learning process.” Yeah, right! As I suppose, the main secret of their focus is not in that at all đ
The trick is that AI is already quite capable of composing fairly decent lyrics and music based on user prompts. So, a special AI instructor can already compose a quite acceptable song for the student, even if the student just once says what they want to achieve in the end.
And if the person also makes an effort, and the AI instructor pretends that it’s not composing for the person but is “advising” or “providing feedback” – then the result will be even closer to the student’s expectations. Moreover, the student will sincerely believe that they came up with and did everything themselves đ
No, of course, the most talented students will be able to compose a good song using only general advice from the lessons. But the more new students come to the courses, the greater the percentage of old students who achieve the result. Well, just as parents prefer to send their children to those schools, the higher percentage of graduates of which enters universities, and to those universities, the higher percentage of graduates of which quickly finds a good job.
But not everyone is talented in what they have decided to learn âšī¸ How to ensure that the maximum percentage of students achieves the result?
Firstly, give them an AI assistant who can help them for 24 hours a day to squeeze the maximum out of what the student has in their brains. Something a live teacher can’t handle, or it will cost too much.
And secondly, arrange everything so that the remaining larger or smaller part of the work to achieve the desired result can be done by the same AI assistant in the worst-case scenario đ
Where to go
Online education is a vast market that has continued and expanded the eternal education market. It’s profitable to engage in it; otherwise, every “expert” in any field wouldn’t be promoting their online courses from every corner đ
The first trend in this market is that now not only “experts” creating content can earn from it, but also techies with “business people” – on platforms for creating individual educational courses (or “learning tracks” in the trendy new terminology). Business people will deal with licensing others’ content, while techies will create and develop AI-powered machines capable of generating individual educational courses based on students’ requests.
So, the first direction of movement is towards creating such platforms. Therefore, if you’re a techie, look for a co-founder who is a business person, and if you’re a business person, look for a techie đ
The second trend – it’s even irrelevant to the volume of the original content. Its essence lies in creating educational courses on such topics and achieving such results – which the AI instructor of the course can achieve even with minimal participation from the student!
Once, I said that to create a massive educational course, you need to teach people what any fool can learn đ Otherwise, most students won’t be able to achieve results from learning, and this won’t allow the course to become widely popular.
Now, I’m ready to change the wording of this statement – to create a massive educational course, you need to teach people what AI can do for them đ Then, the maximum percentage of students will be able to achieve results. It’s just that AI will help different students to different extents – from 0% for the most talented and persistent to 100% for the most sluggish or relaxed.
This recipe, as I suppose, Studio decided to apply to its songwriting courses. And in what other popular topics can the same recipe already work?
Once you find such a topic – it means you’ve found the second possible direction of movement. So, what subject of study will you choose for this?
About the Company
Studio
Website: studio.com
Latest funding round: $50M, 11.04.2022
Total investments: $60M, rounds: 5