Online training is skyrocketing across every industry – from solo-preneurs teaching guitar fundamentals, business coaching, and fitness training.
Vancouver’s Thinkific has seen a 200% increase in online courses being created on its platform since the pandemic hit and earlier this week announced that they had raised $22 million to accelerate product innovation.
Thinkific’s financing comes at a time when the online course market—forecasted in 2019 to be worth $350 billion by 2025—has rapidly accelerated due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
And with a growing global market comes increased competition.
Founded less than six months ago, Course Studio has assembled a team from Masterclass, Metalab and Thinkific to arm educators with the skills to monetize their knowledge.
The Vancouver startup has also raised a $1 million from was lead by longtime edtech investors and operators.
While Thinkific is a platform for the masses, Course Studio wants to focus on producing a few comprehensive courses per year that will be offered online, with the aim of bringing in $1 million in revenue per class each year.
Course Studio will handle production and building the curriculum for the classes and is looking to work with people who already have a large audience to create an online platform around.
Part of the new financing will go to hiring more engineers and building an analytics engine that will track time spent in classes and other user behavior.