Udemy, Inc. (UDMY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and thank you for joining us for Udemy's first instructor panel for investors. For those who don't know me, I'm Dennis Walsh, Udemy's Vice President of Investor Relations. Today's webinar is part of Udemy's newest initiative, IR Access, in which we provide deeper insights into our business through multiple online channels. If you haven't done so already, you can sign up for IR access e-mail alerts on our Investor Relations website to keep you notified of new blog posts and events. A quick disclaimer before we get started. The views expressed by our panels today are their own and not necessarily shared by Udemy. If you have questions, feel free to submit them in the Q&A section on your screen, and we'll try to get to as many as possible. With that, I'm excited to introduce three of Udemy's top instructors as our panelists for today, including Ceci Mansilla, Diego Davila and Frank Kane. Thank you all for joining us. Now I'd like to kick it off with introductions for each of you.

Let's start with Ceci, could you please provide the audience a little bit about your professional background, how you became an instructor, and what are the topics that you cover?

Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very happy to be here. I'm Ceci Mansilla, I'm from Argentina. Actually, right now, I'm living in [ Uruguay ] . And I'm a learning and development professional. I spent over 15 years working in IT consulting firm as a training manager for Latin America. And after COVID, I decided to quit my corporate job and start working as an independent professional. I already had my Udemy courses. My Udemy business was working well and that helped me transition. And I'm basically teaching soft skills, power skills and especially leadership.

That's great. And how did you first discover Udemy? And have you ever looked at any other platforms to do -- put courses on?

It was almost five years ago, I was kind of bored on my corporate job, and I wanted to do different kind of trainings. I was serving Latin America and it was a global company and I wanted to localize the learning solutions for my region, and that was not -- possible because of the policies and everything. I wanted to do my own courses, and I start doing my research, I found Udemy, and I love that here in Udemy I can just focus on creating content, and I didn't have to focus on how to sell courses and all the online business things that was entirely new for me. So that's what made me decide to try it up and it worked.

Awesome. And just for fun, what's your most popular course on Udemy?

Liderazgo y Gestión de equipos that is leadership and team building and it's a course in spanish.

Awesome. All right. Let's turn to Frank. Frank, can you provide a little bit about your background, how you became an instructor and what are the topics that you cover?

Yes, sure. I'm Frank Kane coming here from Central Florida, got my start back in the '90s as a video game developer working at Sierra Online. That's how old I am, and after that, I went and worked at a dot-com called worlds.com, where we built a metaverse application. That turned out to be ahead of its time. Maybe it still is, we'll see. But after the dot-com collapse spent a little bit of time in the defense industry making VR training environments. And then in 2003, I went to Seattle for a little e-commerce startup called Amazon.com. And spent the next almost 10 years there so while I was there I did a lot of R&D on their personalization systems, their machine learning and data science systems, data analytic, distributed computing, cloud computing, and those are all the topics that I'm teaching today on Udemy. By the end of my career there, I had about 17 issued patents and I was managing teams of about 100 people as a senior manager. I also spent a couple of years managing the tech team at imdb.com there, too.

Nice. I was a big King's Quest fan back in the day. So that's good to hear.

My [indiscernible] in Kings Quest 6. So.

How did you first discover Udemy? And if you were looking at any other channels at the time?

Yes. So after about 10 years at Amazon, my family just kind of had enough of the weather in Seattle, quite honestly, and my doctor was telling me that I probably wasn't going to live much longer if I stayed in that career. So we packed up and went to Florida. So to make ends meet at first, I was just doing some freelance work here and there. It wasn't terribly satisfying to be honest. And Udemy gave me a call out of the blue. And they said, "Hey, we need a content on big data and data analytics. And we found you as an expert in that field, who might have some time on his hand." So I just saw an opportunity and figured what I got to lose and put out their first course and put out a second course and just kept building on that and building on that and here I am today.

Excellent. And just for fun. So currently, what's your most popular course on Udemy?

Right now, it's probably my Amazon Web Services machine learning preparatory course.

Excellent. Diego, how about you, just your background and what are the topics that you cover on Udemy?

Sure. Thank you for inviting me, I am Diego Davila, I have a background in computer science. So I got a degree on that study for 6 years and then passionate about digital marketing. And basically, the -- back in 2014, I was working for 15 years already as a network admin, looking for opportunities to create an online business to have more independence and to increase my revenue. And I had several experiences that were not successful until I found Udemy, back in 2014 and that was 9 years ago and since then right now, I have at least 86 courses and over 800,000 students.

Nice, So you said about 9 years ago, you found Udemy, How did you come across Udemy? And were you looking at any other platforms at the time?

So I didn't have the idea of teaching online honestly, I was just looking for opportunities to leave my regular job and to work with something that I love and I'm passionate about and suddenly for -- I got an e-mail from Udemy, offering a [ writing ] course. So I opened that e-mail. That was my first contact with Udemy. And I opened the course, I enrolled, and I saw that the course was great, the platform was, I like the platform, I like instructor, I started rolling more courses. And I said, these teachers are great, these instructors,. And they are sharing something that they are good but they are good at. So maybe I can -- one opportunity that I could have to create a business is to start teaching online. So I create my first course then and the -- and start growing from there yes.

What was -- just out of curiosity the first course and then what's your most popular course today?

So the first course was actually a hobby that I had about the Camino de Santiago. It's a pilgrimage in spain that takes 34 days. So I make a course on how to prepare for the [ trail ] , what is the best way to do it and all that and most popular course today is the digital marketing masterclass, in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and now the ChatGPT courses are super popular, yes.

Excellent. let's shift gears. Let's talk a little bit about the platform experience for our instructors -- maybe Diego, let's just stick with you. Can you talk a little bit about your course creation process, how do you determine what topics you're going to cover about how long does it take to create a course from concept to publish -- just some of the key elements of your process.

So I used to choose the topic, Dennis, I choose -- I have 3-step process. So the first one is student survey. I send my students a survey to see what they want to learn next. What is the next thing that they are looking for or if they want to go deeper in one of the topics that we already have. The second one is the current industry trends. So if there are new things coming, new tools that we can use to create these courses and also the Udemy Marketplace Insights, which is a fantastic tool we have here on Udemy have helped us to validate topics to see the demand and other details that are fantastic. So once I choose the topic, my next step is to do a market research to see other courses that already exist about that topic -- see the competitors. And based on that, I build the course outline. And after that, it's just recording, editing and publishing. The whole process takes from one to three weeks, depending on the course topic.

Excellent. And a recent trend has in the last couple of months has really blown up is AI and ChatGPT. And I know you have some courses on that. So -- just kind of curious when did you decide that was something that you wanted to start putting courses out? And how has the engagement been on those courses in particular?

The engagement is fantastic. We currently have 10 courses about ChatGPT and AI tools in different languages. And people are loving it because this is a way to be more productive to accomplish more in less time. So we are basically teaching people how to use AI and ChatGPT on marketing, on your daily life, on your job, at the office in several areas that we can -- all the areas you can imagine, basically. So the engagement is going fantastic.

Excellent. Ceci, how about you? Can you talk about your course creation process, how you're determining topics? How long does it take you to create a course and start to finish?

It takes longer than Diego. I have to say that. I'm a instructional designer. So I have a very structured process where I have to do my research. I have to talk to my audience, test the course outline with my network and ask for feedback. But one thing that I learned creating content in Udemy is my audience is people -- it's workers, people that it's actually working for companies. And as I asked the corporate environment, it felt that I was missing that connection to what is going on right now. So one thing that I'm doing is I am still having corporate clients and I am working as a consultant, I am working as a trainer and I am working as a instructional designer. And that is helping me to understand which are the new challenges that workers are facing, which are the new topics, which are the new trends. So that is one very important source. My clients then my students in Udemy -- I check the question-and-answers section. I check the message that they send me. They usually they will ask for what want and that's amazing. That's one of the things that I love about Udemy, that we have that possibility to connect. So once I identify a topic, the problem that I will be solving. I will create the [ long term ] Objectives. I will define the audience. Based on that, I will create the course outline. That is what I will share with my network as for feedback change, update, polish. And once I have that course outline, I will start creating the content, designing each class, the assets, exercises, everything, once I have all of that, I will move to production, recording, editing, [ gen config ] and then publishing. So it takes me a little bit longer than Diego. I can be an entire month, working in just one course.

Got it. And this is really important, Frank. I'd love to just hear, is there anything different about your process that you'd want to add to this?

Yes, a little bit. I mean, I kind of approach selection from a different angle. So if you can envision like a Venn diagram of three things. One is what are students demanding right now? And that's a combination data that I get from Udemy, which is super valuable. Also just what I get from talking to my former colleagues at Amazon and elsewhere in the tech industry and following newsletters and things like that to see what's happening in the tech world. The other circle would be what I'm passionate about, right? So if it's a technology that I don't really care about personally, it's going to be tough to deliver a compelling course that's engaging for students. And finally, the other piece is what do I know? If it's not something that intersects with my past knowledge and experience, I'm not going to take it on because that would just be too difficult for me to get up to speed on. But that's the first step in creating a new course for me. I just immerse myself into that topic, make sure I'm totally up to date on the latest developments in that field before I even start writing an outline. Let's have the outline, I'll flush through that. I'll usually start by doing the hands-on activities for the course just to get that out of the way, go through creating the slides and then start recording. How long that takes for a short course, it's like an hour or so, maybe a month for more comprehensive course, it's closer to 3 months.

Interesting. And you mentioned the data and insights and maybe for our audience that may or not have actually seen what that looks like. Could you maybe talk a little bit what kind of data and insights you're getting from Udemy? And how do you use that?

Yes, it's really an important tool for us as instructors because our intuition is not always right as to what students are actually searching for and demanding on the platform. So Udemy gives us a lot of information. First of all, what are students searching for? What are the top trends in those search terms that they're trying to find content on? And just as importantly, are they finding that content? So what existing courses exist for those search terms and how successful are they being, right? So those two things alone gives us a good insight into where the demand is and where the unfilled demand is, which is even more important. We also see information coming directly from Udemy business, for example, about things that they are hearing from their customers from those corporations and what topics they want to deploy to their learners. And sometimes, that's ahead of the curve a little bit, right? So students might not be searching for this stuff yet but the organizations know that they need these skills. So sometimes, we'll get a little bit of a leg up that way as well.

Excellent. And Diego, you mentioned it as well. Anything that you want to add there on the data and insights.

The Udemy Insights, Dennis is my favorite tool. I use it every day to validate ideas to see how we can improve the course, the performance on Udemy As Frank mentioned, we can see there all the demand for a specific topic. So if you have an idea, if you are a Udemy instructor, if you want to become an instructor, you go there, you search for the specific category, and you will see all the ideas, the demand, the conversion of the current courses we have, how many people are searching for that specific topic. What are the keywords they are using. And we see also the top courses on that category so we can analyze the competitors and create our version of the course.

Excellent. And Diego, you -- an important point is you actually create content courses in three different languages. So how do you determine which language you're going to create your courses in?

That's a great question. I use actually the Udemy Insight Marketplace Insight. So if, let's say, I have a specific topic that I want to create a course about, I search how the topic is going on that tool for the three different languages. And let's assume that English had a higher demand. So I decided to go first with English. I create the course. And after that, I go and create the course in other languages like Spanish and Portuguese, for example.

Excellent. And Ceci, you actually purely create content in Spanish. And so have considered creating an English -- or if not, why not?

To be totally honest, when I created my first course, the second one was in English. It was an English course. And I think it was published like three months, and then I took it off because I was not comfortable. Even though I worked my entire life in English, I feel more comfortable in Spanish. I think that I can connect better with the students. And then there is also a business perspective, I'm looking to be better positioned in Latin America. I'm trying to position my brand and my consulting business is growing here. So having courses in Spanish, it's actually opening a lot of doors for me, companies from the Udemy business catalog are contacting me asking me for trainings, for sessions and I think that for me, at least now, I will stay focused on Spanish because I'm growing my business here, and it's working fine. Eventually, maybe in the future, I will start translating in English, but it's not and a focus area for me right now.

Awesome. That makes sense. And so it's something that's really a nice competitive differentiator for us is really the freshness of the content on our platform. And so Frank, I'd love to just get a sense from you how often would you say you're updating your content? And what would be the catalyst that would prompt you to do so?

At least once a week, sometimes more. In fact, just this morning, I published a couple of updates to my courses in response to student feedback. So -- the thing that drives that is this powerful feedback loop that Udemy gives us through Q&A on our courses, right, to a lesser extent through reviews that we get. But if there's anything wrong, anything out of date with our course, students are going to let us know right away, especially if you're a popular instructor with a scale of like 1 million students like we have. So yes, just this morning, someone is like, "Hey, one of your videos wasn't edited right." I'm like, I got to go fix that, right? Another one was like, "Hey, this lecture is a little bit boring. Maybe you should have more action in the slides" and I'm like, okay, I'll go fix that. And another one was like, "Hey, AWS has released its new feature, maybe you should incorporate that into your course" and I'm like, all right, well, added to my list for later today. So it's almost a daily occurrence.

Great. And Diego, how about you?

Same for me, same as Frank, we are always updating the course weekly. Digital marketing, we have new tools, the interface of the tools we use, we teach changes frequently. So we need -- we have to rerecord the lessons and also when we come with new strategies for the students. So new strategies that can drive better results for what the course is promising. So we replace those lessons with new content.

Excellent. And Ceci, you've been doing this for a while. I'm just kind of curious about what would be some of the key learnings that you've learned over the years that really ensure that you're producing quality content that will resonate with learners?

Well, they just mentioned that, but I think checking your feedback, it's key, like there is nothing you don't have to invent something new. People will tell you what they are looking for. People will tell you how to improve your courses. They will tell you which are the new topics that they are looking for. So if you want to be a Udemy instructor, you need to be active on the platform. That idea that I will upload the course and I will magically get dollars in my account, that doesn't work like that. You need to be engaged. And I think that, that's the additional value that we are offering to our learners. So key learning will be to check your feedback. You have that tool, go and check is not just the stars, read the comments. The comments are pure gold. So just dedicate some time to that, listen to your students, pay attention, look for the trends on the insight and on the student's metrics that we have. We can even see which are the videos that people is not watching that people is dropping that they are abandoning. So start asking questions like what's going on? Why are they abandoning this video? What can I do better? How can I update this? And then I will say, show up, stay connected. We have a tool that it's for educational announcements, which is kind of a news letter that you have where you can stay connected with your people. And it will send at least twice, two announcements a month with educational resources with articles, with templates, with news, what changed, which are the new tools, which are the new trends, studies, whatever it's related to the course content and it's like refreshing whatever it's on the formal course, I will be sending that and that I can see that the reading percentages, the opening rates and all of that, it keeps increasing. And students are looking for that. if they want to see -- if they just want to see a video, they will go to YouTube. Here, they are coming for something else. And I feel like it's kind of our responsibility to listen to them, to pay attention and to act accordingly.

Awesome. And I want to dive into learner engagement next. And just before we get there, just Diego, is there any opportunities that you would like to see Udemy address that would really -- that you think would really enhance the instructor experience?

Honestly, I cannot think on any suggestions right now, Dennis. I think for my personal experience at least everything works perfectly fine. We have the Udemy team that help us and support us every in every way. We also have Udemy selling the courses, taking care of the students just customer service. The only thing we have to do as instructor is record amazing courses that help students publish that on Udemy, keep the content fresh. And that's it. Keep improving the content every time and launching new and better courses for our students.

Frank or Ceci, anything to add there?

I was actually asking for -- as I focus on Udemy business catalog, I was asking on how can I -- how does it work? What are the learning paths and all those things. And we have something called the instructors team. There is a team in Udemy that is helping us succeed and they are providing us support and tools and everything. And last month or this month, I think it was, they did a demo for us on Udemy business. So my request is covered now, but that's one of the things we have. We have direct contact with Udemy -- once -- if we have any idea or any request or any recommendation, they will always help us. So for me, it was I needed to better understand how the corporate catalog was working because they have learning paths. They have batches, peer-to-peer learning and understanding that for me as an instructional designer will help me to create content that better adapt to those learner experiences. So that was very, very interesting and useful.

Right. Great. And so let's dive into -- you've been talking quite a bit about the importance of engaging directly with the learners in Q&A -- so it sounds like it comes pretty organically, but I'd love to get a sense of, Frank, are you doing anything to actually encourage that interaction. It sounds like it's pretty regular daily. And then do you have a sense of where they're from? And then maybe just drilling down into what does the feedback actually look like that you're getting from them?

Yes. Yes. I mean we don't really have to drive it so much. We're getting 20 to 30 questions every day as it is. So a lot of that comes from the hands-on activities that we're providing those. So that's really what's driving that interaction, I think. We teach some pretty complex topics that have complex hands-on exercises, and inevitably, people have trouble with it because it's complex stuff. So they have questions like why didn't this work? What am I doing wrong? Like can you help guide me? So that's really driving a lot of that interaction. Just the hands-on nature of these courses where it's not just me blabbering into a screen like I am doing now. I'm saying, "Hey, go practice what you learned? And if you have some trouble, use the Q&A, and we'll try to help you out." So that's really what's driving that cycle there. The specific feedback we're getting A lot of it is just that I couldn't get this to work, what am I doing wrong, but some of it is a little bit more high level, right? So one interesting thing that I just encountered this morning actually some feedback I got on one of my lecture saying, "Hey, this lecture isn't very engaging, it's just a bunch of diagrams and pictures that you're talking over. And when you're taught how to be a good presenter in the corporate world, you're taught to not put a lot of text on the slides, right? You're like you want them to focus on you, not the slide." That doesn't work here on Udemy, right? They want to be able to use those slides as a resource. They want to go back and read those slides to summarize what they learned. And if you're not giving them that, they're going to get upset. So that's an example of feedback that you get that kind of changes your approach to how you present things, I think is good. As for where they're coming from. For me, it's kind a split between India and the United States and pretty much the rest of the world after that.

Excellent. Diego, how about you?

I use educational announcements frequently. As Ceci mentioned, it's a great tool that we have where we can connect with students, we can share new things that comes in the market, new content, the updates that we talk about, Dennis, we -- every time I do a significant update on the course, we send the announcement saying to the students that we have new lessons here, sending the link, so they can visit and start learning. So basically that -- and a good technique that we use also in the educational announcement is to ask questions, and they can comment below the announcement. Just to keep the engagement going for the community of students we have in specific courses.

That's great. And do you have any examples of a time where you've made maybe a significant change to your content that based on that feedback?

Yes. We -- as Frank mentioned, we have the Q&A. The Q&A for me is the biggest source of feedback from my students because they always share what they think. And that's fantastic for us, even if it's something a critique that they are having about specific lessons that we recorded because with that, we have the tool, we have everything we need to actually go there and change the updated course, right? So one of the student some time ago, they contact me because one of the platforms we teach to create ads online change the process. So the process was the same path, but the initial part was a little bit different. So most students were lost on that initial part. So we have to go there and rerecord like the whole model of the course to make sure they have the right steps for them, yes.

Great. And I guess for any of you, how do you measure the impact of the changes that you're making? Are there any metrics that you're looking at closely to know that I have made the correction and it's actually added value here. Frank, how about you? looks like maybe.

Yes. I mean, speaking for myself, I do it mostly on faith just because it's the right thing to do. Like obviously, you want to keep your courses fresh and up-to-date. You want to respond to feedback and make your course continually better. And that's how you stay ahead of the competition on the platform. Efforts to measure that are kind of tough though because those small changes to a course, are going to be hard to tease out from sales data when there's so many other variables going on, like what sales are happening today or what holidays are happening, how many people are on vacation, whatever it might be. But -- if you look at the long run, like over a span of a couple of years of data, you do start to see these trends where the courses that got more attention from you are performing better than the ones that didn't. So at a long enough time frame, you can tease that data out.

Yes. I'll say you have to check that rating and the learning consumption. If I added a new video, I will check if that video is being consumed or if they are abandoning it and how it's working and the minutes that they are consuming of that content, that will give me a clue if it's working or not.

Right. We have great performance tools for Udemy Marketplace and Udemy Business. So we can do what Ceci mentioned, go there and analyze specific lessons, they are consuming, if they are dropping, how is the engagement -- so these tools are fantastic for -- to evaluate how the content is received by students.

Diego, could you maybe drill down for the audience a little bit on that? And kind of how are the insights different between the marketplace and on the Udemy Business side? And how are you leveraging those differently?

The insights are -- the main difference is that on Udemy Business, we have the minutes consumed by students. So we can -- we have all this data for each specific course we have on the platform, the Business platform. And let's say, we can order also the courses by the most consumed if we want and I personally use that, Dennis. Frequently to see what is my Udemy Business students favorite course. So I can see that course, I can create content that is similar on the same style that, that course has and also explore topics that are similar to them because most of the time, the business student is different from the marketplace student, they have different goals on my case, right.

I agree on that, especially my courses on soft skills courses. The corporate student will look for short, very actionable courses. And the marketplace student will go for the 8-hours, 6-hours training, which, for example, for leadership skills, is a very long course -- so you have to also pay attention. It's not just the number is where it's coming from, which is the audience from where is this student from. So I agree, we have a lot of tools to analyze that.

Right. And I guess, Ceci, do you get a sense of that learners are coming back regularly and trying to just -- how do you think about learner retention?

Yes, they are coming back, Thank God. And they will tell you they tell you they send you a message or even in the rating when they leave the comments, they have that option of leaving comments. It's 5 stars, they have to select that and they can leave a comment. And they will say like, this is the third course that I'm taking. This is the fourth program that I'm taking. Also something new that is happening is that they are sharing their certificates on Linkedin and on different platforms, and they are tagging me. So like there are different ways and more sources now to understand what's going on with your students. And it's usually what will happen if they bought a course or if they enroll to a course and they like it, they will keep coming. They will stay with you. And I think that's amazing. And it's a way of growing your business without even noticing like you are not promoting the course, but it keeps growing because it's the same people that keeps enrolling and enroll in the programs.

Excellent. Diego, do you have anything to add there?

I use a lot of promotional announcements too with the promotional announcement every time we have a new course we can send to our existing students and they can choose to enroll in the course, if they want to learn about that or not. And we see lot of students coming back for new courses -- so that's the way I don't specifically see the data of how many students are coming back, but I see a great engagement and some of the names we recognize on the Q&A on different courses, so the people engaging are always not always the same, but the people that engage the most, they engage in most of the courses we have. So that's fantastic. It means that they are happy and they are learning, right?

Great. And Frank, I'm just curious, have you seen -- kind of just building on that, have you seen a noticeable change in learner engagement since the pandemic?

Not really, but I'm not really sure that's tied to the pandemic, so much as just a continual effort to address the underlying things that people are asking about, right? So if you're always listening to student feedback and they're saying, "Hey, something's wrong with this course." And you fix it, eventually, those questions start to go down, right? So in terms of Q&A, engagement no, I'm not seeing that go up. But we are seeing more and more students come back for more. Like Diego said, our most effective promotions are the ones where we're going to our past students and saying, "Hey, here's a new course, one maybe you didn't know about, right? Go check it out." Those do really, really well. And on the whole, I think we have over 1 million enrollments and about 700,000 individual students. So statistically, a lot of them are coming back for more. So that's great to see.

Awesome. I'd love to just kind of shift gears now and talk about instructors building a business on Udemy. Frank, can you help us understand when you're coming on and creating your first course, how does an instructor think about setting the price on the marketplace side of the business?

Yes. I mean as a new instructor, it's probably the most confusing part of it really because you go into this, saying "I have this lifetime of experience and knowledge. That's worth thousands of dollars." right? But the marketplace has other ideas. I mean a better benchmark would be how much would you get from selling a book, right, or ads on a YouTube video or something like that. And it turns out Udemy actually provides a better return than either of those. So you have to first internalize that no matter how much you think you're worth, the marketplace is going to put $10 to $15 on it or something like that. So I tend to [ err ] on the lower side when it comes to pricing just because Udemy has a lot of research as to where that sweet spot is between price and quantity. and they have better data than I do. So if their data says lower prices sell more in the long run than who am I to argue, right? So that's just how I approach it, I [ err ] on the side of lower prices. If it's a more comprehensive course, I'll charge a little bit more as opposed to less comprehensive one, but that's pretty much the only criteria I have.

Great. And I guess building on that, Diego, you've got some free courses. So could you maybe help our audience understand why would you put a course out there for free? And what's the value of having a free course on the Udemy Marketplace?

That's a good question. My personal experience, Dennis the, free course, help you to build your brand. So you are having more students, you are helping more people. And I personally believe that if we -- the more people we have with their content -- with our content, if they like what they see, they will come back and buy a paid course, let's say, and become our regular students so far. So I have two main reasons what is building the brand as an instructor on Udemy and the second one is the -- just sharing what we have with the world, let's say, through Udemy.

Excellent. And so our marketplace currently has about a little more than 200,000 courses on the marketplace. The best of the best gets ported into our Udemy Business catalog. We've got more than 20,000 courses there. So all of you have content on both sides of the business. And once you do have content in Udemy Business, it is exclusive to Udemy. So love to kind of hear from all of you. This is something that we get questions quite a bit about is why would an instructor want their content to be exclusive with Udemy? So Frank, could you just kind of help us understand your thinking and why would you agree to that?

I mean it's really a no-brainer. I mean from a financial standpoint -- what feels right standpoint, right? So the revenue that I get from Udemy Business is many, many times more than what I got from all the other platforms combined. It's just a much bigger reach than anything else that's out there. I have been on pretty much all of the other platforms without naming them. So it's the driving dominating force in that marketplace. So it's worth it. And personally, it's kind of nice not to have to deal with all those platforms. I don't have to deal with keeping content updated on all these other competing platforms where I'm just getting this trickle of revenue in the first place, right? So it frees me up to spend more time on what I want to do and that's making my course is better, right? And also, Udemy just they value their instructors more than some of these other platforms. So with Udemy, I really feel like a partner. I feel like, I'm kind of behind the scenes like I am right now. I kind of feel like I'm a trusted part of the team, whereas a lot of these other platforms kind of treat you as a liability sometimes and that dynamic is much more rewarding, I think.

Awesome. Diego, how about you and maybe if you can build on it as well about? If you remember back -- before you were in the Udemy Business catalog, the difference in earnings that you saw as you became a Udemy Business instructor?

I agree 100% with Frank. I mean 100%. I save more time just putting all my content on Udemy, Udemy Business, it's fine, exclusivity. I love that because they are taking care of the business part. I mentioned in the beginning that my main goal is to create more courses and more content for my students. I don't want to worry about -- I teach marketing, but I don't want to worry about my marketing, selling my courses, all this part because I want to create the best content for my students and Udemy takes care of the whole business. So my only work is to put the content in. So and I try several other platforms in the past. And as Frank mentioned, I end up losing more time. Most of the platforms they didn't produce any revenue for me personally. So it was -- I learn over the 9 years that the best strategy is just to exclusivity with Udemy for sure. What was your other question, Dennis?

I was just asking if you can remember back before your courses were part of the Udemy Business catalog. Is there -- did you -- did you notice the growth in your earnings over time?

Yes. On Udemy, we have a revenue report, and we have a way to see both of the revenues, the marketplace only and the Udemy Business only. My Udemy business, our revenue is from the start is just going up and up every month. So I think I didn't have any more when I are less than the prior month. So it's just going up and that's fantastic. That's another reason for the exclusivity of the content.

Awesome. Thank you. Ceci, anything to add on this?

I agree with everything they say. It's amazing the business like it exploded like it's growing and growing. And for me, that I'm still working as a consultant, I'm getting amazing clients that I wasn't able to get before, and I don't have to do anything. As Diego was saying, I don't have to worry on how to sell my courses, how to create a pitch, how to -- I'm from HR. I don't like doing all of that. That's not for me. So here in Udemy, I just create an amazing course, and then they will contact me like, hey, Ceci, my team took this course. Are you running live workshops? Or can you consult with our company? And I don't even have to do my pitch or create my presentation. That's it, that's a client. So my business in Udemy is growing like crazy, it's amazing and also all my private deals and all the other contracts that I'm getting are coming from Udemy. They are contacting me because I'm in Udemy Business catalogue. So it's a win-win. It works.

Excellent. And so let's just -- let's talk about some of the other platforms now that you've tried out. Diego, you mentioned that you have tried some of the others. So -- in your opinion, really, what do you believe separates Udemy from the other platforms that you've tried?

Several things. I think the Udemy's strategy that the team has to grow the business. I love that also the way -- it's super easy for us instructors to publish the course there, the step-by-step process for new instructors too is all organized. So it guides you step-by-step from the beginning until you have the course published. There are courses also by Udemy, teaching new instructors, how to do the process -- and also, I think the Udemy Business platform is fantastic. I love it also to have the chance as an expert to share my knowledge with huge companies all over the world, right, basically, that can consume what we create for them. So several things. It's hard just to mention a few. I probably -- I'm forgetting a lot of things that I can tell, but I love it, yes.

And Frank, you had listed a couple before but any others to add?

Yes. I think the main thing is just how quickly and easily you can publish new content on Udemy, and that's in stark contrast to another platform that shall not be named. But with another platform, the process of getting a new course published was a months-long process of approvals and going back and forth and getting everything in just the right format. They have the same process for issuing updates to that course. So even if something was out of date, something changed in the technology world that meant what I was teaching was no longer correct. I couldn't fix that. I had to go through this months-long process to do that. Udemy, in contrast, has very little barriers to entry, right? So that means if I want to put out a new course on a new technology I can just do it. No one's going to stop me. If I want to put out an update because something changed, I can just do it. No one's going to stop me. And I think the students and learners on Udemy, really value that as well because they know that Udemy is going to be very responsive to new technologies and changes in technology much more so than the competitors.

Excellent. And a question that's come in from the audience, just asking, were there any tools that specifically helped with video creation that you couldn't get anywhere else on these other platforms that you were able to get from Udemy?

I mean for video creation, most of us are using our own suite-set homes. So I use Camtasia, some people use Adobe tools. But I will say that the UI that Udemy provides to instructors for uploading that content is very intuitive and very efficient. So when we do have those videos rendered and ready to go, they have these tools that let's do that in bulk and very quickly, get it online. So we do value that. They've also offered a lot of instruction to instructors on how to create compelling videos. And I think that's even more valuable than the technical side of it. So for example, how to get that cool depth of field effect Diego has going on there. They actually gave us some presentations in past instructor conferences on how to make your videos look little bit more fancy and professional and I've internalized as much of that as possible. So Udemy has definitely been a good resource for making videos better and getting them out quicker.

Right. And it's also faster to upload to the platform that is because in other platforms, sometimes you create the outline of the course in their website, and it's really difficult to organize the lessons to save, upload a video, takes forever. You need to go inside each lesson, is complicated. But on Udemy, it's like super easy. You can just in the same page, upload all your videos, you can rename, you can relocate the lessons, create your models, create assignments, fantastic.

I think the experience is different. And from both points of you. The learner experience, it's amazing because it's easy system that you can use in a very simple way from any device. So the learner experience it's amazing. You can connect -- it has peer-to-peer learning and you can ask questions to your instructor. You can share your comments. You can do your homework, you will receive your certificate. It has it all. It's the full package. And for us, I mean it's very easy. It's very flexible. It has a lot of tips and tricks that will help you, for example, to create your landing page that I'm not an expert on that, but in Udemy, you just have to fill in the blanks a form. In other platforms, you have to do that from scratch. And that for me, it's very difficult because I'm not from marketing. And Udemy -- I think that it's an amazing experience, from learner and from instructor perspective.

Awesome. And Ceci, if I want to just start, I want to become an instructor today, you've been doing this for a while. So what are some of the strategies or tips that you would suggest to me to be successful on the platform?

Do your research. Do your research. And I love what Frank said at the beginning when he shared his strategy like analyzing the demand? What are you passionate about? And also what do you actually know like talk about something that you're an expert. Well, I fully agree with everything that he said. And I think that like you need to create a course on that, Frank. how to do that, but he's right, he nailed it. It's not just about the demand, it's something that learners are looking for, which is the problem that you are going to solve and why are you solving that problem? Like are you the right person? Do you have experience besides the knowledge that you need also to create the course. But do you have experience because that's I think we learned through experience, 80% of what we learn is by doing, not just watching videos. So do your research, try to understand what people is looking for, identify your audience, define your audience, you need to know who are you talking to and then try to look for that topic and identify one problem that you will be solving. It's not just leadership, it's how to effectively communicate in hybrid environments. So do your research, narrow it down and you have to try it out. It's a flexible platform, then you can update and change and do whatever you need to. But just do it and it will work out.

That's good advice. Frank, what advice would you offer?

Yes, pretty much the same thing. It really boils down to topic selection. And that's the thing that I think new instructors struggle with the most. They'll come in and say, I'm going to make the 6,000 in first course on ChatGPT, and I'm going to get rich off of it, right? You got to do your research. Are you really going to outdo Diego on his courses? That's got -- that's a pretty tough accomplishment to me, right? And a lot of people are teaching stuff that they aren't really experts on. So people need to be a little bit more thoughtful about their topic selection process, and that's the main advice I have for new instructors. Again, go back to that Venn diagram, I talked about, what do you know, what are you passionate about, what is there an unfilled demand for. And if you can find something in the middle there that fits all three of those things, teach that, and you'll probably be successful.

Diego, you have anything to add?

Yes. I 100% agree with you guys. And also, I remember when I was starting teaching online, I never teach before. I never did a -- speak or anything like that before, but I was passionate about a specific topic. So I think my main advice for you guys that want to start teaching on Udemy is to just do it. Don't look for perfection. If your content is good, if you are bringing results with your content, if you are passionate about what you are teaching, that's all you need. Of course, we need a better camera. We need a better audio. We need to improve everything. I also think that, but the main thing is to do the first -- take the first step. That's the most important thing for you. don't overthink it. I spent years overthinking, I'm not perfect. I don't have the right equipment, all these excuses, but it's important to just take the first step and do it. Create the course, publish it on Udemy and you as Ceci mentioned you can update that frequently, you can create new courses later. The platform is open for you.

Excellent. And so right now, it's ChatGPT, AI is a huge topic and how it's going to impact this space over time. So Diego, I know you've got some courses on it. So how do you think advancements in AI are going to impact online education for investors specifically -- I meant to say for instructors?

For instructors. In a big way because you can use these tools right now to accelerate the process. You still need to go in front of the camera and teach the course, you need to prepare the content and make sure it's well prepare and make sure the content is valuable. But ChatGPT, specifically can help you to expedite the process. So you can build your outline, you can do a brain-storm ideas. You can build on my case for example I use it, one of the things I use it is to create the script for the promo video. So I create a script for the promotional video for the course, like the trailer of the course with ChatGPT, for example, and I edit, I create several versions. I get part of that. I do like a Frankenstein. But before that, it will take me like I don't know, four days to write the script because I need to use all these techniques to create a desire on [ my students card ] for the course. And with ChatGPT and this AI tool, I can do the whole process way faster.

Frank, how about you? Are you testing out AI at all today? And I guess, just in general, is there a fear that instructors like yourself would be displaced over time by AI?

Well, knowing how it works under the hood pretty well, I'm not too concerned about that. I mean, AI in its current form is basically predicting the next word in the sentence in a very fancy way, right? So -- it doesn't really have a concept of what's right and wrong. You can't approach problems from a logical standpoint per se. So it's good at producing things that sound authoritative, but they're often wrong. We call those hallucinations in the world of AI. And there's really not a clear path forward on how to make that better. So right now, they're solving that by just throwing a lot of humans at it and sort of like adding this layer of human knowledge on top of it to try to make that better. But that doesn't really scale that well, right? So no, I don't think AI is going to be able to replace a knowledgeable instructor, who can tell stories from their past experience and engage students in that way. I just don't see it happening. However, it does have its place, like Diego said, I'm using it for idea generation. So if I'm making an outline for a new course, I might go to ChatGPT and say, "Hey, what would your outline look like for this?" And maybe sometimes it will come up things I didn't think about -- sometimes it'll come up with things that are just playing wrong though. But based on my experience and knowledge in that field, I can weed that out, right? And that's an important piece of it. So it's a useful tool for improving your productivity, just like any tool, but -- do I see the tool replacing humans? not anytime soon.

Excellent. Ceci, how about you? Are you testing it out at all today? And how do you expect to use it in the future?

Yes. I agree with what they are saying. For me, it's boosting my productivity because I can work faster. I can do my research faster, I can correct scripts. It's helping me a lot. But I don't think that ChatGPT will be able to create courses like it will replace me. We like, for example, in Udemy, if you create technical courses, real revenue will be much higher than if you create soft skills courses like mine. So the other day, someone asked me like, why aren't you using AI to create technical courses and boost your earnings. And I'm like, I would be able to create a Java programming course with ChatGPT. I know that I will get the scripts, I will be able to record that. Maybe I can create a couple of exercises -- will I create the course? Yes. Will that, of course, be effective? And will that course work in Udemy? No way because I'm not an expert. I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know if the if the outline that the system is giving me is right or wrong, if the exercise makes sense. So the first technical student that I have in that course, they will destroy my rating and that course will never work. So are we going to be able or still able to create courses, the entire process? Yes. Will that work? I don't think so, at least not now. There is still this part of storytelling and sharing what you learn from the field, sharing your experience, connecting with the students that it requires a person, it requires a person with experience and with knowledge. So I think I'm fascinated with AI. I think it's helping me a lot, but I don't think that it will replace us, at least not now.

Great. And I guess just in the -- if you could have kind of just a wish for one feature in the future that we could add to our platform. Does anything come to mind? We'll start with Frank.

Well, one potential application of AI would be sort of a first line of defense for a Q&A. So we do spend a lot of time kind of answering the same question over and over again, and that might be something AI is pretty good at. So that would be #1 on my wish list.

How about you Diego?

Same. Yes, Q&A, AI with Q&A will be great. Also for instructors in instructor part. Maybe integrating that insight, we have about lessons, how much students are watching of specific lessons, how to improve the course, maybe link that with AI in some ways to show the instructors in an easier way, how to take the course to the next level, updating and optimizing.

Ceci?

Yes. There were combinations on how to update the course if there is something specific that people is looking for related to my topic like I think the system can tell me like, "hey, you need to focus on effective meetings or people is looking for this, and maybe you can add it." More specific recommendations on classes or topics or exercises, whatever to improve and update your course, I think that would be good.

Awesome. So I want to end on a fun question for each of you. If we were to fast-forward 10, 15 years into the future, in your opinion, what does the future of online learning look like? And how do you see Udemy fitting into that vision? Lets start with Diego.

When I was a teenager, Dennis, I remember, we receive a [ comeday ] , newspaper, the paper version. And there was a section there where they offer courses, correspondent courses were for writing, for marketing, for stuff like that. And I was really passionate about that. I always went directly to that part to see what courses are coming on the paper, right? And now we have Udemy. We -- this is the future and that's why I am here with Udemy for 9 years, I think -- the future for education is where anyone can go to Udemy and search for any topic that they can imagine. And they have hundreds of courses, is on that topic. So the student can choose what is the preferred version of the course maybe they prefer an instructor that is more formal that have more technical explanation about the topic. And maybe they want to just go quickly in half an hour course and learn quickly about specific subjects. So we have on Udemy, the courses for all the taste. And I think that's the future, the possibility for the student to choose, and we also have affordable price, which is key. So we can choose -- I mean we reach people all over the world. And because the prices are affordable, and the content -- the content collection is huge.

Excellent. Ceci?

Yes. I think that we are moving to very actionable learning, role-based learning -- maybe shorter course is very, very specific full of templates, exercises -- people, we don't have time. We don't have time to do anything, so they want to learn how to do something very specific and in a very short time, but in an effective way. So I think that before we have this way of learning role base, then we move with transition to I want to know about everything. I want to learn everything. And now we are going back to get specific get -- to become an expert on what you're doing. So I think it will be world-based learning, micro-learning learning, short learning capsules, multiple formats, not just video, not just articles, a little bit of everything and a lot of practice. And I think that we are also going to a social learning -- maybe we will have more ways on connecting peer-to-peer learning, maybe mentoring within platform between learners, there's no need for instructors to be involved or yes. But I think that micro-learning and social learning. Those are the things that are coming stronger and stronger.

That's great. And Frank, you want to close this?

Yes. Same sentiments. I mean, I think the days of going to school for 4 or 5 years for some career that you're going to spend the rest of your life in, it's already behind us, quite honestly. You look at kids these days the new generation. That's not happening, they are just taking advantage of whatever opportunities and connections come their way. And the ones that can capitalize on those new opportunities are the ones that become successful. The way to do that is to have a way to quickly learn about the skills you need to take advantage of those new opportunities and platforms like Udemy provide that, right? They provide a very cost efficient, effective, efficient way to learn new skills in response to what life's throwing your way right now. So it's much more responsive to your life and the opportunities you're given. And -- that's where I think the future is.

Awesome. So we've reached the end of the session. Thank you, Ceci, Frank, Diego for agreeing to be our panelists today really shared a lot of great insights. And thank you, audience, for tuning in. As a reminder, if you want to sign up for e-mail alerts to be notified of IR access events or blogs, you can do that on our IR website. We look forward to hosting you at our next event, and thank you all.