How MasterClass Makes $90M+ ARR Selling Courses Online
Who is David Rogier?
David Rogier is the founder and CEO of Masterclass, a platform offering online courses taught by world-class experts.
In childhood, Rogier enjoyed learning but struggled to perform well in school. David ventured into entrepreneurship after a stint in venture capital when he felt he wasn’t happy.
Eventually, Rogier’s love of learning led him to develop the MasterClass Platform.
How did David come up with the idea for MasterClass?
Rogier decided he wanted to do something with education. Yet, he wasn’t sure what exactly this would be.
He posted ads on Craigslist to pay people $10 an hour to talk about their educational experiences. He asked his interview partners questions like:
- Who did you learn the most from?
- Which topics would you have loved to study more?
- What things do you want to learn now? And how do you want to learn them?
These conversations helped him sharpen his vision.
But, when he recorded the first videos, they looked like crap.
So Rogier reached out to a professor from his grad school who was an experienced cinematographer, and he offered to film the videos.
That’s how the courses started looking like high-class Hollywood movies.
How did David Rogier build the initial version of MasterClass?
When Rogier dreamed of building MasterClass Sparked, he presented his pitch to three groups of stakeholders with different experiences and goals.
First, he had to convince venture capital investors even though he didn’t have a working platform to showcase and no committed instructors. He described his MasterClass idea while sketching the strategy on a whiteboard.
The second group was the experts he needed to create classes. It took him a year to convince instructors like Dustin Hoffman, Serena Williams, and Annie Leibovitz to be the first to launch lessons.
Some of Rogier's colleagues doubted his idea's chances of success. However, he soon realized that those who knew and respected him would be among the first to join him on his journey.
What was the growth strategy for MasterClass and how did they scale?
Masterclass have a unique asset compared to other edtech competitors: its world-class instructors. By leveraging that, they've built a marketing strategy that relies on two main elements: (1) SEO, and (2) ads.
They've achieved mass success with their search engine optimization, and all their classes rank extremely high on Google.
Thanks mainly to having 12,000 referring domains and backlinks from the biggest sites in the world.
They’ve been featured in the NY Times (6x), Forbes (16x), The Guardian (4x), BusinessInsider (31x), CNBC (11x), LA Times (9x), etc.
Each new course is newsworthy, and they create a whole structure that is open and accessible for anyone, but with the actual video content locked.
Also, they also have a pretty intensive ad strategy. If you check their Facebook transparency section, you'll see they're running hundreds of ads at any given time. Most of them use their high-quality videos.
What's the pricing strategy for MasterClass?
They experiment a lot with their pricing. Currently they offer three yearly memberships, Individual ($120), Duo ($192), and Family ($240).
What platform/tools does MasterClass use?
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More about MasterClass:
Who is the owner of MasterClass?
David Rogier is the founder of MasterClass.
When did David Rogier start MasterClass?
2015
What is David Rogier's net worth?
David Rogier's business makes an average of $7.8M/month.
How much money has David Rogier made from MasterClass?
David Rogier started the business in 2015, and currently makes an average of $93.6M/year.
