Online Lecture Platform 'No.1' Class101... Membership Doubled in One Year
Recently Recruited Top-tier Developer... CTO with Experience at Moloco
"Focusing on Securing Development Talent... AI Investment Also Accelerating"
[Asia Economy Reporter Junhyung Lee] From professional Go player Lee Sedol to the winning team HolyBang of ‘Street Woman Fight.’ For just a few tens of thousands of won, you can learn their know-how. There’s no need to travel far. As long as you have a smartphone or other mobile device, you can watch lectures anytime you want. This is thanks to online lecture platforms that have grown during the COVID-19 pandemic. These platforms attracted large-scale investments last year and recruited many hard-to-see celebrities as instructors. As the online education market expands, competition for platform dominance is expected to intensify.
Class101 is a prospective unicorn (a private company valued between 100 billion and 1 trillion KRW) leading the domestic online lecture platform market. The company’s growth over the past year is remarkable. As of last month, the number of members reached 3.68 million, about 1.8 times more than the 2 million in the same period last year. During the same period, the number of lectures on the platform increased from 1,300 to 2,800, about 2.2 times. The number of creators and the cumulative settlement amount for creators recently surpassed 115,000 and 63.5 billion KRW, respectively.
Cumulative Investment of 50 Billion KRW... Moloco ‘Founding Contributor’ Recruited
Capital market interest is equally hot. The company raised 30 billion KRW in Series B funding last September. Goodwater Capital, a tech-focused venture capital (VC) firm from Silicon Valley, USA, participated as the lead investor. This indicates positive evaluations from overseas investors. A Goodwater Capital representative described Class101 as "the fastest-growing leader in the passion economy sector (an economic phenomenon where passion is developed into a livelihood)." Including the 12 billion KRW Series A investment raised within one year of its founding in 2018, the cumulative investment amount is about 50 billion KRW.
The company recently attracted attention by recruiting top-tier developers in the industry. The key figure is Koo Hyun-seo, Class101’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), formerly of global e-commerce giant Amazon. Koo CTO was a founding contributor to Moloco, an adtech (advertising + technology) startup that became a unicorn last May. He developed payment services such as ‘One-Click’ at Amazon before joining Moloco in 2016, where he served as head of the Korean branch and oversaw Asia-Pacific business divisions.
The reason Class101 recruited CTO Koo is simple: to grow beyond a simple online education platform into a comprehensive tech company. To this end, the company announced plans to more than double its developer workforce this year. Of course, the company believes its current business alone is sufficient for a unicorn leap. However, to maintain high growth after becoming a unicorn, the company judges that it must significantly increase investment in advanced technology. This is because revenue expansion is limited when lecture income is typically split 50-50 with creators. This strategy is similar to that of Yanolja, which is transforming from a lodging reservation app into a tech company. CTO Koo stated, "Most of the funds raised through Series B will be used to expand both the quantity and quality of the development team," adding, "We are also considering establishing a development center in the U.S. to recruit local developers."
Focusing on AI Development... Targeting Overseas Markets
CTO Koo’s first task is workforce efficiency. Currently, all lectures on Class101 undergo review by company staff to improve content and video quality. Company PDs often directly produce and edit videos. This means the labor and personnel costs invested in a single lecture are considerable. CTO Koo found a solution in AI-based machine learning. The company is already testing related technologies, such as launching lectures by AI creators. CTO Koo explained, "We will intensify investment in AI starting this year," adding, "By enhancing AI filtering, when creators upload videos, additional necessary content or lecture materials can be automatically generated."
Another goal is to target overseas markets. Class101 entered the U.S. in 2019 and Japan last year, but results remain minimal. The company has high expectations for CTO Koo, who has extensive experience in the U.S. IT industry. CTO Koo emphasized the U.S. market, saying, "Udemy, which started in Turkey and grew into a global education platform, succeeded in listing on Nasdaq mainly because of the U.S. market," adding, "Targeting the U.S. is effectively the same as entering English-speaking countries automatically."
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