Education Startups giving only Content should not create Content.

In the past few years, lots of educational startups came into the picture and made their user base grew because they gave "FREE" content mostly in video form.

Users liked their content because it was good and they all felt really great because it helped them to replace their traditional offline tuition classes. It was much easier to watch a 30 minutes video than to commute for 1 hour, learn for 30 minutes, and commute back home again for 1 hour.

Most of the educators in those platforms were also those who cleared the respective exams and were driven by passion than the money to create those "FREE" content and students were happy because they were learning through the best educators.

Now here comes the big question of "MONETIZATION"

Obviously, a company that raised millions from the funding series won't be able to justify its valuation to investors without any Cash flow.

Here comes the tricky part, the educational startups which grew their userbase solely on the "FREE" content as opposed to those expensive tuition classes fell into the big problem of cashflow where their entire marketing was based on "FREE" content.

Meanwhile, the educators were also asking for monetary benefits, after all, educators are the ones whose content makes the userbase grow.

So educational startups decide to onboard the best of the best educators and use them as a milking cow to justify to users that some "PLUS" content needs extra cash to get.

Now the users ask how much extra? And users realized it's the same as those traditional "EXPENSIVE" tuition classes which were the main problem those "Educational" startups were solving by giving "FREE" content.

Users need to buy monthly or yearly "EXPENSIVE" subscriptions

If you take a closer look at those Educational startups team you realize that the number of educators outnumbers the number of non-educator people.

And that's where the whole house of cards comes crashing.

What should have been done?

Simple answer, the educational startups should have implemented the business model of the "UDEMY" where the educators are independent and the educational startup just needs to be as a marketplace where best educators and students meet and get the cashflow by commissions.