Maven

Social headlines make it seem cohort-based courses are in the toilet. Yet Maven’s instructors have 2x’ed their earnings in the last 12 months. What is going on? In the last year: The altMBA shut down. Building a Second Brain shut down. Write of Passage shut down. d/MBA announced a 2x price hike, which I am predicting will lead to a shutdown in 12-24 months. =/ These are OG course businesses run by charismatic creators who built fantastic products and brands. WTF happened? There are a few factors here: - Courses have lifespans. About 5-8 years, rarely longer. This is fine if you plan for it, because they are so damn profitable. Also, courses built from the creator’s audience will slowly exhaust that audience, which results in declining sales if you don't have another marketing channel. - Profit over Revenue. Some of these courses were revenue-maximizing instead of profit-maximizing. They invested in over-the-top value and had $1-2M/year in overhead (2-8 full-time staff). This became a burdensome fixed cost threshold that made these businesses unprofitable when sales slipped. FWIW plenty of creators did not make this mistake and did make significant profits. - External factors. The X algorithm has dramatically devalued “followership” and crushed engagement. Furthermore, the economy has come off its 2021 COVID high which reduced willingness to pay. Demand for creator-led courses declined while supply rose. - Creator’s energy. Creators enjoy freedom and control over their lives. When you hire staff for a course business that starts to change. Some creators partner with operators to manage their businesses (as Seth Godin did with altMBA), but ultimately you still have to manage the operators. By contrast, Maven’s instructors keep their overhead low: 80-90% margins are common for someone making $200K-$3M/year. They charge less, deliver more personalized attention, and don’t rely entirely on their own audience. Having less employees also means maintaining their creative freedom and reducing the “burden” of management. We are forever indebted to these trailblazers for their work. But with all things, times are changing and I thought it was worth talking about this massive trend in our budding industry. Funny enough, the same thing happened to me at Sprig (I’ll post about this another time) so I’ve had a similar trend hurt my own business in the past. Going forward, I believe bespoke course businesses with high overhead will continue to struggle, while experts/creators who build solopreneur course businesses will rake in profits. The industry will continue to grow because customers seem to love these programs and want more depth out of their professional learning.

Last week I completed a course on executive communication and influence taught by Wes Kao. As a senior IC, the right communication is critical to my role. The course was full of insights and actionable tactics to improve the way I communicate and sell ideas. There was an excellent slide that resonated with me showing the delta of what we know (explicitly or intuitively) vs. what we do when speaking or writing. I now have a better grasp of how to close that gap between what I know and what I do. A few of my main takeaways: * A little bit of up-front work can save so much time addressing pushback. One of the biggest missteps in my own communication is not taking a moment to prepare before a meeting or reviewing my written communication. Wes gave a lot of great frameworks to think critically about the language being used that I will absolutely be using. * I often am too polite with the recommendations I want to make. Sharing alternate ideas with the recommendation in case it "won't work" can come across as a lack of confidence. It gives stakeholders fuel to use against me. Be direct and make the ask for the outcome you're looking for. * Answering at the right altitude. I tend to overcommunicate the details when it's unnecessary. It's my default because I think everyone wants the full context. That's not always the case. Crafting a response with the right amount of detail specific to the audience takes thought. Even after just a couple days, I've already found the content helpful. I've successfully rewritten recommendations in Slack to be more direct and concise before sending. I've successfully framed feedback requests to avoid a common problem of solutionizing on the wrong things. https://lnkd.in/dgiEPEKJ

As the head of product for monetization at Duolingo, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to price and package our products. Which is why I'm excited to join Jenny Wanger to discuss what product leaders' roles should be around pricing and packaging. We'll cover: - What my role looks like in relationship to pricing and packaging - How to build financial acumen for product development - Why leveling up in these topics can help your career Over 300 people have already signed up (it's free!). Join us live on November 1: https://lnkd.in/ePJxUj9p Looking forward to seeing you there.

A founder DMed me on Twitter to ask what I thought of Shreyas Doshi’s Product Sense course on Maven and if it would be worth it for him as a busy CEO with 2 kids. This is what I wrote back:

Lenny Rachitsky hosted an amazing group of product leaders at his inaugural summit. It was in classic Lenny style with a campfire theme - intimate, friendly, insightful. Some of my favorite takeaways: 1) Claire Vo on her vision for PMs - graduating from “generalist specialists” into “AI-powered triple threats” into “maybe a bit of everything”. 2) Shreyas Doshi on product taste - identify what’s good without needing to see results. Sometimes it’s worth pausing even before a “two-way door” decision. 3) Kevin Weil on PMing at OpenAI - new capabilities are emerging from a mist. PMs need to upskill on evaluating models and going deeper into tech stack. Especially fun to meet so many Maven instructors and students in attendance. Inspired by everyone's curiosity, optimism, and growth mindset.

We're excited to be here at Lenny's Summit... kicking off with Lenny Rachitsky and 1,000 of the brightest minds in product 🔥

3 surprising traits VCs seek in early-stage businesses and founders that you’ve probably overlooked.... Many founders obsess over their pitch deck, fancy research and financial projections. But savvy VCs are looking beyond the numbers. They’re searching for these unexpected qualities that package the business+founders from the rest. Both the horse and the jockey (quoting my guest here!). Find out these 3 surprising traits on Maven! ✅Top 3 priorities for early-stage (pre-seed and seed) founders ✅Early-stage business and founder traits that attract investors ✅Non-obvious skills that create 10X impact I’m excited to host Rod Snodgrass, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Maker Partners, for a FREE Maven Lightning Lesson "Elite Operator's Playbook Speaker Series" on this topic on Fri, Nov 1, 2024 12:00 PM GMT+13(NZ). If you are not familiar with Rod Snodgrass, Rod is a former CEO of Spark Ventures, led the development of Spark's innovation arm and created new businesses including Lightbox, Qrious, Skinny, and Bigpipe. That's where I met him when we built the largest nationwide wifi in NZ😊. Proven track record in building and executing corporate, market, business, and product strategies in the telecom, media, internet, digital, and energy sectors. He is now an active start-up mentor and investor at Maker Partners, helping build great businesses with exceptional founders and partners. 👇Join us here! https://lnkd.in/gA-d4TDp

No-Code x AI empowers all of us to become an elite operator ⚡️ Whether you're working in product, marketing or sales, you can set this up all by yourself now and no longer depend on others anymore to speed up your operations 🚀 Here are 3 things you could start with right away: ⚡️ Streamline your tasks with Airtable ⚡️ Create a workspace of AI Assistants with Zapier Central ⚡️ Build internal portals for your operations with Softr If you're a non-technical professional, and curious to learn how to do this, I'd love to invite you for our free Lightning Lessons on Maven in the next weeks. Join us to learn from Alexandre Kantjas (9x), Anna Marie Clifton (Zapier) and JJ Englert (Softr), to learn how to become an elite operator with No-Code x AI ⚡️ (links below)