review:ed Episode #3.2 – Is Udemy a Copy Cat of Sclipo and WiZiQ? What defines a Copy Cat?

Following our talk about the Groupon CityDeal deal and its possible impact on the European start up scene we went on talking about Udemy which is one of the hottest online education start ups right now.

Udemy has been largely covered on the two leading tech blogs TechCrunch and Mashable and many other blogs, including me here on KirstenWinkler.com and EDUKWEST.

Second Topic: Is Udemy a Copy Cat of platforms like Sclipo and WiZiQ?

As you know Chris worked as Senior Vice President at Sclipo, a company that has a very similar model to Udemy with the difference that Sclipo launched in 2007. Hence I asked Chris if he thinks that Udemy is a copy cat of older companies like Sclipo and WiZiQ. He says it is hard to say when the idea actually came up but you can see that Udemy directly launches with a turn key solution whereas Sclipo and WiZiQ evolved over the time from different business models.

Another advantage of Udemy it is located in Silicon Valley and hence it is far easier making good and fruitful connections. And without any doubt Gagan Biyani is one of the best networkers in online education today. Basically the conclusion is that Udemy can profit from the pioneering work of the older platforms and can save on some dead ends those companies went in. Which of course does not take away their merit of being a really hard working start up that is hungry for success. In most cases pioneers are not the winners anyway. It also shows that Sclipo’s idea of offering a web academy for online teachers was spot on, as Chris says.

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  3. review:ed Episode #3.1 with Christopher Grant – Groupon CityDeal Deal Bad for European Start Ups?
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