This Company Could Be Your Next Teacher: Coursera Plots A Massive Future For Online Education
First, he goes on at length about the two years he spent traveling the world before joining the Mountain View, California-based online education company in June 2017. “I climbed Kilimanjaro with my middle daughter, I went to Cuba for a week, I went to Uganda to see the mountain gorillas,” he says. “In Indonesia we went scuba diving and saw the Komodo dragons. In Borneo we saw the orangutans.”
But in Kyoto his adventures had been cut short. Lounging at a traditional ryokan in a robe and one-toe socks, he read an email from a headhunter who described his dream job: take over a fast-growing tech startup with a social mission—to vastly expand access to higher education through massive open online courses, known as MOOCs, taught by the best professors from the world’s top universities. He was chanting the company mantra before he’d even spoken to Coursera’s board: “I said to my wife, Anne, ‘The solution to our most pressing human problems is education.’”
Maggioncalda didn’t need a job. In 2014 he had stepped down as CEO of Financial Engines, a retirement planning website he launched 18 years earlier with two high-profile Stanford professors, Nobel prize winner William F. Sharpe and former SEC commissioner Joseph Grundfest. In 2010 he took the company public, and by the time he left its market cap was close to $2 billion and his net worth was north of $50 million.
After Kyoto, he and Anne had planned to visit Israel, Machu Picchu, the Galapagos and Antarctica. Instead, he flew back from Japan and became Coursera’s third CEO. He has since boosted the company’s status as the world’s biggest, most successful MOOC provider, with 150 international university partners, 36 million registered learners, $210 million in investment capital, an $800 million valuation and expected 2018 revenue Forbes estimates at $140 Continue reading: This Company Could Be Your Next Teacher: Coursera Plots A Massive Future For Online Education
