I got introduced to several products during what I call ‘the zoom pandemic.’ Quite a lot of them were related to dogs. All thanks to Mocha - our 7 month old aussie (as of this writing). One product which turned out to be a showstopper for me was Masterclass. I love how Masterclass makes it easy for me to access knowledge directly from top experts in various fields. It feels like on-demand tutoring from all-star tutors!
To me Masterclass is an edu-tainment platform. At its core, its combining education and entertainment. By bringing in top industry experts into a setting which looks like they are sitting down and having a chat with you to teach various concepts - virtually. Sounds like some serious scope to innovate with VR! (Maybe more on that later.) And this is the thing which I like, the proximity for users to their favorite heroes.
I knew about Masterclass prior to bringing Mocha home. But, haven’t subscribed back then thinking I will wait for some time to understand what people thought about using the service. But, then 2 things nudged me to get it:
Once I got the subscription I tried to draw parallels between streaming services and other online education platforms. Because it has a clean UI like top streaming services while being a platform where I can find courses to learn. For the longest time I can remember, I have signed up for more online courses than I can complete. Used to enroll but at the end of day go back and watch a video found on youtube on the same topic hoping it would be give me the gist of what I need. Masterclass is different from traditional online course platforms in couple of ways:
These are powerful hooks for new and existing users of Masterclass alike. For new users, specifically, people in late 20’s or 30’s, generally familiar with MOOC/online course platforms and who are constantly trying to improve by learning new technologies and exploring various subjects, gaining access to curated content is like finding the holy grail! For existing users, since Masterclass now knows your profile and tastes, recommendation engine does a good job at guiding you to future courses and related subjects of interests. This is on the consumer side and I can totally see this expand to business users as well. Just like how most employers provide memberships/access to one or some of several online education platforms out there today.