The 7-month-old IT education website has 22 million dollars

The intermediary transaction SEO diagnoses Taobao guest stationmaster buys the Cloud host technology Hall

The reason why the college can obtain capital recognition, but also with its founding team and the accumulation of its predecessor inseparable.

Photo of Geek College founder Shan

Tencent Science and Technology Hu Xiangbao September 24 Report

Recently, a "geek college" of the IT professional online education platform has become the focus of online education, because the online education site 7 months after the birth of the investment boss paid 22 million dollars for its entrepreneurial cake.

At the beginning of 2014, the Geek College was online, September 22 this year, the University of Geeks announced the successful completion of the B-round financing of 22 million U.S. dollars, the investment side for SIG (Haina Asia) and blue-chi venture. Why is a new IT career online education program in such a short period of time to win the favor of the world's top funds, but this is a round of financing in the process of Blue venture investment, investment quotas in line with the forefront of the online education industry.

In contrast to the online education industry, last week, Century Jiayuan founder Gong (Micro Bo) two entrepreneurial ladder nets big layoffs, that good network closure, just because the capital chain break. The same investment environment and time node, geek College out of a "small but beautiful" vertical online education of the new road, worthy of research and attention.

The way to pay: The goal is to become China's Lynda

Geek College provides online education of IT technology courses for professional developers, including Android, IOS, HTML 5, Cocos2d-x, Java and more than 300 doors. It is the domestic IT professional online education pay model to eat crabs, income mainly from the membership system fees (30 yuan/month, 260 yuan/year, etc.).

For mobile developers, online can be simple and efficient to learn useful technology, compared to offline training courses, tend to be more efficient online, and more professional online. The Geek Academy has captured nearly 120,000 of its precision-paying subscribers for the last six months, because it hits mobile developers ' practical pain points.

In reality, the previous including YY, NetEase and many other internet giants to kill online education is mainly to take free internet thinking and the traditional model game.

Shan, founder of the University of Geeks, said: "Vertical IT professional online education threshold is higher, the higher the professionalism, the higher the accuracy, the greater the value of the charges." Professional developers and the needs of ordinary users, online is the most effective way of learning, and this is the practical skills to learn, and enhance the personal value of solidarity, as long as the content of high-quality, its own large number of users pay. ”

In fact, the probability of educational product payment is much higher than other products, but the prerequisite is to truly meet user needs.

"Online education is a slow-moving industry, with a hole in it and a new way out of it careers online education," he said. "Shan told Tencent Science and technology, Geek College is ultimately to make China's Lynda, the user is few, but the value is very large, and the future can also butt the needs of enterprise personnel, can imagine a huge space."

It is understood that Lynda is a vertical online learning service provider in the United States, founded 17 years, so far only nearly 1 million users, a round of financing to raise 103 million U.S. dollars, and the Geek college tightened in half a year to expand to 120,000 users. Lynda income is also similar to the Geek College model to take membership fees, has been continuously profitable for 15 years. The successful foreign precedents also endorse the successful financing of the Geek College. By contrast, the Geek Academy is faster.

Invisible Power: "Online + education" double fusion gene

In fact, the reason why the college can quickly and continuously obtain capital recognition, but also with its founding team and the accumulation of its predecessor inseparable.

The predecessor of the Academy is the earliest and largest mobile developer community in the country,--eoe mobile developer community, after 10 years of accumulation, the community's registered developer over 2 million, the user is very sticky.

Geek College CEO Shan, who has been the practitioner of it vocational education, is the author of China's first Android development textbook, Google Android development and real-time, and founded China's largest mobile developer community, and has done the earliest Android offline training in China. Prior to this, it has accumulated a wealth of experience in two areas of traditional education and online, and because of the 10 years of exploration in the vocational education community, a number of mined areas have been explored and an effective way has been explored.

2014, Shan the opportunity to lead the team to the IT professional online education, set up a geek college is the right and the right people.

Too early, user habits are not mature, too late and no soup to drink. Before the community is the best model, because at that time hardware, bandwidth, payment, technical support are not supported, and to 2014 years, including people's use habits, mobile internet waves to stimulate IT professional learning, a variety of ancillary environmental maturity, the eve of the industry outbreak, at this time, the Geek college thick fat, this is the weather.

Geek College from the community to extract the user's needs data, quickly put the user actual combat needs into the production of online courses, and the curriculum + Community model for rapid iteration. At present, the Geek College has gathered more than 300 it vocational technology courses, covering almost the first half of China's hottest technical courses.

The geographical location is the Geek College chooses the vertical it profession online education as the entrance. It vocational education will be more than tens of billions of large market, especially for mobile developers, this part of the crowd is active learning, the willingness to pay is strong, is a loyal hardcore users in school education, can directly determine their own money bag.

This and K12 (basic education stage) and other online education, K12 is the parents, users are students, is passive learning, the use of not strong intention. Especially for primary and secondary schools, the user is a student, decision evaluation involves parents, teachers, how to three links through the efficient concatenation is very complex. None of these ills exist in the Geek Academy.

In addition, it vocational and technical education is an easy to standardize products, natural fit online mode. Geek College brings together Baidu, Ali and other large Internet enterprises of it learners, high-end learners of Word-of-mouth spread to the rapid expansion of its users, but also reduce the promotional costs.

People and is the most important factor that cannot be seen. Education is a very complicated thing, and online education needs both traditional education and internet and mobile Internet. Specific to the two level of online education: "Online" and "education", most practitioners do not achieve the two truly effective integration.

Shan said: "The whole field of vocational education, the future of traditional institutions should not be self-restructuring, or be reconstructed by others." After the success of the capital, the college will accelerate the restructuring process. The goal of the Geek Academy is clear: we are going to be China's Lynda to help Chinese IT professionals get professional skills, traditional education and other educational institutions do not, and my team can do it. ”

In short, the domestic online education is now in the noisy appearance of the tide, some concrete operation model is worth our calm thinking. However, despite the success of the college in the capital market, but to truly rise in the market, depends on the follow-up operation, and see how its follow-up.