Maven

Shaan's writing course: $127K top line, ~$105K net, 320 students

Shaan breaks down the P&L of his power-writing course: $127K in sales from 320 students, minus ~$12K Maven fee, $7,500 production, and ~$3-4K processing, netting roughly $105K. The first batch was priced around $450 at half price.

“It was like 10%. 10%, right? So, so take out $12,000 roughly from $127,000. Then you take out $7,500 of cost production, then everything else. Then there's payment processing fees. That was another $3,000 or $4,000. And so my net was like $10,000. I'm doing the math bad here, but I think it was like $105,000 roughly. And then, okay, so that's kind of like, that's the money in. And so that was off of 320 students.”

Live cohorts + a high entry bar fix course completion

Shaan explains why Lambda School hit 75%+ completion: because it only got paid when students got jobs, it filtered hard on the front end for serious students, then ran a live, peer-group format. The selective front-end filter plus live cohort drives finish rates most courses can't reach.

“And so because of the filter on the front end, plus the format being live and in a peer group, they had like 75% plus completion rates. And then, uh, I invested in this company Maven for the same reason because they were saying, hey, we're gonna make it easy for you to teach a cohort-based course.”

Steal thisMake your course live and cohort-based with a selective application to push completion rates from single digits toward 75%.

Shitty tweet + Google Form = 1,000 signups for a $400 writing course

Shaan almost over-engineered his Maven writing course launch (build content, do 10 example emails, build a site). Instead his friend Gagan told him to just tweet the idea with a Google Form. The lesson: people overestimate what they need to do to start because they're afraid to fail.

“you are afraid to fail, so you overthink what you need to do to make it successful. And Abreyu, you're listening to this, you're about to go do your own startup. Don't make this mistake that I was about to make, that I've made many times in the past, that most people make every time they go do a new venture is that they are afraid to fail. Therefore, they overestimate what they need to do to get started.”

Steal thisValidate demand with a shitty tweet and a Google Form before building anything; if you're not embarrassed by v1, you launched too late.

Cohort-based and selective courses beat the 6% completion curse

Self-serve courses finish at ~6-10%. Shaan's portfolio companies beat that: Maven's cohort-based courses with live weekly instruction, and Lambda School's ~80% completion by selectively admitting only the top 1% rather than maximizing seats sold.

“Lambda School had like an 80% completion rate when I invested way back in the day. And so I knew something is different about this company. I knew the standard is 6. I knew these guys had 80 plus and I was like, what'd you get different? He goes, well, it's live.”

Steal thisTo fix course completion, add live cohorts and accountability, and filter hard for committed students instead of maximizing seats.