Why Udemy’s 200,000 Courses Are Actually the Problem (And What We’re Building Instead)
Jim Barksdale, the CEO of Netscape, once said: “There’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling.”
He said it in 1995, at the Savoy Hotel in London, right before Netscape’s IPO. A banker had asked how Netscape would survive if Microsoft bundled a browser into Windows. Barksdale’s off-the-cuff answer became one of the most quoted lines in technology.
It also happens to describe what we’re doing with one of our portfolio companies.
The Problem With 200,000 Courses
Udemy has over 200,000 courses. Skillshare, Coursera, and dozens of other platforms offer thousands more. The online education market has been thoroughly bundled — you can learn almost anything, from almost anyone, for almost nothing.
That sounds like a consumer win. And in some ways, it is. But the bundling created its own set of problems.
Discovery is terrible. When a platform has 200,000 courses, finding the right one becomes a needle-in-a-haystack exercise. Quality varies wildly. The rating systems help, but only so much.
The platform has no real relationship with the student. Udemy’s business model is built around transactions, not relationships. Buy a course, watch it, get sold another one. There’s no continuity, no progression, no “what comes next.”
And most critically: these platforms teach skills but don’t help people do anything with them. You finish a copywriting course and then… what? You have the skill. You don’t have clients. You don’t know how to price your services, find your first gig, or build something sustainable.
The platform doesn’t care. It’s already moved on to selling the next course.
The “Now What?” Problem
This gap between “I learned a skill” and “I’m making money from this skill” is one of the biggest unsolved problems in online education.
Think about how most course businesses work. They sell you a promise: learn this skill and your life changes. Some of them deliver on the skill part. Very few deliver on the life-changing part. Because the life-changing part isn’t learning to proofread or learning to write copy. It’s learning how to turn that skill into income.
How do you find clients? How do you price your services? How do you go from “I can do this” to “someone is paying me to do this”? That’s a completely different set of skills from the technical skill itself. And almost no one teaches it.
Students finish courses, feel good about what they learned, and then stall. They have the skill. They don’t have the business. The course creator has already collected the revenue and moved on. The platform has already suggested five more courses to buy.
Nobody is solving the end-to-end problem.
What We’re Seeing at Proofread Anywhere
We own a business called Proofread Anywhere, an online course that teaches people how to become professional proofreaders. It’s a solid business with a loyal audience and real results. People take the course and become working proofreaders.
But here’s the insight that’s been developing: a meaningful percentage of people who discover Proofread Anywhere don’t actually want to be proofreaders. They want to build a freelance business. They want the freedom, the flexibility, the income independence. Proofreading is one path to get there, but it’s not the only one they’re interested in.
When someone comes to Proofread Anywhere and their real desire is “I want to work for myself,” we’re only serving part of that need. We teach the proofreading skill, but we’re not addressing the broader question: how do you build a sustainable freelance business?
The Unbundled Udemy for Freelancing
This is where Barksdale’s insight applies. Udemy bundled everything, 200,000 courses on every topic, with no depth or continuity. The opportunity is to unbundle that into something focused.
Our vision for Proofread Anywhere is evolving. Not a single course, but a focused platform specifically for people who want to build freelance businesses. The components:
Specific skill verticals. Proofreading is the starting point. Over time, the platform could expand into other freelance skills: copywriting, AI skills, virtual assistance, whatever the market demands. Each one is a focused, high-quality course for a specific skill.
Business fundamentals. The piece that almost everyone else is missing. How to find clients. How to price your services. How to build a freelance business that’s sustainable, not just a side hustle that fizzles out after three months.
A real progression. Not “buy another course,” but a genuine path from “I’m curious about freelancing” to “I have a skill” to “I have clients paying me for that skill.”
How Tuck-In Acquisitions Build the Platform
Here’s where the acquisition strategy connects. Each new skill vertical could be a tuck-in: a small, focused course business that wouldn’t justify a standalone acquisition at our holding company level, but becomes highly strategic when plugged into an existing platform.
A copywriting course with a few hundred students? Too small on its own. But plugged into a freelancing platform with an existing audience, existing infrastructure, and existing business fundamentals training? Now it’s a new skill vertical that serves more students and generates more value than it could independently.
That’s the roll-up strategy, but at the individual business level. Each tuck-in expands what the platform can offer. Each one brings its own audience that can cross-pollinate with the existing students. And each one gets immediate access to the business fundamentals training that makes the whole thing work.
Still Early
I want to be clear: this is a vision that’s still evolving. We’re in the early stages of thinking through what this looks like in practice. But the pattern is there, a niche course with a loyal audience, a broader market need it’s positioned to serve, and a playbook for expanding through small strategic acquisitions.
Barksdale was right. Udemy bundled everything and created a platform that’s wide but shallow. The opportunity is to unbundle that into something narrow and deep, a real platform with a real relationship to its students and a real pathway from learning to earning.
We think that’s more valuable than course number 200,001.
If you run an online course business and you’ve thought about the “now what?” problem, how to help students actually monetize what they learn, I’d genuinely like to hear your approach.
*Disclaimer: This discusses our vision for a portfolio company. It is not financial advice. For Onfolio’s complete financial information, refer to our SEC filings.*