{"id":3781,"date":"2022-02-03T21:09:20","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T04:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/?p=3781"},"modified":"2022-02-03T21:09:22","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T04:09:22","slug":"david-rogier-founder-and-ceo-of-masterclass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/2022\/02\/03\/david-rogier-founder-and-ceo-of-masterclass\/","title":{"rendered":"David Rogier, Founder and CEO of MasterClass"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MasterClass <\/strong>is a subscription based online streaming platform of video lessons. The defining feature of MasterClass <\/strong>is the quality (and star power) of its “teachers”, all of whom are successful and well-known in their respective fields. Some of MasterClass’s <\/strong>taglines include “Learn from the Best” and “They changed the world. Now you.”, drawing heavily on it’s unique one-on-one master-student connection offering. MasterClass <\/strong>offers a myriad of topics ranging from Food, Sports & Gaming, Music, Writing, and more. As a subscription-based service, MasterClass <\/strong>offers annual memberships at three separate tiers (Standard, Plus, Premium). A new addition is an “At Work” MasterClass<\/strong> version which offers a one-time 12-month activation code for businesses to provide employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Rogier founded MasterClass <\/strong>(then known as Yanka Industries named after his grandmother) in 2014, with the official MasterClass <\/strong>launch in 2015. He received an BA and an MBA and spent a year post-education working for a seed-stage venture-capital fund run by one of his Stanford professors before launching his own venture. He initially developed the idea for a “education” venture from a discussion with his grandmother on the quality of learning, and the rhetoric surrounding him from colleagues on how what they had learned in formal education was quickly irrelevant (many noted feelings of being “ripped off”, which Rogier himself identified with as a learner with a history of struggles within formal education). When he set about starting the venture, he began by paying strangers $25 on Craigslist to tell him about their experiences with education. These discussions led him to the question “What if anyone could learn from the best?” and fundraising and recruiting began for the first three instructors at MasterClass<\/strong>. MasterClass<\/strong> now has over 150 instructors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within MasterClass’s <\/strong>Leadership Team, there appear to be no formally trained educators, but a wealth of business graduates, and notably an award winning film producer who manages Content (which in this case encompasses curriculum development). Other team members exist for general business operations such as legal council, human resources, marketing, finances, and diversity\/equity\/inclusion. Each member of the Leadership Team, however, has an impressive repertoire of qualifications for their role – example: the current MasterClass <\/strong>Chief Product Officer Paul Bankhead was previously a senior director of product management at Google managing their Google Play Store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*It is worth noting that when MasterClass <\/strong>launched in 2015, it was attributed two co-founders, David Rogier and Aaron Rasmussen. Rasmussen was the chief technology offiicer and creative director for MasterClass <\/strong>at this time until his departure in 2017. Much of the fomatting of MasterClass’s <\/strong>services were born during this time frame. Rasmussen is a self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur who has since launched https:\/\/www.outlier.org\/ which offers a similar service to MasterClass <\/strong>within the for-credit online university-level teachings.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The major inspiration that I can draw from MasterClass’s <\/strong>founder David Rogier is that nothing is quite out of reach. One of the main draws of MasterClass <\/strong>is having the “master” instruction, a master whose attention certainly feels out of reach to the average person or entrepreneur. Which budding environmentalist would imagine that they could have a direct instruction from Dr. Jane Goodall, for example? This extensive effort to deliver the “best of the best” inspires me to approach my own ideas this way: if I could do it the best way, what would that be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a closing point, I came across this interesting article about MasterClass and the future of education – worth a read! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the Year 2120. MasterClass Is the Only School Left.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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MasterClass is a subscription based online streaming platform of video lessons. The defining feature of MasterClass is the quality (and star power) of its “teachers”,…<\/p>\n

Read moreDavid Rogier, Founder and CEO of MasterClass<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":89524,"featured_media":3783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-founders-parade","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3781"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3790,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3781\/revisions\/3790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec522\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}