Spark Plug #25: Make Once Sell Infinitely
Stuff worth sharing for research and learning technologists
🎓Imagine you wanted to get an MBA. What would you consider when picking your top business schools? You might think about who you are and the type of MBA you wanted to get, the reputation of the school🏛️, or maybe a recommendation from an alum👩🎓. You might also consider location and differences in teaching style or post-graduation career prospects. Let’s say you narrowed it down to US🇺🇸 schools because you like the program structure and the approach to an MBA degree there. Now, if you came across a business school that successfully operated as a fully-fledged business📊 diversified away (somewhat) from its reliance on student fees, would that be a deal-maker?
💰💰 For Harvard’s Business School, student fees are just 15% of its yearly revenue. About 28% come from its publishing business or $262M to be precise. Interestingly, Harvard Business Publishing was late to the online game💻, after initially refusing to have an online presence, in 2010 they could not deny the trend.
📈Today, they’ve got 11M views per month and 350k subscribers, more than 30M followers across social media and 400k subscribers on YouTube. And all of this with just 450 employees. This means, that its productivity per employee ($582k/employee) is way beyond any of the other media-only publishers. Forbes, for example, has about the same number of employees but makes just about $180M in revenues. (Read the whole piece here, in 🇫🇷 but google does a pretty good job with the translation. Alternatively, this analysis from The Generalist is spot on.)
How did this happen and what exactly is on their defensibility plate? Having the backing of a school that developed the Harvard Business Case definitely helped. But the key for Harvard Business Publishing's growth is their strategy to produce once, sell infinitely‼️🤯
🧠HBP publishes content that rarely becomes obsolete (even when out of date) and requires very little maintenance. It charges a ton, and it nailed the repackaging model. From articles and case studies published in its monthly review (~$20), these can go into special editions (think HBR’s 10 must-reads, ~$15), bundles (~$130), or even sold independently (~$10).
📣Another organization that publishes a review is the MIT. The Technology Review is a charity org, which means they also raise money from grants and contributions beyond publishing content. With 96 employees, TR makes about $17M (in 2019), with at least a third from its events. So about $183k per employee. Contrast that with the $582k for HBP. Harvard Business Publishing must be doing something right! 💪
💁More than a revenue source, the Harvard Business Review and the Technology Review are building a brand for their respective schools, keeping them fresh and really attractive for incoming students. This is the reason that HBP inspired a new generation of media presence in the startup space. Although not monetized as extensively, these clearly follow a similar format for their media: First Round Review from First Round VC covering leadership, business and product; a16z’s content covering the future of technologies; or HolonIQ and Educapital covering edtech trends.
🧑💻In other news:
Zendesk isn’t buying SurveyMonkey for $4B any longer.
Kahilla combines content, community and coaching to provide digital learning for business women. It raised $2M.
Scaler, an India-based startup, for upskilling professionals, raises $55M.
Domestika upskills creatives and raised $110M.
Fathom is building an AI notetaker for Zoom raised $4.7M.
Course Hero raised $380M at the end of last year and hired a vocal critic of edtech as an executive.
Chegg acquired language-learning Busuu for $436M, basically paying about $800 per subscriber.