gaganbiyani

Congrats Garry - pretty amazing story!

We pay a stipend for the whole summer ($2K). I've heard everything from unpaid to $4K for the summer. More than that for a business intern, in my opinion, is unnecessary and doesn't get you kids who are there for the right reasons.

No - not for free courses. This course is meant to be free forever.

We were a Founder Institute company and I thought the Founder Institute sessions were extremely valuable. Those videos are very informative - the people teaching them have all had a major success in their startup careers. Aaron did Mint.com, Adeo has started 8 companies, Phil is CEO of Evernote.

Gagan

Dear friends on Hacker News,

DO NOT worry about the 1000 person limit. We'll release more codes if we need to. You are all welcome :). I'm a huge fan of HN. Just please enjoy the course - we spent a lot of time convincing the Founder Institute to release these videos and I hope you like them.

Best, Gagan Biyani

Co-Founder of Udemy gaganATudemyDOTcom

See my response to the previous comment. Not to be cocky - but I think I know enough Google employees now that I probably could find a position there. However, I don't in any way want to work there right now.

:) I no longer want to apply for a job at Google - that was 2 years ago when I was still interested in going through that route. Now I'm co-founder of a company called udemy.com and quite happy with my life as an entrepreneur.

I applied to Google and got rejected.

Its a pretty interesting story so I thought I'd share:

I applied through the traditional on-campus recruiting at UC Berkeley. Got past the first round of interviews on Berkeley's campus and then was taken to the Mountain View campus for 4 interviews and a bunch of events. That night, I got a call saying that the interviewers really liked me and recommended that I be hired. At most companies, that would mean that I was made an offer. Instead, they have these "hiring panels" where executives from various departments take a look at your resume, the notes from interviewers, and your transcript / other related documents. 3 weeks later I got an e-mail saying I was rejected during one of these panels. These people never met me; in fact, the 6 people who had met me all recommended that Google hire me. It was kind of weird, since no other company I had applied for had a process where people who hadn't interviewed you made the final decision on whether you should be hired.

Obviously, I am a little frustrated by it - so take this with a grain of salt. However, I think that my experience was emblematic of a few specific issues with the hiring processes there (though they have some amazing processes as well):

1) People who've never met you should not be pontificating in large panels about whether you would be a good fit. That just doesn't make sense.

2) Google has a very strong academic focus on hiring. It is clear when you interview with them that they care a lot about top-brand schools and top GPA's. They seem to believe that the best students will make the best employees. I am not sure, but I think the reason I got rejected may have to do with two C's on my college transcript (which is not indicative of my inability to Ace calculus but rather my lack of interest in attending class). Personally, I think the academic focus is much to their detriment - and a major part of the reason they've struggled at social. That said, Google has some brilliant people who I'm sure I would've loved to work with :). Take this answer for what it is but hopefully you'll find it valuable.

Good question! The simple answer is that our cofounders are immigrants and we need to support their H1B visa for them to be full-time. Unfortunately, we cannot support their visa without funding. Furthermore, investment is a way to accelerate growth. We're now able to hire additional team members and pay ourselves salaries (I had $250 left in my bank account and $3K in credit card debt when we raised money, so we were nearly broke).

Hope this helps! - Gagan, Cofounder of Udemy

You're right - if we gave up 80% of the company, it would be an awful raise. However, it's a pretty fair assumption that we didn't do that. We chose to take in $1M instead of $300K (which is all we needed). Why would we take in more capital if the valuation wasn't fair?