Gagan Biyani

Gagan Biyani, Co-founder and CEO of Maven, discusses his journey from founding Udemy to launching the innovative cohort-based education platform, Maven. He shares insights on revolutionizing online learning and the importance of engaging instructors. Gagan candidly reflects on the challenges of his food delivery startup, Sprig, which despite raising $60M, ultimately failed. The conversation touches on the rising costs of traditional education and how modern platforms can offer better, more accessible alternatives for lifelong learners.

Today’s episode is with Gagan Biyani, co-founder and CEO of Maven, a company that empowers the world’s experts to offer cohort-based courses directly to their audience.After being early at 3 startups that achieved over $1 million in run-rate in their first six months of going live, Gagan has learned some valuable lessons and seen a wide range of outcomes — from Udemy going on to IPO in 2021, to Sprig shutting down in 2017.In our conversation, we dive deeper into the process of starting a startup. We start on generating ideas and open-ended exploration. We talk about key signals to look for in the market and the competition, as well as the mistakes he sees many aspiring founders make.Next, he recaps his concept of minimum viable tests for validating early versions of your idea. As we mention in the episode, Gagan wrote a popular article on The First Round Review last year, where he shared much more detail about his “Minimum Viable Testing Process.”Then, we dig into how you start bringing the idea to life, from exploring different potential business models, to selecting your co-founders and managing that relationship as the company grows.If you’re eager to hear even more on finding startup ideas from Gagan, he’s teaming up with The Hustle’s Sam Parr to run an Ideation Bootcamp on the Maven platform — learn more and sign up here by May 2nd if you’re interested.You can follow Gagan on Twitter at @gaganbiyani. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.

Gagan Biyani, CEO of Maven and cofounder of Udemy, discusses topics such as the keys to learning, starting businesses for the wrong reasons, greatness and evolution, the importance of continuous learning, lessons from professional failure, overcoming fear of judgment, and marketing online courses.

Gagan Biyani, a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Maven, reflects on his journey from co-founding Udemy to launching his latest project. He shares how a free truffle taught him the pitfalls of traditional business thinking. Biyani emphasizes the importance of intuition over metrics and discusses fostering company culture while scaling. He candidly reveals lessons from his exit at Udemy and the emotional complexities of partnerships. The conversation also dives into AI's transformative potential in education, exploring its limitations and the need for human touch in learning.

Gagan Biyani, CEO of Maven and Co-Founder of Udemy, discusses idea formation, the five stages of ideation, and innovative startup concepts like 'Quora for people' and 'reference checks as a service'. The conversation explores scalability, AI integration, and the potential of creating a 'cameo for experts' platform.