Udemy’s 2018 Year in Review

We’ve made another trip around the sun, so it’s time to look back on what we’ve accomplished this past year. Thanks to all of the Udemy instructors and students who’ve spent time and effort making and taking courses and improving lives through learning with us.

People Innovators by Udemy for Business

This year’s People Innovators Summit was the biggest ever (and the best, if you ask us). We welcomed almost 300 attendees and featured a lineup of stellar speakers, including people leaders from PayPal, Charles Schwab, Lyft, WeWork, and Adobe. In addition to the keynote by award-winning researcher, author, and Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino, one of the most anticipated sessions was having Starbuck’s VP of Global Learning and Development, Molly Hill, speak about how her company rolled out unconscious bias training across all of its 8,000 stores in response to a well-publicized business challenge. Watch full video coverage of the 2018 People Innovators Summit here.

Growth continues!

Udemy’s marketplace keeps blowing past milestones. Check out how much we’ve grown in just the last 12 months:

January 2018 December 2018
Students 20 million 30 million
Instructors 30,000 42,000
Courses 65,000 100,000
Course enrollments 125 million 190 million
Minutes consumed 13 million 22 million

This was also the year Udemy grew our physical presence around the world, with the opening of new offices in São Paulo and Denver and the expansion of our European headquarters in Dublin.

Udemy out & about

We hosted our third Udemy LIVE instructor conference here in San Francisco and went on the road with regional workshops in Los Angeles and Toronto. Look for more Udemy events in far-flung locations in 2019.

Udemy leadership also represented us at events around the world. CEO Kevin Johnson took one of the biggest stages at Web Summit in Lisbon to discuss whether robots are killing or creating jobs (answer: both!). And our head of L&D, Shelley Osborne, racked up her own frequent-flier miles at more than 30 industry conferences.

We are #1

Udemy was ranked the number one large business in the annual “Best Places to Work in the Bay Area” awards given by the San Francisco Business Times and the Silicon Valley Business Journal, which recognizes Bay Area companies that have strong company cultures, invest in their employees, and maintain high levels of employee satisfaction. This is the fourth year Udemy was recognized as a “Best Place to Work in the Bay Area.”

Like we said at the top, none of this is possible without the passion and commitment of our instructors and students. We look forward to learning and growing together in 2019 and beyond.