Ventures Capitalists Love Profitable Companies That Don’t Need Money
TheCUBE headed over to Stanford University for the school’s 17th annual Accel Symposium. There, we had the chance to talk with keynote speakers Lynda Weinman, co-founder and executive chairman of Lynda.com, and Bud Colligan of Accel Partners and also currently a member of Lynda.com’s board.
In her keynote speech, Weinman talked about the story of Lynda.com and online education, as well as their plans and vision for the initiative. Lynda.com has been publishing for 17 years now, and it was 10 years ago when they put up an online library that’s being adopted by both consumers and institutions in the enterprise. This solved the problem on top of changing changing software technology, creativity, and business skills. Right now, the company is fixated on growing the company.
All in all, Lynda.com has raised a total of $130 million from investors Accel Partners, Spectrum Equity, and Meritech Capital.
Bud Colligan, when asked what attracted him to Lynda.com, cited two reasons: business model and content!
“What really attracted me to the company was, first of all, they had a very simple business model. You give your credit card, you pay 25 dollars per month, when you get the training you need you don’t have to continue, but we’ve got over 2,000 courses so there’s a… wealth of information and learning that you can take advantage of. But it’s simple, right? A lot of people brought Lynda.com into the enterprise. It’s a very good lead generation system for people to enter at a very low cost.
“Second thing I’m really interested in is the quality of the content. Lynda and Bruce have done an amazing job developing a curated library of very high-quality content in the creative area in development tool and programming and business skills. Having been around multimedia and authoring tools … I was very atuned to finding a company that has simple model and had great content, so there’s no friction to grow in the company and that why I was attracted to it. “
On top of that, the company has always been profitable. Before Bud joined Lynda.com as a board member a little over three years ago, the company has already been up and running for 14 years.
“Lynda and Bruce, her husband, has been at this for 17 years, and I joined the board about a little over three years ago. They had 14 years of development before I came along, and the interesting thing about the company is that it has always been profitable. It’s nice as venture capitalist if you actually intersect the company that has been profitable and doesn’t need the money, and that was the case with Lynda.com. “
To watch the interview, check out the video below.
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