CreativeLive, the fast-growing online education startup founded by photographer Chase Jarvis and entrepreneur Craig Swanson, today announced something relatively unique: The first-ever free 24/7 live online education broadcast network.
At any time of the day, wherever you may be in the world, creativeLive will have live classes being taught by experts on five free channels: Art & Design, Business & Money, Maker & Craft, Music & Audio and Photo & Video.
Founded in Seattle in 2010, CreativeLive just recently raised a $21.5 million venture round, bringing total funding to $29.5 million. Over 500 courses have been recorded since the company was founded, and more than two million students in over 200 countries have participated in a CreativeLive course. Those students have consumed over a billion minutes of content and are watching, on average, more than three hours per class at a time.
In an interview with Jarvis last month, the co-founder alluded to reaching multiple time zones around the globe.
“The whole international landscape for us is really interesting,” said Jarvis, noting that most of the programs are now broadcast in English. “But we are not doing our job unless our core product is the best in the world, and being successful there is the most important thing.”
CreativeLive CEO Mika Salmi tells us that the inspiration for the 24/7 network came after the company compared audience sizes and revenue for days when it had nothing airing to when there was something being broadcasted.
“We did some experiments last spring with re-broadcasts and the results made us think we should do more,” Salmi said. “The 24/7 network came out of that.”
For now, Salmi said, the network will be focused on those five channels. He added that this was all in the works before the recent big funding round, and that the CreativeLive website itself will be seeing some “major enhancements” in the next month.
CreativeLive makes money be reselling the courses after they’ve aired. Those courses, which are in-depth tutorials often led by best-selling authors, Pulitzer Prize winners or other top experts in their fields, typically range from $29 to $199.
The company pays instructors a percentage of revenue from the class downloads, with some instructors pulling in more than $100,000 for two or three-day workshops.
CreativeLive also has two full-blown production studios: a 12,000 square-foot space in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, along with its bustling 10,000 square foot location in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood.
Learn more about CreativeLive here.
Editor’s note: Story updated at 9 a.m. PT with comments from Salmi.
