What is MasterClass? What problem does it solve?

I’ve been working in online education for the last +6 years, and MasterClass has been in my periphery for as long. The first course I checked out was Christina Aguilera Teaches Singing. That was Fall of 2015.

Many friends talk about how much they enjoy MasterClass. This I attribute to their slick trailers and great ad targeting.

But what is MasterClass? What problem is it solving?

To answer this question, I started with the Reforge Use Case map from the Retention + Engagement Deep Dive program. In the map, we want to answer the following questions:

• What problem does it solve?
• Who is using it?
• Why are they using it?
• What’s the alternative?
• How often are they using it?

There can be multiple use cases, but here’s what I landed on: