£100 million valuation and 19 million learners
Simon Nelson, former founding CEO of FutureLearn, shares his experience of building and scaling Europe’s largest MOOC platform. Having guided the company from its inception through rapid growth, a revenue plateau, a hard pivot and a nine-figure valuation, he is full of valuable advice to founders building edtech solutions for schools and universities.
Welcome to the Emerge Product-Market Fit Academy series, where we bring you practical insights and advice from accomplished operators and founders in edtech. This series is dedicated to helping early stage edtech founders navigate the challenging path to achieving product-market fit.
Simon Nelson is CEO of QA Higher Education, a leading provider of higher education services to learners, universities and employers with a focus on bridging the skills gaps. He draws on a 25-year career building products and services across media and education impacting millions of people worldwide, including the world’s largest premium international schools group, Nord Anglia Education and the world’s leading public service broadcaster, the BBC.
Before joining QA, Simon was the founding CEO of the Europe’s largest MOOC platform, FutureLearn, from launch in 2012 until mid-2020. Over this period, 15 million (now 19 million) people signed up to short courses and degrees on FutureLearn, delivered by the world’s top universities.
In this article, Simon shares the fascinating story of FutureLearn. It is a journey rich with fluctuating strategies, an existential crisis and a bold pivot, ultimately culminating in a valuation that soared to nine figures. Describing himself as a ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’, Simon has experience of selling to educational institutions while at FutureLearn and also being pitched to by edtech founders while at Nord Anglia. He draws from these experiences to share advice for edtech founders looking to sell their product to schools or universities.
This is the first instalment of a two-part series on FutureLearn. To discover more about its fundraising journey, £100 million valuation, and Simon’s advice for navigating your relationship with investors, subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when we share part two.
By the end of this article, you’ll understand more about:
- The inception of FutureLearn
The origin story of Europe’s largest MOOC platform, FutureLearn. - FutureLearn’s path to monetisation
FutureLearn’s pivot from free-to-convert to a paid model with university partners, prompted by stalled revenues and an existential crisis. - Selling to educational institutions
How to successfully sell edtech solutions to educational institutions.
THE INCEPTION OF FUTURELEARN
In 2012, Simon Nelson was presented with a challenge that would alter the course of his career, ignite a transformative journey into education — and leave a lasting mark on Europe’s edtech landscape. Summoned by the vice-chancellor of The Open University, a pioneer of distance learning, Simon was asked to spearhead Britain’s riposte to American MOOC giants such as Coursera and edX. Simon agreed, albeit unsure of what exactly lay ahead, and plunged headlong into building the company that would become his focus for most of the next decade. Nine months later, armed with a blend of audacious vision, extraordinary talent and a generous £15 million in funding, FutureLearn was born. What followed was anything but a linear trajectory, a story of fluctuating strategies and bold pivots — ultimately culminating in a valuation that soared to nine figures.
As FutureLearn grew, it was perpetually juggling investment in quality, learner growth and monetisation. But it was FutureLearn’s early focus on quality to which Simon attributes much of its success.
“At the beginning we agreed with The Open University that the most important thing was quality. We had to launch a quality platform that would differentiate us from other players in the market and in no way undermine The Open University’s brand. When you look back, it might be really easy to prioritise monetisation or learner growth from the beginning. But actually, the thing that really ultimately drove that a £100 million valuation was the investment in a quality platform. We definitely got that right.”
Putting such a quality platform on the market quickly led to strong learner growth and, in some cases, phenomenal surges, with individual courses reaching hundreds of thousands of people in a few weeks. However, as learner numbers grew, so did the need to monetise and progress to sustainability, and the balance of priorities inside the company shifted.
As a founder, it’s important to understand that there will be competing priorities and to identify them early on. These priorities will likely change over time and the order in which you prioritise them is important. For FutureLearn, prioritising quality first led to learner growth, and ultimately revenue. Given that these priorities are not static, founders should hold regular reviews to reassess priorities and alignment. This will ensure that you are always navigating by the right North Star metric for the stage your company is at.
FUTURELEARN’S PATH TO MONETISATION
FutureLearn offers a valuable case study on the complex terrain of scaling and monetising edtech products.
Initially, FutureLearn was riding high on the promise that it could convert a proportion of its numerous free learners into paying customers. However, despite its optimistic forecasts and linear growth assumption, revenues plateaued at £2M. Simultaneously, there was a leadership change at The Open University, FutureLearn’s primary owner and shareholder at the time, and with this change in leadership came the threat of being shut down if the company did not come closer to profitability in the next six months.
“At that moment, we really had to pivot. We had to go to our university partners, to whom we had previously agreed to give the platform for free if they provided the courses, and tell them that we’re going to have to start charging them. But in return for charging them for the platform, we were going to develop it in certain ways that they would want. And you know what? That was probably the biggest lesson for me, because I was really nervous about going to these university vice-chancellors and saying, I’ve got to start charging you. And what kept coming back at me was, actually, you don’t value what you don’t pay for.”
Simon was shocked at the response from universities. Assured by FutureLearn’s strong learner growth, they responded positively. Universities felt that if they had to pay for the platform but it would be more tailored to them as clients, then they were even more comfortable than if access to the platform was given for free. Simon took a valuable lesson from the pivot: people do not value free as much as you think. Despite changing the approach to monetisation, from assuming conversion from free learners to monetising via universities, Simon recalls that only one university out of dozens of partners dropped out due to the payment element. All FutureLearn’s other university partners agreed to pay — and suddenly they had £3 million revenue coming in, breaking out of the previous plateau.
However, the pivot was not without its challenges, particularly in terms of company culture. FutureLearn had long championed a mission to transform access to education, providing free learning to underserved populations globally. The shift to monetisation unsettled many employees who had been drawn to the company’s altruistic goals and felt conflicted about investing more time and resources into paid courses. Simon emphasises the importance of being transparent from the outset with your team about the commercial objectives, especially in edtech where the line between purpose and profit is often blurry. “It was so hard culturally to pivot the organisation later on.” Simon urges founders to be clear with their teams about the importance of the financial sustainability of their ventures, alongside their mission.
One year after its existential crisis, FutureLearn was at £6 million in revenue, and then £8 million the following year. “If I look back on it, I and the team had to be jolted out of the path we were on in order to drive that,” Simon admits. However, founders don’t need to wait for an existential crisis to reassess their monetisation strategy or consider a pivot. You can conduct A/B tests on different pricing models to validate which model resonates with your target audience. Like your priorities, your business model is not static, so it’s crucial to evaluate regularly whether your business model aligns closely with the core value you offer to your customers. And, as FutureLearn’s pivot demonstrates, the ‘customer’ may not be who you initially thought.
SELLING TO EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
Simon’s background gives him unique insight into how to sell edtech products, with his experience of selling to universities at FutureLearn and also being sold to by edtech companies, as the Group Digital Director at Nord Anglia. At Nord Anglia, it was Simon who called the shots on which digital solutions were adopted by the world’s largest premium international schools group. He summarises his top three recommendations for edtech founders selling to educational institutions.
- Invest in growing your network instead of cold outreach
Often, cold calling or email ad campaigns are immediately discarded by the recipients. Simon notes that warm introductions were always the origin of the partnerships he made at FutureLearn and the solutions he adopted at Nord Anglia. Founders should invest in building their network so they can strategically identify common connections and find ways to be introduced to the decision-maker at their target institution. Simon emphasises the role of advisory boards, investors and mentors in supporting founders with this, urging founders to start building these relationships, if they don’t have them already. At FutureLearn, Simon accredits much of their early traction to the fact that they signed up half of the top 40 UK universities within a couple of months. “The reason for that was the vice-chancellor of The Open University was an amazing networker. He was a peer of the vice-chancellors of those universities, he had the British Government’s Universities Minister right alongside him, backing what we were doing. We had fantastic entry. That opened doors.” - Find the correct decision-maker
The next step is getting to the right level in the organisation. In his role at Nord Anglia, he found that a lot of organisations would approach him directly, even if he was not the right contact for the given solution. It resulted in an extra meeting, a prolonged sales cycle, and a higher chance of the pitch getting lost in someone’s inbox on the way. - Simplify your pitch to reduce time to decision
The best founders and salespeople know that decision-makers are often juggling numerous responsibilities. “They are probably busy as hell, stressed as hell, thinking about a dozen other things.” Coming in with a well-prepared, straightforward pitch that clearly identifies the problem, offers a solution, and outlines the next steps makes a big difference to the reception of your pitch. Taking the extra step to send follow-up materials that can easily be acted on shows a deep understanding of the needs and limitations of the decision-maker. Simon also notes that conferences, such as ASU+GSV or EdTechX, can be great places to approach target decision-makers, as they are often in a more open-minded state compared to when they are swamped with daily responsibilities and back-to-back calls. “There’s a reason those events exist,” Simon notes, emphasising the value of these settings for more creative discussions.
SUMMARY
In this instalment of Emerge’s PMF Academy series, Simon Nelson, the former founding CEO of FutureLearn, shares key insights from scaling Europe’s largest MOOC platform to a nine-figure valuation and 15 million learners, over his eight years at the company. Simon recounts FutureLearn’s journey through rapid growth, revenue plateaus and a business model pivot that helped break through the challenges. Drawing on his unique dual perspective — selling FutureLearn’s platform and evaluating edtech product pitches at Nord Anglia — Simon offers founders key advice on monetising edtech solutions and selling effectively to schools and universities. This is the first instalment of a two-part series on FutureLearn. To discover more about its fundraising journey and Simon’s advice for navigating your relationship with investors, stay tuned for part two by subscribing to our newsletter.
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