🏫 Founder Feature: Wes Kao
Co-founder at Maven
In This Edition
🎒How a volunteer project led to a professional passion
📚 The power and potential of cohort-based courses
🖼️ How to frame your ideas for your audience
About Wes
Wes Kao is co-founder at Maven, the first platform that makes it easy for experts to teach live cohort-based courses online. Maven has raised $25M from First Round Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
Before Maven, Wes was the co-founder of the altMBA with Seth Godin. Under her leadership, the altMBA grew from zero to 550 cities in 45 countries in three years of growth. As an advisor and consultant, she’s built courses for creators like Professor Scott Galloway (Section), Outlier.org (from the co-founder of Masterclass), and Morning Brew.
Wes earned her B.S. in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Her work has been featured in The Information, Inc, Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, Fast Company, and she is a guest lecturer at UC Berkeley and Harvard. She's also a mentor for Backstage Capital.
What sparked your passion for working in your field?
There were three pivotal moments that sparked my passion in education.
First, at age 16, I founded Packs of Love, a nonprofit that provided backpacks and supplies to underprivileged kids. Collaborating with brands like Walmart and Target, I donated tens of thousands of backpacks. For me, the beginning of the school year always represented a fresh start to be the person I wanted to be. I wanted to help every kid feel that thrill.
Second, in my mid-twenties, I retook Calculus because I was applying to business school. The admissions officers said they wanted to see stronger quantitative grades than what I had in undergrad. In undergrad, I got a C in Calculus. When I retook it, I got an A–mainly because the class had a small group of students and the professor asked us questions throughout class. I had always thought I “wasn’t good at math,” and this changed my entire view of myself. The learning environment and course format made all the difference.
Third, co-founding the altMBA with bestselling author Seth Godin. In 2014, we launched altMBA, a four-week online leadership and management course. It became the first mainstream cohort-based course that kicked off the entire category of live learning.
Can you tell us more about starting the altMBA with Seth Godin?
In 2014-2015, the altMBA was the first mainstream cohort-based course, an online workshop with components of in-person and virtual learning. When most people think of online courses, they think of pre-recorded videos that you watch by yourself without interaction or accountability. A cohort-based course has hands-on projects, live discussions and breakouts where you put into practice what you learn. It’s a much more interactive–and effective–way to learn.
When we first started, I was skeptical if you could recreate the magic of in-person learning with people just turning on their webcams. But within the first day, I was completely convinced. The Slack room that we set up was buzzing with activity. People were meeting up outside of the formal sessions. It opened my eyes to the potential of combining the best parts of online learning (scale, access) and the best part of in-person learning (magic from being surrounded by like-minded peers).
During my tenure, I grew the altMBA from zero to thousands of students in 45 countries and 500 cities. And it inspired me a few years later to co-found my current company, Maven.
How did you spend your time after the altMBA?
Post-altMBA in 2018, I explored replicating cohort-based learning across industries. I collaborated with folks like Professor Scott Galloway, the co-founders of Morning Brew, William Ury (best-selling author on negotiation), and the co-founder of Masterclass on his new venture. These projects proved to me that the concept of live learning could work across a variety of topics.
In 2020, I co-founded Maven with the co-founder of Udemy and first engineer at Venmo. Our vision was to make it easy for anyone to teach online, create a live course, and monetize their expertise–without dealing with logistical, administrative, and technical challenges. We wanted instructors to focus on what mattered most: connecting with their students.
Since then, we've had hundreds of instructors create courses on our platform, and over 20,000 students have participated in courses on topics including leadership, product management, design, etc. These courses have provided valuable learning opportunities for working professionals in tech looking to level up in their careers.
As you look back, what is one project you are proud of creating over the years?
I’m proud of creating the first mainstream cohort-based course. And in doing so, creating and popularizing the category of cohort-based courses.
The past 10 years of online education were about video-driven courses with no interactivity and no community. Completion rates for static courses like these are 6-10%. I believe that the next 10 years of online learning will be cohort-based learning, which has a 75% completion rate.
My company, Maven, is combining the scale/access of video-based courses with the magic/connection of traditional in-person learning experiences. This new learning format is transforming how working professionals continue to upskill and improve in their craft, and I’m really proud of that.
What is your communications style as a leader?
Most of us have to write at work every day. We write to customers, leads, our boss, colleagues, the public, etc. But this is not a skill that’s formally taught.
By spending a few minutes upfront to frame your ideas and empathize with your reader, you can be much more persuasive and advocate for your ideas more effectively. For example, try reducing cognitive load for your reader. Don’t make them decipher what you mean. I keep this top of mind at all times.
And most importantly, make your pitch 90% about the other person. Why does it benefit them?
For example, once I needed a direct report to clean a messy data set. Instead of saying “you have to do this,” I framed it in the context of his career goals. He had mentioned wanting to work more with data, so I explained how clean data is key before doing any kind of analysis. It made a big difference and helped him understand why it was a necessary part of the work.
I’ve had folks describe me as tough but fair. I’m direct. I love giving specific, actionable feedback and I don’t pull punches. A lot of people think directness is carte blanche to be scathing or abrasive. I think that’s lazy thinking–it’s an excuse. There are absolutely ways you can be direct without being a jerk. Learning how to do this will help you go far in your career.
How do you approach communicating internally with your team?
In an organization, your team is trusting your recommendation at face value. If you write a strategy doc or proposal memo, it’s dangerous to act like you have 90% conviction if you really only have 20% conviction. Your company will spend real cash, effort, and headcount to work on the idea you’re advocating for.
You don’t want to aggrandize your level of certainty here. You want to do the opposite:
• Point out what you’re uncertain about
• Share the nuances and edge cases
• Identify why this might not work and how to test your assumptions
These nuances are valuable for your boss and team—and even for yourself to better understand your own thought process.
On a related note, employees often assume if they propose an idea and it gets shot down, that they failed. But this isn’t true. The goal isn’t to get a yes. The goal is to have a thoughtful discussion and come to an informed decision, even if that decision is a no.
Just because the end result was not to pursue an idea, doesn’t mean you failed. You’re not supposed to move forward with every idea. You want to identify high-quality, timely ideas for the business and that’s not going to be every idea. We usually equate moving forward as the holy grail, but a no is equally powerful and beneficial to the business.
What are two of your favorite essays that you've written over the years and would want to share with our readers?
One of my favorite essays is spiky point of view. We live in a noisy world. Whichever industry you’re in, there are thousands of other people like you trying to get noticed. Unless you distinguish yourself, you’ll never get a chance to show how different you actually are. To stand out, you need to develop what I call a spiky point of view.
Another favorite is an essay about how to be strategic when giving feedback. I call this idea strategy, not self-expression. Most people think giving feedback is about unloading all the frustration you have been loading up. That is not effective. Feedback conversations are opportunities for behavior change, and to achieve that, you should focus on saying only what will incentivize the other person to improve.
How do you continue your learning journey?
I’m constantly learning from my team and the people I interact with on a daily basis. I’m saving screenshots in my swipe file. I’ll analyze positive and negative interactions in the moment. Recently, a colleague shared feedback with our CEO, and I was impressed by how he framed his argument in Slack. Most people might think it’s weird to learn from a Slack message, but there are micro-moments like this that happen every day that you can learn from.
The people around you are the richest source of ongoing learning. The second best option are cohort-based courses because you can intentionally surround yourself with high-caliber people.
Thank you for reading The Switchboard. ☎️ Every interview edition is based on a live conversation and personally written by me — Julia Levy. Learn more about why I write. Review the Index of past posts.
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