Thrun retook Udacity's helm, cut 130 jobs and assigned every student a mentor in two weeks

Udacity sells online 'nanodegrees' in technical subjects such as AI, self-driving cars and digital marketing to consumers and enterprises.

Cutting complexity, slashing content costs and giving every student a paid mentor can lift graduation rates and make Udacity profitable.

Udacity's 2017 revenue grew 100% on programs like its self-driving car and deep learning nanodegrees; 2018 then fizzled. CEO Vishal Makhijani left in October and co-founder Sebastian Thrun stepped in as interim CEO and head of content.

About four weeks before the article, Thrun sent an all-hands email saying the trajectory was not long-term tenable and that 'we must act, and act now'. About 130 people were laid off, the content team shrank from about 140 to 40, and a former HP and GE executive, Lalit Singh, joined as interim COO. A mentor program started, matching every new student with a mentor.

The 2015 unicorn round of $105M set growth expectations the 2018 business could not meet

Thrun judged the company had grown too quickly and become burdened with red tape

High-polish video production created a bottleneck in how many courses could be released

Personal mentors were the lever he believed could raise graduation rates and unit economics

A founder returning to a company that grew too fast can restructure quickly by cutting production cost and shifting spend to student outcomes, but the results are untested at the time.

As of 22 February 2019 the mentor program and new leadership were weeks old; Thrun himself said it remained to be seen whether the strategy would work, and unnamed sources inside the company voiced doubts.