Coursera · Strategy · Senior · 45 to 60 minutes

Should Coursera enter enterprise now?

Coursera is an online learning platform that offers university courses to people around the world. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Strategic judgment
Monetization strategy
Org design
Cross functional leadership
Metrics

The situation

It is 2013, and Coursera has strong learner growth and mission momentum but only about $1 million in revenue. The CEO and CPO have asked you, a senior PM, to recommend whether Coursera should open an enterprise business line for employers, not just individual learners. Several signals make this feel urgent: many learners register with work email addresses, corporate learning budgets for business and technical skills are growing, and university partners appear more comfortable with companies paying than consumers paying for access. But the current paid offer is mainly course completion certificates, which may not matter much to employers. Internally, the company culture is deeply mission driven and skeptical of monetization that could reduce access to learning. The product organization is small and currently split across growth, monetization, and learning experience, while business development is separately talking to potential employer customers. You need to recommend if Coursera should pursue enterprise now, what value it should sell, how product and sales should work together, and how to protect the learner mission while still building a durable business.

What to produce

A 2 page strategy memo.

Your answer must

Make a clear recommendation on whether Coursera should invest in an enterprise business now, later, or not at all, and explain why.
Define the initial enterprise customer, including who the buyer is, who the end user is, and what job Coursera would solve for each.
Propose the first monetized offering, including what should remain free, what should be paid, and why that design fits Coursera's mission and partner realities.
Recommend an operating model for the first 12 months, covering product ownership, sales involvement, and how to balance enterprise needs with the existing consumer learning experience.
Specify the key experiments, decision gates, and success metrics you would use to judge revenue potential, learner value, and mission or partner risk.

Constraints

Your recommendation must preserve broad access to learning and address internal concern that monetization could undermine the mission.
Your plan must work with university partner sensitivities and the fact that course content comes from external academic partners.
Your plan must fit a very small product organization at roughly $1 million in revenue and cannot assume a fully built enterprise team or large sales force on day one.

Format

Use five sections, decision, target customer and value proposition, monetization design, operating model and go to market, metrics and risks.

How Coursera actually played it

Guest write-up on Coursera's movement into enterprise, balancing monetization with learning, aligning product and sales and measuring impact.

Shift mindset when moving to enterprise
Coordinate product and sales
Do not let monetization overshadow learning

Built from How Coursera won the Enterprise segment by Bandan Singh (Productify).