Gagan Biyani

I’m amazed at how many high-performers have serious or chronic health issues like TMJ, severe muscle pain, carpal tunnel. I’ve dealt with my share of health issues; imho it all comes down to stress. A story about stress and what I’ve learned from managing it...

One day, I woke up with a pain in my side that wouldn’t go away. Hours later, the doctors were performing an appendectomy. I was out for 2 weeks and it hurt like hell. I don’t think it was a coincidence that I was fired from Udemy 4 months later.

(More to come on that in a future post, follow now to get the story.)

After Udemy, I got healthy and built a fitness routine. My physical health was better than ever, and people noticed. Problem solved, right?

The good times didn't last. Running Sprig was freaking hard (all startups are) and soon I developed TMJ - severe jaw pain related to grinding one’s teeth. It would get so bad that at times I couldn’t even get out of bed in the morning.

The problem wasn’t the TMJ or appendicitis. The problem was stress.
It only dawned on me after we shut Sprig down and I went on sabbatical. Within weeks, I started to feel great again. Walking in 100° heat in Havana, I had more energy than I ever did in San Francisco. As my mental stress subsided, my physical stress did too.

Now, I’m on my 3rd company and worried about falling into the stress vortex again. After 10 years battling this, I’ve learned a lot and thought I’d share 5 lessons:

1. Strategy is everything. You have more control than you realize. You choose your career, your goals, and how you work. You can learn to negotiate with your colleagues/boss/board about expectations and responsibilities. Create a work/life strategy that works for you.

2. Physical health. I work out 3-4x/week, try to eat whole foods, and drink responsibly. I used to meditate but found I prefer long walks and exercise. The most important thing about your physical health: do things that you can do for the next 10 years. No fad diets, no unreasonable expectations. Sustainable > effective.

3. Mental Health is more important than physical health. For non-founders: get a good therapist/life coach, build a “circle” of colleagues at other companies with similar jobs, and find a good mentor to provide perspective.

4. Family & Friends. So many people are only friends with other career-oriented people. This is a mistake. Long-term friends, families, and significant others are there even if your career falters. Invest in these relationships; don’t let them go by the wayside because of work.

5. Monk mode. As an absolute last resort, go into monk mode. No sugar, no alcohol, self-care weekends, meditate & exercise daily. “Monk mode” is not an ideal permanent state, at least not for me. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

This is a lifelong battle. I deal with it every day. But it does get better - as you get older and have more perspective, the things that used to stress you out seem trivial. As my mother says, “Health is Wealth.”

How Udemy solved the Chicken and Egg problem:

The dirty little secret of edtech: the biggest names don’t actually care if you learn anything.

As co-founder of Udemy, it is something I reckon with every day…

Duolingo - edtech’s only decacorn, worth $14B. Brilliant app, addictive product, and great for motivation. But let’s be honest: most users can’t hold a basic conversation in their chosen language. It’s a game, not an education.

Masterclass - it’s called “edutainment” for a reason. Great brand and team. But not useful for serious learning.

Udemy/Coursera opened access to millions, but video courses have a fatal flaw: they only work for the most motivated. 4-10% completion rates! I still get DMs about their positive impact, but still average person doesn’t view them as mainstream solutions to education.

Kajabi/Teachable nailed creator monetization. But many (not all) creators don’t prioritize outcomes — just sales. Too many $5,000 “get rich quick” courses with spammy marketing. There are gems, of course, but still not enough quality for mainstream acceptance.

Then there’s University of Phoenix, the worst offender. It proved you could tap federal student loans, deliver poor outcomes, and keep billions in revenue.

Ironically, the best education models — coding bootcamps like App Academy, BloomTech, General Assembly, Galvanize — actually drove real outcomes. But they didn’t quite reach scale. In large part due to unfair (and immoral, imho) practices by the higher education cartel.

Here’s the thing: everyone in this space starts with good intentions.

I know the teams at Duolingo, Udemy, and others. They care. But the incentives of Edtech 1.0 pushed everyone toward engagement and monetization instead of real learning.

Public investors eventually caught on. Consumer growth stalled, B2B slowed, and valuations dropped. Coursera/Udemy are each ~$700M (!!) in annual revenue, but trade at 1.5-2.5x multiples (!!). It is a hard time in edtech.

We need Edtech 2.0.
The next generation needs to deliver real learning outcomes AND high engagement.

There’s a slew of companies trying - of course I believe Maven is one of them.

To build multiple $10B+ companies in education, we need to care deeply about whether people actually learn. American competitiveness is literally reliant on rebuilding our education system.

AI is about to trigger the largest upskilling need in modern history. The opportunity is massive — and this time, we can get it right.

It may not seem like it, but I’m optimistic. Out from the ashes of Edtech 1.0 will rise Edtech 2.0. The new generation is going to deliver value, and make people believe again.

Kinda crazy but Maven’s top instructors are officially making $5M/year…

It’s critical that some of our best minds don’t just build things, but also help others learn to build for themselves. Teaching has an exponential effect and making millions/year is serious incentive to do it.

I love that people who do this are getting paid for it.

“When I left my job they replaced me with 3 people” is not the flex you think it is.

I see this all the time. Someone leaves their job and brags about how the company had to hire multiple people to fill their shoes. They frame it as evidence of their indispensability.

Sometimes that is true. You were a unicorn and the company was left with a giant hole when you left. It happens, but it's rare.

But there are also three other potential situations:

1. You left while the company was growing. So the scope of your role kept rising and you either decided you didn’t enjoy the change or found a better opportunity. In this case, of course they were going to hire 3 people. Everyone’s job at an early stage company turns into 3 jobs. It’s just the laws of nature, nothing positive nor negative about your performance.

2. You should’ve been advocating for hiring more people and you didn’t. Your boss stepped in your absence and realized: shit we need this to be multiple functions to best take advantage of the opportunity here.

3. You were a great generalist, but the company needed specialists. Nothing wrong with that, but it's good to know this about yourself!

Great contributors and leaders make themselves replaceable. They build systems, document processes, and develop their teams so thoroughly that the work continues seamlessly without them. Most of the time it’s impressive that you did one job and they replaced you with three. But the even more impressive thing would be if you scaled yourself and optimized the team size/scope so that your company got the most out of that function. That's the actual flex.