That crunching sound you hear is software eating the world, and TechCrunch is always looking for ways to pull a chair up to the feast. For example, we have CrunchBase for startup data and CrunchBoard for jobs, and once upon a time there was CrunchPad, too. Not everything works out, but today with high hopes we are launching CrunchU, which is a collection of 30 online courses that we are offering to TechCrunch readers in partnership with Udemy, a San Francisco-based startup dedicated to “democratizing education by making top quality content from the world’s experts dramatically more affordable for anyone, anywhere.”
We like the sound of that, because we all have a lot more to learn, and keeping it real and affordable is what education should be all about. Our initial course line-up includes offerings from TechCrunch friends, like 500 Startups’ Dave McClure on “Raising Money for Startups” and Eric Ries on “The Lean Startup,” as well as experts Gagan Biyani on “Introduction to Growth Hacking” and Russ Fradin on “Startup Hiring.”
We have a certain bias for startups, no surprise, but there is lots of other brain candy in the course mix too, like starter courses on Android and iOS, Ruby and jQuery, as well as gamification, programming for non-programmers, SEO, and in case you just want to have fun, digital photography.
Our plan is to introduce new courses each quarter, based on what we learn about TechCrunch readers’ likes and dislikes. We also have the option of creating courses on our own, with the help of Udemy’s awesome course-creation tools. If you have an idea for a course, or want to teach one yourself, learn more here.
So if you have a minute, check out the CrunchU course catalogue and find some educational itch you want to scratch. The tuition sting is teeny, but it will be automatically discounted 50% off from today until May 18.