Wes Kao is an expert on cohort based courses.
Previously, she was co-founder and Executive Director of Seth Godin’s altMBA
Useful articles
Learning first, community second: The juicy challenges of building course communities
Blog
Wes blogs at WesKao.com and at Medium.
In 2015, she did an experiment where she blogged for 29 days straight.
In July, 2020, she celebrated the 10 year anniversary of her blog.
Maven
Maven is a platform for cohort-based courses. Wes co-founded Maven with Shreyans Bhansali and Gagan Biyani.
You can learn more about the concept at a dedicated Notion page.
Wes announced that she was creating a new company in October, 2020. In December, they launched a crowdfunding campaign so anyone could invest in their startup.
They unveiled the name of the company in March, 2021. The process took 6 months and 4 of those months was securing their new domain.
Part of the launch involved a free course on How To Build A Cohort Based Course.
altMBA
The altMBA is an intensive, 4-week online workshop designed by Seth Godin for high-performing individuals who want to level up and lead.
Wes and Seth launched the concept in May, 2015. She posted a summary of the inaugural session at An incredible 31 day sprint.
She has written about the strategies she used for the project at How to grow a community from 0 to 2,000+ active alumni
Before the altMBA, she was Special Projects Lead for Seth Godin HQ, where she produced bestselling Udemy courses, hackathon days, the 7-day Your Turn Challenge, and the bestselling Leadership Workshop. She shared some of the behind the scenes details at her blog.
- Shipped: Seth Godin’s Freelancer course on Udemy
- Design considerations for launching the Your Turn book on Instagram
Past Projects
Good Morning Love
Good Morning Love was a side project Wes shipped in 2015. It was a seven day drip email campaign where you write lovey-dovey notes that get sent to your partner every morning from Feb 14 – Feb 21
She wrote about it more at The Complex Psychological Hooks I Used to Build a “Simple” Side Project.
Useful Articles
Online Courses
Learning first, community second: The juicy challenges of building course communities
The Super Specific How: How to make your cohort-based course more rigorous
Can people change? My thoughts on the altMBA
Learning first, community second: The juicy challenges of building course communities
Threads
Courses
- How is community building different for CBCs vs other products? What are challenges unique to courses?
- Analysis of course communities
Marketing
- How do you become an end-to-end marketer?
- Marketers are put in a tight spot: How to reframe tricky products
- Brand vs performance marketing
Positioning
Other
- How to end meetings on time
- How to on-board yourself when you join a new team
- List of modifiers to strengthen or soften (language)
- How to give feedback
- Turning bugs into features is one of the easiest & most powerful ways to create a frame shift.
- Startup culture glorifies failure
Features
Interviews
How to Build a High-Performance Team with Wes Kao
Wes Kao on the skills you need to become a master at shipping ideas