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NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Hey, everyone.
Welcome to "Coffee with a Googler."
I'm here with Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity.
And I wanted to just hear a little bit more
about the announcements today in the keynote.
Can you tell us and share with the world
what you and your team are doing at Udacity?
SEBASTIAN THURN: Yeah.
We are really, really pleased to see
that someone took the time to talk about our new nanodegree.
That is basically a way to bring education to the world,
to democratize education.
Google, wonderful.
14 great instructors at Google have teamed up
with my startup company Udacity to bring education
to the entire world, including Egypt and many other places.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Awesome.
Where did you get the idea for Udacity?
Because you used to be at Google, right?
SEBASTIAN THURN: I used to be at Google.
I was a mid-level manager in Maps
and eventually made it into Google X
and founded Google X. And then at some point,
I realized one of the most important things we have
to do is to provide education to people-- not just information,
not making just the world's information accessible,
but we're making the world's education
accessible and democratize it.
So I took time out, I started Udacity,
and we have more than 4 million students.
We're doing fine.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: That's really awesome.
And is the education primarily focused around developers,
or can you share more about the breadth of the offerings
that Udacity has?
SEBASTIAN THURN: Yeah.
So the Android nanodegree with Google to be [INAUDIBLE]
is built and undersigned by Google, by Peter Lubbers
and his team really teaches people
to become Android developers.
So if you take the education, you getting a nanodegree,
you should be able to find a job in the Valley or in the world.
And in the Valley, we pay for a good Android developer
easily $100,000 or more in salary per year.
So it's really meant to find people a job.
It's projected based.
You do many projects.
You do much less lectures.
There's some classes, but they're optional.
And it's one of the many nanodegrees we've launched.
We launched five other ones.
I hate to say, in iOS, we have one.
But we also have data engineering and programming,
and all around computer science.
So all that kind of stuff.
The kind of stuff that we teach is the type
you would like to hire.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Yeah.
And I think that's a game changer.
Bringing more people into the industry
and having this industry knowledge
really helps more people come into our industry faster.
Because I know that in the next 20 years--
we have so many jobs, and we're going
to need them filled by amazing people around the world.
SEBASTIAN THURN: Yeah.
And this is the kind of stuff-- I mean,
I'm a former university professor from Stanford,
and this is the kind of stuff we can't really offer at Stanford
because it is so bleeding edge.
I mean, we announce a new feature here at Google I/O,
and we already have a course online where you
can learn how to program this.
That speed cannot be matched in academia.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: So this nanodegree program, is it free?
Does it cost money?
If I wanted to sign up today, what do I have to do?
Do I have to have some background experience?
How do I get started?
SEBASTIAN THURN: So first of all, it's free.
Udacity's mission is to democratize education,
and you can't democratize if you charge money.
So anyone in the world can study all the content for free
and do any of the projects.
However, to become really good, you want our feedback.
You want services.
You want mentors.
You want code reviews.
You want some engagement.
And these things cost us money, so we charge money,
and we charge $200 dollars a month.
Google has very graciously, in Egypt,
just offering 2,000 scholarships for students
so that students can get those services
and still study for free.
In terms of prerequisites, if you've never programmed before,
don't try it.
It's too hard.
If fact, we have a little test there.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Maybe become a designer?
SEBASTIAN THURN: No no no.
Take a different nanodegree.
Do programming first.
We have a whole bunch of those.
You can start at the very beginning with Udacity.
But Android is really meant to be
kind of a proficient, top-level Android developer,
the same way Google would hire internally.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Got it.
Got it.
So we kind of talked a little bit
about how Udacity is going to help drive job creation.
I heard, when I was talking to Peter backstage, a little bit
about this career summit.
Can you speak to what the career summit is and some
of the goals of that?
SEBASTIAN THURN: Yeah.
That's totally cool.
Laszlo Bock and his team at Google
have decided they're going to invite 50 of the top Android
finishers for our nanodegree over to Google
in November, all expenses paid, for a multiday summit where
we do a hackathon and you meet Google recruiters,
and possibly a few of them find Google jobs.
That's a great motivation to the students in the world
to sign up for it, but it's also a great sign
that Google is willing to reconsider
alternative credentials-- in this case, it's
own nanodegree-- alternative to conventional college
credentials.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Yeah.
And so it's not even that this is
going to be a long-term goal.
This goal can be accomplished this year.
SEBASTIAN THURN: It's going to be accomplished this year.
And think about what's at stake, how many people we have
in the world who don't like their job who
can't get a good education.
Like the entire Middle East, for example, my friend Tom Friedman
talks about that he believes if there's
good education in the Middle East,
there'd be fewer terrorists.
Think about mid-career people.
We have stay-at-home moms to turn into software developers.
We had a professional golf player
who became a data analyst.
These kind of shifts don't exist today, and in this work force,
we need paths for those people.
If we do this, humanity could be twice as productive.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Yeah.
So you spoke about the Middle East.
I know that your team has also been working with Google
to enable even more educational opportunities,
specifically in Egypt.
Can you tell me a little bit more
and our audience a little bit more about what's
going on in Egypt?
SEBASTIAN THURN: Google has a really great
working relationship with the Egyptian government,
and so do we, by association.
And Google has decided to translate several courses
that we've jointly built into Arabic, end to end,
so that a non-English speaking person could still study
and become a top-notch software developer, Android developer,
and so on.
And on top of it, Google is putting
in study centers, job centers, and stipends for students
to take those materials.
For me, it's great because I'm passionately following
the sad news in the Middle East every day
and the entire Arab peninsula.
I truly believe if we brought good education
to that specific part of the world,
there'd be alternative pathways for people
to get a bit of the energy and do something productive.
And picking Egypt is a great launching pad because Egypt
is relatively stable, has an extremely
talented and inspiring population,
and has a huge number of women in technology,
as I just learned, which I think is really important
to bring more women into technology.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Yeah.
So as I was mentioning, I work on the Women Techmakers program
here at Google, and my role is to increase
the visibility, community, and resources
for women in technology.
And I think so often, we don't hear
of all the amazing women globally that
are in the technology industry.
And so specifically, when we're thinking of the Middle East,
so Arabic is first.
Have you guys started thinking about what countries you
might go to next?
SEBASTIAN THURN: We have translated various classes
into up to 40 different languages when
it comes to subtitling, but the narrative is still in English.
We currently took investment from Japan,
from Europe, Germany, and from Brazil.
We are very heavily contemplating
China at this point, and we have a huge following in India.
Udacity is an international platform.
Our students are mostly from international countries
from all parts of the world, and that's our mission,
to be global.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Yeah.
And when I was talking to even some women yesterday,
we were talking about how in order to, I think,
really increase the participation
and the graduation rate from these courses,
I think what's really powerful about what you're
doing is this end to end translation,
because I think sometimes, subtitles aren't enough.
The more that we can have natural language speakers
actually teaching these courses, it makes it feel-- not just
for women, but I think for people of any nation,
to have it feel like it was made for them.
So I think that's a really cool aspect
of what you're doing in Egypt.
I was telling you a little bit backstage,
I had the privilege to bring together a four-woman team
to create the new Android for Beginners course.
So those are just the women that are specifically at Google.
There's also a whole team at Udacity.
And our thought was, how can we bring anyone anywhere,
regardless of their background, into the Android ecosystem?
What are your thoughts around how anyone
can jump in and participate?
Is it starting with Android?
Where do you think they should begin?
SEBASTIAN THURN: I think online education is not
to be underestimated in its power.
It's easy to box people in.
I don't want to box anybody here,
but I've heard some of our female students voicing,
look, we feel less intimidated than in the classroom
with like 90% males that are all super smart
and raise their hand and makes us feel slightly inferior.
It gives much more privacy and much more ability to-- you
can watch the same video 50 times if you want, and so on.
It's also cultural.
I mean, to me, programming Android is sexy.
It's interesting.
How many billions of people at this point?
There's 1.5 billion new devices unlocked every single day.
How can you possibly be worth more than
if you become an Android programmer.
We have 3.69 billion unique mobile accounts in the world.
Half the world is on mobile.
81% is Android.
I think we should just all move into it,
and we should leave the old stuff behind.
We're being told, you can't do it
because of race, ethnicity, whatever, intellect, gender,
sexual orientation, that's all wrong.
Just do it.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Awesome.
Well, thanks so much for joining us.
I really appreciate you taking the time, and congratulations
on the announcement today.
SEBASTIAN THURN: Thank you so much.