South Korean edtech startup Day 1 Company announces plans to Dive into US

Korean edtech startup, Day 1 Company, announced plans to enter the U.S. market with the launch of a new product, Dive. Day 1 Company was launched with a goal of bringing adult education to the masses in Korea. Since 2013, it has grown to become one of the giants of adult education domestically.

South Korea itself is well known for its passion for education - from public schooling and private academies at a young age to being one of the leaders for average spend per capita in adult education. While many sources state this focus on education can be seen as an obsession, especially with younger learners, it has helped create Day 1 Company as the company it is. And that is a multi-million dollar company which has seen significant investment from Softbank, IMM Investment Corp, and Cowell E Holdings.

Day 1 Company currently focuses most of its attention on the Korean market - its most well-known product, Fast Campus, is the market leader in Korea for online VOD courses. The plans to expand to the U.S. is something which they have already started with another product, Coloso.

The biggest question mark for Day 1 Company and Dive is does success in the Asian market equate to success in the international market? The online education market is already saturated with a plethora of companies battling out to become the market leader. This ranges from cheaper courses without well-known instructors, to top-of-the-range, premium options.

Dive has put a lot of focus on getting the right instructors in, with a diverse instructor pool ranging from top professionals with experience in companies to business owners and CEOs. Thus far, the main focus of Dive's courses has been on tech design. It is yet to be seen if Dive's approach of focusing on design courses will remain consistent or if they will branch out to other popular areas such as data science or web development.

Having said that, design is still such a broad spectrum. and Dive's initial course offerings include an All-In-One Design Course. This covers everything - UI/UX, video editing and everything in between. This is a bold strategy and it is yet to be seen how many users would be interested in one course with everything. However, the price point of $149.99 does give it a competitive edge over other major online education companies.

One point that particularly sticks out about Dive is that all courses are produced and edited in-house. This means that curriculum structure or video quality does not fluctuate depending on the instructor. It also makes taking courses by different instructors a more fluid experience.

www.day1company.co.kr