u/ericswc wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
The unit economics of most of the players never worked. Pretty much every VC backed camp was in the red before the downturn, and it just exacerbated the issues. Consider tuition of $15,000 per student. Enroll 20 students. $300,000 in revenue. Less student acquisition cost (ma
u/michaelnovati replied ·
This looks pretty accurate to me, might want to factor in that if a bootcamp uses a loan provider they probably see 50 to 90% of that "upfront tuition" in the bank actually upfront, and the rest at graduation or after the loan starts getting repaid.
Small programs can get by if they have almost no marketing cost (word of mouth and leader's organic reach), but if you grew during the boom times and have a staff of directors... easier said than done to remove all of those people and get your hands dirty again. A lot of people would rather close up shop and do something else if they are going to have to start over again anyways. But some do and I'm sure those programs will survive.
The other anti-pattern I'm seeing is programs in trouble are throwing out AI recklessly for marketing and to lure people in, rather than having any idea what to teach. BloomTech is going all in on their AI and figure it out as they go, but they don't even offer a full stack program anymore and went ALL IN. AI changes every day and you need EXTRA CASH TO INVEST IN IT - cash programs don't have. You can't just have a recent alumni building out your AI program...