Skillshare (stylized as SKILLSHARE) is an American online learning community for people who want to learn from educational videos.[1][2][3] The courses, which are not accredited, are available through subscription.[4][5] The majority of courses focus on interaction rather than lecturing, with the primary goal of learning by completing a project. The main course categories include creative arts, design, entrepreneurship, lifestyle and technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skillshare

founded 2010

Have they always focused on creative classes?

Google Gemini replies:

Skillshare's focus actually swung back and forth like a pendulum, starting narrow, expanding into a broad tech and business platform, and then intentionally pivoting back to its creative roots. [1, 2] The platform’s evolution moved through three distinct phases:

1. The In-Person Creative Roots (2010–2011)

When Skillshare first launched, it was an open tutoring network for in-person classes. The initial course selection was heavily focused on foundational artistic hobbies like painting, sketching, and photography. [2, 3]

2. The Broad Expansion Phase (2012–2019)

As the platform grew and transitioned entirely online, it deliberately diversified to compete with broader e-learning platforms like Udemy. It introduced major non-creative tracks, including: [2, 4]

• Technology & Coding: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and web development.
• Business & Entrepreneurship: Marketing, accounting, project management, and corporate leadership.
• Data Science: Analytics and general software proficiency. [2, 3, 5, 6]

During this era, anyone could teach a class on almost any topic, which led to a massive but highly fragmented catalog. [3, 7]

3. The Creative Brand Pivot (2020–Present)

By 2020, competing with academic-heavy platforms like Coursera or edX for corporate and technical training proved inefficient. Skillshare underwent a major brand relaunch to double down on what its core user base liked most: creativity and personal passion projects. [3] The company tightened its category strategy, restricting new teacher onboarding mostly to curated creative fields like design, illustration, film, animation, and lifestyle crafts. They phased out broad coding and corporate business courses, leaving only "Creative Career" and freelancing classes designed specifically to help artists monetize their work. [1, 6]

[1] https://help.skillshare.com [2] https://benmclemore5.medium.com [3] https://aiinstitute.hbs.edu [4] https://anderswords.medium.com [5] https://ilampadmanabhan.medium.com [6] https://www.skillshare.com [7] https://help.skillshare.com