User:BethMasterClass/draft

Corporate history
MasterClass was formed by David Rogier and Aaron Rasmussen in 2014 under the name Yanka Industries. The website was published publicly under the MasterClass name on May 12, 2015. It had 30,000 sign-ups within a few months of release.

MasterClass was started with $4.5 million in initial funding and two seed-funding rounds totaling $1.9 million. This was followed by $15 million in funding announced in 2016, $35 million in 2017, and $80 million in 2018. As of 2018, MasterClass' total funding is about $130 million.

Classes
MasterClass produces online classes with "renowned personalities in their respective fields." Each class has video lessons, exercises, workbooks, and interview sessions with the instructor. A typical class has about 10-25 video lessons that are 2-5 hours each.

Classes cover topics like writing, sports, and cooking. As of 2019, the company was expanding into politics, economics, and video game design. Many instructors do live demonstrations if the topic is easy to illustrate visually, while writers lecture.

Initially, MasterClass was started with just three instructors. 12 classes were added in 2017. Kevin Spacey's and Dustin Hoffman's acting courses were removed in late 2017 after multiple sexual assault allegations had come out against both actors. By late 2018 MasterClass had about 50 classes and 1,000 lessons. Support for mobile devices was first added in April 2018.