We show how Udemy addressed the two-sided marketplace problem by creating credible supply before recruiting strangers. Gagan reportedly spent six months cold-calling instructors without producing courses. The workaround, Startup Digest University, was an offline paid event built on a newsletter with roughly 50,000–70,000 subscribers; recorded investor talks became Udemy’s first courses. After that case study existed, Udemy used a three-step instructor funnel, 5–10 outsourced data miners at $3 per hour, a roughly 500-email message test, and a three-week promotion deadline for unfinished courses. The lesson is to create one credible supply example, borrow trusted distribution, and measure where supplier recruitment stalls. Source: [Original First 1000 case](https://first1000.substack.com/p/-udemy). [Udemy Built the First Course Before Recruiting Instructors]() Source observed: 2026-09-21T07:30:31.658Z. Last checked: 2026-09-21T08:26:25.451+00:00. [Full page Markdown]() --- Have a question this summary doesn’t answer? Ask the exact question you have. It returns a fresh, cited answer from www.first1000.co’s knowledge base. No account or API key required. Replace {question} with your own question, URL-encoded. ```text GET https://www.first1000.co/agent/faq?q={question}&trace=t_1291118d7f25 ```