In 2011, a New York based start­up that goes by the name Skill­share launched a mas­sive, open online course approach, through inter­ac­tive, video-based lessons. The con­cept is to give peo­ple a real-world edu­ca­tion online and offline. You can find them think­ing big and work­ing hard out of their Soho, Man­hat­tan head­quar­ters. Their small team has bold vision and a laser-like focus.

They have already grown to over 100K in paid enroll­ments in over 500 class­es, even the teach­ers can make quite a bit of mon­ey them­selves depend­ing on pop­u­lar­i­ty. The com­pa­ny has seen a recent injec­tion of funds bring­ing Skillshare’s total cap­i­tal to $10 mil­lion. Skill­share would like to hyper-expand in 2014 by going mobile and adding more cours­es (par­tic­u­lar­ly in busi­ness, design and tech).

Cur­rent open­ings at Skill­share.

So what makes skill­share dif­fer­ent from video-based edu­ca­tion plat­forms like Lynda.com, Cre­ative­Live, Khan Acad­e­my and Curi­ous, is lessons that are both live and inter­ac­tive, as well as cours­es that are project-based and allow stu­dents to learn at their own pace.

Michael Karn­janaprako­rn, CEO and Co-founder seeks to boost stu­dent engage­ment by mak­ing its plat­form, and the learn­ing expe­ri­ence itself, more social. There is no bar­ri­er to entry for some­one to sub­mit an appli­ca­tion to bring their class­es (or sub­ject exper­tise) online. Stu­dents are able to get face-to-face time with teach­ers via online office hours and focus on learn­ing through com­plet­ing projects and receiv­ing peer feed­back. Skill­share is work­ing on devel­op­ing an active and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry com­mu­ni­ty seek­ing to net­work with oth­er pro­fes­sion­als and intellectuals.

The plat­form allows teach­ers and sub­ject experts to design class­es and projects for their stu­dents to com­plete live or at their leisure, along with the abil­i­ty to add sup­ple­men­tal con­tent, from syl­labi to rel­e­vant lec­tures, while allow­ing stu­dents to par­tic­i­pate in dis­cus­sions, sub­mit projects and receive feed­back on their work.

Wan­na work for these Skill­share folks?

Skill­share wants to cap­i­tal­ize on the grow­ing demand for skills-based learn­ing con­tent. This is the type of site that wants to give you the tech­ni­cal abil­i­ty to expand your resume, while main­tain­ing an hon­est and gen­uine field of knowl­edge for the ever-chang­ing and increas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive (and tech­ni­cal) job market.

Right on their web­site, it says they’re “curi­ous, dri­ven and unit­ed around a cen­tral pur­pose: rein­vent learn­ing to unlock the lim­it­less poten­tial of peo­ple around the globe”. Well you can count me in.

If work­ing for a com­pa­ny like this sounds appeal­ing, check out what Skill­share jobs are available.