Founding Story of Cheggs .
A Student named Josh Carlson in 2000's at University of Lowa started an online messaging Forum named CheggPost(Combined by Chicken & Egg) .

Josh with Aayush Phumbhra(an Indian MBA Student) and Osman Rashid Shortened the name to Chegg.
 

Chegg was established into online study guide , Phumbhra left the Company in 2005 . 
5 Years Later Chegg Acquired another Edtech startup Cramster and focused on providing Pre-written answers to frequently asked Homework Questions. 
Later on Dan Rosenweig a former Yahoo Executive was appointed as the CEO of the Company.

Fast forwarding to 2020 , Chegg had hired Thousands of Contractors and Instructors from which most were India Based . The Instructors answered Homework Questions across Subjects like Maths, Science, Engineering Etc.  Students Got Answers to Pre-solved Questions easily .

The on-demand supply of Homework Answers to Student was packaged into a Subscription-based Model priced at $14.95 per month .

The Covid Impact

While Most of the other Sectors were getting impacted by Covid and LockDown , Edtech Sector rose to most of it's Potential. The stock Price of Cheggs peaked at 108 USD in feb 2021. As Students were quarantined at Home . Most of the Student Subscribed to the premium Model of Cheggs . Making the Stock Price Sky Rocket .

2022 End :- Chat-Gpt Launced 

Chegg was doing well solving students problems with a slight Charges ,then chat-gpt came into the market. The Open AI Based ChatBot Trained on vast amount of data and information available over Internet started giving answers to students free of Cost .

It was free and Instant and there wasnt need to worry that the problem is existing prior or not . Students took no time to shift from Cheggs to GPT . Though Being warned by experts that GPT is learning and makes mistakes , Students Continued using it . 

Ignoring AI's Potential 

Though insisted by Employees to leverage AI to automate answers and adopting it into the solutions , the leadership blindsided it .

Chegg executives reportedly ignored the threat posed by AI. Later CEO Rosensweig Met OpenAI Associate Sam Altman To Develop new Product Called Cheggmate that would give GPT-4 access to cheggs vast repository of solutions in order to generate accurate answers to student questions . But it was a very late as students had already shifted to GPT and had shift in MIndset .

By then the companies stock had crumbled as the CEO acknowledged the AI Harm in Earning Calls.

                                                        Stock Price Of cheggs as of Now

The Company had another deal with Scale AI to Build More 24 AI Systems For varoous academic disciplines but to not avail.

In June 2024 Rosenweig stepped down as CEO and Nathan Schultz took the postion.

Learning From the Story

Any Startup Founder/ Bussiness Owner must be Continously Updated with the Trends entering the market.

Continous Adaptation is the Key to Success.

Remeber AI is Continously Evolving per sec at 1000x more speed than humans. 

AI will not take your Job , but the Person Using AI will take it For sure. 

Start Using AI in your Day-To-Day Works.