Chegg's name mashes together "chicken" and "egg," after the old trap every graduate knows: you need experience to get a job, and a job to get experience. The company started with a smaller student problem, the $200 textbook. Chegg rented books by mail for a fraction of the price and shipped them back and forth across the country. By its 2013 offering, it was trying to turn those renters into subscribers for online study help.

Renting the Required Reading

Aayush Phumbhra, Osman Rashid and Josh Carlson started Chegg in 2005 as a campus classifieds site, then found their business in textbook rentals. Students hated paying full price for books they used for one semester. Chegg bought the books, rented them out, and took them back at the end of term. The model drew millions of students, but it tied up cash in warehouses full of paper. The real bet was Chegg Study, a subscription of step-by-step homework answers.

Down on Day One

Chegg priced its offering at $12.50 a share, above its $9.50 to $11.50 range, and raised $188 million on the New York Stock Exchange in November 2013. The stock fell 22.6 percent on its first day. Chegg handed its print rentals to a partner and leaned into digital study help, which boomed during the pandemic. Then AI chatbots began answering homework questions for free. In October 2025 Chegg ended a sale review, chose to stay public, and cut about 45 percent of its staff.

Cover: The Egg, Odilon Redon. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for an egg (chicken plus egg).