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Ask HN: Before there were MOOCs - advice for a startup
Fellow Hackers,
I'm a startup founder, and a little over a year ago I set out to build a "Wikipedia for courses". I ended up building a publishing platform - the idea was to make it extremely easy for anybody to produce highly interactive, online courses (without, and then easy for anybody else to learn from them).
Pensieve: www.pensieve.net
From an infrastructure standpoint, the platform has been quite mature and powerful - anybody can come to the site, and immediately create interactive courses, and put in assessments, assignments ... etc. We generally receive solid approval of our product.
However, our success at programming has been matched by our inability to gain traction. Users don't come for infrastructure, they come for content or because of your brand name - without either, nobody will come. Since then, Coursera and EdX rose, and due to their names, academic relationships, excellent funding, and access to a large body of quality content - they are growing at an insane pace.
The last thing I would want would be to be a "me too" type of company. The thing is, that I believe the we still provide a major value which I haven't yet seen replicated. I've seen lots of content distributors, but I haven't seen a platform which makes it possible (and easy) for you or me to make a course that is more than just a youtube video channel / wiki.
I've tried several things (most promisingly targeting the corporate training market), but I'm interested in your opinions - how would you move forward and get traction?
- soneca 13y agoclickable: http://www.pensieve.net http://www.pensieve.net I am newbie founder, also trying to gain traction, so I am trying to share guesses here, not knowledge. Actually, I am trying to deliver value, not gain traction. "Growth hacking" must be done just after the product/market fit, and I still don't have it. If yours "solid approval" means prod/mkt fit, than you can start to build some features to hack growth. But I would keep it at small scale. I would say, work hard to keep the course creators coming back to create new courses. Use cheap adwords (that you pay) to attract users to their courses (not to your platform). But for this to work, your course creators must have an audience. Something you can do is attract common people that publish courses on Youtube and already have small, but regular viewers. If you provide enough value for these "amateur professors", they will bring on their audience. This will demand a great effort of research, to cherry pick the right teachers. Don't try to create a exponential growth from day zero. Don't be Formspring or BranchOut. Think hard about traction, but a solid, relatively small one. Don't compare yourself (yet) to these big names.
- orangethirty 13y agoActually, I am trying to deliver value, not gain traction. "Growth hacking" must be done just after the product/market fit, and I still don't have it. Not really. Through "growth hacking" you discover the different markets your product fits into. Though you started with the wrong step. You dont design a product and then search for a market. You search for a market and then do the product.
- soneca 13y agoGrowth hacking is not searching for a market. You described "customer development" - which is what I am doing right now - not growth hacking.
- orangethirty 13y agoIf I had a nickel for every time I heard that. Anyhow, good luck.
- soneca 13y agoDon't patronize me. Please, explain me what is wrong with my concept. Basically, I agree with these guys: http://jwegan.com/growth-hacking/autopsy-of-a-failed-growth-hack/ http://jwegan.com/growth-hacking/autopsy-of-a-failed-growth-... and http://www.aginnt.com/post/46854446756/interview-a-growth-hacker-with-greg-tseng http://www.aginnt.com/post/46854446756/interview-a-growth-ha... That's where my concepts come from. If you think that me saying "customer development" is BS and that I should be trying to grow like hell and not wasting time with delusional customers interviews, or something like that, please explain why.
- orangethirty 13y agoI'm not trying to be an asshole, but its hard to explain things to people who have made up their mind. I'm a business development consultant (growth hacking is one of the things I do), so I know what it is and what isn't. Its not your definition, or the definitions posted in the links you posted. Real growth hacking is simply doing whatever you can to grow the business. Not customer development, but the business itself. As an example, I've had to negotiate with suppliers in order to hack the growth of some company. Customer interviews are pretty much worthless. People speak louder with their actions. That is why A/B testing is crucial to growth (hacking or not). Anyhow, don't buy into the hype. Most of the growth hackers out there are social media gurus who discovered a new way to label themselves.
- orangethirty 13y agoPut some money into the look of the site. It is too ugly to be interesting. Hire a designer, and re-launch. And stop feeling bad for yourself. Shit happens, you re-try. If anything, shoot me an email, I participate in a group that is full of people like you.
- thebadplus 13y agoThanks for the advice. I would be interested in meeting this group - I didn't develop the company in a place like SF or in hub with active developer / startup communities, which I think was a big mistake.
- orangethirty 13y agoNot being in SF is the best thing you can do for a company. Anyhow, see you there!