Ask HN: Thinking of starting a software training business – can you give advice?

12 points by throwaway000021 8 years ago | 5 comments

Hi there. I'm thinking of trying to earn money by doing in-person training on software development to software developers.

I'm wondering is there anyone on HN who knows the software training business, who would be willing to share the mechanics of what works and what does not?

How to find customers? What to price the training? Tips on making the training a success?

If you're willing to say how much revenue your business has earned approximately that would be amazing.

It would be greatly appreciated. Finding the answers to these questions is time consuming and risky and hard and I'd love it if someone with experience would be willing to share their hard earned knowledge.

thanks!

BjoernKW 8 years ago |

As with any business the first aspect to think about is your market and the niche in that market you want to address.

Software training comes in many flavours some of which are:

- teaching CS and programming basics to children

- the same for adults

- developer bootcamps

- hackathons

- workshops: Teaching and coaching software professionals in terms of specific technologies

I have some experience with the last one. With workshops typically your customers aren't the individuals coming to the event but companies paying for their employees being taught a new skill or technology. So, in this case you're basically doing enterprise sales (with somewhat shorter sales cycles though).

Don't charge for your time but rather per participant. In this case you provide a service to professionals and / or the companies that employ them. Therefore you can generally charge higher prices. The exact price of course depends on the course topic. Keep in mind though that in this setting you have to pay for expenses for the venue and catering as well. So, basically: Charge more.

As for tips on making the training a success there's a lot to talk about but here are some basic tips:

- Obviously, be well-prepared.

- Be at the location at least half an hour early. Make sure all the required equipment is available and working with your laptop. The same applies to WiFi / Internet connectivity.

- Having assignments for each lesson allowing you to apply what you've just learned is vital to understanding and internalising new knowledge.

- Try to devote sufficient time to each participant individually and to those who're slower than average in particular.

- 10 people in my experience is the reasonable upper boundary for participants a single trainer can handle without neglecting some of the participants.

- A classroom tool for managing students, tasks and course material is really helpful.

brudgers 8 years ago |

How to find customers?

This is really the first item in the critical path. Nothing else matters until this is solved. Time spent on anything else before this is answered is mostly wasted and there will be a strong incentive to spend time on everything but this because finding customers is harder than coming up with pricing, imagining ways to make trainings successful, following tips, printing business cards, renting office space, etc.

There's no checklist for finding customers, just a lot of potential rejection (and perhaps no acceptance if there is no reasonably accessible market). This is not particular to software training, freelance programming, private piano lessons, etc. Finding customers is the fundamental first step of a business...and it mostly comes down to being able to sell yourself and close sales. There are no shortcuts.

Good luck.

raincom 8 years ago |

Look at how trainers find customers. Usually, they go to dev conferences and give free talks; at the end of the talk, on the last slide, they mention about "call me for training". For example, Raymond Hettinger python core dev does it in his talks.

Writing books and articles helps.

Check David Beazley training on python: http://www.dabeaz.com/chicago/index.html

He charges $2750 per student. His max students are 6. Now, you can check how many classes he conducts in Chicago.

There are too many online classes, youtube tutorials, coursera, udacity, etc. These classes help those who are really dedicated to learn. There are many others, who have full time or 40 hrs a week jobs. However, their companies don't spend on training and they want to learn hands on. This is where your business fits in, until you find a steady stream of corporate clients.

bewe42 8 years ago |

I'm on a similar path.

Talks are a good route. You need to prove (to technical people) that you are capable of delivering worthwhile training and at the same time get on the radar on HR (non-technical) who make the hiring decisions.

https://lerner.co.il/trainer-weekly/ is a useful resource.

Get in touch if you want to chat, always happy to speak to fellow trainers. I believe training can be very worthwhile (personally and income wise), but it takes time to get there (and moving out of comfort zone, at least for me).

segmondy 8 years ago |

I'm thinking of doing the same too.