Ask HN: Before there were MOOCs - advice for a startup

6 points by thebadplus 13 years ago | 12 comments

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 13 years ago |

clickable: 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.

thebadplus 13 years ago | |

Something that I should have mentioned in the post: I've reached out to several people on Youtube, as well as Reddit U.

In a sense, I am in the same situation, as I have created a product, and am searching for a market. However, I do believe that market exists, as I see plenty of evidence of amateurs struggling to teach with only mediocre tools. It's not really the way "west coast" entrepreneurs tend to operate - but quite a few successful companies are started that way.

orangethirty 13 years ago | |

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.

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 13 years ago | | |

Growth hacking is not searching for a market. You described "customer development" - which is what I am doing right now - not growth hacking.

orangethirty 13 years ago |

Put 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 13 years ago | |

Thanks 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 13 years ago | | |

Not being in SF is the best thing you can do for a company. Anyhow, see you there!