4 ms·

Ask HN: Feedback on my learning startup

9 points by lux 18y ago

lux 18y ago
I'm resubmitting since this didn't get any notice last time around. Hopefully timing is better this time :) We're about to launch our new startup, but wanted a bit of feedback from our fellow startup-starters in the HN community. Our idea can be described as the Basecamp model/philosophy applied to training. We want to make online training much easier, and affordable for any company. Beyond that, I'll let the site speak for itself. Thanks!
OCInnovationVlt 18y ago
Sounds interesting... did you launch yet?
- lux 18y ago
  We've been using it with a small group so far, but we haven't officially (publicly) launched yet no.
tstegart 18y ago
It has a nice design. I would suggest two things. One, a way to pause the tour. I couldn't find it. Two, a case study, showing how somebody used your product. Testimonials are also great, and its another way to connect to a potential customer. Believe it or not, some still are given work computers without speakers, so the video tour is useless. And some people just like reading things instead. I do at least, its usually faster and I can tell quicker if I like the idea, without waiting for the tour to move along. A more in-depth how-it-works page would appeal to me more than a video tour. Plus it gives you a chance to sell your services in the way you explain how it works. EDIT: Here's someone else launching today: http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups. They have a little more explanation, and a testimonial blurb on the front page. I think it works well.
- lux 18y ago
  We're working with a couple companies who we're working on getting some case studies and testimonials from. Soon, hopefully :) I totally agree on that one. As for the pause button, we're working on improving the flash soon too. I'm more of a back-end coding guy and haven't touched flash in years, so I'm just a bit rusty... Thanks for the feedback!
- lux 18y ago
  I was just checking them out myself! It seems lots of services are using that same homepage layout, which works very well. Maybe we should give it a try...
aggieben 18y ago
I think the topics seem a little too contrived. For example - who is really going to go looking for training in the "Politics" category? There may be some things, but I don't know that many people would look for it there. My suggestion: let topics be determined more organically, and use a tagging mechanism like the one on del.icio.us where you can combine tags to refine the particular topic you want. To go back to the "Politics" topic, I might rather see all topics tagged "politics+communications" to learn more about making political speeches, or "politics+county+texas" to learn about how county governments in Texas work. Or, if I just had a general interest in mathematics, I could just look at the list of courses tagged "math". Etc, etc, etc. I don't think this means you have to show a tag cloud on the front page, but you might show a simple list of the 10 most popular tags instead of imposing a topic list. I realize this is a very common way to organize user-generated content, but I think it's very effective, and I think it's even now something that web-savvy users now come to expect (like me - I very quickly get frustrated with searching for untagged content).
- lux 18y ago
  Thanks! We're definitely looking to completely revamp the public lesson browsing with a more complete experience for users. I agree that tagging like you describe is the best approach there. For our "1.0" launch we're focusing more on the lesson delivery for companies and trainers, which we've been calling their "private learning network" and "lesson storefront" where they get companyname.dojolearning.com (or a few other domains we registered :) and send their learners there. You can see simian.dojolearning.com as an example, which is the learning site for my other software project. For our "2.0" we're hoping to put more emphasis on the public side and also add some social elements so users can find lessons through each other and get recommendations in the system too. But for now we chose to really hone the lesson builder and lesson delivery and just get it out there for companies to use. So right now it's more of a Basecamp style (private focus), and the 2.0 would be more of a YouTube (public focus) in that sense :)

9 points by lux 18y ago

lux 18y ago

I'm resubmitting since this didn't get any notice last time around. Hopefully timing is better this time :) We're about to launch our new startup, but wanted a bit of feedback from our fellow startup-starters in the HN community. Our idea can be described as the Basecamp model/philosophy applied to training. We want to make online training much easier, and affordable for any company. Beyond that, I'll let the site speak for itself. Thanks!

OCInnovationVlt 18y ago

Sounds interesting... did you launch yet?

lux 18y ago
We've been using it with a small group so far, but we haven't officially (publicly) launched yet no.

tstegart 18y ago

It has a nice design. I would suggest two things. One, a way to pause the tour. I couldn't find it. Two, a case study, showing how somebody used your product. Testimonials are also great, and its another way to connect to a potential customer. Believe it or not, some still are given work computers without speakers, so the video tour is useless. And some people just like reading things instead. I do at least, its usually faster and I can tell quicker if I like the idea, without waiting for the tour to move along. A more in-depth how-it-works page would appeal to me more than a video tour. Plus it gives you a chance to sell your services in the way you explain how it works. EDIT: Here's someone else launching today: http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups. They have a little more explanation, and a testimonial blurb on the front page. I think it works well.

lux 18y ago
We're working with a couple companies who we're working on getting some case studies and testimonials from. Soon, hopefully :) I totally agree on that one. As for the pause button, we're working on improving the flash soon too. I'm more of a back-end coding guy and haven't touched flash in years, so I'm just a bit rusty... Thanks for the feedback!
lux 18y ago
I was just checking them out myself! It seems lots of services are using that same homepage layout, which works very well. Maybe we should give it a try...

aggieben 18y ago

I think the topics seem a little too contrived. For example - who is really going to go looking for training in the "Politics" category? There may be some things, but I don't know that many people would look for it there. My suggestion: let topics be determined more organically, and use a tagging mechanism like the one on del.icio.us where you can combine tags to refine the particular topic you want. To go back to the "Politics" topic, I might rather see all topics tagged "politics+communications" to learn more about making political speeches, or "politics+county+texas" to learn about how county governments in Texas work. Or, if I just had a general interest in mathematics, I could just look at the list of courses tagged "math". Etc, etc, etc. I don't think this means you have to show a tag cloud on the front page, but you might show a simple list of the 10 most popular tags instead of imposing a topic list. I realize this is a very common way to organize user-generated content, but I think it's very effective, and I think it's even now something that web-savvy users now come to expect (like me - I very quickly get frustrated with searching for untagged content).

lux 18y ago
Thanks! We're definitely looking to completely revamp the public lesson browsing with a more complete experience for users. I agree that tagging like you describe is the best approach there. For our "1.0" launch we're focusing more on the lesson delivery for companies and trainers, which we've been calling their "private learning network" and "lesson storefront" where they get companyname.dojolearning.com (or a few other domains we registered :) and send their learners there. You can see simian.dojolearning.com as an example, which is the learning site for my other software project. For our "2.0" we're hoping to put more emphasis on the public side and also add some social elements so users can find lessons through each other and get recommendations in the system too. But for now we chose to really hone the lesson builder and lesson delivery and just get it out there for companies to use. So right now it's more of a Basecamp style (private focus), and the 2.0 would be more of a YouTube (public focus) in that sense :)