5 ms·

We founded Skritter just about 9 months ago. We got two grants to fund development and as the front page attests, we're just three right out of undergrad living

by gsaines 18y ago

We founded Skritter just about 9 months ago. We got two grants to fund development and as the front page attests, we're just three right out of undergrad living in an apartment and developing full time. When we were first getting started, App Engine was just becoming available, and we thought that would be a great platform mainly because of its scalable architecture and Python backend, which both Nick and Scott liked. We incorporated the Spaced Repetition after we read about Supermemo in Wired Magazine shortly after launching. The idea is to charge users small monthly subscriptions with big discounts for semester-signups. Since a lot of our current users are young and in school it's really important that we keep the price affordable. We've also attended 2 trade conferences in language learning software, and will be going to one more in about a month at which we'll be trying to sell Skritter as a site license to institutions. If you'd like to check it out in more detail, we've set up a demo account for everyone on HN: UN: hackernews pass: hackernews Thanks a lot for your time.

patio11 18y ago
Since a lot of our current users are young and in school it's really important that we keep the price affordable. I remember being poor and in college once, where "poor" means I was never in danger of starvation but I did routinely decline invitations to the movies for want of $5. I also remember a collection of someones (parents, university, scholarship providers, government, self) feeling it was worth $80 per hour of instruction to get me Japanese classes. Please do not use the "Oh noes, our customers are poor!" factoid as a mental excuse to undercharge for your product. ($80. An. Hour.) I'd also like to note that a significant portion of the American collegiate population has a significant amount of discretionary spending capability. Half of my Japanese class had parents who were paying full freight for that $80 an hour. Do you really need to sell to the other half?
- nwinter 18y ago
  I think we're in a good place for charging for it: it's something that will save users a lot of time and helps with something they're probably already paying a lot more for (learning Chinese). We also have no competition with writing practice, and not much free online SRS with effort put into it. So how much does it make sense to charge, from an outside perspective?
  - patio11 18y ago
    not much free online SRS with effort put into it Your customers are not buying online SRS, they are buying an opportunity to improve their Chinese proficiency, and the experience of being the kind of person who wants to improve their Chinese proficiency. Never forget that. I have a friend with an as-yet-unreleased application for studying Japanese. I told him what I'll tell you: I wouldn't consider charging less than $30 but I would consider trying more than $100. Yep, that is quite a range, and it all depends on what type of student you are targeting. To be perhaps a little unfair to my friends' prospective customers, I would expect to see no anime-related vocabulary in the $100+ product. Exactly how you present your choice to the user is up to you. ($49 a semester, $80 if you buy a year at once should lead to an ARPU in excess of $100, hopefully.)
    - nwinter 18y ago
      Thanks for the positioning advice! I guess I just fell again for the builder's blindness and forgot all I learned from HN about marketing as telling stories to people. We actually do have some users who put together a kung cu list for us... uh oh!
- briansmith 18y ago
  There's so many competitors entering the market, it will be hard for anybody to charge much more than $5. Plus, almost everybody is using the same set of language data, so it is difficult to differentiate. There are already tons of completely free hobbyist- and university- created tools available if you know where to look. Plus, textbook publishers generally provide a suite of (sometimes free) apps to complement their textbooks. Luckily, I don't think there is any place for ad-financed products (ads are too distracting when you are trying to memorize stuff like this), so there won't be many free commercial systems. I am building something very similar to this. I have to say I am very impressed with what Skritter has done so far.
  - patio11 18y ago
    There's so many competitors entering the market, it will be hard for anybody to charge much more than $5 Are you acquainted with Rosetta Stone? They sell language learning software in the "couple of hundred dollars" range. And they're pretty freaking big. it is difficult to differentiate People always tell me that about my product. It isn't true for me, and my product is substantially more boring and smaller in scope than learning the key to accessing the history/culture/economic potential of China. A short list of points to differentiate on would be who you sell to, what level of learners you target, what focus of learners you target, visual design, etc etc.
    - briansmith 18y ago
      You were actually part of the inspiration for me getting into this market; I even have "bingo card creator" in my notebook. There are definitely many interesting aspects of this market. I don't think it is impossible to differentiate or I wouldn't be in it. But, I really do think that prices for formal educational books, materials, and software are all heading towards $0 fast. Rosetta Stone really has executed brilliantly in its segment of the market. It sales and marketing effort has been top-notch. It is also interesting to see how they are attempting to cross over from do-it-yourself language learners to traditional language learners. I would love to know what they are charging schools for their software.
cvboss 18y ago
Nihao! Good application, however I would like to see more instruction/tutorial how it works, since it's asking me to draw, but I am not sure what to draw, since I don't know that symbol and I would like to learn it. ps/ I am interested in learning Chinese, however I am not sure I would pay at that point... Need to see incentives/success stories. Good luck guys!
- gsaines 18y ago
  Hey cvboss, thanks for giving it a spin! Yeah, we really do need an instructional demo video on the "try it page." We actually just got the front page up, so new instructional demo videos and the like are on the way. It's good to know people actually want them, and sorry for any confusion. Regarding you interest in seeing success stories or incentives, we are going to conduct a study next semester with a big batch of students so that we can make claims about the efficacy, is that the sort of thing you're looking for ("With Skritter, you can learn character 44% faster than with traditional methods, see our study") or would it be more enticing to see small narratives from users about how much its helped them?
  - cvboss 18y ago
    I am not sure buddy, but it would be nice to see how it fits or replaces(?) the traditional approach from a high level perspective :)
  - briansmith 18y ago
    "With Skritter, you can learn character 44% faster than with traditional methods, see our study" What are your criteria are for verifying the validity of the study? I've proofread lots of graduate papers about studies of second language acquisition and in almost every case the studies are summarized the same way: the results are (un)promising but no definite conclusions can drawn because the sample size was too small and/or there was too strong of a selection bias and/or there were some other significant flaws in the study. A study that would justify such a bold claim would be, as far as I can tell, a landmark study in the field--likely worthy of a Ph.D. People could probably get Ph.D.s just for studying your study! :)
devin 18y ago
Woo! You rule! If you were here right now I'd shake your hand. I've been using your app for months. This is a fantastic way to practice character writing. Simply phenomenal work. Thank you!
- nwinter 18y ago
  Thanks, Devin! (Want to get on our front page for saying that?)
natch 18y ago
Cool! How can I add more than 1 character at a time? For example say I want to add all the HSK1 characters with one click, is there a way to do that? [update: I figured out how to use Select: List. Strangely it's taking a long time to add the list. The HSK1 list should already exist on your server somewhere, no? Maybe it's doing it character by character? Is this an App Engine-ism? I would think a simple UPDATE student_character_list INSERT '?' WHERE source_list='HSK1'; would be pretty fast (if I even got that SQL right) but then maybe App Engine doesn't support SQL?] I just created an account. Is there a difference between the functionality for my fresh account versus the hackernews account, other than different usage data?
- nwinter 18y ago
  Ah. You've probably just added the entire list at once, where what you want is the "Add starting from..." checkbox. You should delete those (using Select List) or you'll get overwhelmed. We'll work on that UI. Yeah, App Engine doesn't do SQL. Makes things interesting. No difference in functionality--everyone is the same right now.

by gsaines 18y ago

patio11 18y ago

Since a lot of our current users are young and in school it's really important that we keep the price affordable. I remember being poor and in college once, where "poor" means I was never in danger of starvation but I did routinely decline invitations to the movies for want of $5. I also remember a collection of someones (parents, university, scholarship providers, government, self) feeling it was worth $80 per hour of instruction to get me Japanese classes. Please do not use the "Oh noes, our customers are poor!" factoid as a mental excuse to undercharge for your product. ($80. An. Hour.) I'd also like to note that a significant portion of the American collegiate population has a significant amount of discretionary spending capability. Half of my Japanese class had parents who were paying full freight for that $80 an hour. Do you really need to sell to the other half?

nwinter 18y ago
I think we're in a good place for charging for it: it's something that will save users a lot of time and helps with something they're probably already paying a lot more for (learning Chinese). We also have no competition with writing practice, and not much free online SRS with effort put into it. So how much does it make sense to charge, from an outside perspective?
- patio11 18y ago
  not much free online SRS with effort put into it Your customers are not buying online SRS, they are buying an opportunity to improve their Chinese proficiency, and the experience of being the kind of person who wants to improve their Chinese proficiency. Never forget that. I have a friend with an as-yet-unreleased application for studying Japanese. I told him what I'll tell you: I wouldn't consider charging less than $30 but I would consider trying more than $100. Yep, that is quite a range, and it all depends on what type of student you are targeting. To be perhaps a little unfair to my friends' prospective customers, I would expect to see no anime-related vocabulary in the $100+ product. Exactly how you present your choice to the user is up to you. ($49 a semester, $80 if you buy a year at once should lead to an ARPU in excess of $100, hopefully.)
  - nwinter 18y ago
    Thanks for the positioning advice! I guess I just fell again for the builder's blindness and forgot all I learned from HN about marketing as telling stories to people. We actually do have some users who put together a kung cu list for us... uh oh!
briansmith 18y ago
There's so many competitors entering the market, it will be hard for anybody to charge much more than $5. Plus, almost everybody is using the same set of language data, so it is difficult to differentiate. There are already tons of completely free hobbyist- and university- created tools available if you know where to look. Plus, textbook publishers generally provide a suite of (sometimes free) apps to complement their textbooks. Luckily, I don't think there is any place for ad-financed products (ads are too distracting when you are trying to memorize stuff like this), so there won't be many free commercial systems. I am building something very similar to this. I have to say I am very impressed with what Skritter has done so far.
- patio11 18y ago
  There's so many competitors entering the market, it will be hard for anybody to charge much more than $5 Are you acquainted with Rosetta Stone? They sell language learning software in the "couple of hundred dollars" range. And they're pretty freaking big. it is difficult to differentiate People always tell me that about my product. It isn't true for me, and my product is substantially more boring and smaller in scope than learning the key to accessing the history/culture/economic potential of China. A short list of points to differentiate on would be who you sell to, what level of learners you target, what focus of learners you target, visual design, etc etc.
  - briansmith 18y ago
    You were actually part of the inspiration for me getting into this market; I even have "bingo card creator" in my notebook. There are definitely many interesting aspects of this market. I don't think it is impossible to differentiate or I wouldn't be in it. But, I really do think that prices for formal educational books, materials, and software are all heading towards $0 fast. Rosetta Stone really has executed brilliantly in its segment of the market. It sales and marketing effort has been top-notch. It is also interesting to see how they are attempting to cross over from do-it-yourself language learners to traditional language learners. I would love to know what they are charging schools for their software.

cvboss 18y ago

Nihao! Good application, however I would like to see more instruction/tutorial how it works, since it's asking me to draw, but I am not sure what to draw, since I don't know that symbol and I would like to learn it. ps/ I am interested in learning Chinese, however I am not sure I would pay at that point... Need to see incentives/success stories. Good luck guys!

gsaines 18y ago
Hey cvboss, thanks for giving it a spin! Yeah, we really do need an instructional demo video on the "try it page." We actually just got the front page up, so new instructional demo videos and the like are on the way. It's good to know people actually want them, and sorry for any confusion. Regarding you interest in seeing success stories or incentives, we are going to conduct a study next semester with a big batch of students so that we can make claims about the efficacy, is that the sort of thing you're looking for ("With Skritter, you can learn character 44% faster than with traditional methods, see our study") or would it be more enticing to see small narratives from users about how much its helped them?
- cvboss 18y ago
  I am not sure buddy, but it would be nice to see how it fits or replaces(?) the traditional approach from a high level perspective :)
- briansmith 18y ago
  "With Skritter, you can learn character 44% faster than with traditional methods, see our study" What are your criteria are for verifying the validity of the study? I've proofread lots of graduate papers about studies of second language acquisition and in almost every case the studies are summarized the same way: the results are (un)promising but no definite conclusions can drawn because the sample size was too small and/or there was too strong of a selection bias and/or there were some other significant flaws in the study. A study that would justify such a bold claim would be, as far as I can tell, a landmark study in the field--likely worthy of a Ph.D. People could probably get Ph.D.s just for studying your study! :)

devin 18y ago

Woo! You rule! If you were here right now I'd shake your hand. I've been using your app for months. This is a fantastic way to practice character writing. Simply phenomenal work. Thank you!

nwinter 18y ago
Thanks, Devin! (Want to get on our front page for saying that?)

natch 18y ago

Cool! How can I add more than 1 character at a time? For example say I want to add all the HSK1 characters with one click, is there a way to do that? [update: I figured out how to use Select: List. Strangely it's taking a long time to add the list. The HSK1 list should already exist on your server somewhere, no? Maybe it's doing it character by character? Is this an App Engine-ism? I would think a simple UPDATE student_character_list INSERT '?' WHERE source_list='HSK1'; would be pretty fast (if I even got that SQL right) but then maybe App Engine doesn't support SQL?] I just created an account. Is there a difference between the functionality for my fresh account versus the hackernews account, other than different usage data?

nwinter 18y ago
Ah. You've probably just added the entire list at once, where what you want is the "Add starting from..." checkbox. You should delete those (using Select List) or you'll get overwhelmed. We'll work on that UI. Yeah, App Engine doesn't do SQL. Makes things interesting. No difference in functionality--everyone is the same right now.