5 ms·

Disclaimer: I'm involved in a small LMS startup It's funny to me because there's so much low hanging fruit in the business training industry but the clients te

by columbo 13y ago

Disclaimer: I'm involved in a small LMS startup It's funny to me because there's so much low hanging fruit in the business training industry but the clients tend to be absolutely fearful to make decisions beyond the norm. The hardest part of convincing businesses that they don't need Blackboard or Moodle is reminding them all the features they don't use. Last year I featured our application to a client. I have a pretty scripted event that starts with creating a course with content in a few minutes and had people clapping because of the simplicity. Despite that the first questions are always going over the "Feature Checkboxes" (Oh, you don't have wikis? What about a ticket system?)... it can be a very long sales cycle. That and SCORM, oh man do I loathe SCORM

vineet 13y ago
In the context of the above: Here's a question to the experienced entrepreneurs. If a startup wants to take on Blackboard. What would be a good way to go about doing it?
- shimms 13y ago
  We tried the typical SaaS startup freemium model for what we thought would be our Blackboard killer (hint: it wasn't). We offered it for free to individual teachers with the strategy of enlisting an evangelist group of dedicated and passionate teachers at institutions. The plan went that once a critical mass of teachers from a given institution where onboard and using it, we would trigger the enterprise sales approach and sell the product to the institution. We had some uptake from teachers, who universally loved the product. They raved about it in fact. We were super excited. We thought we were onto a winner. They told their friends and colleagues who in turn signed up, and they too loved it. And raved about it. And told their friends about it. Unfortunately the vast majority of them never actually delivered a course on it with live students. We were stunned. After prodding and asking, and eventually getting to the bottom of it, we found that whilst the vast majority of teachers loved the product, and loved the idea of using it for their courses, they wouldn't use a product that wasn't centrally supported by the institution (or even in quite a few cases, couldn't use a product that was specifically prohibited by their institution - they were only allowed to use the prescribed LMS, which in most cases was Blackboard or Moodle). So my tip for entrepreneurs trying to break into the enterprise LMS space is appreciate your an enterprise sales company. Your users are not your buyers, and even if they love your product, if you aren't selling it to the buyer you'll die. I don't believe this is a market in which you can offer a freemium product to the individual with the intent of penetration reaching the masses through viral or other growth strategies. It might be worthwhile to do this to help get exposure, but don't expect to get actual sales, or actual usage, off the back of it. This isn't an industry in which a Yammer approach works (IMHO).
  - robterrell 13y ago
    This is hugely valuable advice. Ignore the parent post at your peril! You need to be constantly vigilant about who your users are versus who your customers are. If there's a divergence, you need to make sure it's accounted for & benefiting you. Many companies think "let's build the best thing we can, and the users will love it and win over the IT department, who will write the checks." Microsoft's ongoing record revenues, in a time when the PC market has shrunk and WIndows 8 sales are tanking, proves that theory wrong. Having lived through this myself, my advice to to come up with price points that middle managers can expense without institutional review. But if you don't plan for this from the start, it can be a frightening to go from a sales forecast of 20-odd $100,000 sales to one that forecasts 100,000 $20-ish sales...with the same sales team.
    - shimms 13y ago
      Thanks - but right back at you with the price point threshold. We called it the "credit card approval limit". If a divisional/departmental manager can approve a purchase on their credit card without seeking director or board level approval you'll have a much easier time getting past the penny gap with customers.
      - sbierwagen 13y ago
        http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie... The reason I bring this up is because software is priced three ways: free, cheap, and dear. 1) Free. Open source, etc. Not relevant to the current discussion. Nothing to see here. Move along. 2) Cheap. $10 - $1000, sold to a very large number of people at a low price without a salesforce. Most shrinkwrapped consumer and small business software falls into this category. 3) Dear. $75,000 - $1,000,000, sold to a handful of rich big companies using a team of slick salespeople that do six months of intense PowerPoint just to get one goddamn sale. The Oracle model.
      - devilshaircut 13y ago
        I found your comments to be hugely insightful. I am working on a project in the same general area (education) with a business partner and I was wondering if you'd be so kind as to let me pick your mind on the topic and learn from your experience. I have my email available in my profile although I am happy to reach out to you if you're open to it. In any case, like I said before, I found your insights very valuable. Thank you for sharing.
- columbo 13y ago
  IMO? 1) Choose business or educational. Pick one and completely walk away from the other. Businesses (Generally Speaking) don't care about classroom training. Educational Institutions (Again, see above) don't care about learner org charts. 2) Embrace (#@%!) SCORM. It's a requirement. It just is. Just don't base your domain after it. Use SCORM as an old api, but not as a model for your database. 3) Be multi-tenant from day 1 This is really hard to get right, but I think it's really important. There's too many solutions out there that require installing the entire software suite and not enough SaaS offerings. 4) I guess at this point do standard startup stuff Find companies (or universities) that are looking to create a learning platform and reduce their requirements down to something that resembles a platform
- isalmon 13y ago
  My suggestion: 1) Go to a college you have some connection to (e.g. the one you graduated from), find a decision maker who has authority to BUY your BB killer. 2) Sit down with him/her - see if they are interested at all. If not - try a couple of more times and forget about it - it's easier to fulfill the market, not create it 3) Now if they are interested - create a product they are willing to pay for (very important), sign them up. 4) Ask that decision maker or any other professors who are happy with your product to introduce you to their friends at other colleges. 5) Repeat I think the problem with most companies who tried an failed is that they assumed that if they build a better product - colleges will pay for that. In many cases it does not work this way.
  - hobs 13y ago
    I would agree, finding and connecting with real decision makers on a personal level to show them how you bring value and have that personal connection is one of the best sales strategies around. I am not talking someone who is high in the food chain, I mean the one who is the final say and can move the entire organization. Sometimes there is no one at a specific org that can do that, and if so, don't even attempt it.
- pseut 13y ago
  Not an experienced entrepreneur, but FWIW, don't take on Blackboard's existing products. Make a gamble on what's going to be important for managing courses in 5-10 years and start building that. Online testing is probably going to be more important; video-delivery of lectures is going to be more important; mobile access (especially for instructors) is going to be more important; massive enrollment is going to be more important. It's hard to imagine that Blackboard will do any of those well.
vyrotek 13y ago
As soon as I saw you mention SCORM I had to speak up. SERIOUSLY, THAT STUFF IS A MESS! I worked for a Tutoring/LMS company for a while. They specifically focused on english programs for businesses and government agencies. We had to integrate our platform with SCORM and had content developers create modules for it. That's a really rough space to be in. We were basically the layer in between SCORM content developers who want the freedom to create lessons and quizzes however they want and the people who wanted sophisticated reporting on top of all this free-form content. Good times...
binxbolling 13y ago
What LMS start-up? I'd love to check it out.

by columbo 13y ago

vineet 13y ago

In the context of the above: Here's a question to the experienced entrepreneurs. If a startup wants to take on Blackboard. What would be a good way to go about doing it?

shimms 13y ago
We tried the typical SaaS startup freemium model for what we thought would be our Blackboard killer (hint: it wasn't). We offered it for free to individual teachers with the strategy of enlisting an evangelist group of dedicated and passionate teachers at institutions. The plan went that once a critical mass of teachers from a given institution where onboard and using it, we would trigger the enterprise sales approach and sell the product to the institution. We had some uptake from teachers, who universally loved the product. They raved about it in fact. We were super excited. We thought we were onto a winner. They told their friends and colleagues who in turn signed up, and they too loved it. And raved about it. And told their friends about it. Unfortunately the vast majority of them never actually delivered a course on it with live students. We were stunned. After prodding and asking, and eventually getting to the bottom of it, we found that whilst the vast majority of teachers loved the product, and loved the idea of using it for their courses, they wouldn't use a product that wasn't centrally supported by the institution (or even in quite a few cases, couldn't use a product that was specifically prohibited by their institution - they were only allowed to use the prescribed LMS, which in most cases was Blackboard or Moodle). So my tip for entrepreneurs trying to break into the enterprise LMS space is appreciate your an enterprise sales company. Your users are not your buyers, and even if they love your product, if you aren't selling it to the buyer you'll die. I don't believe this is a market in which you can offer a freemium product to the individual with the intent of penetration reaching the masses through viral or other growth strategies. It might be worthwhile to do this to help get exposure, but don't expect to get actual sales, or actual usage, off the back of it. This isn't an industry in which a Yammer approach works (IMHO).
- robterrell 13y ago
  This is hugely valuable advice. Ignore the parent post at your peril! You need to be constantly vigilant about who your users are versus who your customers are. If there's a divergence, you need to make sure it's accounted for & benefiting you. Many companies think "let's build the best thing we can, and the users will love it and win over the IT department, who will write the checks." Microsoft's ongoing record revenues, in a time when the PC market has shrunk and WIndows 8 sales are tanking, proves that theory wrong. Having lived through this myself, my advice to to come up with price points that middle managers can expense without institutional review. But if you don't plan for this from the start, it can be a frightening to go from a sales forecast of 20-odd $100,000 sales to one that forecasts 100,000 $20-ish sales...with the same sales team.
  - shimms 13y ago
    Thanks - but right back at you with the price point threshold. We called it the "credit card approval limit". If a divisional/departmental manager can approve a purchase on their credit card without seeking director or board level approval you'll have a much easier time getting past the penny gap with customers.
    - sbierwagen 13y ago
      http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie... The reason I bring this up is because software is priced three ways: free, cheap, and dear. 1) Free. Open source, etc. Not relevant to the current discussion. Nothing to see here. Move along. 2) Cheap. $10 - $1000, sold to a very large number of people at a low price without a salesforce. Most shrinkwrapped consumer and small business software falls into this category. 3) Dear. $75,000 - $1,000,000, sold to a handful of rich big companies using a team of slick salespeople that do six months of intense PowerPoint just to get one goddamn sale. The Oracle model.
    - devilshaircut 13y ago
      I found your comments to be hugely insightful. I am working on a project in the same general area (education) with a business partner and I was wondering if you'd be so kind as to let me pick your mind on the topic and learn from your experience. I have my email available in my profile although I am happy to reach out to you if you're open to it. In any case, like I said before, I found your insights very valuable. Thank you for sharing.
columbo 13y ago
IMO? 1) Choose business or educational. Pick one and completely walk away from the other. Businesses (Generally Speaking) don't care about classroom training. Educational Institutions (Again, see above) don't care about learner org charts. 2) Embrace (#@%!) SCORM. It's a requirement. It just is. Just don't base your domain after it. Use SCORM as an old api, but not as a model for your database. 3) Be multi-tenant from day 1 This is really hard to get right, but I think it's really important. There's too many solutions out there that require installing the entire software suite and not enough SaaS offerings. 4) I guess at this point do standard startup stuff Find companies (or universities) that are looking to create a learning platform and reduce their requirements down to something that resembles a platform
isalmon 13y ago
My suggestion: 1) Go to a college you have some connection to (e.g. the one you graduated from), find a decision maker who has authority to BUY your BB killer. 2) Sit down with him/her - see if they are interested at all. If not - try a couple of more times and forget about it - it's easier to fulfill the market, not create it 3) Now if they are interested - create a product they are willing to pay for (very important), sign them up. 4) Ask that decision maker or any other professors who are happy with your product to introduce you to their friends at other colleges. 5) Repeat I think the problem with most companies who tried an failed is that they assumed that if they build a better product - colleges will pay for that. In many cases it does not work this way.
- hobs 13y ago
  I would agree, finding and connecting with real decision makers on a personal level to show them how you bring value and have that personal connection is one of the best sales strategies around. I am not talking someone who is high in the food chain, I mean the one who is the final say and can move the entire organization. Sometimes there is no one at a specific org that can do that, and if so, don't even attempt it.
pseut 13y ago
Not an experienced entrepreneur, but FWIW, don't take on Blackboard's existing products. Make a gamble on what's going to be important for managing courses in 5-10 years and start building that. Online testing is probably going to be more important; video-delivery of lectures is going to be more important; mobile access (especially for instructors) is going to be more important; massive enrollment is going to be more important. It's hard to imagine that Blackboard will do any of those well.

vyrotek 13y ago

As soon as I saw you mention SCORM I had to speak up. SERIOUSLY, THAT STUFF IS A MESS! I worked for a Tutoring/LMS company for a while. They specifically focused on english programs for businesses and government agencies. We had to integrate our platform with SCORM and had content developers create modules for it. That's a really rough space to be in. We were basically the layer in between SCORM content developers who want the freedom to create lessons and quizzes however they want and the people who wanted sophisticated reporting on top of all this free-form content. Good times...

binxbolling 13y ago

What LMS start-up? I'd love to check it out.