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Ask HN: Feedback About Newly Launched Supercool School

19 points by SteliE 17y ago

Hi HN, would be great to hear your feedback regarding Supercool School. We just opened up our platform so that everyone can create their own next generation online school. For a relevant example check http://startup.supercoolschool.com - Thanks :)

bjoernlasseh 17y ago
like :)
SteliE 17y ago
A relevant example of a Supercool School can be found here: http://startup.supercoolschool.com http://startup.supercoolschool.com - Excited to hear your feedback! Thx :)
mathgenius 17y ago
"supercool school"?? hmm, try saying that three times quickly!
- SteliE 17y ago
  fair point - we tried to use a name that creates a response in people and is inclusive. most ppl either smile at us or with us hearing the name and we like that :) what do you think about the idea behind the name?
PStamatiou 17y ago
Thoughts on Supercool School from someone that has used it (me): http://paulstamatiou.com/review-supercool-school-online-learning-startup http://paulstamatiou.com/review-supercool-school-online-lear...
zackattack 17y ago
i can't take you seriously. need to change your name. this is a case where the name matters just 'cuz it is so damn bad.
- terryjsmith 17y ago
  Seconded. There is nothing quite so uncool to a kid (or anyone I would imagine) as branding yourself cool :)
  - SteliE 17y ago
    :) I understand where you're coming from guys - I disagree since I've seen how many ppl react positively to the name (and some really hating it ;)) - but still thanks for letting us know!
- vgurgov 17y ago
  +1 name sounds really stupid :)
- Chukwu 17y ago
  It speaks solely to your inherent level of buffoonery that you cannot take some product 'x' seriously on the basis of its name, rather than it's actual content. For shame.
dmix 17y ago
a) You have way to many features for the stage your at. It lacks clarity but also, for those features to be useful and worth paying for you'd have to spend tons of time developing them. That time is better spent finding out who your market is and what they want, before making that investment. b) I've read about many VC-backed companies that tried to do e-learning and failed. (Selling to schools is very difficult) c) I've recently come across more online classroom supplemental sites (with social features) than I can count and many of them had a narrower feature set and a clear market in mind. Edit: I just noticed your b2b section (http://corp.supercoolschool.com/index.php http://corp.supercoolschool.com/index.php) this makes a lot more sense, enterprise 2.0 is a growing industry. I'd narrow your focus as much as possible because b2b sales are tough as it is (but more rewarding then consumer).
- SteliE 17y ago
  thx for your feedback :) a) you're problably right - we're still figuring out what is important and what not for our users b)true - but what does that have to do with us? ;) c)same as b Regarding the b2b market: we actually started in the enterprise space and have sold Supercool School to large tech companies in the valley (yeah - even with our name ;)) although its very profitable it is a slow moving space and we thought it would be exciting (and rewarding) to open up to the general public and allow everyone to create their own Supercool School. For the first week we've seen some very good results with over 10 schools launched! But we are well aware that we are doing something completely uproven and new...
  - learnalist 17y ago
    Congratulations on making headway in the "enterprise space". With that in mind, could you not approach a few of them and ask them to write testimonials to be used on your site?
    - SteliE 17y ago
      Already in the process of getting this done :) btw - it seems like you're an edu entrepreneur yourself! would love to chat with you if you're interested - just ping me at steli at supercoolschool dot com
learnalist 17y ago
A grand idea! But.. I have skimmed your front page and your tour page, yet im not feeling like I have grasped what you do clearly enough. I even went as far to skim the article by a very supportive Paul Stamatiou. He mentions you will use 30% of money made to aid 3rd world countries. Im curious what that is written on a random blog, yet I cant find such a statement on your site. Either way top effort for attempting to tackle such a space, have you given much thought as to how your "video classes" etc will work for people in 3rd world countries, or are you only targeting them with the money you make from developed countries?
- SteliE 17y ago
  thanks for your feedback and your time! when it comes to allowing ppl in developed countries use Supercool School we hope to see the wiki integration we have being used and later the more bandwith intense delivery methods. can you tell me what is unclear / or clear for you about the idea? that is very crucial for us since we are sure that we can improve the way we communicate what we do but need to get more feedback from others on what we are missing to get across! thx :)
  - learnalist 17y ago
    On the tour page. Two options. ( Side note, if this was a uni paper, I would have said you padded it out with really large images, can they be a little smaller? Do you need to show the whole screen? Could the images work without being in context ( ie where your numbers are ) One: Use an index so people can jump to a specific part. Then the index can help sell or prepare them for what they are about to see. Two: ( more work ) Use "personas". I am a student learning french. - then give them links to show how the site will work well for them. I am a teacher of chemistry and I really like videoing my experiments - again a few click thrus targeting this type of user. etc... With your personas, dont aim to fill up all features in all personas, just think what will work for them.
    - SteliE 17y ago
      Great input - will do! :)
spokey 17y ago
I kind of like the name. It's long but memorable and not hard to spell. (And the "super" bit makes me think you mean it a bit tongue in cheek. "Cool School" wouldn't work, but I think "supercool" does.) It may not work for some corporate applications though (although I suppose you'd eventually offer custom domains to those folks, school.bigfacelesscorporation.com or whatever.) I'd need to spend more time with it to have a more complete impression, but two things jumped out at me on the homepage: 1) One of your demo links is broken. You have http://educators.supercooschool.com/ http://educators.supercooschool.com/ for "Educators 2.0" instead of http://educators.supercoolschool.com/ http://educators.supercoolschool.com/. (Maybe that proves my comment above wrong.) 2) In the second under "With your next generation School you can..." the first three paras have an associated image/icon, but not the fourth ("Market your company, product or ideas"). That seems wrong to me.
- vgurgov 17y ago
  same here - its ABP block image called "advertisement.gif"
- SteliE 17y ago
  1) Thanks - should be fixed now :) 2) Really? There should be an "alarm" icon displayed for that point...hmm...let me know if you can't see it and on what browser/os you are. thx!
vaksel 17y ago
well besides what others mentioned, I don't get why you are using an RSS feed button for "Teach students, customers or your audience"
- SteliE 17y ago
  Yeah you're right! The only reason we did that is because we couldn't come up with a good icon :) So its sort of like a placeholder - anyone has a good idea what we could use for that?
Dilpil 17y ago
What I would really like to do is view other peoples courses, I cannot immediately see how.
- SteliE 17y ago
  That's a good point - you can go to http://startup.supercoolschool.com http://startup.supercoolschool.com or http://educators.supercoolschool.com http://educators.supercoolschool.com to check out some classes/courses but we don't have a page that aggregates all the content from all the schools yet.
jwesley 17y ago
You really need to refine the concept of exactly what your product does and the language you use to communicate that to users. Spending a few minutes on the site, I can tell it's for education but not much more than that. I get the idea you are trying to be all things to all people. You would probably be better off being the exact right fit for a specific segment of the market. By trying to be for businesses, educators, and amateurs you end up being not quite right for any of those groups. You should decide to be either for the mass consumer market or for businesses and educational institutions and develop your product and pricing accordingly.
- SteliE 17y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! One of the reasons why opened up to the public (before that we only offered our solution to the enterprise market) was to learn who will use our product in what way and then focus on that group (customer dev basically)...that's why its so vague at this point.
iterationx 17y ago
I looked at take a tour, but I still have some questions. Maybe you could provide a demo class? Or at least a video. The tour has many items I consider unnecessary for example: "1 Give the School your branding - add your own logo" It's quite obvious that there will be a button for logo, so this is actually working against you because it does not help me understand the big picture. Also there can be no doubt you need a different domain name.

19 points by SteliE 17y ago

bjoernlasseh 17y ago

like :)

SteliE 17y ago

A relevant example of a Supercool School can be found here: http://startup.supercoolschool.com http://startup.supercoolschool.com - Excited to hear your feedback! Thx :)

mathgenius 17y ago

"supercool school"?? hmm, try saying that three times quickly!

SteliE 17y ago
fair point - we tried to use a name that creates a response in people and is inclusive. most ppl either smile at us or with us hearing the name and we like that :) what do you think about the idea behind the name?

PStamatiou 17y ago

Thoughts on Supercool School from someone that has used it (me): http://paulstamatiou.com/review-supercool-school-online-learning-startup http://paulstamatiou.com/review-supercool-school-online-lear...

zackattack 17y ago

i can't take you seriously. need to change your name. this is a case where the name matters just 'cuz it is so damn bad.

terryjsmith 17y ago
Seconded. There is nothing quite so uncool to a kid (or anyone I would imagine) as branding yourself cool :)
- SteliE 17y ago
  :) I understand where you're coming from guys - I disagree since I've seen how many ppl react positively to the name (and some really hating it ;)) - but still thanks for letting us know!
vgurgov 17y ago
+1 name sounds really stupid :)
Chukwu 17y ago
It speaks solely to your inherent level of buffoonery that you cannot take some product 'x' seriously on the basis of its name, rather than it's actual content. For shame.

dmix 17y ago

a) You have way to many features for the stage your at. It lacks clarity but also, for those features to be useful and worth paying for you'd have to spend tons of time developing them. That time is better spent finding out who your market is and what they want, before making that investment. b) I've read about many VC-backed companies that tried to do e-learning and failed. (Selling to schools is very difficult) c) I've recently come across more online classroom supplemental sites (with social features) than I can count and many of them had a narrower feature set and a clear market in mind. Edit: I just noticed your b2b section (http://corp.supercoolschool.com/index.php http://corp.supercoolschool.com/index.php) this makes a lot more sense, enterprise 2.0 is a growing industry. I'd narrow your focus as much as possible because b2b sales are tough as it is (but more rewarding then consumer).

SteliE 17y ago
thx for your feedback :) a) you're problably right - we're still figuring out what is important and what not for our users b)true - but what does that have to do with us? ;) c)same as b Regarding the b2b market: we actually started in the enterprise space and have sold Supercool School to large tech companies in the valley (yeah - even with our name ;)) although its very profitable it is a slow moving space and we thought it would be exciting (and rewarding) to open up to the general public and allow everyone to create their own Supercool School. For the first week we've seen some very good results with over 10 schools launched! But we are well aware that we are doing something completely uproven and new...
- learnalist 17y ago
  Congratulations on making headway in the "enterprise space". With that in mind, could you not approach a few of them and ask them to write testimonials to be used on your site?
  - SteliE 17y ago
    Already in the process of getting this done :) btw - it seems like you're an edu entrepreneur yourself! would love to chat with you if you're interested - just ping me at steli at supercoolschool dot com

learnalist 17y ago

A grand idea! But.. I have skimmed your front page and your tour page, yet im not feeling like I have grasped what you do clearly enough. I even went as far to skim the article by a very supportive Paul Stamatiou. He mentions you will use 30% of money made to aid 3rd world countries. Im curious what that is written on a random blog, yet I cant find such a statement on your site. Either way top effort for attempting to tackle such a space, have you given much thought as to how your "video classes" etc will work for people in 3rd world countries, or are you only targeting them with the money you make from developed countries?

SteliE 17y ago
thanks for your feedback and your time! when it comes to allowing ppl in developed countries use Supercool School we hope to see the wiki integration we have being used and later the more bandwith intense delivery methods. can you tell me what is unclear / or clear for you about the idea? that is very crucial for us since we are sure that we can improve the way we communicate what we do but need to get more feedback from others on what we are missing to get across! thx :)
- learnalist 17y ago
  On the tour page. Two options. ( Side note, if this was a uni paper, I would have said you padded it out with really large images, can they be a little smaller? Do you need to show the whole screen? Could the images work without being in context ( ie where your numbers are ) One: Use an index so people can jump to a specific part. Then the index can help sell or prepare them for what they are about to see. Two: ( more work ) Use "personas". I am a student learning french. - then give them links to show how the site will work well for them. I am a teacher of chemistry and I really like videoing my experiments - again a few click thrus targeting this type of user. etc... With your personas, dont aim to fill up all features in all personas, just think what will work for them.
  - SteliE 17y ago
    Great input - will do! :)

spokey 17y ago

I kind of like the name. It's long but memorable and not hard to spell. (And the "super" bit makes me think you mean it a bit tongue in cheek. "Cool School" wouldn't work, but I think "supercool" does.) It may not work for some corporate applications though (although I suppose you'd eventually offer custom domains to those folks, school.bigfacelesscorporation.com or whatever.) I'd need to spend more time with it to have a more complete impression, but two things jumped out at me on the homepage: 1) One of your demo links is broken. You have http://educators.supercooschool.com/ http://educators.supercooschool.com/ for "Educators 2.0" instead of http://educators.supercoolschool.com/ http://educators.supercoolschool.com/. (Maybe that proves my comment above wrong.) 2) In the second under "With your next generation School you can..." the first three paras have an associated image/icon, but not the fourth ("Market your company, product or ideas"). That seems wrong to me.

vgurgov 17y ago
same here - its ABP block image called "advertisement.gif"
SteliE 17y ago
1) Thanks - should be fixed now :) 2) Really? There should be an "alarm" icon displayed for that point...hmm...let me know if you can't see it and on what browser/os you are. thx!

vaksel 17y ago

well besides what others mentioned, I don't get why you are using an RSS feed button for "Teach students, customers or your audience"

SteliE 17y ago
Yeah you're right! The only reason we did that is because we couldn't come up with a good icon :) So its sort of like a placeholder - anyone has a good idea what we could use for that?

Dilpil 17y ago

What I would really like to do is view other peoples courses, I cannot immediately see how.

SteliE 17y ago
That's a good point - you can go to http://startup.supercoolschool.com http://startup.supercoolschool.com or http://educators.supercoolschool.com http://educators.supercoolschool.com to check out some classes/courses but we don't have a page that aggregates all the content from all the schools yet.

jwesley 17y ago

You really need to refine the concept of exactly what your product does and the language you use to communicate that to users. Spending a few minutes on the site, I can tell it's for education but not much more than that. I get the idea you are trying to be all things to all people. You would probably be better off being the exact right fit for a specific segment of the market. By trying to be for businesses, educators, and amateurs you end up being not quite right for any of those groups. You should decide to be either for the mass consumer market or for businesses and educational institutions and develop your product and pricing accordingly.

SteliE 17y ago
Thanks for the feedback! One of the reasons why opened up to the public (before that we only offered our solution to the enterprise market) was to learn who will use our product in what way and then focus on that group (customer dev basically)...that's why its so vague at this point.

iterationx 17y ago

I looked at take a tour, but I still have some questions. Maybe you could provide a demo class? Or at least a video. The tour has many items I consider unnecessary for example: "1 Give the School your branding - add your own logo" It's quite obvious that there will be a button for logo, so this is actually working against you because it does not help me understand the big picture. Also there can be no doubt you need a different domain name.