8
12 Comments

I'm launching my first SaaS product as a solo-founder. I need your feedback!

Hey there!

My name is Grégory (on Twitter as @gdangel0), and I recently finished building the MVP for my first SaaS product: AlterClass.

It's an all-in-one platform for creating and selling interactive programming courses online.

The goal is to help developers build better online programming courses.

With AlterClass, they can:

✅ Create engaging and interactive programming courses using multi-media content
✅ Bring their course to life with presales while still creating the content
✅ Earn money online from their experience and skills

If you'd like to learn more about how I came up with the idea for the product, check out my thread here.

I would love to hear your thoughts on it! It's free to use and you can already try it out:

https://alterclass.io/teaching

Let me know what you think and feel free to ask me anything!

  1. 1

    Just a note that Scrimba has a fully interactive training model:

    https://scrimba.com/allcourses

    I've also seen a few other places that do that, can't remember them right now.

    But, that's a GOOD thing as it proves you are in a validated market :)

    1. 1

      Hey Justin! Thanks for your feedback.

      Yes, I know about Scrimba. They've built their own system to create interactive videos. This is great but quite different from what I offer with AlterClass in terms of the content you can create with the platform but must importantly the revenue model for the instructors.

  2. 1

    Hello, your website looking great !
    What's your tech stack ?

    1. 1

      Hey Paul! Merci pour ton message.

      Mainly React/Next.js, Fauna DB, Tailwind CSS. It runs on Vercel.

  3. 1

    Hi Gregory, I have opened your website. Bit of context: I'm a UI designer. So i probably would not be your user target.

    However, I do really think Alterclass already have such polished UI.
    ✔️ good contrast
    ✔️ clear and engaging CTA
    ✔️ Nice color scheme
    ✔️ Work flawlessly on mobile

    I only have 1 suggestion that may improve the product. If I'm a programmer and want to buy the course, I would want curriculum and detailed contents inside the course page as it gives me transparency

    All in all, you have launched a flawless product. Hope the best for Alterclass

    1. 1

      Hey Ariq! Thanks you for your detailed feedback on the UI.

      You're right! I'm currently working on adding more content on the course page (curriculum, requirements, etc...), even for the courses in presale.

      Thanks again.

  4. 1

    This looks cool! I've seen a few course builders geared towards programming although I haven't taken a close look at too many yet, so I'm not sure how you're differentiating the product. I created a Vuex course on Scrimba for the Vuex docs, which is only video, so having markdown and other content types seems really nice.

    My first impression is that I want it to be as easy and efficient as possible to create the course content on the platform. Also, can I transfer the content away from the platform or is there any lock-in? Final thing that stood out is that 15% seemed like a large percentage - just my initial reaction, not necessarily true or not.

    If I were to make another course, I'd definitely consider using this platform.

    1. 1

      Hey Connor! Thanks for your feedback. I really appreciate it. I've looked at your course on Scrimba, and it looks good.

      One of the main reasons I'm building AlterClass is because no other platform allows us as instructors to use interactive and multi-media content (such as quizzes, code snippets, coding env, ...) for creating a programming course.

      Most of the courses we can find on the web are only video-based, and it is by far not the best way to learn such practical skills as programming.

      So, for now, I'm focusing my effort on building the authoring system for the instructors to build better programming courses with diverse types of media. And also make it easy for them to sell it right away on our marketplace.

      You are the first to ask if the course's content can be exported, but it is not. If this is something that comes up again, I'll definitely take a look at it 😉. What do you think is the main reason you would like to export it?

      Regarding your last question, if we compare how much Udemy, for example, is taking for each sale, the 15% fee is not a lot. On Udemy, if a sale is made thanks to Udemy (or its partners), the instructor only receives 37% (which is a 63% fee) on the net amount (i.e., after taxes and other fees such as the 30% fee imposed by Apple or Google for sales on iOS and Android). At the end of the day, on Udemy, an instructor does not get much from a sale, which is not fair at all.

      I've been an instructor myself, and I know how much work and time is necessary to build a great programming course. So, that's why I think the instructor should keep most of the revenue.

      1. 1

        Definitely agree having the course builder is nice. You might want to take a look at traditional LMS's like Canvas for best practices (or ways they could be improved) as far as organizing modules, types of content, etc.

        As for exporting, I ask because on a previous consulting project, the clients wanted to prototype the course with a course builder like Kajabi, but were worried they'd outgrow the platform. I had a similar reaction to your platform. If at some point I wanted to build a custom course platform for my courses, I'd be worried about having all of my old content stuck on another platform. Again, just hypothetical, but it's what came to mind. My guess is that other platforms like Udemy might get the same reaction.

        For pricing, after seeing more of a comparison, the 15% does seem very fair.

        1. 1

          Thanks for sharing. I'll take a look at Canvas 😉

          For the content export I'm not sure if it will help my business as the goal is to have instructors build and sell the course on AlterClass. But we'll see how it goes.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 16 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments