Lambda School Meets Teachable?
https://vrtlly.me/build
Hi all - excited to be a part of Indie hackers! I cannot believe that it has taken me so long for me to find you guys...
I left my job as a Software Engineer at FB back in March of this year. Since then, I've been building a host of different products to hopefully find financial freedom.
Most recently, I've been working on a tool to allow anyone to build a live online course. I love the work that Lambda school has been doing by introducing live video classes into CS education. I'm hoping to build a similar product for any vertical:
https://vrtlly.me/build
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Some quick tips :)
Do you have an email?
I can't believe I forgot to add the CTA to the Navbar. That's an easy win.
Also I would move the app to app.vrtlly.me, will save you time in the future.
What's the benefit of that btw? I've seen a lot of web apps take that approach.
Means that you don't have to hard code your marketing site.
So if you want to make changes to the app/marketing site you only have to do one instead of both.
Yes! ish@tryvirtually.com
Are you saying I should add a contact email to the page?
Just wanted to email you :)
Hi,
I always liked the idea of online courses. Unfortunately, I didn't find any really good platform yet.
I would like to ask you if you conducted any survey, asked potential customers.
Because this "Instead of going through a series of videos, students can ask questions and discuss course topics with other classmates through live video group calls" sounds a little bit questionable to me.
Of course, a series of videos is not a good method, but I'm not sure if a discussion is better.
Thanks and good luck!
Hey, that's valuable feedback! I definitely need to do more customer research.
A part of the hypothesis comes from participating in Startup School for the past three years.
I've just been amazed by how much more I've been able to get out of live, group discussion than I have through watching online lectures.
Have you ever participated in Startup School and/or a similar live group video discussion? Would love to hear your thoughts if you have.
Hi,
yes, I'm actually attending Startup School this year. I can't say that group sessions have a huge impact on my life and business. The very first session was really helpful because I had valuable feedbacks and did my pivot based on it. All the following sessions were so-so, I only had something like "I liked your product!" and, as you can guess, there was no much value in it.
Also, you need to take into account the specificity of Startup School. It's probably the only case when group meetings may be so valuable - when all people are working on their projects and want to hear feedback from strangers. I can't imagine the same value for coding courses for instance. (Foreign language courses may be the case, but not when "just a group meeting").
Good luck!
Right this year hasn't been as valuable since it's just peer discussion. In previous years, group sessions were lead by YC alumni who had built successful products and were scaling their companies.
They added a lot to discussions. Largely because they were incredibly knowledgeable in the area and were able to advise based on their own experience.
This year is a bit weird as its early stage founders advising other early-stage founders so the advice is often less dependable.
Again, you might be right here that there isn't actually any value gained here, but I won't really know until I test it further.
It might be specific verticals really resonate with this while others don't...
Step 1) Recruit 2 - 3 creators that are willing to run a test course
Step 2) Run a pilot live course with them and their audience.
Step 3) Gather user sentiment & analyze. Did people enjoy it? Would they do it again? Did creators make it enough revenue for it to be worth their time?
Does that seem to be a good approach?
Looks like it's a good approach, and step 1 is probably the most important. You will see right away, if people are interested in the product, or not, and if not, why.
Your idea came from a real experience as you mentioned. Most of us haven't had that experience yet. So "live video group calls" initially sound uninteresting to me.
I agree that you need to do more customer research and clarify the use case better.
Try to include their attributes, habits etc as well , while concluding anything.
Doing it wrong tho does more harm than good. I wrote a blog about this a while back - maybe it'll be a bit useful to you - https://blog.lightcat.io/a-behavioural-view-of-what-customers-want/
I never thought of that...
I'll have to really think about how to convey the benefits to someone who's never really experienced it before.
I think using the right wording and visuals will be critical.
Thanks for the blog post. Taking a look now
Here are my recommendations for the home page.
As for the idea itself, I think it's good.
Ahh that's great feedback! Recently hired a designer to help me with the layout. Still kinks to work out it appears...
Thank you!
Alright, I went ahead and fixed the spacing as well as the alignment. Need to think more on the first point...