🔬 Micro-Education Businesses: AI Assistants, Micro-Courses, Content-Format Fit
In this Trends.vc Report, we talk about building micro-courses with AI prompts, getting quick insights into any topic, micro-consulting services, email courses and more.
💎 Why It Matters
You can transform your life in hours instead of months.
🔍 Problem
You want to learn a new skill but lack time.
💡 Solution
Micro-education helps you learn new skills fast.
🏁 Players
Micro-Education Examples
- Landing Page Hot Tips • Rob Hope teaches how to build effective landing pages
- The Collab Lab, Inc. • Maisha L. Cannon teaches AI-powered recruiting
- No-Code Maker Workbook • Katt Risen teaches how to build no-code products
- Innovisory Sessions • Jordan Divecha teaches creators how to build and launch businesses
- Hybrain.Academy • Nick McFly teaches AI for non-tech folks
- Growth Marketing 101 • Marketing Max teaches how to get more customers
- Find Your Following • Arvid Kahl teaches how to build an audience on Twitter
Micro-Education Tools
- Sequel • Add onboarding webinars to your website
- Zuddl • Run scalable webinars with polls, chats and more
- Mindsmith • Use AI to build detailed micro-courses
- Readwise • Highlight, save and manage notes from the web
- PDF.ai • Chat with your PDF documents
🔮 Predictions
- Personal AI assistants will help us make informed decisions. They will become our personal consultants.
- Jarvis Invest helps you trade stocks.
- FP Alpha gives insights into financial planning.
- FinChat.io helps you get insights into 50,000+ public companies.
- Wally helps you learn more about investing, finance and personal budgeting.
- More micro-learning platforms will use AI to build micro-courses. You will give the topic. They will build lessons and tests.
- Mindsmith lets you use guide AI to build detailed micro-courses.
- EdApp lets you build AI-powered micro-courses with a click of a button.
- TalentCards lets you prompt a topic and watch AI build a micro-course from scratch.
- Full-time consultants will offer micro-consulting services. They will serve clients with lower budgets but urgent needs.
- Harry Roberts offers web performance consulting and 90-minute calls.
- Kevin C. Whelan offers long-term consulting services but has 90-minute strategy calls.
- Justin Welsh does SaaS advising with 90-day retainers. He has 20-minute and 1-hour consulting sessions.
☁️ Opportunities
- Do micro-consulting. Share expert advice on short calls.
- Rebecca Skeete helps with sales and marketing.
- Vanessa Paech helps to build online communities.
- Adrienne Kress helps with book writing and publishing.
- Emma Rhoades helps to build workplaces with a great culture.
- Vanessa Bolosier helps with branding, marketing and content creation.
- Build an email course. Stay top of mind by getting right in your students’ inbox.
- Laurie Wang has a 7-day email course on social media marketing.
- David de Céspedes has a 7-day email course on setting goals in Notion.
- Josh Kubicki has a 6-day email course on managing finance in a law firm.
- Use ChatGPT to get quick insights into any topic.
- Brian uses ChatGPT to learn JavaScript.
- Brian Morris uses ChatGPT to learn history and literature.
- ThuRein uses ChatGPT to learn React for iPad interfaces.
- Ihtesham Haider uses ChatGPT to learn Japanese, Python and more.
🏔️ Risks
- Content-Format Fit • Micro-learning may have theory and tasks that barely touch the topic. It can be hard to teach backend development with a micro-course.
- Low Lifetime Value • This lowers margins and makes it harder to invest in customer acquisition.
🔑 Key Lessons
- Micro-learning accommodates shorter attention spans. Keeping lessons short and focused can boost the completion rate.
- Micro-education is great for upskilling. You can enhance your current skills with a few focused lessons.
- Spacing out topics over short lessons helps to retain information better.
🔥 Hot Takes
- There's a benefit to long books. Especially if the ideas are repetitive. You spend more time with the ideas and soak in the lessons better.
- You need to pick an area that's painful enough for people. Be a painkiller, not a vitamin.
- Micro-learning is bad for reskilling. You need more than a few micro-lessons to switch careers.
😠 Haters
“It's hard to learn a new skill in N hours.”
It depends on what you want to learn. While it can be hard to learn data science in a few hours, you can learn how to do squats in a few minutes.
“A mobile format does not work for people who get easily distracted.”
It can be wise to take on a cohort-based course if you rely on external support and accountability to keep going.
“A 3-hour course is not a micro-course.”
Compared to what? There are 50-hour online courses, 30-day email courses and 6-month cohort-based courses. While you can finish a Duolingo lesson in a few minutes, not all topics can fit this format.
“Micro-courses seem like a bad fit for what I want to teach.”
The micro-learning format might not be a good fit for teaching complex topics. Focus on one goal at a time. This course tries to teach “everything” about SEO and lasts ~46 hours. This course teaches local SEO and lasts ~2.5 hours.
🔗 Links
- Building a Report on Launching and Growing Micro-Education Businesses • The Tweet behind this report.
- The First 20 Hours — How to Learn Anything • How to master practical knowledge and skills.
- The Micro-Education Business Model • How to turn your knowledge into a micro-education business.
📁 Related Reports
- Email Courses • Deliver promised transformations in a scalable way
- Digital Products • Scale your revenue without spending more time
- Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses • Find your highest point of leverage
- The Creator Economy • Create, share and monetize your content
- Micro-Consulting • Share short bursts of knowledge, perspective, insight and opinion
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