What do you think about this platform idea?
Hello guys 🤸♂️
I was thinking about these platform that let content creators sell a lot of things online (patreon, gumroad etc.)
I don't know if there already is a platform that does this, but I thought about a medium where people could sell their time, for consulting and mentoring.
Maybe something like someone posts "I have 20 years experience in graphic design" and other people that need advice or some kind of consulting can book a time from a calendar with that person.
What do you think about this idea?
How would this be different from UpWork or Freelancer? Just curious.
Platforms like upwork and freelancer are more for finding jobs/gigs (like a website, web app, mobile app etc). This could be just for some quick advice, like a 15 min call in which you get to ask some important questions about what you are trying to solve.
Check codementor.io
seen services that do this but nothing that feels like it has nailed it. https://remotehour.com seems to the closest but is more self host rather than a directory
Nicee 👌🏽, thanks for sharing that app. From what I researched, they started as a service to help remote workers get in touch by having an "open-door" approach to calls, which I think is brilliant. They seem to also have a similar feature, in which you can put an addon on your website and people can pay to call you which is what thought about, but yeah you're right is more of a self host rather than a directory of people from which you can choose.
Here's an article that outlines exactly how I validated the idea for GrowthMentor, which basically does what you're thinking.
https://www.growthmentor.com/advice/startups/how-to-validate-startup-idea/
Tip:
Niche down in an area/field you're super passionate in and know that others also share that same passion and like to talk about it.
Here's an example of doing niche:
https://www.growtalk.tv/one-on-one
I like the idea. I think it would work great. For example, IH interviews with founders teach me a lot of things and can even easily pass for consulting on some level. If interview platforms like those have caught traction, I think people would like a consulting marketplace if you can call it that. However, it might be difficult to scale at the beginning because of a two-sided user base.
Yep true, these kind of platforms, i think, require you to have a stable community of users from the start, so new users will trust the services
Sounds a lot like superpeer.com. They have Ryan Hoover (founder of Product Hunt), Hiten Shah and a lot of other tech influencers: producthunt.com/mentors. There's also Jemi which has some people in tech as well: jemi.app
Yess, that's more or less how I envisioned it
On a high level, seems interesting, details wise I do not know. But two questions, how are you planning to make cash (commission based?) and second question, I know alot of well known names that "usually" answer back in cold emails when people ask them questions, also, I get alot of Upwork jobs (although I mostly decline), for a one-two hour chat on something I have experience in (not saying I am expert or something, but since, that happens with me, I am sure it happens with real experts).
Great feedback!
The idea is not really well thought, it's just something that came to my mind, but I want to beat it with you guys and see if after all the questions it's still alive😂.
The experts would maybe pay a fixed fee, so they would be more inclined to share their profile because either if they make money or not they would pay something to the platform, so maybe it's an incentive to share their profile and rank up. The customers would pay for the service, part of the money goes to the expert, part of the money goes to the platform, like upwork or any other commission based thing.
Really good point from someone who had a similar experience, I come back to a question for you, would you use something liek that?😂
Point 1: Doesnt make sense to me to let the expert pay anything. Like for example, Upwork does not pay people to make profiles, they can decline them, but not make them pay.
2) Maybe later, 1) if my business is doing well and I have money (since my mindset now is all about saving for the website) and prices are really good, 2) If i see real value in the experts. But to be honest, I am currently more skewed to no than yes.
Sounds interesting, but I'd wonder are people currently experiencing problems finding others for consulting and mentoring? What options have they tried that haven't work? Is there evidence that the people providing the consulting and mentoring would be willing to pay you a cut in order to be brought more leads through a platform like you're proposing?
Spot on questions, I didn't make a research but I could answer from my own perspective.
I thought about this idea because sometimes I think of things like: "How can I start a company in my country? What are the steps? What implications does this have? How about starting one in another country? What is the legislation there?" and so on, of course much of the info are probably online but as someone who did not have that experience before and wants to learn, it may be really easy to miss some stuff, that a quick talk with someone who did that thing and can share the process in a matter of minutes.
As to similar services, I didn't find anything that would solve this problem, at least from my limited time research.
I think you should have a really great platform that people can use, in order to maintain them on the platform and not choose other tools for collaboration like zoom/skype/etc. But yeah, I don't really know if people would pay for this right now, that's why I wanted to ask you guys😂😂
There are or were many of them at some point
Do you remember any name? I'm just curious of what has been done for this and if it worked
https://clarity.fm/ is the big one still around I think
IIRC at the time it was built you could easily find like 20 alternatives doing the same. (recently "years" it seems these sites are a bit harder to google for)
These might be relevant as well due I didn't look too deep
https://www.getmeexperts.com/
https://www.comatch.com/
Nice ones, clarity.fm seems the most appropiate to what I thought of
https://www.growthmentor.com/ Seems like another one...
How do you find all these?😂
At least the idea seems validated
I used to search in the altavista days :shrug:
"clarity.fm alternatives" directed me to the 2nd one.
There used to be plenty of them and it doesn't seem like many survived, so I'd assume it's a bad niche to get into unless something changed...
it used to be everywhere, famous people were on these platforms...