Learnly
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Background story: I started building a paid coding bootcamp 2022, reached a high of $500 MRR, pivoted to a learn anything product with the launch of GPT3.5 in 2023 and eventually closed it up after not finding success.
I started on the bootcamp because I had taught 2 of my friends how to code, with no background to helping them find a job. I wanted to build a bootcamp that focused on the fundamentals of computer science and problem solving rather than technologies. I pivoted to the learn anything product as it could expand the product into a broader market and help organizations along the way.
Lessons learned
- People won't come just because you built it. Be involved in the communities, use the power of small things to find your first customers. As YC says it, do things that are not scalable early on.
- Iterate fast, put your customers feedback before your roadmap. Your grand plan doesn't matter if you can't satisfy your current customers.
- If you are solving the right customer problem, sign up should be easy: I started learnly with a one pager, describing the problem I saw and what I was fixing, and I started building for a group of customers who were interested. My first 4 students were in Dubai, 2 in U.S, and one in Mexico. Never met them, they just resonated with what I had. I have a very small following, so not a big reach either.
- Know when to hang it up. After I pivoted, I met organizations, did customer interviews, people thought it was cool, but not ready to swipe the card. After 2 months of no sign ups, I decided to close it up. Reason being: sign ups were easy, I wasn't solving an important problems for my customer.
- One big eye opener for me was buildspace. It's online community/accelerator. People come and build their products to revenue in 8 weeks. People got really successful! And it's not a fluke! They iterated fast, simplified, and solved the right problem. I thought I was doing it, not even close to who fast these "lucky" "overnight success" people do it.
After closing it up late 2023, I decided to focus on going back to learning phase. I've been studying AI for a while, I decided to join AWS bedrock to work on responsible AI (we just launched AWS Guardrails).
Now I have decided to at least make my course on Learnly free for everyone. I'm not working on it or using it, I'll just be glad if people make use of it. I just have the intro to computer science course. I do believe it's really good because of how much it focuses on building the problem solving muscle, it takes 100+ hours to complete. If you are reading this and you know someone who would find it useful, please share :)
Thanks,
Zaid
Course Link: https://www.learnly.dev/course/intro-to-comp-sci-1-js
Learnly used to be a learning coding bootcamp. At a high, I had a high of $500 MRR. I thought I was going to make it through and updated my Twitter status to track my progress to $1k MRR.
With the development of LLMs, I transitioned Learnly from a coding boot camp to a learn anything platform.
After my recent launch and pivot, my MRR was still around $150 (it had slowly been dropping as I had been marketing the coding BootCamp). These subscribers have not active users for months. I could just take the free money as long as they want to pay. I decided to start from scratch and canceled all their subs.
Wish me luck, checkout our launch announcement
Zaid
With development of LLMs I had transitioned Learnly from a coding bootcamp to a learn anything platform. One thing was missing, I wasn't solving a problem.
I joined forces with Ihtisham: Ihtisham has overseen dozens of digital transformations and now specializes in AI transformations.
We worked together, we built a hypothesis around industries/types of customers that could benefit from this and hit the road talking to potential customers. We talked to teachers, students, working professional, and heads of the learning & training department. Eventually, we found the missing gap.
Organizations have a lot of wiki pages, videos, and various knowledge bases. Learning and Training departments are understaffed. Here comes Learnly, we can help you learn from your existing data by creating specialized "Gurus" on your data, and then creating structured courses from your content.
We spent some time building the product, (we made a hire too: Fahad Durrani - AI Engineer) and launched the first iteration! Here is the launch announcement:
🚀 Launch Alert: A New Chapter for iQonsulting, Introducing Learnly!
For 8 incredible years, we've been dedicated to service offerings. Today, as we take our first step into the product domain, we're elated to present Learnly - our answer to the evolving learning needs of our community. Have you ever wished for a tool to organize the world's information and your personal content into a comprehensive learning journey? Today, we’re thrilled to unveil Learnly — designed to make learning personable and accessible to all. 🌍✨
Why the Shift?
Through countless conversations with our valued clients, we recognized a recurring theme: The rapid pace of knowledge, learning, and skills leaves many, especially small to medium-sized organizations, grappling to keep up.
Why Learnly?
🔍 Personalized Learning: Whether it's content from the vast expanse of the internet or your private documents like PDFs, Learnly crafts custom interactive Gurus and learning paths specially tailored for you.
💡 Powered by OpenAI: We leverage advanced technology to curate modular courses, filled with custom exercises and quizzes, ensuring an enriching learning experience.
🔐 Data Security: Your content remains private and secure. We prioritize your trust above all.
📚 For Everyone: Students, teachers, and all businesses/organizations alike! Whether you're diving into a new topic, designing courses, fostering employee growth, or need rapid interactive access to your company's private knowledge base, Learnly is your companion.
💪Our Mission: To empower individuals and businesses to reach their full potential by making learning personable and accessible. Whether you’re a student, an educator, or an employee, join us in revolutionizing the way we learn.
🔗 Experience Learnly today and be part of this transformative journey. Here’s to a new era of learning! Learnly
Excited to see where this goes.
Zaid
Since the release of LLMs, a lot of applications can improve their UX with Chat, something which was hard before, especially when users did not prefer talking to AI bots, there is a time now where users prefer talking to bots.
As part of this, I added "Chat" ability to Learnly. Checkout the demo
This feature allows you to chat with your courses in real time, it is context aware and can help you!
Looking for feedback always :)
Since ChatGPT came out, I realized the future of software development will be very different than we know today. It will get a lot more competitive, and a lot of coding might not be happening directly.
I decided to pivot to a product that allows ANYONE, to learn, ANY TOPIC. Learnly now provides people the ability to create structured courses.
I extended the ability to add exercises and quizzes so learners can truly build experience with the knowledge they are collecting.
I launched this 3 weeks ago and have seen more users sign up, learn topics from AI, coding, English, to preparing for marathons. It has been an amazing ride.
I'm talking to users and collecting feedback to make sure I create the best learning experience. I'm keeping this completely free, and paying out of pocket to run this. The goal right now is not to make money but to make a platform that will truly help people learn anything!
Posting updates regularly on twitter, exciting times everyone!
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Nice! Do you have plans for image generation? Might be helpful for course builders. Should be easy to implement with Evoke
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I definitely plan on adding some image generation, will check it out. thanks!
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Wow, your dedication to creating a platform that helps people learn anything is truly inspiring! It's amazing to see how you've adapted and pivoted in response to the changing landscape of software development. Keep up the great work, and I'm sure Learnly will continue to impact many lives positively.
What kind of feedback have you received from users so far, and how do you plan to incorporate that feedback into improving Learnly? Also, what challenges have you faced in creating a platform that accommodates such a wide range of topics?
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Thanks! I can't help but say this looks like an AI-generated response, maybe my bias toward your product, nonetheless, good questions.
I have received feedback on customization, sharing, and fine-tuning for specific industries. Challenge so far is getting AI to behave lol
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Interesting. I do not want to learn any topic. Who wants more theory, flat text.
- I want to learn applied knowledge.
- I want to set myself a challenge and use all the non-programmer schooled tools to build an iphone app.
- I have never built an iphone app or a website. I don't even know JS or python.
So in a nutshell, will your app assist with my goal?
The Challenge:
Build an iphone app using live text api ( image to text) output to feed multiple data-sets that will feed a community interactive dashboard.The Progress:
Step 1- GPT-4 gave me the succinct 7 steps. I tested a few different prompts to see what was best and that was both fun and I now realise 2 days on, the easy part.Step 2- Then I thought, I could muddle way thru these steps. But it would super cool, if I could put each step into another AI model (text to video) so each step would produce a how to video, specific to my context.
Step 3- It would even be way way cooler, if I could subscribe to a indie workspace - "a slot" where all the common tools are already installed as they are in a seed box scenario. GPT-4 told me I would need Xcode, Swift UI. I already have Xcode but know zero about Swift. I do realiseI will eventually install all tech tools on my own macbook or my own remote server but for know if a workspace existed, I would definitely subscribe. For same reason I am subscribing too chatgpt plus. I want to play focus on building new stuff, now. I want my dev environment to be dependable. The learning about development infrastructure can come later after I have proven to myself I can actually deliver on my challenge.
Step 4- Deploy the proof of concept
The app is greatly needed so I have no issue with the common startup issues - market-fit, early adopters, traction, obtain funding when I want to etc... That is all the stuff I am good at.But building an iphone app is soooo new for me. It would a game-changer for people like me, if it is truelly possible. I dont even mind if I fail. And only get it to a working prototype for the early adopter to use and we adapt. Its much more satisfying to hand over a prototype to a season developer than spend all that time trying to explain what you see so clearly.Does your platform offer this text to video to show us non-programmers?
What do you think of the idea to create an indie workspace?-
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A couple of things:
- Why an iPhone app? If you want to build something now, make a web app. Push people to save it at home. If it truly picks up (end users like it), build a native experience. If you want to build a mobile app badly, use react-native. The reason I'm suggesting a web app is that you will be able to release really fast (iPhone world is a PAIN to get to app store), and reduce risk by testing the waters first.
- Learnly will give you a good guideline depending on your prompt. For example if you do something like "learn to build a text to image app with no or low code", it will take you all the high-level steps and background information. Right now Learnly is really good for smaller topics, something that you can master in 2-3 hours with the right structure. So going end to end requires a longer format, which it doesn't have just yet. I'm using it myself to explore topics, for example I want to learn about Word2Vec (ML stuff), it gave me a very good structure and links to go from, I was able to get a good understanding.
- Explore no-code tools (search google for some), try building your first version through that, especially if you don't have existing programming background. It will save you A LOT OF TIME
Does your platform offer this text to video to show us non-programmers? -> My platform will create a structure, discuss the topic, link each item in the structure to relevant articles and youtube videos, and provide incremental exercises to test the knowledge.
What do you think of the idea to create an indie workspace? -> Replit is the first one that comes to mind. There are tons of other ones too
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1 iphone app - as it is mobile data capture on mass (citizen). Crowd sourcing data collection out in the field for transparency. Apple live text api is perfect. Citizen Scientist by the Ocean Cleanup, did a similar mobile data capture app for citizen in both apple app store and google play.
https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/the-ocean-cleanup-survey-app/id1533071965
2 Thankyou. Learnly does seem interesting. Will keep in mind for smaller topics.Thanks so much for your assistance. I will check out Replit and ask gpt-4 for alternatives.
I got 10 new customers that started the trial. This is a lot for my platform within 13 days! So removing the credit card option definitely helped!
Please note I am also running Google Ads while I have done this, I was running them before as well, but no conversions on starting trial period (credit card required) were being made. Since making it credit card free to start trial, I have had 10 new users.
Next challenge
Although half of them are still in trial mode, I haven't seen much activity. The start of the course requires students to email me their assignments, I haven't see any emails. Looking for ways to raise engagement after the trial begins.
Will keep everyone posted.
Happy new year!
Since I'm building the Learnly platform myself, I have to release features actively too. For a long time, I had been to make the trial option independent such that anybody can try out Learnly. Originally, I had included it due to the effort it took me to look at exercises from people, but now want to try it out, without a payment option.
I'm running some ads these days to acquire more students, I haven't yet had a conversion from google ads, a few sign-ups (login) to the portal, but no one starting a trial option. To be honest, my MVP UI isn't the best looking either, so I don't blame these people.
I have removed the requirement for a trial option, I just want more students at this time to really test this course out! Will post an update in 2-3 weeks if it changed anything.
How I did it
My payments are managed by stripe, and I have integrated it within my platform. To start the trial, I have a button that takes the user information and starts a subscription with the trial option. After day 7, users will see their account is past due (if they are coming back). I linked Stripes' hosted "customer portal" link in the profile page, so these users can go and attach a payment method to start the subscription. Not the best UX, but gets the feature out the door really fast.
For a while my MVP has worked well enough to acquire my initial students, now it's time to start stepping up a notch. Previously, users had to sign in to get details of a course, just shipped a feature that allows me to showcase a full course and its sections. Checkout the first Learnly course outline
In order to attract potential customers, I'm doubling down on building my personal audience on Twitter.
I have been stuck at 450 MRR for the last 2 months, and I am trying to push through that boundary. In July, I started tweeting a lot!
Steps I took
Signed up for Tweet Hunter. I am using their AI tools to tweet 3 times a day. I am also using the CRM tools to engage directly with my target audience (developers, new to coding, etc.). My goal is simple, provide as much value as possible as a developer, and meet with like-minded folks.
Created a blog for software development related topics. This hasn't resulted in as many views on my articles, compared to when I launched them on hackernoon.
Results on tweeting
20 days of tweeting 3 times a day, resulted in the following numbers for me.
- Tweet impressions: 14200 - up 380%
- Profile visits: 7708 - up 1157% 🚀
- Mentions: 69 - up 6800%
- Total Followers: 215 - up 15%
I think these stats were amazing. It's as simple as work in -> success out.
Would I recommend Tweet Hunter? Definitely!
Even though my follower count isn't crazy, I'm already meeting people in the same space. It's really satisfying to see the results right away!
You can also follow my journey on Twitter, DMs are open, feel free to say 👋
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Interesting. Hopefully not a stupid question but what did Tweet Hunter do for you over what you were doing previously? Were you not tweeting 3 times a day before TH? If you'd tweeted 3 times a day for 20 days yourself would you have got similar results?
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Everything that it does, you can do it too. Only thing is time. I save a lot of time by using their AI. Finding relevant content, sentence rewriting, engagement, and scheduling. Saving the brain some processing power 😅
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Tweet hunter sounds interesting. Will try it out.
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Please do
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So it's been a while since I updated the milestones here. In April, I finished the first course part of Learnly, and the results so far have been great. My students who have gone through the course are very confident, and they understand the basics of computer science really well. The introduction to computer science 1 takes beginners at least 💯 hours to complete! The amazing part is that it doesn't contain any knowledge about objects or any web-related things, strictly focusing on building fundamentals of computer science and problem-solving!
Along the way I have lost some students as they had other responsibilities come up, so far whoever is committed, is doing really well at learning to code. Currently, I am at $450 MRR!
If you want to learn to code, join learnly today!
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