Ask HN: How do you gain traction for an education startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you gain traction for an education startup?

8 pointschromedude12 comments

I am currently working on a startup (http://nvrforget.com). I have gained some (~150) users who would like to get into the beta, but that is a measly amount compared to other startups. How would you suggest gaining traction for this? I don't have a problem with having a small user base except that I need to gain funding somehow and that is not going to happen when I only have so few people.

This seems to be a problem inherent with education startups and I wanted to ask the best in startups to make sure I was leveraging all the possible options.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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So even if you had 200,000 users, that would not necessarily make the business a great candidate for funding, but that is neither here nor there.

Education is quirky. Who is your customer for this? Is it school districts, teachers, students, parents, etc?

If it's school districts, you lose. Selling into them largely requires enterprise sales skills and credibility, which (unfortunately) you don't have. They also have sales cycles which last 12 ~ 18 months, require getting about ~5 different approvals (sometimes more), and can be torpedoed by a single recalcitrant decisionmaker, including at least 1 to 2 whose job it is to torpedo your deal.

Teachers: do teachers have a pre-existing slot in their book for the exact problem you solve? If so, you can use demand harvesting techniques like e.g. SEO. It's fairly slow going, but it will work. (This is how I got about 200k or so users: building a better mousetrap for people who absolutely, positively know they have a particular flavor of mouse to catch tomorrow.) If you have to create the demand for your product, well, godspeed. A lot of teachers are going to feel actively threatened by the introduction of one more scary computer thing into their day.

Parents: Like teachers, except with less attention and less money. (Homeschoolers excepted.) The overwhelming majority of software sold to parents comes in boxes and is either sold on brand name (Kaplan, etc) or box art. They find users by giving WalMart a bigger discount than their competing box did. Run screaming from this opportunity.

Students: I would run screaming from pitching educational software directly to students below undergraduate. Do they spend any appreciable amount of money on educational software directly in the status quo? No. Undergrad is also not a walk in the park, either.

P.S. Rather than selling Spaced Repetition done for the 473234th time, you might consider selling Spaced Repetition for $HIGH_STAKES_EXAM_TAKEN_BY_RICH_PEOPLE. Spaced Repetition for passing the bar, for example, would command a price about ~50 times higher than spaced repetition which looks like it would help a fourth grader on their vocabulary tests, even if it is the same software in the box.

Very interesting P.S. - I actually am making it with trying to specialize for different types (one I am thinking right now is Med students). The bar exam idea is very good, I should look into how this could help with that Thanks.

Med students fall into the rich category as the bar. Try doing specialized medical fields, microbiology, psychology?, child care, etc. Go for the long tail

It's hard to say without knowing how your product works, but here's what I can say having worked in for-profit education for over 10 years (including Sylvan Learnin Center, Kaplan, Grockit, The College Network, and Veritas Prep). In for-profit education, there are two parts of your marketing angle. The first is convincing people that they need to pay for prep, and the second is convincing them that you are better than the competition. Your first challenge is to convince me that it is worth my time and money to train myself to memorize things faster. Is there a short presentation (~5 min) that you could put up on YouTube that just scratches the surface of your product, but at the same time actually gives some benefit to potential users? Kaplan uses this technique by giving a short 10 question challenge, and then having an expert teacher explain shortcuts for each. The takeaway is that if you can learn this much in 30 minutes, imagine what $1500 and 3 months can do. Maybe you can adapt that sort of approach. If you were giving people a taste of the product, you'll be able to convince them that they want more.

Thanks... very good ideas.

It appears that you are creating a spaced repetition app that works for memorizing poems and passages where order matters as opposed to the usual model that works for memorizing a set of facts in random order. That's a good idea. If it works, I'll use it.

I think you should stop calling it an education-based startup because that sounds like something teachers would buy. You need to be clear on your homepage etc. that you have an improved tool for power memorizers, get in their communities and open it up as soon as possible for feedback. Offhand I can think of: -Self-improvement hacker communities like 4HWW forums, Steve Pavlina forums, etc. -Memorization forums -Homeschool forums -Secondary ed/college student forums

But you need to open it to users soon. People don't tell their friends to use something that doesn't exist yet.

Very good thoughts... I am opening it up to users very soon (invites should start going out by the end of this week).

http://imaginek12.com

They have connections to schools.

Yeah, I have heard and looked into them, but the thing is I would have to get into their incubator which is quite difficult since I am still a full-time highschooler.

I have a few friends that are in it - I can probably intro you, they might be able to give you some good advice since they're in the trenches with this stuff. E-mail me if you're interested (nbashaw at gmail.com).

Just sent you an email (stephen at nvrforget.com)

Why are you worrying about traction when you haven't even launched a product yet?

The hardest part of getting traction is making something anyone cares about at all. Given that your first guess will be wrong, you need to launch the product so you can start iterating.

To be sure, education is a really hard niche to break into. But there's always an angle, and you'll never find it until you get involved with your customers.

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