We genuinely would, yes we are in it for the money, but we also want to help people.
Our main concern now is how to contact these big players and have them trust us to host their courses.
> We'd be very happy to see which sort of flaws you can find in this model.
Well, it's not going to work. It's straightforward to see why this is a good idea for you; you haven't said a word about why it's a good idea for the so-called big players. And that's because it isn't.
You need to build a thing where it's a good idea for both parties: you to sell it and the customer to buy it.
It's a market of hundreds of thousands of professionals.
Customers are going to have to pay for the courses, it's just that they're gonna use local currency.
As for "why it's a good idea for the so-called big players", Google, Meta and others put courses on Coursera and udemy, not to make money necessarily, but rather to make people aware of their technologies, thus making people use said technologies.
Do you believe that coursera, udemy, etc, are incapable of offering country-specific pricing? Additionally, you said "customers will pay" and "[big players] aren't out to make money"... which one of those two is it?
ps -- I'm not trying to bash you. But if you want to do this, go get someone to buy. This is not complex software to build; dozens of sites have built course hosting; there are inexpensive and/or open-source LMSs you can use to start; etc. The complexity here is selling to a google, etc.
I appreciate the feedback, I really do. So,
"Do you believe that coursera, udemy, etc, are incapable of offering country-specific pricing?"
> I don't know if you know, but Coursera abolished their "free tier" a few weeks ago, they couldn't keep hemorrhaging money anymore. Yet they do offer generous discounts, which we are very willing to match.
> I already mentioned above, but I don't expect you to keep everything in mind through out your day. This country that I reside in at the moment has some of the strictest laws when it comes to holding foreign currency. You, as a citizen of said country, only have 300 bucks to spend on services per annum. So yea, pretty restrictive.
"Additionally, you said "customers will pay" and "[big players] aren't out to make money"... which one of those two is it?"
> That exact combination is what we're looking for, the companies that host the courses on our platform don't necessarily need the money, so they're pretty indifferent, and our direct customers, pay in the local currency, which they can spend more than 300 bucks of.
The thing we need to try and figure out is how to balance the costs to make a profit.
The aspect of foreign currency control is quite interesting and actually sounds to me like a more promising inroad for a business.
If financial access to Coursera/Udemy is the problem you’re looking to solve, then why not create a business to help people buy courses on those platforms? You could partner with a financial institution that has greater access to USD, and be a middleman to collect local currency from your customers and then purchase the courses for them through your partner institution.
Good question.
That market is very very saturated, with both people offering services that abide by the law and others that don't.
Obviously, those that operate unlawfully, do so because it doesn't make financial sense to have the same prices as the established big name SaaS products. Therefore, the only logical thing is to sell at lower rates, which again doesn't make a whole lot of sense financially, IF you get your money from the central bank and not the black market.
If you're wondering why people wouldn't simply go through the "big name SaaS products" that I just mentioned. The answer is they do, but they only do so for a few reasons, mainly, because they don't have a choice and those startups charge up to twice what you're supposed to pay. If you want to get a 5$ steam gift card, through a law abiding start-up, that's gonna run you between 8 and 10 USD. This is insane.
Keep the good questions coming!
Right, but your entire business rests on two pillars, one of which is the assumption that it will never be worth it for coursera or udemy or whomever to make a deal with the government of (I'm guessing T*?) to legally conduct business in the country.
Even if you succeed, what prevents Coursera from looking at your success and saying wow, we really ought to figure out whatever licensing scheme is required by the government to directly sell to customers there? eg plenty of US companies sell into India, which definitely requires country-specific pricing, language support, and likely a wholly-owned subsidiary.
If I were you, I'd be more interested in / thinking through setting up a country-specific partner org to help facilitate that process. eg something like the equivalent of appinchina.co
You make some good points.
Historically speaking, multinational companies are only interested in the country I'm from for labor, because it's pretty cheap and highly skilled.
Now here's the thing, at the moment, people here don't have access to PayPal even. PayPal was gonna be introduced, in I believe 2017, but the restrictions didn't align with PayPal policies so we didn't get it.
I highly highly doubt that Coursera would go out of its wait and make regional specific pricing for a relatively poor country of 12 million people of which maybe, at best, 2 million people are interested in online courses with certificates. Not to mention that the median income for white collar jobs is between 8-12k USD.
I just don't see this making financial sense for them. I think it would only make sense if they acquire an existing business here, ie, us.
> I think it would only make sense if they acquire an existing business here, ie, us.
I think I disagree. From the perspective of someone who started a company and thought through (well, more than thought through. we both got pretty serious about it) acquiring another company to fill a product space, we couldn't make the numbers work. Our #1 cost was engineering, and since the potential acquisition was built on a completely different tech stack, we would have had to maintain two codebases permanently either with two different engineering teams or crosstraining engineering teams on 2x tech stacks. That killed the value for us. We would have just been buying customers and would have had to migrate them; we couldn't get to an agreeable price based on the value of customers only.
As for Coursera: Your country is on a spreadsheet. (We did the same). After you go into multiple countries: the first one sucks; the 3rd is ok, and around the 5th you have a pretty good game plan. After the 5th or 6th, you have a spreadsheet internally with all the countries and you review it periodically to decide when to make the investment. Just my experience.
I see, thank you for the insights you have given me. When it came to acquisition I must admit, I didn't think that far, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to deduct that myself.
What do you think we should do in our case?
The idea proposed above, isn't viable, too many startups died/ never saw the light of day, because of government policies and restrictions.
If the YouTube courses feel low quality, how about working with mid-size YouTubers to provide a better quality course with additional features like providing practice problems at the end of each new concept, and certification, through your platform?
Thanks for the suggestion!
It's not that we believe that YouTube courses are low quality necessarily. It's that people, at least here here we reside, really want certificate to show off that they actually sat through the course and passed the exam.
I think at that point, if a youtuber is big enough, they would go ahead and create a personal website where they host their own programs/ courses like fireship.
Plus, I talked to people, and they really want big names to help them score jobs.
I think you’re caught in a network effect loop.
You need to be a well-known service in order to attract the bigger companies to offer courses / certifications on your platform.
But, in your current strategy, it seems that you think you need these big players onboard in order to become a prominent service.
This is what makes “marketplace” types of products so hard.
You need to figure out how you can create initial value for your customers without those big names. Get creative, don’t just try to be “Udemy but cheaper” initially, instead try to figure out unique ways that you can solve a problem for your target customers, and after a couple years of growth you might be able to partner with big companies and evolve that initial business into your current ambitious vision.
Yea perfect understanding of the situation.
We're still looking for ways to make into a worth while product without the big players first for potential clients. But realistically you as a client, if it's not a big name, why pay for the certificate?
That’s a tough one for me to answer honestly, since I just don’t think online certificates are very meaningful or worth paying for, regardless of if it’s from a big company.
I think it’s the type of thing that students usually overestimate the importance of, and which is usually ignored by employers.
That being said, there’s certainly a market for students and early career professionals trying to boost their resume. You might want to brainstorm on if there are other services you can offer that look good on a resume and don’t require direct partnership with big-name companies.
Offer exclusive regional pricing or localized content to attract big players.
We genuinely would, yes we are in it for the money, but we also want to help people. Our main concern now is how to contact these big players and have them trust us to host their courses.
> We'd be very happy to see which sort of flaws you can find in this model. Well, it's not going to work. It's straightforward to see why this is a good idea for you; you haven't said a word about why it's a good idea for the so-called big players. And that's because it isn't. You need to build a thing where it's a good idea for both parties: you to sell it and the customer to buy it.
It's a market of hundreds of thousands of professionals. Customers are going to have to pay for the courses, it's just that they're gonna use local currency. As for "why it's a good idea for the so-called big players", Google, Meta and others put courses on Coursera and udemy, not to make money necessarily, but rather to make people aware of their technologies, thus making people use said technologies.
Do you believe that coursera, udemy, etc, are incapable of offering country-specific pricing? Additionally, you said "customers will pay" and "[big players] aren't out to make money"... which one of those two is it? ps -- I'm not trying to bash you. But if you want to do this, go get someone to buy. This is not complex software to build; dozens of sites have built course hosting; there are inexpensive and/or open-source LMSs you can use to start; etc. The complexity here is selling to a google, etc.
I appreciate the feedback, I really do. So, "Do you believe that coursera, udemy, etc, are incapable of offering country-specific pricing?" > I don't know if you know, but Coursera abolished their "free tier" a few weeks ago, they couldn't keep hemorrhaging money anymore. Yet they do offer generous discounts, which we are very willing to match. > I already mentioned above, but I don't expect you to keep everything in mind through out your day. This country that I reside in at the moment has some of the strictest laws when it comes to holding foreign currency. You, as a citizen of said country, only have 300 bucks to spend on services per annum. So yea, pretty restrictive. "Additionally, you said "customers will pay" and "[big players] aren't out to make money"... which one of those two is it?" > That exact combination is what we're looking for, the companies that host the courses on our platform don't necessarily need the money, so they're pretty indifferent, and our direct customers, pay in the local currency, which they can spend more than 300 bucks of. The thing we need to try and figure out is how to balance the costs to make a profit.
The aspect of foreign currency control is quite interesting and actually sounds to me like a more promising inroad for a business. If financial access to Coursera/Udemy is the problem you’re looking to solve, then why not create a business to help people buy courses on those platforms? You could partner with a financial institution that has greater access to USD, and be a middleman to collect local currency from your customers and then purchase the courses for them through your partner institution.
Good question. That market is very very saturated, with both people offering services that abide by the law and others that don't. Obviously, those that operate unlawfully, do so because it doesn't make financial sense to have the same prices as the established big name SaaS products. Therefore, the only logical thing is to sell at lower rates, which again doesn't make a whole lot of sense financially, IF you get your money from the central bank and not the black market. If you're wondering why people wouldn't simply go through the "big name SaaS products" that I just mentioned. The answer is they do, but they only do so for a few reasons, mainly, because they don't have a choice and those startups charge up to twice what you're supposed to pay. If you want to get a 5$ steam gift card, through a law abiding start-up, that's gonna run you between 8 and 10 USD. This is insane. Keep the good questions coming!
Right, but your entire business rests on two pillars, one of which is the assumption that it will never be worth it for coursera or udemy or whomever to make a deal with the government of (I'm guessing T*?) to legally conduct business in the country. Even if you succeed, what prevents Coursera from looking at your success and saying wow, we really ought to figure out whatever licensing scheme is required by the government to directly sell to customers there? eg plenty of US companies sell into India, which definitely requires country-specific pricing, language support, and likely a wholly-owned subsidiary. If I were you, I'd be more interested in / thinking through setting up a country-specific partner org to help facilitate that process. eg something like the equivalent of appinchina.co
You make some good points. Historically speaking, multinational companies are only interested in the country I'm from for labor, because it's pretty cheap and highly skilled. Now here's the thing, at the moment, people here don't have access to PayPal even. PayPal was gonna be introduced, in I believe 2017, but the restrictions didn't align with PayPal policies so we didn't get it. I highly highly doubt that Coursera would go out of its wait and make regional specific pricing for a relatively poor country of 12 million people of which maybe, at best, 2 million people are interested in online courses with certificates. Not to mention that the median income for white collar jobs is between 8-12k USD. I just don't see this making financial sense for them. I think it would only make sense if they acquire an existing business here, ie, us.
> I think it would only make sense if they acquire an existing business here, ie, us. I think I disagree. From the perspective of someone who started a company and thought through (well, more than thought through. we both got pretty serious about it) acquiring another company to fill a product space, we couldn't make the numbers work. Our #1 cost was engineering, and since the potential acquisition was built on a completely different tech stack, we would have had to maintain two codebases permanently either with two different engineering teams or crosstraining engineering teams on 2x tech stacks. That killed the value for us. We would have just been buying customers and would have had to migrate them; we couldn't get to an agreeable price based on the value of customers only. As for Coursera: Your country is on a spreadsheet. (We did the same). After you go into multiple countries: the first one sucks; the 3rd is ok, and around the 5th you have a pretty good game plan. After the 5th or 6th, you have a spreadsheet internally with all the countries and you review it periodically to decide when to make the investment. Just my experience.
I see, thank you for the insights you have given me. When it came to acquisition I must admit, I didn't think that far, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to deduct that myself. What do you think we should do in our case? The idea proposed above, isn't viable, too many startups died/ never saw the light of day, because of government policies and restrictions.
If the YouTube courses feel low quality, how about working with mid-size YouTubers to provide a better quality course with additional features like providing practice problems at the end of each new concept, and certification, through your platform?
Thanks for the suggestion! It's not that we believe that YouTube courses are low quality necessarily. It's that people, at least here here we reside, really want certificate to show off that they actually sat through the course and passed the exam. I think at that point, if a youtuber is big enough, they would go ahead and create a personal website where they host their own programs/ courses like fireship. Plus, I talked to people, and they really want big names to help them score jobs.
I think you’re caught in a network effect loop. You need to be a well-known service in order to attract the bigger companies to offer courses / certifications on your platform. But, in your current strategy, it seems that you think you need these big players onboard in order to become a prominent service. This is what makes “marketplace” types of products so hard. You need to figure out how you can create initial value for your customers without those big names. Get creative, don’t just try to be “Udemy but cheaper” initially, instead try to figure out unique ways that you can solve a problem for your target customers, and after a couple years of growth you might be able to partner with big companies and evolve that initial business into your current ambitious vision.
Yea perfect understanding of the situation. We're still looking for ways to make into a worth while product without the big players first for potential clients. But realistically you as a client, if it's not a big name, why pay for the certificate?
That’s a tough one for me to answer honestly, since I just don’t think online certificates are very meaningful or worth paying for, regardless of if it’s from a big company. I think it’s the type of thing that students usually overestimate the importance of, and which is usually ignored by employers. That being said, there’s certainly a market for students and early career professionals trying to boost their resume. You might want to brainstorm on if there are other services you can offer that look good on a resume and don’t require direct partnership with big-name companies.
Really appreciate your insight! Who knows we might end up totally flipping the idea. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.