
Ask HN: Thinking of starting a software training business – can you give advice? - throwaway000021
Hi there.
I&#x27;m thinking of trying to earn money by doing in-person training on software development to software developers.<p>I&#x27;m wondering is there anyone on HN who knows the software training business, who would be willing to share the mechanics of what works and what does not?<p>How to find customers? What to price the training? Tips on making the training a success?<p>If you&#x27;re willing to say how much revenue your business has earned approximately that would be amazing.<p>It would be greatly appreciated. Finding the answers to these questions is time consuming and risky and hard and I&#x27;d love it if someone with experience would be willing to share their hard earned knowledge.<p>thanks!
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BjoernKW
As with any business the first aspect to think about is your market and the
niche in that market you want to address.

Software training comes in many flavours some of which are:

\- teaching CS and programming basics to children

\- the same for adults

\- developer bootcamps

\- hackathons

\- workshops: Teaching and coaching software professionals in terms of
specific technologies

I have some experience with the last one. With workshops typically your
customers aren't the individuals coming to the event but companies paying for
their employees being taught a new skill or technology. So, in this case
you're basically doing enterprise sales (with somewhat shorter sales cycles
though).

Don't charge for your time but rather per participant. In this case you
provide a service to professionals and / or the companies that employ them.
Therefore you can generally charge higher prices. The exact price of course
depends on the course topic. Keep in mind though that in this setting you have
to pay for expenses for the venue and catering as well. So, basically: Charge
more.

As for tips on making the training a success there's a lot to talk about but
here are some basic tips:

\- Obviously, be well-prepared.

\- Be at the location at least half an hour early. Make sure all the required
equipment is available and working with your laptop. The same applies to WiFi
/ Internet connectivity.

\- Having assignments for each lesson allowing you to apply what you've just
learned is vital to understanding and internalising new knowledge.

\- Try to devote sufficient time to each participant individually and to those
who're slower than average in particular.

\- 10 people in my experience is the reasonable upper boundary for
participants a single trainer can handle without neglecting some of the
participants.

\- A classroom tool for managing students, tasks and course material is really
helpful.

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brudgers
_How to find customers?_

This is really the first item in the critical path. Nothing else matters until
this is solved. Time spent on anything else before this is answered is mostly
wasted and there will be a strong incentive to spend time on everything but
this because finding customers is harder than coming up with pricing,
imagining ways to make trainings successful, following tips, printing business
cards, renting office space, etc.

There's no checklist for finding customers, just a lot of potential rejection
(and perhaps no acceptance if there is no reasonably accessible market). This
is not particular to software training, freelance programming, private piano
lessons, etc. Finding customers is the fundamental first step of a
business...and it mostly comes down to being able to sell yourself and close
sales. There are no shortcuts.

Good luck.

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raincom
Look at how trainers find customers. Usually, they go to dev conferences and
give free talks; at the end of the talk, on the last slide, they mention about
"call me for training". For example, Raymond Hettinger python core dev does it
in his talks.

Writing books and articles helps.

Check David Beazley training on python:
[http://www.dabeaz.com/chicago/index.html](http://www.dabeaz.com/chicago/index.html)

He charges $2750 per student. His max students are 6. Now, you can check how
many classes he conducts in Chicago.

There are too many online classes, youtube tutorials, coursera, udacity, etc.
These classes help those who are really dedicated to learn. There are many
others, who have full time or 40 hrs a week jobs. However, their companies
don't spend on training and they want to learn hands on. This is where your
business fits in, until you find a steady stream of corporate clients.

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bewe42
I'm on a similar path.

Talks are a good route. You need to prove (to technical people) that you are
capable of delivering worthwhile training and at the same time get on the
radar on HR (non-technical) who make the hiring decisions.

[https://lerner.co.il/trainer-weekly/](https://lerner.co.il/trainer-weekly/)
is a useful resource.

Get in touch if you want to chat, always happy to speak to fellow trainers. I
believe training can be very worthwhile (personally and income wise), but it
takes time to get there (and moving out of comfort zone, at least for me).

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segmondy
I'm thinking of doing the same too.

