

Ask HN: Feedback About Newly Launched Supercool School - SteliE
http://www.SupercoolSchool.com
Hi HN, would be great to hear your feedback regarding Supercool School. We just opened up our platform so that everyone can create their own next generation online school. For a relevant example check http://startup.supercoolschool.com - Thanks :)
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spokey
I kind of like the name. It's long but memorable and not hard to spell. (And
the "super" bit makes me think you mean it a bit tongue in cheek. "Cool
School" wouldn't work, but I think "supercool" does.) It may not work for some
corporate applications though (although I suppose you'd eventually offer
custom domains to those folks, school.bigfacelesscorporation.com or whatever.)

I'd need to spend more time with it to have a more complete impression, but
two things jumped out at me on the homepage:

1) One of your demo links is broken. You have
<http://educators.supercooschool.com/> for "Educators 2.0" instead of
<http://educators.supercoolschool.com/>. (Maybe that proves my comment above
wrong.)

2) In the second under "With your next generation School you can..." the first
three paras have an associated image/icon, but not the fourth ("Market your
company, product or ideas"). That seems wrong to me.

~~~
SteliE
1) Thanks - should be fixed now :) 2) Really? There should be an "alarm" icon
displayed for that point...hmm...let me know if you can't see it and on what
browser/os you are. thx!

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learnalist
A grand idea! But..

I have skimmed your front page and your tour page, yet im not feeling like I
have grasped what you do clearly enough.

I even went as far to skim the article by a very supportive Paul Stamatiou. He
mentions you will use 30% of money made to aid 3rd world countries. Im curious
what that is written on a random blog, yet I cant find such a statement on
your site.

Either way top effort for attempting to tackle such a space, have you given
much thought as to how your "video classes" etc will work for people in 3rd
world countries, or are you only targeting them with the money you make from
developed countries?

~~~
SteliE
thanks for your feedback and your time! when it comes to allowing ppl in
developed countries use Supercool School we hope to see the wiki integration
we have being used and later the more bandwith intense delivery methods. can
you tell me what is unclear / or clear for you about the idea? that is very
crucial for us since we are sure that we can improve the way we communicate
what we do but need to get more feedback from others on what we are missing to
get across! thx :)

~~~
learnalist
On the tour page. Two options. ( Side note, if this was a uni paper, I would
have said you padded it out with really large images, can they be a little
smaller? Do you need to show the whole screen? Could the images work without
being in context ( ie where your numbers are )

One:

Use an index so people can jump to a specific part. Then the index can help
sell or prepare them for what they are about to see.

Two: ( more work )

Use "personas".

I am a student learning french. - then give them links to show how the site
will work well for them.

I am a teacher of chemistry and I really like videoing my experiments - again
a few click thrus targeting this type of user.

etc...

With your personas, dont aim to fill up all features in all personas, just
think what will work for them.

~~~
SteliE
Great input - will do! :)

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iterationx
I looked at take a tour, but I still have some questions. Maybe you could
provide a demo class? Or at least a video.

The tour has many items I consider unnecessary for example: "1 Give the School
your branding - add your own logo"

It's quite obvious that there will be a button for logo, so this is actually
working against you because it does not help me understand the big picture.
Also there can be no doubt you need a different domain name.

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jwesley
You really need to refine the concept of exactly what your product does and
the language you use to communicate that to users. Spending a few minutes on
the site, I can tell it's for education but not much more than that. I get the
idea you are trying to be all things to all people. You would probably be
better off being the exact right fit for a specific segment of the market. By
trying to be for businesses, educators, and amateurs you end up being not
quite right for any of those groups. You should decide to be either for the
mass consumer market or for businesses and educational institutions and
develop your product and pricing accordingly.

~~~
SteliE
Thanks for the feedback! One of the reasons why opened up to the public
(before that we only offered our solution to the enterprise market) was to
learn who will use our product in what way and then focus on that group
(customer dev basically)...that's why its so vague at this point.

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dmix
a) You have way to many features for the stage your at. It lacks clarity but
also, for those features to be useful and worth paying for you'd have to spend
tons of time developing them. That time is better spent finding out who your
market is and what they want, before making that investment.

b) I've read about many VC-backed companies that tried to do e-learning and
failed. (Selling to schools is very difficult)

c) I've recently come across more online classroom supplemental sites (with
social features) than I can count and many of them had a narrower feature set
and a clear market in mind.

Edit: I just noticed your b2b section
(<http://corp.supercoolschool.com/index.php>) this makes a lot more sense,
enterprise 2.0 is a growing industry. I'd narrow your focus as much as
possible because b2b sales are tough as it is (but more rewarding then
consumer).

~~~
SteliE
thx for your feedback :)

a) you're problably right - we're still figuring out what is important and
what not for our users b)true - but what does that have to do with us? ;)
c)same as b

Regarding the b2b market: we actually started in the enterprise space and have
sold Supercool School to large tech companies in the valley (yeah - even with
our name ;)) although its very profitable it is a slow moving space and we
thought it would be exciting (and rewarding) to open up to the general public
and allow everyone to create their own Supercool School. For the first week
we've seen some very good results with over 10 schools launched! But we are
well aware that we are doing something completely uproven and new...

~~~
learnalist
Congratulations on making headway in the "enterprise space". With that in
mind, could you not approach a few of them and ask them to write testimonials
to be used on your site?

~~~
SteliE
Already in the process of getting this done :) btw - it seems like you're an
edu entrepreneur yourself! would love to chat with you if you're interested -
just ping me at steli at supercoolschool dot com

------
PStamatiou
Thoughts on Supercool School from someone that has used it (me):
[http://paulstamatiou.com/review-supercool-school-online-
lear...](http://paulstamatiou.com/review-supercool-school-online-learning-
startup)

------
SteliE
A relevant example of a Supercool School can be found here:
<http://startup.supercoolschool.com> \- Excited to hear your feedback! Thx :)

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vaksel
well besides what others mentioned, I don't get why you are using an RSS feed
button for "Teach students, customers or your audience"

~~~
SteliE
Yeah you're right! The only reason we did that is because we couldn't come up
with a good icon :) So its sort of like a placeholder - anyone has a good idea
what we could use for that?

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Dilpil
What I would really like to do is view other peoples courses, I cannot
immediately see how.

~~~
SteliE
That's a good point - you can go to <http://startup.supercoolschool.com> or
<http://educators.supercoolschool.com> to check out some classes/courses but
we don't have a page that aggregates all the content from all the schools yet.

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mathgenius
"supercool school"?? hmm, try saying that three times quickly!

~~~
SteliE
fair point - we tried to use a name that creates a response in people and is
inclusive. most ppl either smile at us or with us hearing the name and we like
that :) what do you think about the idea behind the name?

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bjoernlasseh
like :)

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zackattack
i can't take you seriously. need to change your name. this is a case where the
name matters just 'cuz it is so damn bad.

~~~
terryjsmith
Seconded. There is nothing quite so uncool to a kid (or anyone I would
imagine) as branding yourself cool :)

~~~
SteliE
:) I understand where you're coming from guys - I disagree since I've seen how
many ppl react positively to the name (and some really hating it ;)) - but
still thanks for letting us know!

