

Show HN: Finally opening signup on my education for business startup, Learndot - paulitex

HN,<p>I've been mostly lurking, semi-active on HN for over 4 years. For most of that time, I've been working on my startup, Learndot. I have always wanted to do a "Show HN" post, but I never thought it was ready.<p>We've now finally launched web signup and using a freemium business model. I feel I can now post and offer something to the community (a new app to try out) and hopefully get good quality feedback.<p>Here's the site: http://www.learndot.com<p>Would appreciate any or all thoughts: From pricing/positioning, to design/performance.<p>The app is written in Sproutcore and backed by an API written in Scala.<p>Thanks so much,<p>Paul
======
jkuria
As others have said, really nice design. I know a little bit about this market
(business courses/internet marketing gurus) so here are my thoughts/questions:

1\. Are you creating the content yourself? Are you partnering with domain
experts?

2\. Are you targeting corporations or individuals? Corporations likely have
their in house training tools. For individuals and small business owners,
"Learning is a competitive advantage" is a very weak message. Most people who
would want to buy from you want to know how to get more traffic, how to get
cheaper traffic or how to make more money from the leads they get.

You are competing with serious hustlers like Frank Kern and Perry Belcher,
both of whom are extremely aggressive at what they do (they've had issues with
the FTC) and also extremely successful.

Having hung out in both worlds, here is common issue I see. The HN crowd is
generally very bright and talented. They have great design insticts, coding
skills and a healthy dose of "do no evil" sensibilities. But they are too
soft-core to make money online.

The hardcore internet marketing crowd (think warrior forum) doesn't care about
design or saving the world. They make do with ugly 'geocities era' landing
pages. But they sure know how to make money online. I would suggest you spend
some time in this latter world. You will learn a thing or two that will help
clarify your offering, target customer and value proposition.

~~~
triplesec
thx.. very interesting. Can you say any ore about the kinds of things these
people do that the smart but unworldly hackers don't, or more places to bury
our heads in?

------
cooperadymas
Just a few initial thoughts, not having dug in too deep.

The site looks great, aesthetically. But I wasn't sure exactly what your
product was until I scrolled down quite a ways on the homepage. "Make learning
a competitive advantage" is a good tagline, but not great for being the only
text I immediately see on your homepage. Something based on the "platform for
customer, partner, and team training" would serve better.

I'm not certain who your target market is, and I don't know enough about the
product to really say, but there is a large gap between $0 for your smallest
plan and $250/mo for the next plan. Keep reading and you can get the
$10/mo/learner with the free plan (at which point it's no longer free), but my
immediate reaction is the large price gap.

~~~
daspianist
I would also echo this: "Make learning a competitive advantage" is vague. It
was only until I clicked on "customers" that I got a rough sense of what your
product is trying to accomplish.

Also, the "see pricing and plans" button doesn't need to be up on top with
your tag line (because its likely that users won't know about your product
from the current tagline alone). This should be somewhere down the bottom
after someone has gotten a sense of what your product does.

In fact, I think you already wrote your most powerful tagline: "We’ll be the
software behind <https://learn.MY-COMPANY.com>. Just put that up top.

I just concentrated on the front page. The color scheme is quite pleasing :)

~~~
paulitex
Thanks! Definitely sounds like we need to tighten up the message.

This is great. :)

------
goyalpulkit
Clickable: <http://www.learndot.com>

------
jonathanjaeger
I'm going to agree with the other people who've commented so far in that your
value proposition and problem you're solving isn't very clear. It takes a lot
of digging just to piece together all the information.

This high LTV customer you're aiming for in the B2B sector is only going to
scale really well if you can do an arbitrage through Google Adwords or other
channels. This isn't a viral, word-of-mouth type business (for the most part).
So you want to lower the amount of time it'll take someone to understand what
you're offering after they quickly click on an ad. You should really sit down
with people, like your target customers, and ask them, "What does my website
offer?" and see how long it takes for them to answer.

I like the design a lot but you need to take full advantage of it with more
clarity in copy.

------
joegaudet
Hey guys, thanks for your comments, the actual app can be found here.

<https://signup.learndot.com/#/plans/1>

Would love to hear some feedback on it as well.

------
tzickles
Funny I was just looking for a solution like this and wasn't able to find
anything.

I'm confused on why the pricing is a monthly price per learner.

With our internal training we have a set amount of information to communicate
to our team. Once they've learned it, they're not going to need to go back to
it regularly. It's a one and done situation and wouldn't make sense to
continue paying after a team member has learned the info. Why would it make
sense for anybody to pay a monthly fee per learner?

Maybe I'm just confused on the market you're going for and how it works.

------
silverlake
I'm doing something similar. Prepare yourself for the glacially slow pace of
B2B sales. Lots of big companies get CornerstoneOnDemand for HR, and they
throw in a LMS. Lots of companies can't store their material off-site for
"security" reasons. For some reason HR people can't figure out how to use an
LMS effectively.

On this page: <http://www.learndot.com/customer-success/> All your links go to
pricing rather than telling me something.

------
madmax108
I remember you guys from: <http://www.learndot.com/how-to-name-your-startup/>
.... I remember posting on that asking if it was logical to spend 9 months on
deciding a name of a product.... and here, it's a year and 2 months on... I
really sincerely hope you do well, but I wish you'd work faster than the
velocity you're pulling.

------
userium
Nice work! I think the "see pricing and plans" button should be located
elsewhere. The first call-for-action button should have a clear benefit for
the users. E.g. "Try our learning tools for free" or "Get a free trial" and
with small letters for example "no credit card required".

------
orangethirty
Your landing page structure needs work. I didn't learn what it was until I
made an effort to find out. Others don't usually do that. Plus, this is a B2B
product. Why not get _their_ feedback and close a few sales at the same time?

~~~
paulitex
Thanks – that's similar to what cooperadymas was saying.

Who did you mean by "their"? We are soliciting feedback on our more B2B
channels too. But I'm posting here because a) it's a startup and HN likes
startups and b) I like HN and wanted to share. :)

~~~
orangethirty
* We are soliciting feedback on our more B2B channels too.*

I'm sorry, but I don't understand this sentence. Do you mean that you are
getting feedback from prospects? Or getting feedback from other businesses
(that are not prospects)?

By _their_ , I mean businesses who might actually buy your product. That's the
only feedback you should really pay attention to. Asking for opinions on HN is
good, but ultimately, less valuable than trying to make a sale with a real
prospect.

~~~
paulitex
Yes, prospects. Mailing lists, relevant LinkedIn groups, etc.

I generally agree with you, but I think this community has an eye for detail
we might not find in other groups.

------
volandovengo
Beautiful design! :)

