

Ask HN: Review my classroom web tool, Eduset - fuzzmeister
http://www.eduset.com/

======
joez
Why the monthly plan? I know subscription is the holy grail because people set
it and forget it. But are you implying teachers should cancel it during the
three summer months if they aren't teaching?

And do teachers really pay for two months and then go oh... sorry kids but I
realize this isn't going to work and cancel it? I assume once your on one LMS
your stuck for at least the duration of the semester. Maybe a 30 day free
trial is better, even sixty. If Eduset is really amazing, which it could be,
then it'll become such a critical tool that they can't just switch off midway
of a semester.

I'd also want to see it in action. If it is a LMS, what better way to demo
your LMS than to create a Eduset page on how to use Eduset. Have quizzes,
videos, homework assignments... etc.

~~~
fuzzmeister
That's a very helpful observation, thanks.

The problem I actually ran into there is a liability one. My payments
provider, Braintree, informed me that allowing yearly payments for a web-based
service presents liability concerns, as if Eduset was to close, Braintree
could be on the line for any refunds demanded by customers. Thus, they say
they advise against new companies charging yearly. Does anyone have any
experiences with overcoming this hurdle?

Also, given the feedback I've gotten from some other commenters, I'm going to
add a demo account feature.

~~~
callmeed
_"Does anyone have any experiences with overcoming this hurdle?_ "

Ask them if they can hold some of the money in escrow ... or go with a
different underwriter that will allow yearly subscription (but at a higher
rate).

You could also just do one-time payment for the year and require them to re-
purchase.

Might even look into accepting POs from schools. If you're into cashing checks
:)

~~~
fuzzmeister
I'll talk to them further about the possibility of escrow - that sounds like a
potentially reasonable solution. I asked previously about one-time payments,
and they said that doing so does not negate the issue, which is interesting.

Also, if a school wants to pay the good ol' fashioned way, I'm more than happy
to oblige.

~~~
joez
It's going to be really difficult to get schools to pay for anything in this
environment. Definitely a worthy goal. I'd have a school administrator page or
portal or something target at people who purchase 30 accounts at once.

But you need an entry point. Cold calling schools is likely ineffective. Try
seeing which schools use Blackboard and then see if you can convince someone
to try it out Eduset. Administrators are definitely looking to cut costs where
they can. If you can provide their current LMS functionality for cheaper,
there might be a play there.

Another thing to try is once you have users, suggest that they tell their
friends about it. Maybe suggest it on a newsletter? Make it easy for them to
share it with their peers and even their administrator.

This is probably a revenue model decision for you. The way I see it, 60 bucks
a year is not much. If the teacher cares enough, then they should be willing
to spend it. 60 bucks is not painful enough for them to push the school to pay
for it. If it were more money, you'd lose teachers because they weren't
willing to try it but you may net a whole school. A way you maybe able to
solve this is offer some really expensive but cool tool at a higher pricing
point. Base is 60 bucks but if you want to be able to track how
students/classes/races are doing it's going to be 800 (maybe more?) bucks a
class. Okay that idea was from a quick brainstorm, administrators love
numbers... especially ones they can show accountability to parents with.

~~~
fuzzmeister
Yes, for the foreseeable future I will very much keep the focus on getting
teachers to sign up for accounts. A teacher using Eduset inside a school can
be a far better advocate for an institutional purchase than I could ever be by
cold calling.

As for Blackboard, Eduset certainly was not designed to directly compete with
them. Blackboard is a vast and complex piece of software that teachers often
require courses to learn how to use. Our aim with Eduset is to make it as easy
as possible for even non-tech-savvy teachers to jump right in. This means that
we will never have the range of features a solution like Blackboard provides.

------
sachinag
While I applaud your initiative, I cannot believe that teachers would feel
comfortable using something made by a single person who just graduated/will
graduate? high school this year. You can keep your name, but I'd recommend
taking out your relative youth.

Also, I'm always a big fan of competitive analysis charts, especially if
you're competing on price. Here's ours:
<http://www.dawdle.com/selling/index.php/fees/> I will say that I'm with Brad
and $4.99 a month feels like you're selling yourself short, but that _is_
$60/year. Perhaps make a couple more tiers right off the bat to try to nudge
people higher?

Lastly, I wouldn't say "if your students can use Facebook, they can use this"
with a screenshot of Gmail. That shows a lack of attention to detail.

~~~
fuzzmeister
I'll give some more thought to revealing my age on the about page (I'm now a
college freshman, by the way). Any specific reasons you say teachers would be
uncomfortable with it?

I'm hesitant to add more plans at the risk of creating too many options for
users, but I am looking into the possibility of institutional accounts.

Also, I hadn't fully realized the disconnect between that screenshot and
subtitle, thanks.

~~~
sachinag
My sister is getting her PhD in learning and memory research, and specializes
in how kids learn (and she has her teaching cert), and her experience matches
mine: teachers _hate_ being told there's something new, young, and better. If
they discover it for themselves, great. But positioning yourself as the new
young buck on the scene is shooting yourself in the foot. Frankly, I'd try to
get an advisory board chock-full of NEA and AFT reps.

~~~
fuzzmeister
That's fascinating to hear. It seems I've occasionally failed to consider both
early adopters and regular teachers in my marketing materials. Thanks.

------
oxygen
I like the design and the core concept. My suggestions:

1) The video was helpful and I would out it right under the "Try it for free"
tab

2) In terms or pricing strategy, I like the idea of giving away one class for
free and then adopt a per class pricing at around $30. I am sure there would
be some teachers out there who would just use their one class slot for all
classes but then you will always find 10% of your customers getting more than
what they paid for. Lets worry about the remaining 90%

3) Make sure you keep track of what school are these teachers from. As soon as
you see >5 teachers from a school registering, you might want to solicit an
institutional model

4) I, as a teacher-customer, am not sure how will it work for students. What
would they see and how? A video will help.

~~~
fuzzmeister
1) That's good to hear, I'll try to make the video more prominent.

2) What's your reasoning for the $30 price point, as opposed to something
lower? Also, having more than one class in a slot would cause some confusing
overlaps in homework due dates and such, but you're right, there will always
be some people trying to do it.

3) That's a good point, I'll look into a database of schools that I can put
behind an AJAX picker.

4) I worried about that when I made the tour. I'll work on tacking on short
segments from a student's viewpoint at various points in the video.

~~~
oxygen
I would check if teachers think about their job in terms of workload per class
or per month and work backwards from there. The real question is: how do I get
to $X/teacher?

------
patio11
Your core customers will happily pay $35 for a bingo activity which they'll
use once. You're offering an application which revolutionizes the way they
work, and charging $5 a month.

Thus, the usual pricing advice: charge more.

------
Wilduck
I do like how professional the site looks, however, it took me a while to find
out what it would look like to use eduset. What I did find to be very helpful
was the video showing linked from "click here to take a tour of eduset". The
content of that video was informative, but not at all what I expected. I would
place it more prominently on the page, not right above a screenshot (I was
surprised those two elements were unrelated) and maybe give it a new name
("See eduset in action"?).

Props on the highly visible "Try it for free" buttons.

No props for the opening line of your faq "Eduset is an online classroom
communication tool designed to make teachers' lives easier." Try something
that says a little about what eduset actually DOES. While the product
certainly does look easier than maintaining a personal webpage, it would be
better to state how it makes a teacher's life easier, rather than just saying
it will.

Similarly, in your about page, I would suggest moving your first sentence to
the end of the paragraph (or at least to right before you talk about contact
information.

~~~
fuzzmeister
Thanks, I'll make the video more prominent and make it clearer what it
contains.

You're right about the FAQ, that line is pretty much marketing-speak. I'll
work on re-writing both that and the about page.

I have to say, you have 37signals to thank for the green button idea.

------
vyrotek
Looks clean and simple. I definitely see the Facebook/Twitter design
influences. I have a sister who who teaches High School Biology who might use
such a thing.

But, I worry that she wont be interested in the price. As byoung already
mentioned, there are a lot of other (free) services out there that facilitate
basic communication already. My sister is someone who lives on Facebook and
would probably look to use that first if she could. Extra features that byoung
mentioned could be the key.

Some local college grads here just launched <http://www.instructure.com> I
haven't played with their product but it looks similar. Its never a bad idea
to check out any potential competitors to see how they are addressing the
market.

~~~
fuzzmeister
Instructure looks like a very good product. Slightly more college-focused and
LMS-like than Eduset, but certainly similar.

I'm definitely working on more features to differentiate from generic
platforms that could be used (Facebook, Wordpress, etc). As for the price, do
you think that it would become justifiable to someone like your sister once
more features are added, or do you think that she and other teachers like her
are unwilling to pay for any sort of classroom web tool?

~~~
vyrotek
I sent her the link just now and we talked a bit. Turns out the school
district currently offers a very basic website for teachers to interact with
students online.

This is the site they gave her - <http://barnes.myteacher.dvusd.com> which was
created using <http://manila.userland.com>.

As you can tell, its nothing fancy really. She mentioned that students can
create accounts and interact on her page but that its too confusing and so she
just uses the basic features.

To quote her: "I can have the students create accounts on there so they can
post stuff too but I haven't played around with any of that stuff. Its really
confusing so if he could market it to school districts instead of making us
use this stuff then that'd be great. Its really dumb, a lot of teachers just
use google sites instead cause its easier. To make my site look like that I
had to go through and edit the html code"

It seems like she is definitely looking for something different but expects
the school district to purchase it. Otherwise she'd rather use Google or Ning.
I hope the feedback helps :)

~~~
fuzzmeister
It's great to hear feedback like that. I intentionally designed Eduset to have
less customizability than options such as the one you linked, or even Google
Sites, as it's almost always the customizability that introduces the
complexity. Further, from what I've heard, having an institutional payment
option seems like the way to go.

------
teuobk
Haven't tried the actual product, but the site design and execution looks
professional and trustworthy.

------
NoBSWebDesign
"Eduset completely changed the way I interact with my students." \- High
School English Teacher

Would be much more effective with a name (and even a picture). My first
impression was that you made that quote up. Here's a good tutorial on using
testimonials: [http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-
conver...](http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-
conversion/using-testimonials-effectively.html)

~~~
fuzzmeister
Working on it.

------
byoung2
Definitely a good start. Lots of teachers don't want do deal with mastering a
learning management system like Moodle or Blackboard. What I don't see is a
compelling reason to pay $5/mo for something I could accomplish with a class
blog or facebook page. Are there plans to allow interaction between students?
Grade management? Online quizzes? These would be great value-adds to justify
different pricing tiers.

~~~
fuzzmeister
The goal was certainly to target teachers who aren't willing or able to put in
the time and effort to learn a full-fledged LMS.

I agree that $5/month is a slightly hard sell right now, although there are
certain parts of Eduset (such as assignments) that cannot be easily
accomplished with a blog. In order to fix this, we are actually in the process
of implementing every one of the features you described. Soon, students will
be able to post content to their classes (if the teacher allows it), making
classes more collaborative. Students will also be able to turn in homework and
take quizzes on Eduset, and teachers will be able to grade that work.

As for pricing tiers, does anyone have thoughts on which of these two options
would be better?

1) The current model, where all features are provided free for one class,
while $5/month is charged to create an unlimited number of classes.

2) The model the commenter above describes, where certain features are made
pay-only.

~~~
psyklic
I would vote for an institutional subscription model. It might be a hard sell
for individual teachers (often likely out of their own pockets), but I bet you
could sell the value to institutions which employ teachers.

~~~
yjsoon
I agree with the above - in its current form, I think you'd attract early
adopters who, even if they love your product, might have trouble convincing
others to sign up and fork out for it. With an institutional model, said early
adopters (presumably those in charge of educational technology spending) can
try and push it out to teachers in their school.

Along these lines, perhaps consider some way to allow those who use and love
your product to bring others in with minimal friction - let them try out the
product in an administrative and student role, without having to sign up and
learn on their own. Most teachers I know won't try something out until they
really see the value in it (i.e. students engaged, fulfills some kind of
need).

~~~
fuzzmeister
We're working on adding institutional accounts. There are some complexities
involved, mainly involving legal issues and various whitepapers that need to
be written, but I wholeheartedly agree with your idea: early adopters are a
great way to get institutions to adopt a product.

As for your second suggestion, do you think a way for current users to send
potential users an invitation to try a demo account (a sandbox) would do the
job?

------
raptrex
1\. Slideshow view or whatever you call it where you can press "next" or the
right side of the image to go to the next screenshot. I hate clicking to
"minimize the screenshot" then clicking again to zoom to the next screenshot

2\. Maybe zoom in on that email message since it may give the impression you
have to use a gmail account.

3\. Page of features and screenshots

4\. DEMO ACCOUNT WITHOUT SIGNING UP. No one likes signing up for anything
unless they have to. Just have a static version or give them a demo account
with full access and every hour or so, have the database be restored to normal

~~~
zaatar
Yes, the demo account is crucial; a lazy effort would be a screencast (flash-
based?). I certainly want to give this a whirl, even though it would not
directly help me, but rather, friends of mine who are professors or teaching
assistants. But I'm not about to register, activate an account, and then
populate it with bogus info and bogus students burning an hour of my time ...
the entry barrier is too high :/

~~~
fuzzmeister
I currently have a video walkthrough posted on the left side of the page
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-WCIKVbRc>). Is that the kind of thing
you're thinking of, or something more in-depth?

I'll look into the technical aspect of setting up demo accounts, I am
beginning to come around to the idea.

------
zemote
This is almost an exact replica of my startup <http://edmodo.com> which is
completely free for multiple groups (eduset charges for more than 1 group),
and already has decent traction with 87,000 registered users.

~~~
markbao
Jeff, Will has already explained to you multiple times in both in public and
private that Eduset is not a copy of Edmodo and both products were developed
independently of each other. Kindly lay the fuck off and quit advertising your
startup at every mention of Eduset.

Will and I both developed a teacher classroom web interface independently of
each other. The difference is that I didn't lay claim to the idea and become a
dick about it.

BTW, your comparison of Eduset and Edmodo is like a comparison between the
Zune and the iPod. You might as well accuse Classleaf of similar 'exact
replica'-tion.

~~~
Xichekolas
Moreover, even if he _did_ copy the idea... who cares? Ideas are a dime a
dozen... whoever executes best will win... assuming there is a winner. Seems
like a space that several players could comfortably operate for quite a while.

Also, accusing someone of copying your site is rather ballsy considering that
both sites look like repurposed Facebook clones. At least the eduset guy
changed the color from blue to green. ;)

(Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, but you don't exactly
have a unique style that got ripped off.)

