
Show HN: Kosmos – Homework Help Chat - shafyy
Hi all,<p>We&#x27;re committed to making it easier for students to get help with all school-related things (mostly homework). We launched a text-based tutoring service in January (called Humbot).<p><i></i>We&#x27;ve learned some things since then:<i></i><p>- Tutoring is not something students want; it&#x27;s mostly something their parents want<p>- Therefore, it&#x27;s a shitty experience for students<p>- The need for tutoring is a consequence of students falling behind in school (part of which is caused by not being able to do homework). We want to fix the cause, not the symptom.<p>- We thought homework help is also tutoring (which it is in theory), but students don&#x27;t see it as tutoring<p>- They need instant help when they are stuck with homework<p>- Paying is usually not an option (even small amounts) for teens<p>- Teens don&#x27;t really care if an MIT grad tutor helps them or some random, as long as it&#x27;s instant and free (and makes sense to them)<p>- The interaction of a chat is a game-changer compared to &quot;static&quot; homework help forums, where there are almost never follow-up questions because it&#x27;s just not dynamic enough<p>With these learnings, we launched our new app, Kosmos last week. It&#x27;s available for iPhone and Android. It kind of feels like a Slack for homework help, however currently it&#x27;s more a chat-based Reddit (with only one community and but subject-related channels). Or, if you&#x27;re feeling nostalgic: A chat website with chatrooms :-)<p>Since launching last week, we already have ~600 downloads and ~60 daily active users.<p>It&#x27;s pretty basic feature-wise, but we wanted to launch quickly. We&#x27;re adding more features every week, and in general, our goal is to make it easier to post and discuss questions. Obvious things are a whiteboard feature and a graphing tool. However, threading, etc. will also be important.<p>Check it out: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kosmosapp.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kosmosapp.io</a><p>Curious to know what you think.
======
nikodunk
I love the process you guys have been through so far. 600 downloads in a week
sounds like you guys are on to something! These learnings stuck out at me: \-
Paying is usually not an option (even small amounts) for teens \- Teens don't
really care if an MIT grad tutor helps them or some random, as long as it's
instant and free (and makes sense to them)

So it's convenience over quality problem. This makes sense. Any ideas on how
you could eventually make money?

~~~
shafyy
Thanks! We want to offer premium accounts eventually. We'll need to see what
features are best to offer as premium, but two ideas:

\- Create private communities (as in "not public"). Could be useful for groups
of friends, or teachers/profs who are looking for an easy way to communicate
in a school context

\- Content: It would be awesome if students did all things school related in
Kosmos. We could offer micro classes that cost a small amount of money (e.g.
$1 per class).

But we shall see =)

