

Ask HN: Please critique my idea/non-profit startup - shayanjm

So just a little bit of background - I'm the co-founder of Founder-School.org along with one of my friends who I met at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in High school. I've worked as Lead Engineer/Developer at two other startups (Previously LearnShark, Currently TalkSession), and co-founded my own Software Consultancy startup in my sophomore year of high school. At Founder-School, we have a VERY talented development team - and a steadily growing Advisory board of seasoned entrepreneurs (some gray hair, others who have "been there, done that”). Our long term goal is to disrupt the education platform space, while simultaneously providing aid to destitute areas in the third world.<p>Short term:
We're building a learning platform that learns while you learn (insert xzibit reference here)
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shayanjm
The platform will constantly curate the list of courses "suggested" for you,
as you rate courses you take. Courses will be built to be fully interactive
and all encompassing (not just coding/development oriented. Ideally, you will
be able to take an interactive course on anything). The courses will also be
built in a similar fashion to that of Codecademy - where they're short and
highly addictive. To populate our course list, we'll be developing a "course
builder" of sorts - where any user can easily build a course. Course curation
will be taken care of by the platform.

In the future, we would like to be able to launch programs at high schools in
the form of "clubs". The goal would be to teach high school students how to
take an idea, flesh it out, and build it into a small cashflow positive
startup. Fundraising dates would be set throughout the school year for these
"micro startups" to contribute towards a club-wide minimum goal of $x,xxx
raised by date z. All funds raised from these clubs would then go towards
charity work in a third world country. All financials will be 100%
transparent, and individual clubs would have the ability to see (visually)
where their money is going and who its impacting. All micro-startups that
donate over the minimum would compete for a spot on our leaderboard. Students
in this program would get: A line on their resume stating they built a
cashflow positive startup, went through a rigorous company-building program,
and (if they made it to the leaderboard) a $10k scholarship recognizing them
for their venture.

Any sort of direction, feature suggestion, etc. is greatly appreciated!

<http://www.founder-school.org/>

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spenvo
I love the idea, and the website looks nice.

Two suggestions: 1. ) Since the top of the page looks like a landing page any
way, it would be great if you had a way to enter your email immediately
without scrolling down to the bottom or clicking (as the sign-up link is very
understated). 2.) Even though the website isn't too long vertically, it can be
a bit disorienting when you've scrolled down half-way. I know each section is
titled, but it would be a great touch if you highlighted the tab which you are
currently scrolled over.

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shayanjm
Excellent suggestions! I'm going to go ahead and add them to the next
iteration which I'll deploy in about an hour. I'll re-comment here when
they're ready.

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melkisch
Good luck with this nice project. Great lading page.

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shayanjm
Thanks!

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avishjain94
Awesome idea! Good luck!

