Ask HN: Feedback on my startup www.dojolearning.com

[lux]

We're now ready to launch our new startup, with the press release going out next week, and wanted to get a bit of feedback from the HN community ahead of that for any last-minute glaring oversights or suggestions that might improve things. The site is:

http://www.dojolearning.com/

Our idea could be described as the Basecamp model/philosophy applied to training, which makes online training affordable to a much wider range of companies and trainers.

Beyond that, I'll let the site speak for itself :)

Thanks!

[ScottWhigham]

I wish you luck :)

You are in a highly competitive market since there are so many sites like this; I would be afraid that you cheapen yourself to nothing more than a commodity. My first thought when I click through your site is, "Why would I use this over YouTube?" You have a lot of competitors in the "Anyone can create/share training videos" space so I guess I would need to see something unique before it piqued my interest.

I guess what I don't see is, "What are you doing that makes you different?" Allowing anyone to upload/create training is not new.

[lux → ScottWhigham]

Thanks for the comment! Maybe our marketing is off in describing our service. I'll try to describe it better and maybe that will help show where it's off.

Where our idea is different is that we're not just offering video upload or a quick how-to site, but a complete training system for a fraction of the cost of any of our competitors, and with zero technical setup. We do much more than text or video in our lesson builders, but we also combine that with lesson delivery, sales, communication and assessment tools, and various privacy levels as well (free public lessons, paid public lessons, private lessons, etc).

We don't see YouTube as a competitor, since they just provide video delivery, which isn't functional or private enough for companies to deliver their private training through.

We've taken the essence of online learning and built a simple way of achieving that all in one place. That certainly has similarities to other services like YouTube (we both allow video upload), but I wouldn't use Flickr for training either, now that they do video as well... ;)

What is new about Dojo versus our competitors is that it provides an informal learning experience specifically for companies and trainers (no grades :), and is technically and financially more affordable for anyone. The existing solutions are prohibitively expensive for most companies, and most including the open source tools are geared towards formal learning institutions as their primary focus.

After that mouthful, I guess we'll go back over our site and see if we can hone the message a bit now :)

[lux → ScottWhigham]

Btw, just checking out your learnITfirst.com site from your profile, watching the free SQL Server video :)

[lux]

And here's a clickable link to the site:

http://www.dojolearning.com/