I am making LMS because I hate boring corporate learning

[avshelestov]

Hello Hacker News Community,

I've always found corporate training painfully dull and uninspiring. That's why I created SkillsRace, an LMS designed to make learning genuinely engaging and fun.

*What I’m Changing* Mini Courses: Short, focused lessons that fit into any schedule, making learning more accessible. Gamification: Introducing game-like elements and friendly competition to keep learners motivated. Interactive Live Streaming: Real-time engagement with learners, complete with instant feedback. Rewards System: Real awards to recognize and celebrate achievements, adding an extra layer of motivation. Easy Course Creation: Simplified tools to help educators create quality content quickly and efficiently. Seamless Integrations: Compatible with popular tools like Slack and Discord to streamline the learning experience.

Building EdTech is freaking hard. Please support launch on ProductHunt. Upvote SkillsRace. I would love to hear your thoughts about LMS and how to make learning better.

There is the link: https://skillsrace.com

[hnthrowaway0315]

IMO we should replace general corporate trainings (those HR ones, e.g. anti-harassment) with centralized ones, so that we don't have to take it again and again. Those are the most boring, most time consuming things for the first 1-2 week of any new job. The only purpose is for the company to click some checkboxes.

[daemonologist → hnthrowaway0315]

My employer has us do most of the corporate training annually anyways, so in our case I don't think centralizing would be of much benefit. (There are tweaks, this year mentioning AI a bunch, but for the most part each is exactly the same interactive video thing every year.)

Fortunately they have an accessible mode which turns off all the video and audio so I just click through that, wait the prescribed amount of time while I do something else, and then take the test.

[avshelestov → daemonologist]

Would be great to have a mode: "Skip a video I already knew everything" :-)

[codingdave → avshelestov]

My company kinda does this - it gives you an assessment first. If you pass the test, you can skip the training. I have only seen this the last couple years, but I hope more companies head this direction.

[bjourne]

One of the major issues with LMSes is grading and cheating. You have one poor teacher's assistant that has to grade 1000 student submissions by the end of the week. How do you make this possible without compromising the integrity of the assignment or the fairness of the grading? Assignments should be painless to grade while being difficult to cheat on. It is very difficult. Many LMSes fail because they only address the pain points of the learners and not of the educators.

[supertofu]

This product looks really slick.

But what I don't like is the implication that learning isn't already fun. Learning is inherently fun!

It's not gamification that make learning fun. What makes learning fun the satisfaction that comes from completing tasks successfully and the sense of focus that comes from a course that has a well-organized roadmap.

[andrei_says_ → supertofu]

Gamification has shown to reduce the enthusiasm for the activity being gamified.

Rewarding any activity diminishes intrinsic motivation. Focus shifts on the reward, our brains deem the activity as worth-less in the absence of a reward. The activity is now a chore.

See the work of Alfie Kohn and Stanford’s online course on gamification.

[ilt → andrei_says_]

Ha! I just read a comment yesterday on a Reddit Duolingo forum about how Duolingo doesn't reward a person when they finish a certain language completely, I guess this is what happened there. "Activity seems to be worthless in the absence of a reward."

[avshelestov → ilt]

Totally agree. Rewards are super important and just feel good.

[vunderba → supertofu]

I think what makes learning fun is subjective and varies from student to student.

For me, what makes learning fun is the retroactive satisfaction I get from solving a future unrelated problem that incorporates the knowledge/skills I acquired at an earlier point.

[avshelestov → supertofu]

That's a really good point. Thanks!

[kingkongjaffa]

clickable link: https://skillsrace.com

[avshelestov → kingkongjaffa]

Oops, thank you!

[aristofun]

Did you validate with any corporation if it solves any of their real pain points?

I am very curious to know.

[ryshbg]

Since it will take a long time for organisations to realise the benefits for a long term product like this:

A. How do you(or did you) plan to launch the MVP and get the feedback loop running?

B. How do you market/sell this? (is fun > boring enough moat for say businesses?)

[avshelestov → ryshbg]

MVP is already done. I just need to polish it a little bit. I already have 20 signup requests so I plan to start with them and gather some feedback. Apart from that I am gong to try few ads channels + cold emails.

[ryshbg → avshelestov]

That's great!

What is the Organic / [Reach out + Convince] Split in the 20 signups?

For Organic -> From any outbound Links or Google?

For Push -> What do you think convinced them the most?

[avshelestov → ryshbg]

Most of the requests came from Google. I have a couple of keywords where SkillsRace is ranking pretty well. I can't say much about the second one. I am going to start talking with them tomorrow. I hope a few will reply so I can gather more insights and feedback. I already have 5-6 replies from earlier, and I asked them to join the waitlist. I will try to convince more to talk.

[mitjam → ryshbg]

For me, the term LMS is the antithesis of fun, thus a fun LMS is an oxymoron. If you can deliver on that promise, you have a unique position in the market.

[authorfly]

How do you plan to reach people looking for an LMS - any particular niche/strategy?

[avshelestov → authorfly]

My target audience is: Educators Companies Schools Universities

I am planning to try many channels including cold emails, linkedin, google ads, youtube.

Also I already have some organic traffic from google and plan to increase positions.

[matt_s → avshelestov]

You may want to niche down to something like small businesses. Universities and schools already have LMS solutions that conform to standards and I see no mention of any LMS standards on your site. Small businesses won’t care about that and might be looking at tools for internal training. So focusing on businesses with either growth (lots of hires) or employee churn would make sense to have training systems that can get support or sales people up to speed quickly.

Also some focus on what value it brings would help, making learning fun usually isn’t at the top of the list when people look for these systems. For example, if you emphasized how your small modules can be redone easily later on when that part of training changes and they don’t have to redo an entire course which then saves them money.

[avshelestov → matt_s]

I plan to start with educators and small businesses. I already have 20 signup requests and after a little analysis I realised that the most of requests I received exactly from educators and small private schools.

[negouseid]

I really like your landing page, very cool. Good job!

[avshelestov → negouseid]

Thank you!