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.
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.
Does anyone have any experiences with overcoming this hurdle?
Switch you subscription term from "per month" to "per academic year". Alternatively, characterize the payment as a one-time license or use fee, get a year of positive history with Braintree, then switch to a subscription model and give your existing customers free-for-life accounts on it. (This is equivalent to a lifetime subscription option, but offered by stealth and limited to early adopters.)
"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 :)
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.
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.
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.
They were incredibly helpful in the application and integration process, and I've had no real problems with them so far, beyond this issue of yearly billing (which is understandable on their part). Highly recommended.
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.
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.
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.
I'm hesitant to add more plans at the risk of creating too many options for users
Read 'The Truth about Relativity' in Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. He explains this problem really well.
A quote from that chapter: most people don't know what they want unless they see it in context. We don't know what kind of racing bike we want—until we see a champ in the Tour de France ratcheting the gears on a particular model. We don't know what kind of speaker system we like—until we hear a set of speakers that sounds better than the previous one.
I think I've actually read that quote before, but somehow it slipped my mind. I'll check out the whole argument.
To present different options would pretty much require a shift from my one-class-free model to an extra-features-for-money model, so that's something I'll have to wrestle with.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
That logic usually works, but I've found that teachers are a stingy group when it comes to paying for classroom services. I think that the risk of making the product seem too cheap is outweighed by the risk of teachers being reluctant to spend a significant amount on their classes. Wikispaces, another product partially targeted at teachers, has a $5/month option as well.
I've found that teachers are a stingy group when it comes to paying for classroom services.
What data do you have which supports this contention? Is it more of a "gut feeling"? I had that gut feeling once myself, and you know what? It is a lie. A myth. Totally contrary to empirically observable fact.
The average teacher in the United States spends $200 to $400 of her own money per year (varies with level and geography, and I've seen a few numbers quoted from different studies) on instructional supplies.
The average customer for Bingo Card Creator spends $32.50 on a program which most use once or twice per year. (Which is still cheaper than the laminated set of bingo cards they were about to buy at the teaching store. Those cards are on the shelves because they sell.) I have a trial-to-purchase conversion of about 2.3% for my online version, which is considered fairly good.
Some teachers do complain about the price. That is a good sign -- if no one is complaining that it is too expensive, you've priced it too low.
While we have a $5/month option, Wikispaces has offered a free service (no ads, same features as paid service, no strings) for K-12 teachers since early 2006. We've given away around 225K wikis under this plan. http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers
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.
This is the opposite of the truth for small businesses: you can sell to any teacher, all you have to do is convince her to get out her credit card. To sell it to a district, you're going to have to go through a sales cycle measured in months to years. You will have to collect rubber stamps from upwards of four different decisionmakers, three of whom have no interest in using your software, at least one of whom has incentives to kill the purchase.
Selling software to educational institutions is largely a matter of playing Enterprise Sales. I don't suggest you make that choice lightly.
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).
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?
Free for one class seems interesting but how would you distinguish between their classes? What happens if a teacher just put all their students on the one. I think you don't mind getting it to some people for free.
With each semester a teacher would have a new class right? Would it be possible to perhaps charge a one time fee for each class that is created instead of a monthly fee?
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
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 :/
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.
I'll definitely put #1-3 on my ToDo list, thanks. As for #4, my current strategy is to provide one option and one option only to the user on the home page: signing up. I believe I got the idea for this strategy from 37signals. Does anyone have any insights as to whether this works in the real world?
Another option is 'lazy signup', as demonstrated with some YC startups like posterous. Get the user starting to use the site and only then ask for an email address, username, password etc.
My hunch is that in the real world if it's "signup or die" most people choose the latter.
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.
Jeff, I have to say, I'm kind of disappointed you chose to say that it is an "exact replica" publicly. As I said in my email to you some time ago, I had the idea for Eduset having never even heard of Edmodo, and only discovered Edmodo about halfway through the process of building Eduset. While I was certainly stunned at how similar the ideas were, I decided that the classroom microblogging space was big enough for more than one player, so I continued work.
Further, for the record, the inspiration for Eduset came from Pownce. When I first tried the Pownce closed beta, I realized that its model would apply perfectly to the classroom setting.
Edit 2: I'd like to emphasize again that I sent Jeff a long and detailed email about this exactly 3 weeks ago, containing everything I've said here and more. He confirmed to me that he received the email, but has yet to reply. For him to then take the debate public here, without bothering to talk to me personally, is unnecessary and absurd.
I actually have proof you signed up for Edmodo in October or November of last year, so you new about Edmodo almost a year ago. The classroom micro-blogging space may be big enough for two but we are more motivated than ever to own the educational micro-blogging space which we are already doing a very good job at it. I'm just letting the Hacker News users the similarities between your service and ours and ours is free unlike yours and we have a business model too :) We put our money where our mouth is and making the Education community a better place by offering the best free micro-blogging we can for individual teachers.
If you want to get into proof, here is proof that I got the inspiration for Eduset exactly a year earlier than I signed up for Edmodo: http://grab.by/5A5
Also, it is painful for me to see you painting me as a villain here. Why are you implying that I'm not "putting my money where my mouth is", that I'm not also trying to make the education community a better place? As I said above, you are planning to launch paid features, so please don't try to make it seem like I am doing teachers a disservice by charging a small amount.
By charging for your service, you're actually rather protecting your users — a free service is much more likely to suddenly disappear from the face of the web when it's too far into the red. And certainly, that wouldn't be appreciated by those users who have come to rely on the service. Maybe you should even put that into your marketing copy: it not being free is a feature.
Jeff, I understand that you're passionate about Edmodo, just as I'm passionate about Eduset. And it's very true that all startups are derivative to a certain extent. However, I have to correct you: you did say I stole your idea. Here's your tweet from September 2nd:
I agree, silly rants like this is absurd and really doesn't do any good and is not productive. Execution is key. I'm little passionate about my startup and that is why I replied. I never said he stole our idea. I said "almost" exact replica. Facebook borrows from twitter, eduset borrows from pownce, we borrow from twitter, facebook, friendfeed.
Yes, we can co-exist as healthy competitors. I'm usually not one for silly rants, my passion has gotten the better of me tonight. Edmodo, Eduset, and The Education Community as a whole is better served by us putting our energies into execution of our startups.
Based on what you've written here, as an outsider: Your audience is not the HN audience. What people think of you here in terms of copying is completely irrelevant. (Also, copying is fine. Everybody copies, sometimes entire business ideas.) Your customers, who I assume are school administrators and teachers don't care which came first or who copies who. If you look at school admins, they probably don't even care about features, to win them over you need a good salesmen. Also, X always pointing out how he came first and his is better then Y is just good marketing, because whenever people see Y they also see X and are more likely to compare the two. Saying X is better is hardly evil, it's just marketing. (Remember the Apple vs. PC ads? Remember the news about how Microsoft wants to build stores right next to Apple stores? You're living it.) In the end I think you will need to sell packages to schools to make real money, and in that case it's not even going to be about features but about a good salesman with connections. That's what you get for making a product aimed at the goverment. Cheers.
I agree; its not the idea that makes the product (or service) but rather the execution. Jeff should simply concentrate his time on bettering his own venture. Consider a similar venture nothing short of flattery.
I wish both Eduset.com and Edmodo.com the best of luck with their ventures - let the execution begin.
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.
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.)
Did a quick search for Eduset. From the blogs I have read this dude Jeff just spams "Rip off of Edmodo", "Not impressed", etc. everytime somebody posts about this thing.
I have no relationship to either, but pretty scummy practice IMO.
SchoolRack has been around for years and is doing ~10K daily visitors. Both of these services do a lot of what we do... We're not bitching! :) Bring on the competition! The Education space needs some attention.
Whalesalad, totally agree, Education startups are lacking. I'm very impressed with the new Schoolrack release. Hey we are getting close to you guys :) http://www.quantcast.com/edmodo.com
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.