We looked at the user data around MOOCs and saw completion rates hovering in the single digits. Most people are exploring different classes, universities rather than doing deep dives on full courses. We even spoke with a former administrator at Princeton who helped form their partnership with Coursera and they admitted that MOOCs fall short in catering to this type of learner. We built Podium to cater to the 90% + of learners using MOOCs who want to explore content and listen to what's relevant to them. I had this problem myself which is why I'm passionate about this. Initially audio is the simplest way for professors to DIY record their classes. Capturing video brings a lot more complexity also some legal hurdles with images in slides, access for the blind, etc.
Hey Guys, I’m one of the founders of Podium, a university streaming platform that lets anyone listen to the best parts of university classes. We differ from MOOCs in the sense that you can listen to content that’s most relevant to you rather than having to take an entire course. For example, if you’re interested in entrepreneurship you can find and stream 2 to 5 minute clips on “product market fit” or “raising capital” rather than taking a 4 week course. You can also listen to the full courses and classes if you choose.
We’re doing this by building out a 2-sided platform where professors can go to record their classes with our web recorder, and where users can go to stream those classes with our web player.
If anyone is interested I'm building an edtech startup which streams college classes. We have a a few courses from Stanford done in partnership with Y Combinator on building startups: https://www.podiumedu.com
I'm working on an edtech startup and with it I've been spending a lot of time at Princeton University. From my experience with Princeton, Ivy League school are VERY overt about promoting elitism within their communities. I understand the thought behind it but a lot of these students are in for a rude awakening when they go work for an investment bank and find out that their Ivy League elitism means nothing if they can't produce in the workplace.
Equal amount of time should be put into developing tests to validate or invalidate the idea. There's not point in doing any work if all the feedback you get is from your family, friends, etc., saying "Looks great I would totally buy this!"
That said, even before putting anything on the web you can easily bootleg wireframes in powerpoint and even add buttons that click through to specific slides as if it were a functioning product.
I worked for a small digital marketing and PR agency in NYC. We worked with clients mostly in the music industry. The environment was very collaborative and it felt like a family in many ways. The work was creative while also being relationship driven. Overall I'd say it was the environment that made me enjoy the job most.
I believe in hiring the very best employees that fit the culture of your company. If your culture is a boring one, then hire the best employees which would fit well into a boring culture. If your company culture is vibrant and outgoing, then hire the very best employees that will thrive in a vibrant, outgoing culture.
The biggest point I agreed with in the article was: "There's a huge difference between someone telling you they'll buy your product and them actually buying it."
It's about time their investors get a massive liquidity event. I tend to think the lack of an near term exit strategy was one of many reasons Travis got the boot.
I can attribute a lot of my professional value to my professional and even personal network. I've found they key is to network before you need to network so you're not always looking for something. That way you can look for ways to provide value and serve your network. That's how you build solid relationships.
The amount of value we've come to expect for zero cost on the internet is pretty incredible when you think about it. The move to monetize users beyond just throwing ads up makes a lot of sense with click rates sitting at 0.05%. Even freemium web platforms are struggling to get paid conversion rates in the range of 2 to 4 percent of total users.
I'd say for the majority of startups, ideas are a dime a dozen. executing on ideas is really what matters. Just look at some of the most high valued startups today (Uber, AirBnb), extremely simple ideas with relentless execution.