Idea 1:
Masterclass for companies
Background:
One of the most important first principles of startup/business success is the quality of its people.
Defining 'quality' is hard and nuanced, but clearly one of the key components is the amount of applicable knowledge those people have.
When facing a knowledge gap between what a company has today and what they actually need, most companies will look to hire new people.
But instead, maybe the solution is to increase the amount of applicable knowledge of their current employees?
Problem:
Hiring is expensive and difficult, but crucially important.
Solution:
Bring together the increasing number of consultants together with companies, to teach the skills that those employees need most to succeed.
Why now?
- People are now used to Zoom meetings whereas before, this was not the case and this idea would likely need to be done in person.
- Employees know they need to grow and learn to stay competitive in the job market. They will see this as a perk of their job. Most continuing education options are mediocre (online courses, continuing education programs, youtube videos) that are also expensive, time consuming and often not relevant to their job or level of proficiency.
- More and more people are becoming consultants, recognizing the benefits of flexibility and earning potential that it provides. A teaching marketplace provides a potential lead gen opportunity, and potentially a relatively straightforward/easy way to earn additional revenue.
Product/technology:
The initial stages of this idea does not need extensive product development. The quality of the consultants and their teaching is the most important part of the value proposition. Using existing tools and no-code workflows will be able to get this concept off the ground. Further down the line, standard marketplace functionality will be built to improve the efficiency of the marketplace.
Business model:
20% of each teaching engagement
Potential issues:
- Who are you selling this to? CEOs? Heads of HR?
- Potential response: To department heads who sell to their boss
- Do they see the return on investment or is this just adding costs to the P&L?
- Potential response: Will need to see this as a comparison to
- How do you find great teachers and ensure great courses? Will they want to do this?
- Will people go outside of the marketplace?