Value proposition

What problem do you solve?

Finding learning experiences can be a challenge. Cost can be a barrier. And even when you find something in budget, the content is often too easy or too difficult. And you don’t know before you start. And often you find something similar to what you want to learn, but not specifically scoped to what you need to learn.

Who has that problem?

People who are wanting to start their careers are particularly vulnerable. But even for people mid-career, spending time on content that is too easy or too difficult is wasteful. And even beyond careers, life-enriching learning can take a backseat when it costs too much or it isn’t scoped to the learning goal.

How do they describe the problem?

There’s many complaints about the current state of learning. The school system is overly standardized. Postsecondary education is astronomically expensive. Classroom learning can be both boring and overwhelming. The MOOCs are putting most of their content behind paywalls, and the quality is highly variable. Flashcards are often free, but limited in what you can learn with them. Books are by definition not adaptive, and hard to stay motivated to read.

How big of a problem is it?

I believe there’s no greater opportunity for technology than human learning. If we can accelerate how people learn, we can change the trajectory of our species. With all of the problems with learning today, the opportunity is massive.

How much would they pay for a solution?

For most learning, I suspect people will only do it if its free. Most people will only pay for learning if they expect to make income as a result of learning.

What other solutions are out there?

There’s many options already, see “describe the problem”.

How are you better / different?

1. We’re free, and have zero intent of putting learning content behind paywalls. We can get income other ways. Some learning experiences out there are free as well, but not a majority.
2. We’re open content. As far as I know, there is no other learning site out there that is completely open content. This means we can have very specific content and reach subjects no one else economically can.
3. We’re adaptive. A few options in the market are gaining here, but Sagefy’s design started with adaptive learning in mind. For the learner, this means avoiding spending time on boredom and overwhelm.

Lean canvas

Problem

• Learners waste time and effort on materials that don’t tightly fit their current level of knowledge.
• Learners have difficulty finding learning materials on more niche subjects they are interested in.
• A great deal of human knowledge is still locked up in pay-to-play systems.

Solution

• Provide an open-content, adaptive learning platform to everyone, for free.
• Open-content allows for mass creation of a wide variety of content.
• Adaptive learning tightly matches learner prior knowledge.
• The combination is more powerful than the individual parts.

Alternatives

• Classroom - Barely adaptive. Not open-content. Limited audience.
• Learning management systems - most traditional of edtech. Not open-content. Limited adaptive ability.
• Current adaptive learning systems - expert created content. Not generalizable.
• Massive open online courses - still expert created content. Not adaptive.
• Flash card systems - somewhat adaptive. Some open content. Limited options for types of content.
• Current open-content systems - non-adaptive. Have to create own learning path.

Key Metrics

• Number of learners in the system - growth, engagement, retention
  • How many people start a subject
  • How many people complete at least one card
  • How many people complete at least one subject
• Amount of content created
• Quality of content created - how effective is the content at optimal time/effort given learner prior knowledge and goal

Unique Value Proposition

• The combination of both adaptive learning and open-content, for free.

Advantage

• I’m driven by the goal of making learning more effective, and I don’t care about making a profit.

Channels

• Social media
• Email
• In website
• Blogging
• PR
• SEO
• Analytics, A/B, experimental testing to increase conversions (accounts, learning, creating content, donation)

Customer

• Independent, adult learners who are motivated by
  • Job skills / career opportunities
  • Hobbies
  • Pursuit of knowledge
• Theoretically, organizations that want to run their own instances
  • Schools
  • Companies / non-profit organizations
  • Government

Influencer

• Individual learners - themselves
• Organizations:
  • Trainers, edtech specialists, IT…

Costs

• Technology services
  • Servers
  • Domains
  • Email
  • User support
• Staff (product, outreach, financial/organizational)
  • Payroll / accounting
• User acquisition

Revenue

See finanical models

Mission and opportunities

Mission

Sagefy’s mission is to remove all barriers to learning.

Opportunities

• Learn any subject free
• Learn regardless of what you already know
• Learn in a way that is time-and-effort effective
• Create a map of human knowledge
• Accelerate human development and growth

Areas of Collaboration & Skills

• Creating learning content
  • Domain expertise
  • E-Learning course development expertise
• Building the community
  • Outreach
    • Social, email, content, SEO, etc
  • Support
  • Organization / coordination
• Improving existing features
  • Client, server engineering
  • Localization
  • Performance
  • Security
  • Learning science algorithms (statistics)
  • Visual design
  • Usability
  • Accessibility
• Building the technical process and infrastructure
  • Documentation
  • DevOps & Server management
  • Monitoring
  • Logging
  • Testing
• Creating new features
  • (See improving existing features)
• Sustaining development
  • Revenue (donations, contracts)
  • Staffing
  • Leadership and management

Job to be done

“Job” is shorthand for what an individual really seeks to accomplish in a given circumstance. The circumstances are more important than customer characteristics, product attributes, new technologies, or trends.

What is the job to be done?

I want to learn more about how to make electronic music, because:

1. I’m new to it, I like the music, and want to figure out how to make it myself.
2. I’ve been doing it for awhile as a hobby, but I feel like I don’t know what all the knobs do and options are.
3. I’m a musician or artist in another area wanting to expand my mediums.

What experiences will help customers make the progress they’re seeking in a given circumstance?

1. I’m totally new, and I’m not really sure where to start. I want to know an outline of what I should learn, and how to approach it. I don’t know if this is for me, so I don’t want to pay a bunch of money.
2. I know what the tools are, but I don’t have a full understanding of the ideas behind them. I want to see how the concepts relate to the tools that I already know. I might not mind spending some money, but I don’t want to get more technical than what I need.
3. I want to jump right in to making something as soon as possible. I want to see how electronic music can relate my primary medium. I don’t want to spend money on this. I don’t want to invest a ton of time upfront either.

Jobs are never simply about function—they have powerful social and emotional dimensions.

What obstacles must be removed?

1. Breaking through the initial “can I really do this?” feeling. Just getting started.
2. I’m nervous about the conceptual part. I don’t want to be “put in my place” and I don’t want to feel like I’m starting from nothing. I don’t want to get too mathy/technical either.
3. I just want to get to making stuff as soon as possible. I just want some basic information but then I want to get right into making stuff without a lot of ceremony.

What are the social, emotional, and functional dimensions of the job?

1. Just getting started, breaking through procrastination. Maybe have like a 3-5 minute quick introduction that’s engaging/fun? Go over an outline. Ease into it.
2. Be clear about adaptive features and content difficulty level. Relate to real and familiar tools. Interactive examples that are similar to common tools. Allow skip ahead.
3. Allow an option to let users get through some basics and then get more tool featured. Show how the concepts relate to free/cheap tools available.