On Jan 28th Skillshare launched a course by Ash Maurya titled Raise Your Odds of Building A successful Product.
It’s a short workshop only lasting a week, but a good starting point for someone that’s not very familiar with Lean Startup. For those that have already some familiarity with the topic it can still be a good refresher, plus Ash has his own take on the BMC that can provide some food for thought.
We just completed The Myth of the Visionary Entrepreneur module and the classroom had a deadline yesterday to jot down a first iteration of the Lean Canvas. The Lean Canvas is a product Ash built that helps entrepreneurs defining a business model and then running experiments. There’s a free option limited to two users, but that’s plenty if it’s just you and maybe a co-founder.
The module was pretty simple and low commitment, about 35 minutes worth of video and 20 minutes to build your canvas. If you’d like to join now you should be able to catch up just fine.
One interesting thing Skillshare does is to run a hangout where the teacher and students can interact. Unfortunately the timing was rather unfortunate for me, it’s in the middle of my afternoon and I’m at work. Luckily the event is recorded so you can catch up, but of course you lose your opportunity to ask questions. That said, there’s a discussion section where you can still get a shot at talking to Ash, he seemed to be around and has answered a few questions so far.
Even tho this is not a MOOC, I’m finding interesting how similar the percentages are:
- 503 people signed up
- 28 projects were submitted
- 9 discussions were started
in other words, lots of people signed up and very few (5.6%) showed some activity. Yes the other 400+ might have watched videos and so forth, I have no way to know that, but having taken several MOOCs the percentages are strikingly similar.
In the end, considering the price tag of $0, this is totally worth it if you’re just starting out. Ash does a great job and walking you through the basics and being able to interact with him would be worth alone a lot of $$.
Looking forward to the next module and I’ll be posting some notes about my product/canvas soon.