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Tell HN: Very exciting project looking for new home

22 points by lachyg ↗ HN
Hi HN Community,

I'm writing this post after a long hard talk with my business partner. We've had this project for around half a year, and initially started out with huge excitement. We did research, found no true competitors, and saw a huge opportunity in the market. We proceeded to plan the whole project, got it designed, and found a coding team.

Outsourcing to India was our biggest mistake, we tried a company, and they produced nothing. Terrible results. We got no where, and it's been many months.

Since then, we have been very dis-interested in the project, due to moving on from it. We've started working on projects that mean more to us, projects that we can successfully complete. Projects that we have knowledge in.

The project at hand was called CrowdTutor, a way for 'the crowd' to teach anything they want. We initially thought this would be a fantastic learning and study resource for tutors or teachers to teach courses online with an interactive video and whiteboard utility. (Targeted at students, esp. for exam prep and ongoing study).

Here are the designs, which will give you a better idea of the concept:

- Home / Inside: http://fruda.com/port/ct.html

- Teaching Interfaces: http://i.imgur.com/aVhZr.gif / http://fruda.com/ct/studentview.jpg

We're looking for someone, or some team, to take over this project from us. We know this is a great opportunity for someone to enter the startup scene / get an accelerated project. We'd be very happy to help you get really into it, and provide all the info you'd need (and work with you to get it to launch).

Would love to know what you, the community, thinks. And would love to talk to anyone who's interested

Lachy and Josh (HN: joshbuckley)

P.S. Check out Bill Gates talk - http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/06/bill-gates-education/, this really the right time for this sort of site.

36 comments

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ecommando
Lynda.com pretty much owns the online training sector, as far as I have found. While it's not exactly the same, it is similar.
lachyg
We're looking at more high school and college education vs. Tech education.
atomical
You should take a look at foreign education too. There's money in that. I just finished up teaching online ESL courses in Yeosu, Korea. There's a well established need for English tutoring and the rates for private tutoring in Korea can be around $50/hour.
lachyg
Exactly! This sort of service can be provided internationally, nationally. You can spin it off and allow individuals to teach anything (Guitar, foreign languages, etc).
iamjustlooking
What has actually been done on this? Any backend work or just mockups?
lachyg
We had some backend work done by an Indian outsourcing company. You could continue with them and recode it, not sure you would want to though. We've got a lot of documents on what the site is about, and tech spec sort of stuff. We're also willing to commit a fair bit of time.
atomical
You aren't asking for equity though, correct?
lachyg
We're pretty flexible here. We'd like to discuss it further, we'd be happy to sell 100% outright.
jeffepp
Shoot me an email, I may know someone depending on the price..
user24
what kind of backend do you have? because if I were looking to take this on, I'd likely have my own ideas on "what the site is about". Tech spec sort of stuff means nothing. So really all you're selling is some mockups and whatever code you have - and if the code isn't substantial it would probably be more cost effective for me to recode it. I'm not trying to judge, I just think you may have overvalued what you're offering.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
crayz
Why don't you just upload everything to github and let the best man (team) win?
lachyg
What do you mean mate?
lrm242
Because they're trying to sell it. This is an advertisement. Not a offer of something to the community.
lachyg
We're trying to offer someone with some skills, the opportunity to get into a startup. We have genuine intentions. This was a lesson for us, and we think people smarter than us could take this far. We're either looking to sell, or looking to partner.
checker659
Are you looking to sell the design or are you planning to give it away for free? If it's the latter, please do consider open-sourcing it.
lachyg
We're looking to sell the 'startup' as a whole.
lrm242
Um, you don't have a startup. You have some mockups. So, you're looking to sell some mockups?
lachyg
We've got some code, some flash, and a whole lot of information on operations. The mockups are the most visual thing we can show!
lrm242
The code is of dubious quality, as you highlight in your post.
vermontdevil
Looks interesting. How shall I contact you then?
lachyg
lachygroom@gmail.com, or search Lachy Groom on Skype.
malbiniak
Would you mind talking about any lessons learned from offshoring? Was there anything you could have done differently to have a different outcome?
lachyg
Sure. Basically, I think the most important thing I would do next time if outsourcing to India is to find a company with a native English leader. If they have that, then the cultural differences can be minimized.

It's also how they want payments, how pushy they can be, and how they can't really seem to think for themselves. You have to have a rock solid brief, have everything designed beforehand (never have them design it).

Also, make sure you look at multiple companies, and bargain them down. Keep communication constant, and consistent.

die_sekte
The Student View thingie is full of errors. "Hallo" instead of "Halo", "dein Name" instead of "deine Naame", the proper base form is "sein". Conjugated: "Ich bin / Du bist / Er/Sie/Es ist / Wir sind / Ihr seid / Sie sind". I know, German is hard, but that should've been made by someone who knows a bit more about the language.

The chatbox, well, I'm not sure what they're trying to discuss, but it's nonsensical at best. Wanda Hoe isn't a common German name. It's also pretty close to Want-a-ho which probably isn't what you want.

There are lots of other errors. Not good. And "Learning will never be the same"? That sounds too dramatic.

/Rant. It's actually a pretty good concept. But it's just a concept without a good presentation.

lachyg
I don't think our designers first language is German! Sorry about that one mate :D!
f1gm3nt
If you're willing to give up some equity then I can get some work done for you. Sounds interesting, but would like some more info. Could you email me at Joshua.Estes@ScenicCityLabs.com

^_^ thanks

lrm242
I'm sorry, but why is this here? Why is HN now a place to sell a failed project? I don't get it. If this were truly a "here, I started something, don't want it anymore, go grab everything I have from github" then great. But after reading the comments from the OP it sounds like they want to enter into a transaction to sell what little they have. Um... I don't read HN to be advertised to. Flagged.
lachyg
Please see my reply to your other question. I had no intentions of offending, or spamming you, and I am truly sorry if I did.
lachyg
Also, a valid comment. Where would be the best place to post this? Because I know this can help someone out here. Could be an interesting site a HN member could develop, I would support it, and I'm sure a ton of other HN members would!
zaidf
Because I know this can help someone out here.

Most advertisers also believe their product can help someone out there.

drhodes
> We did research, found no true competitors

Is "true competitor" a technical term? Nearly everyone has competition, except a very small minority of government granted natural monopolies, like public utilities.

lachyg
By true I mean very similar. We found a few generic services, but nothing that went for the angle we were going for. We looked into it, and our niche was a multi billion dollar niche.
grantheaslip
Sorry if this sounds a bit mean, but what's to stop someone from taking the concept (which is interesting) and just running with it on their own without buying it from you? If all you've got to offer is some almost-definitely-terrible code for an outsourcing firm, some documents, and a few mock-ups, why do you expect someone to pay you for it?

And honestly, the fact that your first instinct was to outsource to India rather that learn to code yourself or finding someone local that you could work closely with, to me, means that you really weren't that passionate about the project in the first place or lack some basic judgement.

You call this project "accelerated" but I really don't see anything of any actual value in your description. If you were offering quality code in an useable-but-unpolished state, that might be a different story.

Again, sorry if that sounded mean-spirited, but I'm calling this like I see it.