Ask HN: Improving people skills w/ Bandersnatch for e-Learning. Other use cases?

Hi everyone! Technical co-founder of Wiserstate here.

Please share bloody honest feedback on the product I'm working on! :)

I've just watched "All About Pivoting" by Dalton Caldwell from YC's Startup School (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pNxKX1SUGE) and highly recommend it to early stage start-up founders still looking for product-market fit and trying to understand if they're going in the right direction.

The lecture made me think that we (Wiserstate) might be chasing a mirage - we've got a little traction making it hard to throw everything out of the window but not so much traction to say that we've found PMF.

Wiserstate helps new managers to solve team and personal problems with videos by qualified experts; unlike in static video lessons, experts ask questions and react with individual advice.

So, technically we've built a "Bandersnatch (Black Mirror's interactive movie) for eLearning". I would highly appreciate honest feedback:

1) Would you pay for this and use this to get an expert's advice instead of approaching directly your manager / coach / mentor / advisor / other experts you know personally? Why not?

2) How do you look for leadership / team management advice? Do you google it? Does it work for you?

3) Is this a problem for you as a manager? (having the necessary know-how / advise on how to handle team and personal problems / improve your leadership)

4) What should we be doing differently?

5) What other use cases for such interactive videos come to your mind?

Looking for that magical product-market fit. Any advice for the directions to pursue will be highly valued.

4 comments

[ 280 ms ] story [ 837 ms ] thread

juris-ws 6y ago ↗

You can find out more at https://wiserstate.com/ as well as try out some of the demo sessions (free, no registration required).

arandr0x 6y ago ↗

You should talk to university and business schools about this, because it sounds like it could provide more immediate feedback and be easier to grade than written case studies.

Blakestr 6y ago ↗

I checked out one of your video, (I believe the overly competitive coworkers one)

I think you need to clarify which aspects of these social workplace problems are the most valuable for your demographic -1 is it simply trying to come up with a solution, or is it the immediacy of dealing with a live person, 2 that pressure of having another human being look back at you.

Both of these aspects would require a fair amount, #2 seems like a lot more technical work involve to create a live person staring at you. (I actually think this one would be a home-run but it's a technical challenge, to create a simulation that triggers someone's social anxiety?)

One number 1, I think the limiting factor which would shy away potential users is that most would feel their situation is unique. So developing a giant algorithm that would encompass every possible nuance of workplace social problems could be done, but that would just be text.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of interactive videos because I would prefer to simply read the answer faster. However, if you can give me a text answer that fits my situation, that's all I'd want. Hope this helps.

throwaway13000 6y ago ↗

1) Yes. And Companies might also pay for training. 2) Actually, good forums for this are lacking. WiserState is good step in this direction 3) Yes. First time managers need all the help they can get. 4) Consider if it should be video based or should be a giant tree based questionnaire? Text is faster to read. Much much faster to read. I can read at my own pace, the areas that I do not like. Understanding what I would do in various scenarios will help me understand what I should do in this situation. Write blogs to other resources on the topic to increase your street cred. 5) This is not interactive video. This is pre recorded videos with some input from users.