Linkedin for School Children

An MVP of a demo proposal (WIP)

Sunday, Apr 12, 2020

It’s quite a novel idea to come up with a social network for children which allows students from different age groups or similar interests to interact with each other not bound by their current institutions.

The 3 parts to the MVP for such a product are:

However, to better understand what the product represents, it would make sense to first enlist what problems would such a product solve and what features would it provide for them. This will also serve to define our value proposition to potential users.

Product Features at Launch

To understand what these might be for a LinkedIn like product, let’s first see some features of LinkedIn itself:

Translating some of these into an academic perspective can help us decide some core features. Problems solved would mostly be the betterment of the individuals — students and teachers — with educational institutions playing a role in providing a structure and bringing them together. It can also provide a platform for parents to get more involved with their children’s studies (Phase 2).

While e-learning platforms can cater to the whole age-group of K-12 children, with the assistance of their parents, our app which focuses on social networking and media, and is an auxillary aspect of learning, it should be reserved for the higher age group to limit their online activity time. Hence, we suggest that the app should be targeted towards students aged 11–18, secondary to high-school to junior college age.

Not a progress tracker for children, nor an online course provider, but a connecting and collaborating tool.

Some of the features can include:

The Market

We analyze the student market as it is markedly more significant than the teachers and schools count.

P * (d/100) * (e/100) * (i/100)

The numbers:

N = ~43,680,000

It seems the market is about 2–3% of the population, and the product falls into a highly specific category. This is something that would influence our acquisition strategy.

User Acquisition

Given the previous, it would make sense to launch it first in a small region limited to a district with a few schools, will also serve as a viability test.

Via families/parents: Our value proposition to them here would be

Target online ads on YouTube are quite effective for reaching out to new users. Other than that media like TV and newspaper ads. We can have perks for early adopters, but currently we are uncertain as to what they could be. Byju’s did face troubles into making parents believe in benefits on online learning early on: https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/the-story-of-byjus-from-a-small-village-in-kerala-to-creating-a-global-edutech-startup-from-india-3688455.html

Via school institutions: This can prove much more effective as schools can drive their own students and teachers to join the platform. However, the value proposition communicated to schools will, other than the individualistic goals above, show them how they benefit:

This is a first of my case attempts during a dive in to explore Product Management concepts with the help of friends over at https://pmschool.io. I hope I can make them more developed studies over time for other folks.