All of Dumbledore's Army's Comments + Replies

Ok, sorry for the misplaced advice. Good luck with the school!

Who is your target market? For an adult to take nearly a year out of their life is a big ask. For whom do you expect it will be worth it? Staff/campaigners at existing non-profits? Existing bloggers/youtubers etc on related subjects? Anyone else? How large is the potential pool of students and how will you reach them and convince them that the course is worth the time and money?

I realise this is not a commercial project, but I think you would benefit from some start-up like thinking: who is this product for, what is the market, how do you reach customers, what is a minimum viable product from which to iterate? Apologies if you have already done that, but it wasn't communicated in your post.

2Daniel Golliher1yThanks for the note! I answer your questions below. One overall comment: this is an expansion of a project/school that's already successful and profitable, with a proven model and product. I've already taught 100 students, with demand far beyond what I can currently supply. * "Who is your target market?" City and state employees, and several markets in the general population, with immediate focus on tech, law, and finance professionals. I am not asking them to take a year out of their lives; all of my classes are meant to be taken with a regular job and busy life. * "For whom do you expect it will be worth it?" I've taught over 100 students already, and ~all of them would say it's been worth it. It's exciting to learn what the government actually is from a charismatic teacher, even if you don't go on to be super active politically! (Although many do go on to be active politically, empowered by their new knowledge.) * "How large is the potential pool of students and how will you reach them..." I think the pool is at least 10,000 people throughout NYC, but probably far more. I'll reach them the way I've already been reaching them with my established classes, via Twitter, my newsletter, and word of mouth. Demand already vastly outstrips my ability to teach my current classes, which is why I'm focusing on expanding and training more teachers. * "I think you would benefit from some start-up like thinking." Agree, and already done. Maximum New York (and me) have been sustained principally from revenue/profit since I started in March 2022.

What if they gave an Industrial Revolution and nobody came?

Dumbledore's Army2y7

One other factor, which I would class under demand factors: at each stage of the industrial revolution, you need to have enough demand for the primitive early version of your new technology, so that people will use it, iterate on it, and develop it.

You write "early Newcomen engines consumed ~45 pounds of coal per horsepower-hour; the most efficient engines of the late 1800s used less than one pound." But to get to those efficient engines, it had to be worth someone's while to use the very inefficient early Newcomen's engines, so that there was a vers... (read more)

3jasoncrawford2yThanks! Yes, this is definitely part of Allen's argument (maybe I should make that more clear). I've been meaning to read that Devereaux post/series for a while, thanks for reminding me of it. However, I don't you think can argue from “the Industrial Revolution got started in this very specific way” to “that is the only way any kind of an IR could ever have gotten started.” If it hadn't been flooded coal mines in Britain, there would have been some other need for energy in some other application. I see it more as: you develop mechanization and energy technology once you reach that frontier—once your economy hits the point where that is the best marginal investment in development. Britain was one of the most advanced economies, so it hit that frontier first.