Suggested by Claire Zhang over 3 years ago

I’ve seen some whispers of a trend of the concept of personal coaching and tutoring is going beyond leadership and fitness to other areas that people are passionate about and wanting to develop as personal projects or hobbies.

• https://every.to/superorganizers/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-1-1-learning
• https://twitter.com/mikekarnj/status/1609278233807036419

In NYC, Catapult was one of the three biggest "writing workshop" offerings (competitors: Gotham Writing Workshop, Sackett Street Writers). They recently shut down their entire workshop/course business to double down on their publishing business: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/91526-catapult-to-shutter-online-magazine-writing-classes.html

In response, one of their former instructors shared this Tweet thread giving advice on how she managed to start her own independent courses and recruit her own students: https://twitter.com/lillydancyger/status/1625543758157692945

The last Tweet is where she articulates the unmet need, in my opinion, though the whole thread gives a window into her current tooling / tech stack: "if a bunch of us are gonna go this independent route, maybe there's a way to collaborate/support each other in getting the word out? Some centralized listing we can put together? IDK how or where, just a thought."

I have heard a fair amount of solutions out there for creators that allow them to manage businesses etc, including setting up courses. The passion economy was a trend for a hot second a few years ago and mentions some of these companies (eg. Outschool): https://li-jin.co/2019/10/22/the-passion-economy-and-the-future-of-work/

But I wonder if there's something in the idea of going back to an older industry with a lot of structural tradition already - writing workshops, and really focusing on that very specific need. Maybe there's business opportunity to eventually tier into partnering with publishers to scout talent, which is something I know a few founders have brought up here (https://os.platformstud.io/guild/unmet_needs/a-saas-platform-for-non-fiction-publishers-to-network-with-readers-and-inch-sales-up-by-65--by-ebenezer--amemador + @Josh Lampley).

Maybe what I'm describing is something like a decentralized MFA?

Or maybe it's something like a Mindbody for writing instructors / workshop organizers? Back when I interned at Pear VC, we saw some companies building new software for fitness instructors that was better suited for small independent solopreneurs (Mindbody is super clunky) such as this: https://www.ribbonexperiences.com/studio.

I could see this being used by not just published authors looking to teach / get paid, but perhaps also for aspiring writers who want to organize their own regular workshops as well (something I actually do myself on the side as a hobby).

Would love to hear thoughts!

Aforementioned trend of personal coaching getting popular.

Idea of hobbies getting popular.

Shuttering of Catapult writing courses making it top of mind for a potential audience segment to test with.