Unvalidated Ideas #054

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Here's a fresh idea you can take out there and validate.

Excel Training (🗒Raw Notes)

As long as generative AI hallucinates, people will still need to be good at Excel and at the very least double-check output LLMs provide.

In the meantime, people still have to learn how to use Excel. What's the best known Excel training or learning startup? Can you think of a household name? If not, why is that?

Excel is boring, and building online courses is generally derided. No one is excited about it, and training to use office software isn't an exciting area that entrepreneurs look at. This is a great place to out-execute other entrepreneurs.

It's a massive market -- just about everyone who works online in the internet age needs at least passing familiarity with Excel/Google Sheets and other office tools.

In addition to being a massive market, the cost of building a solution for this is relatively low:

• watch other courses and introductions to Excel, figure out basic structure
• figure out how you can do better/innovate
• record (or subcontract) new classes
• market your solution

Obvoiusly, the hard part here is the marketing -- but the fact that there isn't a household name means there's space. All you need is a computer and an internet connection.

Even something a simple as chunking the content differently (catering to shorter attention spans) can make for a far more engaged audience. Build a household name for learning to use crucial office tools, starting with Excel.

NOTE There's also a really good cross-section idea in here -- adapt Loom to be usable for building courses. You can also expand this idea way past Excel -- any well-used software (like Salesforce, or Hubspot) is fair game.

What was in this week's uncut edition?

Like being teased? I hope so, because here's what was in the uncut edition this week:

Ideas:

• Excel Training
• ███████HackerNews
• Hosted █████████

Bonus:

• Remember when I noted how fast Open Source AI was progressing?

Don't forget, there's always money in the banana stand 3x more in the uncut edition.

Thanks for reading!

If you liked this letter feel free to criticize, comment on, remix, and share these ideas with your fellow builders and entrepreneurs!

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Victor (victor@unvalidatedideas.com)

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