I’ve spent the last several months since launching the WP Auto Tag plugin searching for my next project. Building WP Auto Tag was a great learning experience, but I don’t see an immediate path to revenue for it without many more months of model building and React UI work. My goal for that project is to build an open source community around it, because it’s too much for one person.
So in the meantime, I’ve focused my attention on 1) leadership skills (thanks Coursera), and 2) formulating a business idea related to data science professional development. I’ve landed on an idea I feel confident about and have begun formalizing it with the launch of Skillenai.
Skillenai is an intelligent career coach for data scientists. Every data scientist has skill gaps, but few are strategic in the way they fill them. Skillenai will coach data scientists to identify skill gaps and develop action plans to achieve their career goals.
Building a minimum viable product will be difficult, but there’s some nice checkpoints along the way that can generate revenue early. In particular, the Career Wizard, as I’m calling it, will require curated collections of learning resources to recommend to users. I can begin curating them right away, and can promote ones that have affiliate marketing programs such as Coursera and Datacamp. I can also create my own learning resources and content that will feed search engines and social media. Lastly, I can offer 1:1 career coaching while eager students await the Career Wizard.
The other thing that excites me about this product is that it’s as applicable to senior data scientists as it is to people who aren’t even sure what a data scientist does. Personalized professional development plans are universally beneficial. That fact makes expansion beyond data science inevitable, if all goes well.
If you’re interested in using Skillenai or helping to build it, please connect with me.