Chet: A New Creator Platform for Curating Micro-Courses
How Chet is democratizing career opportunity and professional wisdom and how you can be a part of it.
Chet’s platform has made it simple to use existing content sourced from the internet of things (IoT) to build your online course. Instead of reinventing the wheel, Chet allows you to link and embed videos, articles, e-books, and other IoT material to structure your course. Chet calls for ‘curators’ instead of ‘creators’ because you are basically pulling together existing content in a coherent, structured, and valuable way to set up your online course. You don’t even have to own the rights of the content you use.
The advantages of first movers
Before you dismiss Chet as a platform, consider the opportunity it brings to build your digital presence. As a creator, you may already have online courses, e-books, or a whole catalog of YouTube playlists named and neatly organized with your own categories within marketing, product, design, leadership, sales, or other interests that you have built over the years.
Chet’s application process is simple, their user interface is intuitive, and as their platform starts to grow, creators will gain exposure via their own Chet profile. As professionals share their courses through their networks and social media platforms like LinkedIn, exposure will grow.
This is how I found Chet, a friend who shared their course on LinkedIn.
Chet is a diamond in the rough for any creator who has already built an online course or loves to curate their own content.
Strategically targeting high-profile companies
It’s clear that whilst in the Beta phase, Chet aims to add credibility to its platform by targeting well-known tech companies. Chet will evolve as its platform gains traction and the data they collect allows them to unpack new opportunities across areas of most interest by their users.
Chet currently features professionals from Netflix, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Soundcloud, Canva, and other high-profile technology companies. But, as its new platform evolves, Chet might look for other professional creators across varying disciplines to sign up as a ‘curator.’ Using a standard application through Typeform’s platform, Chet collects critical details on a creator’s professional suitability.
Once a curator sends an application to become a curator, Chet’s Head of Growth sends an email for a follow-up conversation. Chet’s screening process will most definitely be refined as the future gates of its platform opens up to more professionals, and Chet aims for scalability.
Education will be a 10 trillion dollar industry in 2030
As a startup, Chet has identified the massive potential of the online education industry, which has forecast to reach $10 Trillion by 2030. As the recent pandemic has led many students in the U.S.A. demanding tuition, board, and room refunds from colleges like Boston University and Brown, online education might be a more significant opportunity than what has been forecasted from previous years.
As more students study via online university portals and new platforms, the traditional education system will continue to be disrupted.
There are untapped low-end markets in the online education space, which Chet seems to be going after. Dima Syrotkin covers these opportunities well in her article about these markets ripe for the picking.
You most likely already have content to use
As described by Chet, their platform offers expertly curated “micro-courses.”
Georgia Vidler, Head of Product at Canva, has simply added 11 YouTube videos to build a course on ‘how to lead and inspire people’ (below).
If you have a YouTube playlist in your area of expertise, then Chet is well worth the investigation.
Chet’s navigation is intuitive & offers a great experience
Having a user-centered focus for startups is a massive consideration when building their products. Chet has built a brilliant product with a user-friendly interface, and from their home page, it is easy to navigate and digest their content without the need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.
As a startup, Chet has nailed their platform and identified an opportunity in a growing market. Their clever strategy of allowing people to curate content instead of creating it from scratch offers a unique way to build an online course. However, at the moment, creators or curators do not get paid, so the value proposition to their community is only exposure. But, without quantifying leads as a curator from Chet’s platform, Chet’s platform could fail quickly as a startup.
As Chet allows people to source content they don’t have the right to, they can not use a subscription model to monetize their platform. This means that Chet will need to do 1 of 2 things:
- Advertise across their platform.
- Create a paid wall for unique content that curators have rights to.
It isn't easy to see how Chet will navigate the future of its platform without incentives being given to content creators. If curators aren’t paid, content creators may not continue creating micro-courses on Chet’s platform.
Takeaways
Exposure to new audiences from emerging platforms can create massive opportunities for freelancers, creators, or anyone who wants to build their digital presence.
It’s difficult to predict whether Chet will provide benefits beyond what you can currently see on the surface. A new credible way to build out your profile and access a new audience.
However, if you can hit the ground running with already collated assets, then Chet could be perfect for you.
I’ve signed up for Chet and will build my course out because the time it takes me to source 11 YouTube videos from my playlist and create a reputable profile takes a couple of days. For me, this outweighs the risk of missing out if Chet breaks the glass ceiling of online courses and becomes a popular platform within the next few years.
There is little competition for visibility on Chet currently because it has only recently launched in Beta, so I’d recommend creators to at least have a peek.
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Thank you for reading,
Rick Govic
