The story behind launching my first cohort-based course

Back in college when I was studying electronics and communication engineering, learning how to code was never a part of my curriculum and I felt so constrained whenever I had an idea to build something. So I started learning how to code with a course on Web Development by Colt Steele on Udemy (which btw I highly recommend)?

My single motivation to learn how to code was to gain the ability to build something out of any idea I had. Learning how to code was rewarding in many ways. I was felt so liberated as I was actually able to convert my Ideas into something substantial. Won a few hackathons too?:)

?In 2019, I was working at Bounce as Product Manager for customer support. My role included building great support experience for our customers and also building supporting tools for the customer team to function effectively and efficiently.?

When I joined I got a handover from my colleague then, Sid Puri who currently leads Growth for Retool in India. Sid, while giving the handover introduced me to Retool and mentioned that this is what I should use for building internal tools as he had been using it for quite some time.?

I started exploring the tool and I was AMAZED. ???? Frontend engineering had never been more simplified for building internal tools. Imagine you are building a dashboard for your internal team to verify KYC and you could just drag and drop all the components for the dashboard and integrate APIs and Databases with just a few clicks. That's exactly what Retool helped us do and exactly how I first time used a low code tool.?

And then we kept talking about a few other no-code tools?

Every time I tried a new no code or low code tool I was blown away by how much I could build using them. The possibilities were extensive and as someone who codes I could appreciate the value of these tools even more because I knew that component I just dragged or that API I just integrated, would have taken 20 or even more lines of code.?

This time I felt liberated again! No code tools would enable so many people to turn their ideas into a working product even if they didn’t have technical expertise.

For engineers, it would save so much time that they would otherwise spend building trivial things.?

And I kept using these tools to build a few things on the side and help other folks who wanted to build something until this happened ????

I am so glad and thankful that Navneet reached out and we had a conversation. We discussed about Navneet & Dhaval’s startup which is called Airtribe today ???? and also discussed about launching a course on No code tools.

It all started from a WhatsApp group to a notion doc then to a fully functional product.

The Result

Why a Cohort-based course?

Since childhood, we have been made to believe that learning is unidirectional and that student and teacher roles cannot be interchanged. The problem with this kind of learning is that the learner is not involved in the process which affects the amount of knowledge any learner would retain.

On the other hand, when you learn in a cohort-based course format you are actively involved in the learning process hence knowledge retention is much higher. You also learn from the cohort members and not just from the instructor hence learnings are multiplied.

What matters the?most?

I will let that sink in????

We also had our first offline meet up in Bangalore ???? ????

Why Airtribe?

As a first-time creator, you could feel overwhelmed with the number of things you have to take care of. Airtribe was exactly solving this problem by creating a platform for creators which would take care of everything starting from creating a landing page for your course to your learner’s experience so that you could focus on course content creation.

Along with this, Navneet and Dhaval are the most humble people I met in 2021 who deeply care about solving creator problems with a mission to innovate learning formats ??.

Navneet & Dhaval with their super awesome team! ????

I would like to end this article with just one thought?

You can only connect the dots looking backwards....