Yodomo is a platform for creative learning that combines quality instructional video with ecommerce.
Business overview
Idea
Introduction
Yodomo Ltd is a curated platform for premium ‘how to’ courses and products, designed to reinvent the way that people learn lifestyle skills and to create new revenue streams for skilled and talented creative tutors.
There are 500M views of learning-related content on YouTube every day and searches for 'how to' content on YouTube are increasing 70% year on year. Over half of UK consumers (53%) have used the internet to develop three new skills.
In our view, learners are currently challenged to find good quality, effective ‘lifestyle’ learning content due to poor production of tutorials, and a lack of accountability around content. We have found that better tutorials are hard to discover and lost in the quagmire of cats and cucumbers. A thriving global market of offline lifestyle learning workshops is already proven by AirBnB ‘Experiences’ and EventBrite. Yodomo will provide a curated elearning platform to take the best of these workshops online.
Intended impact
Our vision is to provide a platform to connect upskilling lifestyle learners to the world's most talented tutors, creating a thriving curated marketplace for premium courses and products, and developing new revenue streams for individuals and businesses.
At the heart of Yodomo's planned roadmap is the development of owned technology, aimed at increasing the productivity for learners and providing tutors and content partners with monetisation opportunities, through online lifestyle learning content (paid-for) and ecommerce (product sales of tutorial materials and end products).
Yodomo is already reaching audiences, meeting the creative upskilling community online, and working with content partners and existing talented workshop tutors to create compelling elearning content for this influential market. We aim to cover all lifestyle skills - craft, gardening, well-being, cookery, etc. - but we are focusing launch content around the artisanal and craft sectors.
Substantial accomplishments to date
We launched Yodomo 1.0 at yodomo.co in October 2017, initially on third party software, with selected tutors across cookery, pottery, heritage crafts, illustration and fermentation. Our tutors bring with them a joint reach of over half a million through individual’s social media reach, and audiences through content and product partnerships with Cass Art (one of the UK’s learning art suppliers), Octopus Publishers, Hachette UK (one of the UK’s largest lifestyle publishers) and Turning Earth (one of the UK’s largest pottery studios). There are another 40 tutorials already in development. Over 200 tutors have signed up through yodomo.co, and our content and product partnerships already give us access to hundreds of others.
We have built a prototype of the Yodomo Player - a video player that works alongside our 1.0 platform and offers additional options to support the learner experience. Learners can stop / pause / fast forward / rewind to specific sections, ‘loop’ content, go to additional content for specific questions and use their voice to control these options.
Our third current workstream is the development of the Yodomo Storyboard app that will enable tutors to create and upload their own tutorials to the Yodomo platform, following a bespoke Yodomo storyboarding style guide created having worked with experienced online video specialists and lifestyle TV producers and directors.
Monetisation strategy
Yodomo learners pay per course. We see that consumers are paying for digital content when they want to find quality content. A World Economic Forum report shows that in specific cases, consumers will pay for online video content, and one of the key cases being if it teaches them new skills.
“Viewers will pay double or more for longer form content: As video length increases, viewers expect, and are willing, to pay nearly double what they’d pay to buy a short-form video”.
The Global E-Learning Market is poised to grow at a CAGR of around 7.0% over the next decade to reach approximately $331 billion by 2025.
In addition, we are looking to monetise the sale of materials associated with specific courses, through affiliates schemes initially though we are already in discussions with a fulfilment company so that we can offer full ecommerce. The global crafts industry generates around $100bn (€93.5bn) of annual revenue, and there are around 850m crafters across the world.
Use of proceeds
Yodomo Ltd is currently seeking investment to support:
Development of Content and the Yodomo Tutor Portal - This funding round is planned to enable Yodomo to quickly produce a bank of Yodomo-produced tutorials over the next 9 - 12 months to quickly establish itself as a major player in this market. Simultaneously we plan to build the first version of the Yodomo Tutor Portal, which will enable tutors to upload course planning content and key assets, enabling Yodomo to produce and edit courses more effectively thus scaling the business quickly.
Marketing and Audience Development - Planned investment will help us bring on marketing expertise to rapidly grow our audiences.
Our long-term goal is to enable tutors and partners to produce their own content working to the Yodomo Style Guide and facilitated through our Yodomo Storyboard tool. Some funds will also be used to scope Next Phase Platform and Product Development of the Yodomo 2.0 platform, Yodomo Player and Yodomo Storyboard tool.
Market
Target market
Our target customers are influential ‘creative upskillers’. Innovation research and trends firm, Stylus describes this group as ‘learning-loving, impatient upskillers (who) want to acquire new knowledge and engage in creative pursuits through instant, fuss-free formats.’ The report highlights the online market is booming, with more than 35 million people worldwide enrolled in digital courses in the past 4 years, and as previously mentioned 53% of UK consumers have used the internet to develop 3 new skills. We think that consumer brands and media companies alike are all keen to reach this influential group of ‘skilful socialites, no-timers, next-gen onliners and DIY crafters’.
Characteristics of target market
While Instagram is a natural home for creative upskillers, there is no online learning home for this market in the UK, as far as we are aware and a lot of room for competition globally. The Global E-Learning Market is poised to grow at a CAGR of around 7.0% over the next decade to reach approximately $331 billion by 2025. The global crafts industry generates around $100bn (€93.5bn) of annual revenue, and there are around 850m crafters across the world.
Yodomo Ltd is gaining meaningful traction with customers through social (in particular Instagram), sign-ups for our monthly newsletter and sign-ups to become a tutor or a learner through yodomo.co.
Marketing strategy
Yodomo’s growth strategy is underpinned by the content creators and content partners, many of whom have sizeable social media presences. For example, our launch partner Cass Art Supplies has a substantial number of engaged customers we believe are interested in workshops and materials. Turning Earth ceramics studios has an Instagram following of nearly 40k followers.
Our monthly email newsletter is already building in traction and we are running small Facebook and Instagram campaigns to drive up email registration. We are building followers on Instagram as a primary platform, and also on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. In addition, we are looking to hire an in-house Chief Marketing Officer who can help us accelerate the development of our audiences through digital marketing and traditional media.
The focus for Phase One will be earned media and as the site matures, and in particular as Yodomo adds commerce functionality, paid media (predominantly digital) will be added to the media mix.
Competition strategy
While existing elearning platforms have shown themselves to be successful in monetisation models around B2B professional or academic content (Lynda, Udemy, etc.), we think they have been clumsy in bringing lifestyle learning into the mix. In our view, they fail to think specifically about how these learners and consumers behave, and the high expectations we believe this group has around design and aesthetics.
Others in this sector include LoveCrafts (aimed at buying supplies), OR Craftsy education.
We feel that Yodomo’s competitive advantage lies in:
* Focusing on reaching the influential/affluent ‘creative upskilling’ generation through relevant content and aesthetic design.
* Working from the outset with influencers, major content partners and institutions to reach build audiences quickly .
* Bringing lifestyle education and ecommerce under one online proposition.
* Creation of our Yodomo Tutor Portal enabling use to scale quickly.
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