We’ve tried a few different business models and weren’t entirely happy with any of them. Charging for GoSoapBox allows us to generate revenue to pay the bills but creates a barrier for teachers to adopt the product. School budgets are tight and teachers don’t have a ton of disposable income to pay for additional tools. Our ultimate goal is to help as many students learn as possible. Charging for our product gets in the way of that.

So Here’s The Scoop…

We are considering the idea of partnering with an outside organization which would sponsor GoSoapBox and allow us to offer the product 100% free of cost to K-12 teachers and students

GoSoapBox would be custom designed / skinned with the partner organization’s logo and branding.

• IT WOULD BE a well designed, visual branding layout.

• IT WOULD NOT be a standard banner ad, or text based ad, like something you’d see on Google adwords.

• IT WOULD NOT be a click through advertisement (no pop ups, or new windows opening)

• IT WOULD NOT require student email addresses or any contact information

•  IT WOULD allow us to offer GoSoapBox 100% cost free for K-12 teachers and students

We Need Your Help…

We created a very brief survey in order to assess the feasibility of this idea. The data collected from this survey will help us determine the demand for the free product and help in creating usage projections that we can bring to our partner organizations.

Please share this with other K-12 folks in your network. The more data the better!

If you are involved in K-12 education please do us a huge favor and take our short survey. It will only take 3 minutes. The survey is embedded below. You can also find the survey here

Beginning today, you can now embed your Polls into PowerPoint for Windows. The process is easy.

1. In GoSoapBox, browse to an existing Poll or create a new Poll.
2. Click the “Download Slide” button to trigger a PPTX file download.
3. Save the PPTX file to your computer.
4. Open the PPTX file and copy the slide into your existing presentation.
5. Test your presentation to verify that the Poll results display as expected.

That’s pretty simple.

When you run your presentation, the Poll results will update in real-time, and the Poll will automatically be unlocked for your students to respond to.

The Confusion Barometer is a simple concept. When students join your GoSoapBox Event, they are automatically assigned the status “I’m Getting It”. As you are teaching, they can change this status to “I’m Confused”, and when they do it sends a signal to your teacher view.

Despite the name, the Confusion Barometer has never resembled, well — a barometer.

See what we mean? There’s a lot of information AND the look is boring. This has bothered us for a while, but we’ve been busy with other soon-to-be-announced functionality projects.

But we had some time to work with the Confusion Barometer, and right now you are going to get a sneak peek.

The New Confusion Barometer

After talking with users, we realized that the Confusion Barometer’s history sparklines aren’t used at all, and the most important overall function is to give teachers an at-a-glance data point. Even reading a number adds to cognitive load, so we decided to entirely do away with numbers and charts and move toward this beautiful skeuomorphic gauge.

What do you think?

A handful of unexpected events occurred while we were updating our application environment on Amazon Web Services. What should have been 60 seconds of downtime required an environment rebuild that took longer.

We typically notify users ahead of time when we expect to experience an outage of more than a few minutes, but in this case we were not anticipating a problem.

Now that we know what went wrong, we have already adjusted our processes to avoid this kind of outage when performing similar maintenance in the future.

Dr. Cooper, an educator at Glendale Community College in Arizona (United States), used a variety of ed-tech tools in 2012. Her blog, which is quite extensive, details her experiences with these tools. On January 1st, Dr. Cooper posted her favorites tools of 2012.

GoSoapBox allows teachers to gauge student understanding or confusion levels throughout a lesson, poll students and track the data for future reference. I used GoSoapBox with my hybrid class as a quick way to hold them accountable for their online responsibilities. It works well and is easy to use.

Mr. B, the brain behind Tech-ing the Classroom, focused on GoSoapBox for his January 2nd blog post.

GoSoapBox is another example of a response system that enables teachers to check for understanding in real time of the entire class. I have been playing around a bit with GoSoapBox to get acquainted with its features, and I have to say, I have really enjoyed the platform they have designed. It is simple, clean, and easy to use. GoSoapBox is compatible with many devices which makes it all the easier to use with high school aged students that carry various computing devices.

Tom Burns, an educator at Monash University in Australia, mentioned GoSoapBox as one of six ed-tech tools students will love, particularly for in-class use.

Gain insight into your students’ comprehension mid-class to see if they ‘get it’ with GoSoapBox! It helps break down the participation barrier in large-lecture environments by allowing students to respond to online polls with smartphones and laptops.

To Dr. Cooper, Mr. B, and Tom Burns — THANK YOU for taking the time to write about GoSoapBox.

We want to share some of the data and insights that we’ve collected to tell the story of GoSoapBox’s progression through this first year. You’ve all played a part in our journey so we thought it was only right to give you a behind the scenes look at our story.

This post is not related to product updates or features but is a unique recap of what we’ve learned about entrepreneurship through starting GoSoapBox, and what advice we’d give to students interested in starting their own company.

A few months ago I downloaded the Monopoly™ game app for my iPhone as a way to pass time traveling back and forth on the train. Monopoly™ is a simple game but the more that I play it, the more I realize it can teach you some very important, fundamental aspects of starting a company. The parallels between the two are endless but I’ve narrowed this list down to my 4 favorites.

1. GET SOMETHING BUILT QUICKLY

In Monopoly™

My goal is always to be the first player to build houses on a set of properties. Once you have houses built, you start earning serious rent. Having other players land on those properties early in the game is a key to success because it not only puts money in your pocket, but more importantly takes money out of theirs, which can severely restrict the other players’ ability to make purchases / build. You start the game with a limited bank-roll and that original cash only allows you to go so far. You need to get those houses up in order to start generating new revenue, and it’s only a matter of time before your competitors do.

In a Startup

It’s the simple principle of an MVP (minimum viable product). Startups should try to get their MVP out to market as quickly as possible. There’s no need for a 6 month beta, or for the product to have 50 features. It’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting to build every possible function that your user may want prior to launch, but DON’T. You’re looking for that problem that’s big enough that people will pay for your solution even if your product does nothing but solve that one problem. Identify that problem, build out your MVP, and get it to market quickly.

2. FIND A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

In Monopoly™

My favorite set to obtain on the board is Orange. While the set only offers the 5th highest maximum payout, the properties are cheap to purchase and houses are inexpensive to build. Most importantly though the orange set has a unique advantage due to its location, as it occupies the 6th, 8th, and 9th spaces away from The Jail.

Players can be sent to jail in a number of different ways and as the game progresses players will be sent to jail on a steady basis.

The key here is that the players will be forced to roll past the orange set of properties each time they leave jail, and there is a fairly high probability of them landing on one of those properties each time.

In a Startup

You’re going to have competition. That is a guarantee. Other companies will copy your product, pump more money into marketing, or even give away a similar product for free. The companies that sustain and have success in the market generally have competitive advantages.

A competitive advantage is not simply a way to differentiate from your competition. Being the only product in the market that integrates with MySpace probably isn’t a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage is something that adds value to your product / service that cannot be easily replicated by competitors.

The fact that the orange set of properties is a different color than the rest of the spaces on the Monopoly™board doesn’t make it a competitive advantage. Its proximity to the Jail, which no other set of properties can offer, gives it its competitive advantage.

3. DISTRIBUTION

In Monopoly™

Essentially all of the spaces on the board are distribution channels for the players to obtain. When you own a space and someone else lands on it, you receive money from them. Each round (when players roll the dice to move) can be thought of as a sales cycle. The more spaces (distribution channels) that you own, the more revenue you’ll receive. The more diversified your channels are (owning properties on all sides of the board), the better chance you have of generating revenue during each sales cycle.

In a Startup

Many startups (Ourselves included) misunderstand distribution when starting out, yet it might be the most important aspect of a new company. We made the mistake with GoSoapBox of relying on word of mouth and referrals as our main distribution channel, and we’re still trying to truly solve it. Though we still receive a steady stream of signups via WOM, it isn’t a sustainable strategy. You can’t rely on WOM because it’s not a controllable channel, and your growth is at the mercy of your users.

True distribution channels guarantee consistent access to potential customers. The great thing about Google adwords is that if you can identify a campaign that consistently brings your target customers to your site and converts them at a profitable rate, you now have a controllable channel. Pump more money into adwords, get more profit out of it.

Don’t try to do it all yourself. Startups should explore a variety of potential distribution channels — online marketing, direct sales force, distribution partners, 3rd party resellers, etc. — The more channels you have, the higher your revenue and sustainability potential.

4. INJECT INVESTMENT AT THE RIGHT TIME

In Monopoly™

The timing of when you decide to invest in building houses is an important strategy in Monopoly™. You always want to keep enough cash on hand (especially in the later rounds) in case you incur a big expense, but you need to spend money in order to build on your properties.

There’s no point in building houses when the other players aren’t within rolling distance of your properties. On the other hand, when all three players, or a player close to bankruptcy, is nearing your properties it is an opportune time to build. In some cases it’s often a good bet to even take on debt (mortgage your properties) in order to build.

In a Startup

Not all startups need to take on funding and if you can bootstrap successfully it’s well worth it, but raising funding can be the key to scalability and growth. Taking on funding is all about timing. Pre-mature scaling is a recipe for disaster but if you wait too long there’s a chance that your competitors will pass you by.

The opportune time to inject outside investment is once you’ve nailed down product / market fit with a business model that works and is scalable. The investment should be used to put your growth engine into overdrive, not to give you time to figure out what you’re going to do.

Just like rolling the dice in Monopoly™ though, even well timed, well thought out investments don’t always work, and a certain degree of luck is needed.

Things are going to happen that are totally out of your control, sometimes they play out in your favor, sometimes they don’t.

Attendance Monitoring

Instructors are now able to see how many students are currently active in their events as well as the names of those students

Editing Student Replies

Instructors are now able to edit replies that students add to Discussions or Social Q&A questions.

Social Q&A Reply Icon Upgrade

Each Social Q&A entry will now show the number of replies that have been added to it. This allows users to identify when a new reply has been added that they have yet to read.

Quiz Progress Indicator

Instructors are now able to view progress information about their Quizzes. Instructors can now see how many people are currently taking the Quiz, and how many have already completed it.

Re-Ordering Quiz Questions

Instructors now have the ability to re-order the questions within their Quiz. Re-ordering questions can be helpful to fix errors, as well as randomizing the order of questions for different classes.

SMS (Text Message) Integration For Social Q&A

We’re exciting to announce that we’ve now integrated the ability for students to text message in questions to Social Q&A. This assures that every student is able to participate during class, whether they have a ‘smart’ device or not!

Polling and Instant Polling SMS integration will be rolled out very soon as well.

* Due to costs incurred on our end, the SMS functionality is only available for students who have subscribed to GoSoapBox and is limited to U.S. users.

COMING SOON: PowerPoint Integration For Polls

Within the next 2 – 3 weeks we will be launching functionality that allows Instructors to embed the result graphs from Polls and Instant Polls directly into a PowerPoint presentation. Students will be able to respond to the Polls via GoSoapBox or SMS and the results will be displayed right on the PowerPoint slide. Instructors will no longer need to exit PowerPoint and open the GoSoapBox window in order to see Poll results.

Integration with PowerPoint has been our most frequently requested feature and we are very excited to roll out the integration. Once our prototype is available it would be great to test it with a few users before we fully launch it. If you are interested in gaining early access to the feature please let us know.

We’re a bootstrapped company, and have opted to not raise outside funding because we feel it’s in the best interest of our product. We’re focused on making a great product, and we want to be accountable to our users, not our investors. By bootstrapping we are able to focus on making decisions that lead to the best product possible, and avoid the pressure of making decisions based on a return on capital investment.

Bootstrapping though requires generating enough revenue to support ourselves as we continue to build and unfortunately we’ve determined that our current business model will not be scalable enough in the future to allow us to grow and compete with competitors who have raised outside funding.

So what’s changing?

We are no longer going to offer the individual teacher subscriptions to GoSoapBox. Instead we are introducing an alternative model that keeps GoSoapBox totally free for educators.

Here’s how it works…

• Instructors can ask or require students to use GoSoapBox in their class, just like they do with textbooks and clickers.

• Students purchase a GoSoapBox subscription at a very low cost ($10 per year). This subscription entitles them to use GoSoapBox with any class.

• Each student will now receive their own account to sign in with.

• Instructors will have access to use GoSoapBox for free

Integrating student accounts also opens the door for improving student performance tracking and analytics in the future. We have some exciting ideas on how to innovate this aspect of the product.

What this change means to you…

1. If you are a GoSoapBox user you can choose to upgrade to the ‘student account’ model. Each of your students will create their own account, and you will be eligible for the additional benefits in the future (Text message response integration, student performance tracking, etc.)

2. If you signed up for a trial of GoSoapBox before August 1st you are eligible to continue with the original subscription model as promised ($90 / year)

3. We will continue to offer volume discount pricing & pilots for Schools, Universities, and Districts. For more information please email john@gosoapbox.com

4. We will also continue to offer free trials for new users, and students are not required to create accounts during the free trial period.

Thank you for all of your support along the way. It’s been an exciting few months since our initial launch and we really appreciate all of our users’ help.

We have some exciting new features that are ready to be rolled out so stay tuned for those!