Thunder Course

Disrupting the online education industry with an AI-powered course builder platform.

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Inspiration

After losing my dream job, I sought to create it.

Initially, I wanted to help coach others online, but every tool I looked into was either too pricey or complex to use.

Eventually I gave in and signed up for Skool's $100/month program. Broke and desperate to catch a break, worrying about paying the monthly platform fee overshadowed the actual desire to create and teach.

That's when I stumbled upon Bolt and the Hackathon Dev challenge. After building some experience with simple apps, I decided the time to build an app I WANTED to use had come.

And that finally brings us to now.

What it does

Thunder Course offers anyone the ability to create a course, build a community and monetize their knowledge on just about anything.

Our features include

  • Explore page to view courses from multiple categories
  • Payment Integrations for Bank/PayPal/Stripe deposits, and One Time/Recurring billing options
  • Public/Private course options lets you set custom questions for users to answer when applying to join
  • Creator analytics to view and filter metrics like subscribed users, earnings, reviews and more
  • Built in community/discussion channel, with comments, replies and user profiles

How we built it

I built Thunder Course by leveraging the AI Bolt agent, GPT tools and occasional manual edits in the IDE and Supabase.

Integrations used include, Supabase, Stripe, Entri (IONOS), Github and RevenueCat.

Challenges we ran into

The main tech problems were mainly database issues which involved configuring the Supabase backend manually (such as adding storage bucket for media uploads). However in the end the biggest challenge of all remains one's own creativity and ingenuity in thinking of features no one else has problems that haven't been solved to the fullest. And of course, running out of tokens.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm really proud to have figured out the project idea, business opportunity and branding theme all in a single day. Thunder Course fits well because the AI powered agent is named Bolt (Thunder x Bolt, get it?).

Although the tech isn't the most fancy compared to other AI made apps. The business model itself I feel is very solid, and has a good chance of mass adoption once people learn you can pay us $20/m instead of $80-100/m (what Kajabi and Skool charges) for the same or even better features.

To put things into perspective: Udemy has a yearly revenue of over $786 million dollars. Kajabi has raised over $550 million dollars to date. Alex Hormozi reportedly invested $100 million into Skool. And I invested $20 into Bolt and a dream.

What I'm most proud is that I am finally able to build my online coaching business (what my first aspiration was in the very beginning) using the very platform I created, rather than paying a multi million dollar startup.

What we learned

  1. Bolt is actually one of, if not the most powerful app builder. Better than Repl.it and Loveable.
  2. Good prompt = Good output.
  3. Sometimes it's better to ask the AI "how do I fix this" rather than just "fix this"
  4. The chance of the next billion dollar app being built by AI drastically increased thanks to this Hackathon.

What's next for Thunder Course

I believe in my business plan, niche and branding for Thunder Course so much so that I will continue developing and pushing the app in public, though with less of a focus on it being built by AI, and more on the fact that its cheaper and more powerful in every way compared to current top course builders.

Plans include:

  • adding more course customization options like limited user seating, user activity tracker etc.
  • turning the app into a social platform with real time chat, friending system, live events etc.
  • add more monetization options like built in digital shop, upsell services, schedule private bookings etc.
  • integrate a referral/affiliate system for course creators
  • feature to one click generate entire chapters/lessons content with AI
  • finding existing course creators to switch to my platform in exchange for membership

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