Author Archive

Video interviews with TeachStreet — it’s like an infomercial!

July 20th, 2008 by Dave

I posted a link to the 10-minute King5 interview in the previous blog post, but I wanted to also post the individual segments (below), for your viewing pleasure (and, because my mom will be oh so proud :-) ).

We wanted to give a special thanks to Tim Robinson of King5/Kong6/16 — he was fantastic to work with on the segment, and he and his team did a fantastic job — we couldn’t be happier!

Segment #1






Segment #2






Segment #3






Of course, it also reminds me that I’d love to learn how to make digital videos and improve my interviewing skills!


TeachStreet’s on Seattle TV (KING5 and KONG6) tomorrow (Thursday)

July 16th, 2008 by Dave

Update — check out TeachStreet on TV — so excited!

TeachStreet Dave Schappell on Seattle TV

Sorry for the late notice, but we wanted to let our loyal blog readers know that we’re being featured on KING5 tomorrow morning — we don’t have definite times (a range is presented below) but the feature will be by Tim Robinson and will likely refer to TeachStreet several times between 7:30am and 9:00am (with a live Seattle breakdancing performance by TeachStreeter Daniel Etcheto at 8:15am).

So, set your Tivo!  And, if you haven’t been to TeachStreet in awhile, stop on by and find something new to learn!

Know that we’ll post some video of our performance (and that of Zach the Dog!) afterward — just wanted to give you all a chance to catch up live!

Tentative TV Times are:

KING 5 Morning News on Thursday 7/17

  • 4:30-7 a.m. on KING 5
  • 7-9 a.m. on KONG 6/16
  • Live Segment time: 8:30 a.m. (approx.) — 3:30-minute long segment
  • Will be several segments and “teases” during the morning newscast; may include @ 8:10 a.m. and/or the 8:27 a.m. 15-second tease.

Learning about Health with new Seattle startup, Trusera.com

June 16th, 2008 by Dave

Trusera logo

We spend so much time talking about all-things TeachStreet that we sometimes forget there are other “little engines that could” striving to make the world a better place — one of them, Trusera, just officially went live last night, and we couldn’t be happier for them.

Trusera.com, which allows consumers to find and share real-world health experiences with others who’ve been there, is a new online health network founded by a good friend, Keith Schorsch (and fellow ex-Amazon.com alumni). The company vision was based on Keith’s own struggle with Lyme disease and the difficulty in finding credible health insights from others. After meeting with 11 doctors, it was one phone call from a friend that finally led to his diagnosis and saved his life.

During his diagnosis and recovery, Keith realized that there’s actually too much health information on the Internet today. Many people find it overwhelming to navigate and hard to trust. He found the most useful information came from people with similar health experiences and their own personal health stories. He founded Trusera to inspire people to learn from each other to inform important health decisions.

Click here for a free membership to Trusera, the online health network


Dr. Tri wins the TeachStreet Seattle launch promotion

June 15th, 2008 by Dave

Dr. Tri - Michael Ross

We mentioned this in last week’s marketing mail, but some teachers got a different mail, so may not have heard the news — we’re excited to announce the winner of our Seattle Launch promotion: Dr. Tri! He won a month’s worth of free classes (up to $500 in value) with the TeachStreet member of his choice — we’re excited for him! Wonder what he’ll learn? Maybe hone up on his espanol and learn Spanish? or maybe Piano lessons? Whatever it is, we’re excited for him!

Among other things, Dr. Tri (a.k.a. Dr. Michael Ross) is a Seattle triathlon coach. He’s one of the thousands of teachers here on TeachStreet who’s sharing his personal passion with students and life-long learners. If you’re here in Seattle, check out his awesome fitness classes!


TeachStreet Learns to Sail (sort of)

June 15th, 2008 by Dave

Last week, we decided that it was time to bust out of the office and find ourselves — we’d had enough of feature prioritization, scrum/sprint planning and meetings! So, we packed up and headed to Seattle’s Center for Wooden Boats — if you haven’t been there before, you should definitely check it out. Not only are they a TeachStreet teacher/school with tons of great boatbuilding classes, but they have a fantastic facility for offsites (we rented the upstairs library for a discussion of TeachStreet Values, Philosophy, and more).

Afterward, they also arranged a 2 hour sail on Lake Union — while it was a little overcast, we had a great day and also got to experience some of the rowing skills (video below) of team members Fred, Sam and Scott — not sure why rowing should have been necessary, but sometimes that’s what it takes to get back to solid ground!

Video:

Photos:
TeachStreet Sailing Lessons

Jim Cooley TeachStreet

Sam Niccolls - Scott Windsor - Jon Fuchs - TeachStreet

TeachStreet - Dave Schappell - Fred Sadaghiani - Jim Cooley


NWSource learns about TeachStreet

June 8th, 2008 by Dave

Little Kids Big City Blog - TeachStreet article

Thanks to Lora Shinn (she’s the parenting columnist at NWsource (she also runs the blog Little Kids Big City — if you’re a Seattle parent, definitely check that out)) for showing some love for our humble little website — she interviewed our own Marketing and Operations Goddess, Ms. Katie Gruver about what we’re working to build, and we couldn’t be happier with her article about TeachStreet!

Personally, I loved her last sentence :-)

“I liked the fact that I could find independent teachers, and unusual subspecialties — whether beekeeping or talking to kids about the birds and bees.”


a 1, and a 2, and a 3… Learning to Cha Cha with Washington Dance Club

May 30th, 2008 by Dave

Happy weekend, everyone!

I just wanted to fire off a quick post before heading off to the San Juans for a quick weekend of island relaxation (and a little bit of wi-fi enabled laptopping!).

It’s so easy each week to get swamped with work issues, product requirements, fixes, meetings and the like. But, I had a great conversation with Christa Hinshaw on Wednesday that I wanted to share. She’s been managing the Washington Dance Club for north of 17 years in downtown Seattle (only several blocks from TeachStreet headquarters!) and she became one of our newest schools — so, if you’ve been thinking about learning tango, ballroom dance or some salsa and merengue dancing in Seattle, definitely check out their new classes on TeachStreet — we already had students reaching out to her — it’s so much fun to see these meetings taking place because of what we’re trying to build.

Anyway… have a great week — we’ll be back at it on Monday (and over the weekend), trying to make things even more useful for teachers and students. We hope you learned something new this week!

Dave


TeachStreet finds DailyCandy oh so Sweet

May 6th, 2008 by Dave

TeachStreet featured on DailyCandy Seattle

Sorry… we couldn’t resist that syrupy title.

DailyCandy.com Seattle did us the nicest favor by featuring us in today’s Seattle DailyCandy Teachy Keen e-mail, and on the DailyCandy website, and the impact was incredible!  They pretty much boosted our traffic through the roof (our lawyers won’t allow us to give specifics, but the technical term is that the pop was awesome!), but what’s even better is that their audience resonated perfectly with what we’re trying to achieve with TeachStreet — helping to connect inquiring minds with great local teachers, school and classes.  We set records for new reviews, new classes and new registered members, which continues a nice growth trajectory that we’ve seen since launch.  And, it looks like our most popular searches from the DailyCandy crowd today were for knitting classes, learning photography, tennis lessons, plus some summer sailing classes — we love it!

Thanks to everyone — our new teachers who have been helping us since launch two weeks ago, and today’s recent arrivals — we’re having a blast, and hope you are too.

And, for those of you not familiar with DailyCandy, head on over to their site and sign up for some Seattle DailyCandy — really, we received so many e-mails from friends today who (a) wrote to ask us if we knew about it (uhh… yeah :-) ) and then (b) to tell us that it’s their favorite daily, must-read email subscription — so, what are you waiting for?!?


Some TeachStreet News Shout-outs!

April 21st, 2008 by Dave

Exciting day around the ‘Street — we’ve been live for all of 12 hours, and so far, so good. Have seen a bunch of really interesting (and fun) classes show up, including “Private Bird Behavior Consultations” and a bunch of great knitting and sewing classes from our friends at Stitches here in Seattle!

In addition, we’re honored to have received some awesome launch coverage including:

My Mom’s going to be so proud!


Welcome to TeachStreet — we’re live in Seattle!

April 21st, 2008 by Dave

TeachStreet launch celebration

Hello World — we’re so excited to welcome you to TeachStreet!

The last 6-9 months have been an incredible experience. While the TeachStreet idea is about a year old, the team has actually been developing the website for only about seven months, and we’re incredibly excited to share our efforts with you. We launched today with a directory of more than 25,000 classes, teachers, and schools across the Seattle metropolitan area. While building that directory was a herculean effort, we’re even more excited about the easy-to-use tools we’ve built, to help make it incredibly convenient for teachers and schools everywhere to get themselves set up on the web with a professional presence that helps them find more local students, more quickly.

First, we’d like to thank our friends and family for all of their support — we couldn’t have done it without you.

We’d also like to say a special thank you to our early investors and advisors — your belief in us is truly humbling. Thank you Erik and Maryam, Joel and Karen, Mike, Chris and Regan, Kim, Mom & Dad S., Jeff and Anne, Jason and Jamie, Dave and Saya, John and Sally, Dave and Sharon, Auntie Maine, and Gregg. To our later investors, we are equally humbled — thank you to Scott, Matt and Geoff at Madrona Venture Group and to Melinda, Steve and Jeff at Bezos Expeditions — we are so excited about your involvement in what we’re trying to build.

Wow… It’s starting to feel like an awards acceptance speech around here… I promise, I’ll sign off soon.

Next, thank you to the Seattle startup community — we’ve been propped up with advice and assistance on a moment’s notice over and over — thank you — we’ll strive to return the favor. And, to our advisors and consultants, you’ve been unbelievable.

Finally, I’d like to personally thank the members of the TeachStreet team: Katie, Fred, Scott, Leandra, Jon, Sam and Jim; plus Amanda toiling away at Grinnell. You’ve been unbelievable. I’m so excited about what we’ll be building together.

Onward!

Dave (and Zach the Dog)

p.s. We’ll leave you with two TeachStreet Launch Limericks, courtesy of Mama Gruv, Penny Gruver (proud ‘mom’ to our wonderful Katie Gruver!):

Is there something you’re itching to know?
Come on and give teachstreet a go
Just settle right in
and give us a spin
It won’t even cost any dough

There once was a place about teaching–
you could get there without any preaching
you just sit in your house
and you work that old ‘mouse’
and soon EVERYWHERE you are reaching!