A supplemental course for software engineering and data science
Masoud Kaviani has spent a lot of time looking for written sources about science. After familiarizing himself with the structure of the website, he has made it the model of his work. He now has a website called What is it? manages that helps its audience to increase knowledge in the field of data science. Stay with Masoud and his business.
From yourself and the experiences you had before you started What is it? you were going to say
I am Masoud Kaviani. For several years, due to my personal interest in the field of artificial intelligence and data mining, I had sporadic studies in this field. I usually collected and read books or articles from around the web or translated books. Books were good guides, especially those that accompanied their explanations with simple examples.
Meanwhile, in the industry, I was working as a programmer in the second information technology company, which was the executive of the intelligent graph of the mother of Iran’s railways and also the producer of the native system of intelligent management of academic times, and in real terms, I learned the application of artificial intelligence in problem solving from managers and engineers. I studied at that company and my interest in this field increased many times, but unfortunately, there were not many sources and references for learning this field in Farsi, or at least I could not find it, and many articles and writings were mostly either incomplete or translated verbatim. had Until then, with the help of the company’s engineers and various professors, I slowly learned more about these topics.
Later, I was appointed as the manager of the data mining unit of the same company and we worked on data mining projects in the field of buying and selling food products. Besides this, the company created a management dashboard business intelligence project and was able to do positive things in this area as well. All these somehow give a person ideas and like a university, you can learn something from them.
After that, I went to another company to specialize in data mining and text processing. That company Startup It had Persian news, the main task of this system was to collect news from different news sources and categorize them, and it did this with smart algorithms in data mining. There we were doing data mining and machine learning on text processing, NLP and news data. In this way, with specific methods and different researches, we arrived at methods that can attach news to specific categories with high accuracy and identify the most important news.
Of course, along with these, we also registered a separate company with business partners, and after I separated from the first established company, I met another team and started a new startup with them. The name of the team was Etfa, and with that team we had various failures, and of course, by participating in the Google startup circle and designing an MVP. Startup idea , we were also able to win the Google Entrepreneurship Medal, although that idea also failed for some reasons, and then we started another idea in the field of art industries with the same team, which in turn was good and successful, and still a very good team on it. Works. The main point is failures. Perhaps more can be learned from failures than from victories. Besides these, I also gave advice to some companies in the field of business intelligence and data mining. After that, I came to Pars Pack and worked here as a project manager. Regarding my university education, I am currently a software engineering student.
What is your idea? Did you arrive?! How did you come to the conclusion that you were solving a real problem?
For several years, I have been a customer of the website that has excellent training in the field of management. I was saying to myself, how can a site like Motammem be so well-liked and structured. By reading various books and articles in the field of data mining and management, I decided to try my luck in the field of software engineering and data science and see if I can create something like a supplement in this field. That’s how Chisio was established and slowly reached the current path by posting several articles and getting feedback from users. Of course, in the beginning, the idea was not like this and later it took shape little by little. It can be said that within about a year, the initial idea of turning or the so-called Pivot was relative. The main idea was to find a series of words in the field of software engineering and data mining and explain them. For example, should I explain what programming language is? Or what is a distributed system? But later I felt the void of the structure and saw that it is not possible to put the articles without a specific order. This is how the courses were formed and became the current form.
How long did it take you to get to the initial version of the product?
Honestly, the initial version of the product was a simple WordPress with the same default WordPress template. You can see it at archive.org. I think it took about 6 hours for the initial version to come up. Finally, from the previous startups in which we failed, this one case of learning was enough to know what things are not important to start! I heard from professors in this field that the initial version is not very important and you should focus on one thing or one point. For example, in a site like Snapfood, food is important and other things like simple design, attractive graphics, use of symmetrical colors and site loading speed help it. In the website of Chistio, there were also important contents and the design and quality of the site design helped it. It was that considering these things, I put the main focus on the quality of the content, and I still think that the quality of the content (at least for Chistio) is the most important point to continue. Let me also say that we are always changing and it can be said that every day is the beginning of Chistio’s work.
How did you enter the market? What marketing method did you consider?
Chistio’s main focus was to first find visitors who would be interested in the website’s content, most of which naturally come from search engines, and in this way, in addition to introducing it to others, they would also regularly enter the website and use the content. In my opinion, an ecosystem can be created in this way, and the student will go to other materials by studying the lessons and understanding the material, and this work will naturally help the growth of visits. Of course, we do not want to increase the visit in any way. The visit must be of high quality and helpful to the visitor. So the materials are prepared in different courses and each course includes different courses. These lessons can be read sequentially, and of course we try to make each lesson as independent as possible. So it can be said that our advertising method is search engines and after that the user stays on the website and visits again. Also introducing the website to other friends by visitors. This is the case that I also saw in Pars Pak. Pars Pack provides such good service that it is usually recommended by customers to their friends. With this, the need for advertising will be much less, and the cost of advertising will be spent on improving the quality of the product.
Do you have competitors? What do you rely on in the competition?
We definitely have a competitor. But I learned one thing from Mohammad Ghayoumi (CEO of Khabar Farsi) who said that competition is important, but in many cases you have to do your own thing. Too much disobedience to the work of competitors may prevent you from the main path. This, in my opinion, is the bane of many businesses that focus too much on competitors. This makes the individuality of the organization less and instead of creating and creating value, the organization is constantly involved in a series of useless and costly competitions. It is interesting that I also observed this in Pars Pack that they usually don’t talk about competitors and are more interested in creating value in their business. In Chisio, I think the main focus should be on simplification. Simplifying concepts for students so that they can quickly learn the material. We are in the age of information and everyone is looking for speed. So it seems that simplification can bring speed in learning.
How much has the feedback you received from the audience been influential in your journey?
Usually, by analyzing the data of users, we find out which content and courses are the most trending. Also, we get positive energy from users’ comments, and we pay attention to weaker content in order to grow them as well. Data analysis is very important even if the data is small. In fact, data is a road map for businesses. Maybe that’s why many startup professors say start fast. Because by starting you can get data from your customers and find your way by analyzing this data. It’s like being in a dark space with only a flashlight to show you a few meters ahead. You have to walk and learn the path from the path itself. Feedback is the impression left by the user. Users leave their impact either in the form of comments or conversations, or by visiting more than one page or a set of specific pages, and these effects should be used and find the way.
Have you had acceleration or fundraising? or will you have
We have no plans for this at the moment. Because we may be too young to start fundraising. For now, we plan to visit more and complete the content of the website in order to create a basic framework for the website. We can think about this later.
Other services to provide on the platform What is it? did you predict
For now, we only have writing. We will probably include services such as audio podcasts, educational videos, and interactive e-learning. In fact, a business must provide a basket of services in many cases. This makes it attractive and attracts more audience. For example, some audiences in the field of education may be more comfortable with movies. Some want to listen to audio podcasts in their car because of their busy schedule. Some people like to read short and practical content on their mobile phones. So the portfolio of services and products is important. We are also trying to do this, but step by step.
Did you face any special challenges in developing your business? How did you meet them?
The main challenge was not having income! which is currently partially resolved by adding the store section. Anyway, one of the most important goals of business is income. So it cannot be ignored forever. Also, preparing the contents and headings (according to the teaching and simplification method) is a bit time-consuming, which is the nature of this work and should be managed by studying more and structuring and mental order. Good content is not produced quickly. Educational material is like food. It can be fast food that is ready in less than 5 minutes, or it can be like a soup prepared from morning to noon in a pressure cooker. The more time we can spend on the content, the more established and naturally the content will become more specific.
Download PDF of the article
How do you rate this article?
