Cloud Stocks and PaaS: How to Train a Developer Ecosystem

You have read my earlier piece, Cloud Stocks and PaaS: Which SaaS Players Will Win in PaaS, articulating a vision for a large number of SaaS players evolving into PaaS ecosystems.

We’ve been talking to a lot of PaaS developer ecosystem leaders, and one of the key issues they’re dealing with is the challenge of training a large number of developers at scale.

My observation is that there are two kinds of training required to build a thriving ecosystem: Technical and Business.

Technical Training

At the beginning of a developer ecosystem, the developer tools, SDKs, APIs, documentation, tutorials, etc. that drive a thriving developer ecosystem have to be developed and managed in-house. 

Of course, as ecosystems mature, channel partners should be developed to additionally scale the training. There are numerous small businesses all over the world that specialize in technical training. Recruiting a network of these to deliver training is key.

Additionally, MOOCs like Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, Pluralsight, LinkedIn Learning are good places to set up online learning material to support developers.

Business Training

This is squarely our domain. We see a number of categories of developers who need business training within developer ecosystems:

1. Practicing ISV entrepreneurs who are currently bootstrapping but are not ready to raise money 
2. Practicing ISV entrepreneurs who are currently bootstrapping and are ready to raise money 
3. Entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs who know a platform technically, and are Bootstrapping with a Paycheck while holding on to their jobs 
4. Entrepreneurs who know a platform technically, and are Bootstrapping with Services – includes VARs, SIs, etc.

We’re in conversations with platforms that have hundreds of thousands, and in some cases, millions of developers.

How do you train such large numbers in technology entrepreneurship?

Well, this is what we’ve been doing for over a decade.

Here are some resources:

1. We have started releasing short courses based on the 1Mby1M Methodology. These 3-4 hour courses are priced at $39.99 each. Udemy often discounts heavily and offers them at $10-$15. You will find the list of courses here: Udemy Courses Based on 1Mby1M Methodology. They’re very good starting points to nurture your resident entrepreneurs. We’re adding 4-6 courses a month currently.
2. The full 1Mby1M methodology is available in an all-you-can-eat digital curriculum dubbed 1Mby1M Basic for $99/month.
3. The full 1Mby1M global virtual acceleration program is available as 1Mby1M Premium for $1000/month. This includes fund-raising.

Part of the trick of scalable training is  to make it  (a)  virtual (b)  affordable.

We have cracked that code.

If you want to explore, please reach out.

Photo by SwapnIl Dwivedi on Unsplash

This segment is a part in the series : Cloud Stocks and PaaS