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Understand your Product

SQLNinja is a gamified, AI-assisted SQL learning platform. It understands the user's current competency level and career goals by asking questions in the beginning and creates a tailored path for learners to teach them exactly what they need to learn in order to go to the next level.

What is the fundamental need or want that the product is solving for?​

Creating a personalized SQL learning path with the help of AI based on the user's career goals & competency levels.

What are the basic features and functionalities that the product provides?

The core features of the products are as follows:

1. Tailored Learning Paths:

Based on your career goal & Gradually build up SQL skills with step-by-step concepts, ensuring a smooth progression in difficulty.

2. AI-Guided Learning:

Engage in conversational learning with AI-driven feedback, tailored to your understanding and needs.

3. Progress Tracking:

Get a snapshot of your SQL concepts understanding based on historical performance

4. Role-Specific Challenges:

Solve challenges relevant to your role—like retention queries for product analysts or CAC queries for marketing analysts—enhancing practical application.

5. Dynamic Practice Question Bank:

Receive personalized practice questions based on your past performance, reinforcing areas where you need improvement.

6. Interactive SQL Editor:

Start querying instantly without the need for any SQL server installation—just log in and practice.

7. Real-time Leaderboard:

Stay motivated with daily, weekly, and monthly leaderboards that track your progress against other learners.

8. Gamification:

Track your progress through streaks, points, and badges, helping you visualize your learning journey.

9. Daily Challenges:

Build a daily SQL habit with challenges categorized as Easy, Medium, and Hard, designed to keep you engaged and improving.

10. Community Interaction:

Send appreciation pings to peers who solve challenges, fostering a supportive learning community.

11. Modules for Quick Refreshers:

Quickly revisit key concepts with refresher modules, perfect for when you need to brush up on specific topics

12. Weekly Data Newsletter

SQLNinja has a dedicated data newsletter - DataPulse Weekly

on Substack. It has about 600 subscribers & deliver a weekly engaging newsletter to help readers build a data-driven mindset and improve their decision making skills

13. One-click Social Sharing

The platform allows users to share their progress with their professional network, especially LinkedIn. The below image goes on LinkedIn with the links to the user profile that has more information about the user's past historical performance. Easy for any potential employer to find the users.

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For instance -

1. Out of 12 users surveyed, they identified 8 different platforms they use to learn SQL, highlighting the fragmented landscape of SQL education. This diversity indicates that users are burdened with the task of sifting through multiple platforms to find one that meets their specific learning needs. This process can be time-consuming and overwhelming, leading to a less efficient and often frustrating learning experience.

2. One striking observation was the contrast between how users prefer to learn SQL and their actual go-to sources. While 50% of users indicated that 'Interactive Learning Platforms' are their first choice, 57% still rely on non-interactive platforms like YouTube, Coursera, and Udemy!

Understanding Core Value Proposition

TL;DR - Helps user personalize their SQL learning with the help of AI for their career goals - saves time, removes guesswork & accelerates learning.

How exactly? - SQL can be divided and learned across various concepts aligned with specific career goals. Our platform maps each user’s career goal to the appropriate SQL concepts, creating a personalized learning path. This path is guided by AI, utilizing reinforcement learning and gamification to ensure the user progresses in the right direction. The two images below illustrate the different SQL concepts and how they are mapped to various roles.

Different SQL concepts -

SQL Concepts Category mapped with Career Goals -

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1. What are you really in the business of?
   We are in the business of a career-based outcome learning path for data professionals who want to enhance their SQL skills
2. What problem is your product or service solving for the customer?
   We are removing guesswork and creating a personalized learning path for the users to do exactly what they need to do to advance their skillset in SQL. It's not just effective but efficient and saves a good amount of time in researching different platforms while making sure the user achieve their learning goals.
3. What are the key features and key customer benefits?
   Below are the main benefits the user will receive upon using the platform. Mapping the features from the previous sections on how the user will realize those benefits -
4. 1. Accelerates and personalizes user SQL learning journey
      (Feature mapping: Tailored Learning Paths, AI-guided learning, Progress Tracking)
   2. Stay motivated by tracking & comparing your progress in real time
      (Feature mapping: Progress tracking, Gamification, Real-time Leaderboard)
   3. Saves time & reduce guesswork: Forget researching about which platforms will be best for your goal. Just come, fill out the form, and get a tailored learning path for yourself
      (Feature mapping: Tailored Learning Paths, Role-Specific Challenges)
   4. Get 24x7 assistant: An AI guide is always there to help the user with any doubts
      (Feature mapping: AI-guided learning)
   5. Solve relevant challenges: A product analyst learns by solving retention problems, whereas a data engineer solves optimizing database problem
      (Feature mapping: Role-Specific Challenges)
   6. Reinforcement learning: Solify learning by automatically revisiting the difficult concepts
      (Feature mapping: Dynamic Practice Question Bank, Modules for Quick Refreshers)
   7. No need to set the SQL server. Just write queries.
      (Feature mapping: Interactive SQL Editor)
   8. Practice habits.
      (Feature mapping: Daily Challenges)​

Step 2: Ask your best customers about the Customer Benefits

Why the user will choose us over our competition? ​

While we are still in the pre-PMF stage, upon doing user research below are the reasons why the user will choose us over over our competitors:

Reason 1: Tailored Learning Paths, AI-guided learning

Customization of the learning path based on the user's career goal and competency level is a big differentiation & one of the most desirable features. "

Overwhelming abundance of SQL resources

" is one of the top challenges for the users. We take the guesswork out and outline the learning path for the user during their onboarding journey.

Reason 2: Progress tracking
One of the biggest differences is how we track the user's understanding of the concepts by looking at their historical performance. Current platforms are limited to how many questions the users have solved with Easy, Medium & Hard difficulties.

Reason 3: Gamification

While gamification was not one of the most sought-after features, this has never been tried in SQL learning. Duolingo has already proved that learning can be made fun by gamifying learning & this is another differentiation we would like to bet on.​

Step 3: Gather all the insights​

Here are some intangible benefits that may be core value propositions for your customers:

• Save time for the user by removing the guesswork (personalization)
• Tell them what exactly they need to learn (Progress tracking)
• Keeping users motivated & excited (Gamification)

Other points:

• Video tutorials & project showcases are other most sought-after product features that users appreciate and we lack those on the platform

How are the users experiencing this core value proposition?

Journey Maps & Experience Mapping:

Create journey maps to visualize the user’s path from discovery to adoption, identifying key touchpoints and potential friction areas, this helps us to look at the process from a user point of view

​Journey 1: Onboarding & realizing the core value proposition

The user learns about the platform from an existing user →
The user lands on the website →
The user is educated about the features & benefits →
Onboarding questionnaire to know the career goal of the user →
Based on the selection, the user is served with 10 multiple-choice questions to understand their current competency (The user has the option to skip & select the competency manually, not recommended though) →
A personalized learning path is created for the users based on responses →
The user needs to sign up →
Users have the option to either practice or learn →
The user starts solving the problem on the platform →
A real-time progress bar appears →
The user receives real-time feedback from an AI guide →
The user progresses in the journey to solve more problems →
AI guide changes the difficulties of the problems based on user performance →
The user gets excited about learning a new concept & feels accomplished

Journey 2: User engaging with the platform (Solving daily challenges)

The user receives an email for daily challenges with the current streak →
The user clicks on the email and login →
User solves the daily challenge →
The user receives points & progresses through the leaderboard →
Users feel motivated & accomplished

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Customer Segmentation

Understanding the Users: ICP

We have chosen the top 3 ICPs. There can be more ICPs.

(build your ICP's- by now you know how to do that and then segment the users, think about why are you even segmenting and what is the goal of your product and segmentation)​

(use this template and don't forget to add more parameters)

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define how is a user activated on your platform and who would classify as an active user. Then move one to defining your core EnR metric, don't forget to mention the why!

What is the core activate metric?

A user is considered an active user when they submit any SQL query on the platform. Submitting any SQL query shows user time investment. An activation could also be when a user finishes a personalized learning lesson or sends kudos to another user when they solve a problem.

How does the user receive the core value prop?

The user logs into the system and goes through an onboarding journey that personalized their SQL learning. They get a hook.

The user logs in the the platform from their desktop and solves any daily challenges. Upon solving the problem the user gets a boost when they receive points and goes up in the ladder. They see another gamification element of the platform.

(also scope out the Engagement Framework you will be taking up for your product and the rationale behind it)

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Some screenshots of the features:

Engagement Goal

1. Goal - Get the users to solve an SQL problem every day
2. Success metric - % of days active in the last 7 days
3. Problem statement - Learning requires habit to form and in order to truly derive the value for users, the user needs to solve a problem daily to be part of the leaderboard. It will keep them motivated.
4. Current alternative - Schedule a reminder to solve the problem daily
5. Solution - Send a daily reminder by Email to solve the daily challenge. Personalize the based on user's current progress to keep it relevant based on their progress to motivate and build habits.

6. Metrics to track -

1. DAU to track the effectiveness of campaigns
2. # of emails sent (to track how many users have received an email)
3. % of emails opened (to track the intention)
4. # of users visiting the platform by clicking the email link (To track the relevant of personalized content)
5. % of users solving the challenge to check the final action that users did (To track the final objective of the campaigns)
   
   7. Ramp up milestones -
6. 1. Increase in DAU by 10% in 7 days
   2. Increase DAU by 20% in a month
   3. Increase the problem solves users by 5% in 7 days
   4. Increase the problem solves users by 15% in 30 days

Engagement Campaign

you need to build at least 5 separate engagement campaigns, yes 5 is important! Remember to bring the campaigns to life- give them structure and body.

(use this and add more depth/parameters in this framework)

The plan for the campaigns has been shared on the top in the google sheet screenshot.

Retention Design

figure out the retention data for your product. If you don't have access to the same, begin by adjusting the industry standards. Plot down the data and bring to life your retention curve. Draw out observations and insights from the same.

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Below is the sample graph for the retention:

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As per the data collected and observations, below the some of the core insights:

1. For a learning platform like SQLNinja, daily retention is more important than monthly retention due to 1 one-time case. That's why day-level retention is more relevant for learning use cases.
2. Freshers have higher retention than entry-level data professionals.
3. The biggest drop in retention is in 14 days. Users lose motivation in the learning process or they move on the look into other skill sets for their problem.

Churn

go back to your user insights and figure out the number one reason for churn by listing down all the factors​

Most of the users churn because of these reasons:
1. Complexity of the daily challenges for freshers - Voluntary

Freshers get blockers when they face a new concept in the daily challenge. Having a concept link to the specific problem will help the users to resolve their issues.

2. Got the job - involuntary
3. Found a better platform for practice - Voluntary
4. Don't have any friends to compete - Voluntary
5. It's very confusing - Voluntary

Resurrection Campaign

you have already created the engagement campaigns, resurrection campaigns are quiet similar just keep in mind the churned users which are being targeted here.

(customized your campaigns as per the ICP you're targeting to bring back, add parameters accordingly)

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We hope this helped you break the cold start problem!

Reminder: This is not the only format to follow, feel free to edit it as you wish!​

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