21. Canned Talks
Lunch and learn session? Why not consider an external speaker who can re-do a talk they've given in the past.
Problem
“Lunch and learn” sessions are often organised in team or company settings. They are usually volunteer led, which means that a team member organizes a presentation or they find a speaker in their network.
Finding a volunteer consistently (e.g. weekly) can be difficult, and the most interesting talk may be one that is on a topic in which none of the attendees are an expert (e.g. presentation skills).
Tech talks are often given at meetups, but hardly ever performed more than once. Giving a talk multiple times generally only improves it and the amount of preparation required goes down.
Solution
A website that allows speakers to list the talks they wouldn’t mind to give again (for a fee).
Users no longer need to rely on their internal network to find speakers.
Speakers can re-use their (internal) lunch and learn presentations.
Bootstrapping this is difficult, one would need to reach out to potential speakers to build up an initial offering. Users should be able to search and filter by topic and geography.
Business Model
It’s a two-sided marketplace which is always difficult: businesses where you scrape some pennies off the floor for every transaction are difficult to bootstrap.
I see three paths:
The most straightforward is to have transactions inside your platform of which you keep a fee (say 20%). You would have to find a way to add enough value to stop the two parties from communicating off-platform to avoid this fee entirely.
You offer a SaaS “lunch and learn management platform”, in which internal and external can be scheduled, recordings uploaded and watched, and other such features.
A white glove all-in service. The talk gets recorded, microphones and AV equipment gets sorted out, food and drinks get catered, and stuff like that. A premium talk / on-site mini conference.