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Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

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Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#71

Post by coldpie »

axiom wrote: post #26
uiri wrote: post #12

Having used TopHat in a couple classes circa 2014-2015, the product is pretty bad. It's main use case is, honestly, attendance. Two anecdotes stick out. The university subsidizes the cost down to $5. Through some technical error, TopHat applied a full discount. One month later, they noticed their mistake and retroactively charged each student $5. I think I'm the only one who complained to their support enough to get…

You're right that there are still too many profs who use Top Hat for really basic stuff like polls in class and taking attendance - thankfully that's in the minority these days. Our goal is to get profs to at least take these baby steps to get started and then to swap out their $200 textbook with content on our platform, which would save students a ton of money and create a much better experience in the process. Here…

> https://tophat.com/marketplace/generalchemistry/

$60 plus a "subscription," whatever that is.

I can't speak for the quality of the books, but searching "general chemistry" on half.com gives me a bunch of entries in the $5-30 range. They're a few years old, but I can't imagine general chemistry has had many radical changes in the past decade.

These textbooks work with Linux or any other operating system. They can be re-sold, probably for the same price at which they were purchased. There is no learning curve to using a textbook. The textbook's servers will never be down. The university has to pay no licensing fee to the textbook. Textbooks do not have technical glitches. I can read a textbook on the bus, on a plane, in a car, or anywhere, with no worries about running out of batteries or losing my network connection.

Why on Earth would I ever pay more than twice the price for a far worse user experience?

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#72

Post by eth0up »

VT_Drew wrote: post #58
coldpie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, physical textbooks have never blocked me from using Linux, nor has physical paper coursework...

Exactly. >Even as the big publishers work to increase the proportion of sales that come from digital products, they’re still largely dependent on physical books. The other issue the large sum of money they want to charge per book. The cost of the books is so high that it is propping up "physical book" market. Mostly because publishers have offered no way to resell your digital or ebook. Lots of students buy used text…

I can assure you, some colleges have worked out methods to prevent students from selling their used books too. I'll cite my previous, rinky-dink college that after a single semester, within the same year of book publication, would simply change the book required for the next course. They did this with all five of my courses. I was unable to resell a single book that I'd purchased new only four months previously.

Also to consider is the marketing of student biometrics or other private data garnered through such software, e.g. SmartThinking https://services.smarthinking.com/login/login.php, etc.

SmartThinking also blocked Linux and, in my opinion, provided no benefits to students at all. It was actually used to manage and grade the majority of our assignments. Seriously, the professor would have most assignments pre-graded by SmartThinking; it told the professor what to think! The whole system seemed an embarrassment.

EDIT: I should add that for the amount of time spent in "smarthinking", many physical classes could just as well be conducted remotely. Many students pay for a traditional course, but end up with the majority of their curriculum occurring remotely/digitally. If this is to be so, then the tuition should reflect accordingly and presently it doesn't. Also, I misspelled "smarthinking" by adding two "t"s.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#73

Post by djsumdog »

omouse wrote: post #28
mabbo wrote: post #2

As a developer in the Toronto area, I suspect I would be working for Top Hat if their recruiters were better. I've had two or three interactions with them and each time they completely dropped the ball. Extra funding is great, but if they can't hire, they can't use it.

Read through their GlassDoor reviews, it suggests they're an awful company on both the dev and sales side. And that means thatm at this point, their product probably isn't very good because devs keep leaving. Which means it'll be a mountain of technical debt to deal with and of course the inevitable, "omg we must have new features X, Y, and Z". They're no longer a startup, yet they act like it. If they didn't raise m…

Sucks because I'd like to see real disruption in the text book industry. It's like trying to compete against Wal-Mart .. I still shop at Target/Kroger/et. al, but I realize they now employ a lot of the same supply chain practices Wal-Mart started just to stay competitive.

So it makes me wonder if Top Hat, claiming to be disruptive and different, is or will eventually employee questionable practices just like the current industry.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#74

Post by uiri »

axiom wrote: post #26
uiri wrote: post #12

Having used TopHat in a couple classes circa 2014-2015, the product is pretty bad. It's main use case is, honestly, attendance. Two anecdotes stick out. The university subsidizes the cost down to $5. Through some technical error, TopHat applied a full discount. One month later, they noticed their mistake and retroactively charged each student $5. I think I'm the only one who complained to their support enough to get…

You're right that there are still too many profs who use Top Hat for really basic stuff like polls in class and taking attendance - thankfully that's in the minority these days. Our goal is to get profs to at least take these baby steps to get started and then to swap out their $200 textbook with content on our platform, which would save students a ton of money and create a much better experience in the process. Here…

If you're providing electronic resources, then your competition isn't a $200 paper textbook. Your competition is all the free resources available online, including the PDF versions of most textbooks. There is no money to be made in this market except by conning University administrators.

Content on your platform is reliant on charging each student for it, while these free resources can easily be shared by a Prof with the class, between students in the save class, by the student associations (similar to exam databases) or from upper year to lower year students.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#75

Post by stcredzero »

surge wrote: post #19
pyre wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through the interview process with them several years ago (when they were still called Top Hat Monocle). I basically got very positive feedback from the interview process, until I had to interview with the CEO. Apparently the reason given by the CEO for torpedoing me was that I didn't have enough projects on my Github account so I didn't "love the web" enough. Take from that what you will about their attitude…

Seriously? Not every project can be in a public repo, are all their projects on open repos? Some of us host our own or use different sites because we've been using git longer than github. Also, love the "web". It's called the Internet, are you a tech CEO or not? I love how critical they are because you didn't conform to their specific idea of how coders share their code and communicate. Someone can be pro open source…

Also, love the "web". It's called the Internet, are you a tech CEO or not? I love how critical they are because you didn't conform to their specific idea of how coders share their code and communicate.

Quite recently, I had a conflict on social media, where some other programmer went halfway to doxxing me. Apparently, the worst thing he could imagine saying to someone was that "Your github sucks!" And in his mind that is sufficient for determining someone isn't a worthwhile person.

I remember when SourceForge held the same sway. Now look where it is now. (That said, I do plan on putting some more stuff up there. Though it would be hard to tell, I do have some code that is used commercially, even now.)

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#76

Post by JosefStoolen »

axiom wrote: post #17
mabbo wrote: post #2

As a developer in the Toronto area, I suspect I would be working for Top Hat if their recruiters were better. I've had two or three interactions with them and each time they completely dropped the ball. Extra funding is great, but if they can't hire, they can't use it.

I'm the founder/CEO of Top Hat I'd love to hear about your experience and what we can do better - my email is mike at tophat dot com Hiring engineers is one of the most important things we need to get right, so I'd hate to think we're doing such a bad job at it. Really sorry that you've had a bad experience with us

I am a current undergraduate student using TopHat software. My professor stated that he was unable to typeface using Latex for the class notes. This should be a feature if it hasn't been updated already.

Additionally, at my school there is a centralized online interface for professors and students to post notes, quizzes, updates about the course, grades, forum discussions etc. Myself and many students were upset when we had to pay for a 'premium' service which offered no features outside what was offered for free in all our other classes.

All I can say is in order for TopHat to impress STEM students they will have to be very creative in the features that they offer. Though they are sometimes liked by professors, interfaces like TopHat and McGraw-Hill/Pearson are almost universally seen as a rip off by students. Access to propriety notes isn't a feature when very few students pay for any textbooks in their STEM subjects.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#77

Post by ghettoCoder »

throwawayosiu1 wrote: post #25

Something that annoys me the most about top hat is not the product but the company: 1. almost every month they enter their info for the HN Who's Hiring thread. 2. BUT they don't seem to ever respond apart from something automated about receiving your resume (this is not just from personal experience, I've seen people generally comment about the no real response) 3. They advertise the same position over and over again…

What's not to get. They're just casting a wide net looking for that special unicorn coder that only appears when the planets align. All other mere mortals are not worthy but they will gladly waste your time until then. I guess they forgot the old adage about interviews are 2 way streets.

These guys don't have a very good rep in Ottawa either. It's not really their fault, it's more of a Canadian business attitude thing.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#78

Post by HarryHirsch »

eth0up wrote: post #39
axiom wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the founder/CEO of Top Hat I'd love to hear about your experience and what we can do better - my email is mike at tophat dot com Hiring engineers is one of the most important things we need to get right, so I'd hate to think we're doing such a bad job at it. Really sorry that you've had a bad experience with us

Maybe not the suggestion you're looking for, but I'll take the opportunity to vent. First and foremost, don't arbitrarily block Linux users for web interfaces. McGraw Hill does, or did in the past and so do others. I spent hours contacting their useless support and playing politics with the college to get this changed, to no avail. At first, I could simply change my useragent and sneak in, with everything working wel…

It seemed a cheap, shameful way to employ 'professors' otherwise too inept and uncreative to manage their own coursework and classes.

You just found out the truth about textbook prices. What students are really paying for is the test bank for their assessment, the workload for today's instructors is just to great to be able to do paper coursework. In the past, you would have delegated grading to student assistants or the courseload would be smaller, nowadays you have "Mastering Physics" and whatnot. That, friends, is what "disrupting the market" is all about.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#79

Post by rconti »

fastftw wrote: post #50
Panini_Jones wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have a pretty bad reputation among U of T students.

- Current TopHat Full Stack Dev PEY here - I'm not sure what your basis of a bad reputation is, but, I've been working at TopHat for the past 10+ months as part of their engineering team and it's been my favourite internship thus far (I've had 2 previous internships in development). As far as I know, myself and one other UofT student are the first PEY's to have been hired, and our current opinions of the company are…

"Professional Experience Year"

http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/PEY

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#80

Post by neap24 »

kerhackernews wrote: post #51

Well if they can get rid of the $200+ textbooks that you have to buy (and never use) to get web access that would be great. Almost all material in school textbooks can be found online for free, it really makes no sense to require students to spend anything of $20 on coursebooks.

I agree that access to information online has lowered the price that people are willing to pay for textbooks (digital or physical). But I still think there's a market for a textbook that essentially organizes all the relevant information for a course and vets it for correctness. This is worth a little more than $20 to me, but definitely not $200.
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