Case Study - The Future of Music Education

Overview

Forte was founded in 2020 at the peak of the pandemic to bring music education and a superior learning environment to the masses. After 2 years of prototypes and early user testings with real teachers and students, Forte successfully raised Angel and Seed funding to build out the greater vision of "Forte 2.0". Forte appointed an experienced CTO, who in turn brought Matt on as his first fulltime engineering hire. Shortly after joining, Matt was asked to recommend the company's next technical hire – leading to Will joining the team two months later.

Working closely with the CTO, they decided on a future-proof and flexible data model and broader platform architecture, and started rapidly building everything from scratch. After just 3 months, the freshly built Forte 2.0 was launched. The initial launch of Forte 2.0 was still partially integrating with the original prototype for our Video Call "In-Lesson Experience" and a few months later the legacy VideoCall was merged into the new repo, seamlessly completing the transition for our thousands of early users. Over the next year, the VideoCall would be rebuilt from the ground up to deliver an even better experience.

After such a successful launch and having proved themselves, Matt and Will were quickly promoted to Principal Engineer and Director of Engineering, respectively. Over the next 2.5 years, they were the primary driving force of the Product and Engineering team and were key decision makers, designers, and implementors of the product, as they built out the platform to support thousands of students and teachers across dozens of instruments.

Forte has since established itself as the industry leader for providing an all-in-one platform for music teachers and students. The platform enables students to find their perfect teacher through a personalized matching system. Teachers can create detailed public profiles that students discover after completing a comprehensive survey about their goals and preferences. Once matched, students can seamlessly schedule and attend lessons directly on the platform using Forte's innovative PureAudio technology, which delivers crystal-clear sound optimized for music instruction.

Teacher Experience

Teacher profiles:

• Teachers can decide what kind of students they want to cater to (e.g. Adult, Beginner learners, who don't know how to read music, who want to learn purely as a hobby), which influences our search algorithm to market them towards the same type of student
• Teachers can write about and present themselves accurately and professionally to prospective students with structured data
• Teachers determine their pricing structure that will be presented to students
• Approval process: Forte Admins must approval Teacher Profiles after any change to ensure appropriateness and professional standards are met
• Lesson Bundles: Teachers can optionally create and offer Lesson Bundles, which allow students to purchase multiple lesson packages upfront for a teacher-defined discount (e.g. Buy 5 lessons for 10% off, or "Buy 3 Get 1 Free"
• Verified Teachers: teachers associated with some of our Partners, like the Aspen Music Festival and School, Royal College of Music, and The Recording Academy, can provide documentation proving their association, and Forte displays this affiliation to students, providing assurances of quality and experience.

Subscriptions

• Teachers enroll in a monthly subscription to give them access to different features of the platform, with a Free Subscription available for teachers who choose to only teach students they met through Forte Connect (our "Marketplace")
• Teachers who want to teach students they know personally (e.g. existing in-person students, or students they're bringing from a different platform to use our cohesive Platform) instead need a paid membership in order to use Forte Direct ("Bring-your-own-Students")

Payments

• Teachers get paid for lessons upon Finalizing a Lesson scheduled through the platform. Incomplete payments are handled automatically and transparently to the teacher, while also keeping them informed of the current payment status of individual lessons
• Teachers receive money in their bank accounts automatically

Scheduling

• Teacher Availability: Teachers can list their weekly recurring availability for Trail Lessons, with any existing lessons automatically removed from the offered availability that students can see
• Teachers receive Emails, in-platform notifications, and in-platform chat messages informing them when a new Trial Lesson is booked with them
• Teachers can then discuss with their student during their Trial Lesson or in a Direct Message chat to determine if and when they'd both like to schedule "Standard" lessons with eachother.
• Students and Teachers receive automated email reminders about upcoming lessons

Student Experience

Finding Teachers:

• Students fill out an in-depth survey for each instrument they want to learn. This is used to determine what they're looking for in a teacher
• Students are presented with up to 50 teachers that best match their criteria
• Students can view detailed profiles for each of the teachers and see the prices for each teacher for various lesson durations
• Students can see the Teachers availability and choose a convenient date/time to schedule a Trial Lesson
• Students can instantly book with any teacher

Payments

• Students pay for Trial Lessons upfront and are paid to the Teacher upon successful attendance
• Students only get charged for Standard Lessons by the Teacher upon lesson finalization
  • depending on an individual Teachers Teaching Policy, students might get charged the normal or a reduced fee if the student doesn't show up to the lesson or shows up late etc.

Advanced Permissions and Safety

• Parents can use the platform on behalf of their children, who have limited permissions
• Students cannot attend Lessons and cannot talk with Teachers until they've proven they have the approval of an adult, in compliance with COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act)
• Teachers Profiles are vetted and must be approved before being advertised to students

In Lesson Experience

• Originally built with Twilio, and then seamlessly migrated to Daily
• 1-on-1 calls between student and teacher, (parents can join a childs room from their own account for parent-teacher conferences etc)
• Innovative and easy to use "Second Camera" capability which let teachers have a phone or second camera to show close ups of their instrument (e.g. top-down Piano keys, or close-up to Guitar neck for fretting technique)
• Forte PureAudio delivers an unparalleled experience for online music education - no more Noise Cancellation completely eliminating low and high notes and muddying sustained chords
• Direct Messaging availabile directly in the Call
• Recording capabilities built in which integrates diferctly with the platform to easily reference previous lessons
• Waiting Room capability so teachers can choose when to admit students, and students have a chance to test their camera and microphone before joining the call
• Screen sharing with resizeable panes
• Easy device switching with intelligent NoiseCancellation behavior to avoid automatic Mic Feedback etc
• Shared Notes

Admin Experience

• Advanced Slackbot automation to keep tabs on the platform behavior and to encourage speedy responses to user actions
• Full fledged Admin App built in Retool, which allows non-engineers to fully manage most of the system and interact with the platforms data
• Partnership Dashboards for 6+ different partners (both where partners will send us students looking for teachers, and partners where they have teachers who are looking for students)
• Advanced analytics and custom queries for monitoring platform usage and performance