[codegeek]

One reason is that is is really tough to define what an LMS does since it can serve various use cases. Most people who are not familiar with LMSs think of Blackboard/Moodle/Canvas/EdX and mostly for academic/schools.

There is a whole set of industries for LMSs like B2B training, HR/Compliance/Continuing Ed/Healthcare etc. Then you have Product companies who just need to train their customers, create brand recognition etc. I jus spoke this AM to a startup who works with Kids and they need a "Kid Friendly LMS".I regularly see companies try and twist Moodle/Canvas/EdX for these but usually they end up with in-house duct taped solutions.

The challenge is that each industry can have its own needs and requirements and building something that can truly cater to all audiences in one single monolith LMS is impossible.

I am thinking about building an API first platform where you could build your own interfaces on top while the API does the heavy lifting. For example, you want to start a webinar ? Just call "/api/v1/webinar" and build your own frontend for it. Think of it like "Stripe for eLearning".

Disclosure: I run an LMS company so I know the challenges :) If you are interested in this space, hit me up. I am looking for people to join us.

[zerkten]

There is a lot of untapped potential here. I was close to early enterprise adopters of Articulate which was a much more limited product in the mid-2000s. Pharma had HQ training (yearly compliance plus some specialist courses), but field sales has regular training and updates which was a full time production effort. A single LMS could have worked across the org as long as it had enough of the nudging and reporting which would have served the industry needs.

It seems that many people on HN struggle with understanding the needs of industries because their formative experience is as developers in startups and tech. This really inhibits the ability of folks to attack opportunities later when they want to create a startup. The number of times I've seen enterprises play with startup tools while they wait for the industry incumbent to catchup is very high.