<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.\nName: Skillshare\nQuick Pitch: Skillshare turns cities into classrooms and all of their residents into potential teachers.\nGenius Idea: Creating an open, online marketplace for offline classes.\nSkillshare co-founder Michael Karnjanaprakorn is very good at poker. So good, in fact, that he felt comfortable entering the World Series of Poker last year and that all of his friends wanted to know his poker secrets when he returned. \nWhen he agreed to host a poker class for them, the idea for Skillshare clicked. Karnjanaprakorn and his co-founder Malcolm Ong had been looking for a way to \"Bring On The Learning Revolution!\" after seeing a TED talk of that title by creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson. Almost everyone knows how to do at least one thing that others want to learn, like how to play poker. Why not make cities classrooms and their inhabitants teachers?\nSkillshare, which launched in April, is a marketplace for offline classes. Anyone can sell tickets for a class. Karnjanaprakorn's poker class was one of the first to go up on the site, but since then more than 100 people have hosted classes on everything from \"Crocheted Wire Jewelry Made Easy\" to \"How to Invest Your First $10,000\".\n\n\n\"We thought people would want to take fun and quirky classes, but in reality they wanted to take skill-based classes where they would walk out learning something tangible, whether it was making jewelery or programming, making your first app, walking out with a legal document that you need to start a company ... those are the classes that are selling out like crazy,\" Karnjanaprakorn says.\nTypically tickets for classes on the platform cost less than $50, of which Skillshare takes a 15% cut. They're hosted in personal spaces like apartments as well as public spaces like art studios or parks. Karnjanaprakorn says that some businesses have also recently started hosting classes, many of them as a marketing opportunity that helps fill downtime but doesn't discount their services.\nLess than two months after launch, the site's teachers are mostly in New York and only a handful of businesses have signed on. But we think that they're on to something important.\nOther sites like Learnable and Udemy allow anyone to become a teacher online, but Skillshare seems to have hit on the recipe that makes companies like Meetup.com, Eventbrite and Airbnb tick: online organization for offline interactions.\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, mattjeacock\nSeries Supported by Microsoft BizSpark\n\n\nThe Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/05/26/skillshare/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29>