# Study groups across time zones for cohort courses

Study groups across time zones for cohort courses is a SaaS idea for course creators and small companies running paid live cohort courses, priced to test at $4 per student per cohort. Cohort courses promise small study groups, but matching people across time zones is a spreadsheet puzzle. With it, live cohort courses collect each student’s time zone and free hours, then form small study groups with a shared meeting time.

_Published 19 Oct 2026. A starting point we wrote, not market research: run the 7-day test before you build._

## What problem does it solve?

Cohort courses promise small study groups, but matching people across time zones is a spreadsheet puzzle. Groups that can’t find a shared hour fall apart in the first weeks.

**Why now:** Live cohorts sell to students in many countries, and study groups are part of what they pay for.

## What do they use today?

Most creators collect availability in a poll or chat thread, then match people by eye while converting time zones in their head. Groups are announced in a long message, and changes are handled one by one.

## How does it work?

When a cohort starts, each student fills in a short form with their time zone, free hours and goals. The product forms groups of the right size from shared hours, and the instructor moves anyone by drag and drop. Each group gets a page with its meeting time and members, and if a student drops out, the instructor regroups the rest.

## What goes in the first version?

- Short form for time zone, free hours and goals
- Groups formed automatically by shared hours and size
- Instructor adjusts groups by drag and drop
- Group page with meeting time and members
- Regroup students when someone drops out

## Who pays, and how much?

- **Who pays:** Course creators and small companies running paid live cohort courses
- **Price to test:** $4 per student per cohort

Charging per student per cohort follows how creators already sell: they count the seats in each cohort. The charge appears only for cohorts that run, so it rises and falls with each intake.

## How to test it in 7 days

1. Ask five cohort course creators how they form study groups and how many survive.
2. Group one cohort by hand from a short form and ask students how it went a week later.
3. Ask in course creator groups on Facebook and LinkedIn how they run small groups today.

## Where to find the first customers

- Course creator groups on Facebook and LinkedIn
- Online education subreddits
- Coaches and consultants who teach live online programmes

## What are the risks?

- Cohort platforms may add group matching; integrate with them rather than compete.
- Groups still fail if members lose interest; matching hours alone won’t fix that.

## How to build it on shipanysaas

4 of the parts it needs are already in the kit. Get the kit, open it in Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, and paste the starting prompt.

**Already in the kit:** Teams and roles, Billing, Emails, In-app notifications

**You build:**

- Availability form with time zones
- Group forming by shared hours
- Group pages and regrouping

[Get the kit](https://shipanysaas-demo.vercel.app/pricing)

### The starting prompt

```text
You are in a fresh copy of the shipanysaas starter kit, a pnpm and Turborepo monorepo: the Next.js web app is in apps/web and the Supabase database, with its migrations, in apps/web/supabase. Help me build the first version of Study groups across time zones for cohort courses.

Read AGENTS.md first, then the AGENTS.md in every folder you work in: the kit's rules there win over your defaults. When a skill in .agents/skills (also in .claude/skills and .cursor/skills) matches a task, use it.

## The product
- What it does: Live cohort courses collect each student’s time zone and free hours, then form small study groups with a shared meeting time.
- Who pays: Course creators and small companies running paid live cohort courses
- Their problem: Cohort courses promise small study groups, but matching people across time zones is a spreadsheet puzzle. Groups that can’t find a shared hour fall apart in the first weeks.
- Price to test: $4 per student per cohort (a plan in apps/web/config/billing.config.ts)

## Build only this first version
1. Short form for time zone, free hours and goals
2. Groups formed automatically by shared hours and size
3. Instructor adjusts groups by drag and drop
4. Group page with meeting time and members
5. Regroup students when someone drops out

## Already in the kit: reuse it, never rebuild it
- Teams and roles: team accounts with members, roles and invitations
- Billing: Stripe or Lemon Squeezy subscriptions, per seat or usage-based, and one-off payments
- Emails: transactional email through Resend or Nodemailer
- In-app notifications: a notifications bell in the web app

## New code it needs
- Availability form with time zones
- Group forming by shared hours
- Group pages and regrouping

## How to work
1. Plan first: list the database tables (with row-level security, so each team only sees its own rows), the pages and the server actions for the first feature. Then stop and wait for my OK.
2. Build one feature at a time with the kit's own UI and form components, with a migration for every schema change and user-facing text in the translation files.
3. After each feature, run the verification steps in AGENTS.md, fix what they find, and tell me what you built and what comes next.

## Rules
- Ask me before you add a dependency, delete a file, or change sign-in, billing or the admin panel.
- Leave the parts of the kit this product doesn't use as they are.

Done when every first-version feature works for a signed-in team and the AGENTS.md checks pass.
```

### Guides for the parts it uses

- [How to add Resend email to a Next.js + Supabase app](https://shipanysaas-demo.vercel.app/blog/nextjs-supabase-resend-email)
- [How to add Stripe embedded checkout to a Next.js + Supabase app](https://shipanysaas-demo.vercel.app/blog/nextjs-supabase-stripe-embedded-checkout)
- [Multi-tenant SaaS architecture: teams, roles and invitations done right](https://shipanysaas-demo.vercel.app/blog/multi-tenant-saas-teams-roles-invitations)

## More ideas: Education

- [Costume sizes and orders for dance studios](https://shipanysaas-demo.vercel.app/saas-ideas/dance-studio-costume-orders): Parents enter dancers’ measurements online, and the studio gets one sized costume order per routine, with fees tracked per family.
- [Weekly parent updates for tutoring centres](https://shipanysaas-demo.vercel.app/saas-ideas/tutoring-session-parent-updates): Tutors write a short note after each session, and parents get a weekly update on what their child covered.
- [Mock driving test marking on the instructor’s phone](https://shipanysaas-demo.vercel.app/saas-ideas/driving-mock-test-marking): Driving instructors mark mock tests on their phone during the drive, and pupils get a fault summary straight after.

- [All SaaS ideas](https://shipanysaas-demo.vercel.app/saas-ideas)
- [Try the free generator](https://shipanysaas-demo.vercel.app/saas-ideas#generator)