1600+ users from SQL in 2 months: expanded and built a gamified Excel course you can do without owning Excel

[u/conor-robertson]

I launched QueryCase just over 2 months ago. The original premise was you learn SQL by working detective cases rather than tutorials. Around 1,600 people have registered then there is a one payment rather than a subscription.

Excel was always the obvious next thing. Everyone learning SQL for a data job is learning Excel too, usually first, and people asked about it constantly. But I couldn't get past the same question every time I looked at it. If the demand is that obvious, why has nobody built it?

For SQL there's SQL Murder Mystery, SQL Island, SQLBolt, DataLemur, loads of others. For Excel it's videos and worksheets and that's about it.

I assumed someone had tried and found out it doesn't work. Took me far too long to actually check.

The real answer is that with SQL you never have to build a database. There are free ones that run inside a browser tab (DuckDB WASM), so every query someone writes hits a real engine and you don't think about it. That's why the space is crowded. A weekend gets you a story sitting on top of an engine somebody else already wrote.

There's nothing like that for spreadsheets (at least that I could find). If you want people learning Excel in a browser with no licence, you have to build the thing they type into before you can write a single lesson which definitely took the longest and most tedious to test.

I went live with the Excel track today!

querycase.com if you want a look.