# who we serve I've seen Derek Sivers mention that building a business is an opportunity to make dreams come true for someone, and for building your little utopia in the world. I'm not a big fan of using the word "teaching." That's not what we do here at Explorable. The computer scientist Richard Hamming provided a handout when he taught courses that contained the following lines: > 1. All learning occurs in the student's head. > 2. At best, the teacher is only a coach to guide, encourage, and criticize your style. > 3. The attitude that you are here to be taught rather than to learn is counter productive. and finally, This resonates with our focus. We're focused on learning not teaching. Further we don't want learning to become a little game in an academic bubble that, which is sometimes what standardized assessments turn them into. To quote Hamming's course handout again: > The purpose of the examples and exercises cannot be "to get the right answers" because they are already known! Their purpose, like that of running a mile, is to improve yourself. To take this further, Hamming also indicates two different outcome of learning--creating and consuming: > Apparently, that which you actively learn for yourself you can use later creatively; that which you learn passively you can only use to follow others. I think these notes from Hamming's handout condense really well the kind of learners that Explorable aspires to serve. As we discussed in depth in [[why we learn]], the motivations to learn may be varied across our users. But as long as there is a desire to challenge oneself and seek growth at the heart of every motivation, we want to help you get there. Of course, we might one day end up with a lot of learners who simply want to get a credential or an outcome; but at Explorable, I'd like us to stay true to those who are here to grow and continually tune our offering to prioritize them. Finally, we'd also like to give two things to our learners and users that represents what we stand for: 1. the joy that comes from learning for its own sake 2. the deep satisfaction that comes from being a tiny bit better than an older version of you 3. the wonder and awe when a piece of insight hits you and makes you see the world differently