Problem
Course selection in Turkish universities is a bet placed with no information. The same course taught by two instructors is effectively two different courses — different workload, different grading, different chance of learning anything — and students find this out only after enrolling. The real knowledge exists, but it lives in WhatsApp groups and word of mouth, so it reaches whoever happens to know the right upperclassman.
Why I built it
To move that information out of private group chats and into one searchable place. The distribution problem was already solved for me: every student has the same question at the same time each semester. If the answer existed publicly, it would spread on its own.
Solution
ProfRating let students rate and review instructors anonymously, by university and by course, on a 1–5 scale. Three steps — register, find your professor, leave feedback. Anonymity was not a feature bolted on; it was the precondition for anyone saying anything true about someone who grades them.
The framing was student-side throughout: "Senin sesin, senin platformun."
Outcome
- 1,500+ users within the first three days, almost entirely organic.
- Referral loops ran through student groups without paid acquisition.
- The platform was later shut down following legal pressure over its content.
Learnings
Anonymity is what makes honest feedback possible and what makes the product legally exposed — they are the same property, not a tradeoff you can engineer around. A consumer product about real, named people needs a moderation and liability model designed before launch, not after traction. Distribution was the easy part; the hard part was everything that arrives with it.