13 ms·

Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

356 points by ALee 9y ago

crimsonalucard 9y ago
There is another facet to this equation. Think about an investment banker. The skills an investment banker learns in college are largely irrelevant to his job. One could say that his degree was entirely a waste of time, yet in order to qualify for a job in investment banking you need to go to a prestigious school and excel. I see many spaces where education is largely irrelevant and functions only as a filter to reduce the supply of people who are qualified for a job.
- anonymous5133 9y ago
  That structure won't last into the future. Investment banking is already being disrupted through blockchain ICOs and similar stuff like that. More and more people are just using index funds so there is no need for an investment professional anymore. There will always be the goldman sachs and similar firms but how much people do they really employ?
  - tonypace 9y ago
    The point is not solely related to investment banking. Education as social signaling will not be disrupted by the blockchain.
oceanghost 9y ago
Thanks for this. Working on an educational cost reduction thing... :)
- japhyr 9y ago
  What are you trying to reduce the cost of?
  - oceanghost 9y ago
    The whole damned ball of wax.
shafyy 9y ago
Might have some good points, but: - As it says in the post, there is a lot of generalization. And usually generalized advice for something as specific as building a startup is not good - This is 6 years old - not sure if it still applies. A lot has changed in the tech possibilities since then
m52go 9y ago
Mods, please add (2011) to the title.
- sctb 9y ago
  Done. Thanks!
Spooky23 9y ago
This is interesting but not well structured. Basically consumer facing spending is about delivering cheap services, whether that be babysitting style tutoring, textbooks or slinging a minimally viable educational experience that aligns with government programs. Targeting schools is an enterprise play. You either have the ability to survive the public school sales cycle, or the connections to get the money people behind charter schools to buy your crap. Personally, I think this is a shitty startup market. It’s an insular industry, most non-content plays have entrenched competition or a bunch of players (Microsoft, google, apple) doing a half ass job for free/cheap. It’s easier to do enterpsie style business with normal government entities. Targeting poor people is dumb because poor folk give zero shits about education. If you have the political juice, targeting a government agency with money to burn on helping poor people makes more sense.
- jeffmaxim 9y ago
  “Targeting poor people is dumb because poor folk give zero shits about education.” Don’t even know where to start on this...
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    How many low income households are spending money on Kaplan courses? You may find that harsh, but it’s reality. Doing what the author suggested (producing low quality cheap crap) may sound more sensitive, but in my mind is unethical. Things like Khan academy have traction because third parties pay the bill. Online degree mills have traction because an uncritical third party (ie the government) loans the cash to students.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
ivan_ah 9y ago
Good points. I think the blog post would have benefited from a definition of the "education product" the author has in mind, because otherwise it remains a little vague. I can think of at least a dozen educational services and products and it's possible/likely the optimal growth strategy would be different for each of these. For example, tutoring service (in person or remote), learning web application, learning mobile app, classic content products (print textbook, digital textbook, recorded video lessons), new-media content products (e.g. new apps or learning modality), etc. Then there is the whole "credentialing" aspect, which we all hope will go away but currently it's still a very important: people are easily impressed by big-name universities, and three-letter degree acronyms. The "edtech space" is very interesting. The OP is totally right that it's not obvious how to make money given that neither schools nor students have money... (Sure there are rich kids and motivated parents who can pay and they will enjoy the value, but it's a very ugly thing to deny access to knowledge to someone behind a paywall/subscription just because they can't pull out a credit card and follow the funnel.) In addition to the traditional for-profit startup model, there are big developments in the ed-tech sector by non-profits like Khan Academy. Some of the best learning UX/UI and content to come out in last decade is from KA. More generally, the open educational resources (OERs) are starting to be a thing now... there lots of good open content and there is potential for companies to be "service providers" on top of the vast sea of "commons." Open source gave us an interesting last two decades. Now imagine what will happen when open content becomes mainstream too? On the other hand being too open with the content and starting with a "yes take it all for free" strategy is a sure way to end up out of runway. How many non-profit projects shut down because of lack of funding. Aren't there always strings attached when receiving funding from governments, NGOs, and philanthropists. What if they change their mind next year? Or two years form now? There is something beautiful and robust about a self-sustaining project like a for-profit startup. I know teacherspayteachers and other for-profit projects that are doing very well. Definitely something to learn there. It all depends on what you want to optimize for, but the fundamental algorithm in the edtech space remains the same as in all other spaces: deliver more value than you capture and be in the right place to ride the wave up.
jldugger 9y ago
> The average, middle class person thinks about education as an expenditure, not an investment. The way I remember it, middle class folks in Kansas City suburbs really, really care about the quality of their schools and levy property and sales taxes to fund it. Rural Ohio townships where dual earners are making 17k less than the national median for such households may not have a lot of middle class to speak of. Cost and outcomes have always been a tradeoff. 1:1 tutoring is the gold standard for educational outcomes. We know that from there, outcomes fall as teacher:student ratios rise. This fundamentally puts a cap on returns to improved quality -- if your improved school outcome is comparable to adding one additional teacher per grade level, well, you better be cheaper than those teacher's salaries. And good luck finding that data in the first place. It's not easy to convince folks to run the experimental treatment on their children to get that data.
- rahimnathwani 9y ago
  "1:1 tutoring is the gold standard for educational outcomes." Is it? I'd be interested to see some data to support or refute this. I'd always assumed that students benefit somewhat from other students being around (due to observing how others learn, being pushed to be better etc.), so perhaps the ideal ratio would be in the 1:2 to 1:4 range. If people have really figured out that 1:1 is better than 1:2, 1:3 and 1:4, I'd love to see that data.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    I don’t know whether there has been large-scale empirical testing of this, but anecdotally it sounds plausible. I can typically have a deeper and more efficient knowledge-sharing conversation about some technical topic 1:1 than 1:4 (e.g. in a professional context). In a 1:1 interaction, it is possible to efficiently figure out where the two interlocutors’ common premises are, and then explain concepts in whatever amount of detail is necessary for understanding, skipping over any parts that are known, with frequent checks that the other party is following along (not just pretending, and not suffering some misconception). In a 5-way interaction, it is typical for each participant to be coming from slightly different background / preparation, and have difficulty with different parts of the new material, which makes it necessary to take time for (sometimes extended) digressions to fill in whatever details are missing for anyone. It’s easy to accidentally not notice that 1 or more participants is missing crucial background, because it is time consuming to verify that each separate participant has a solid understanding of every idea. A problem that is too hard for one student will be too easy for another. Things might be better if you had the same 4 students to 1 tutor for, say, 3–4 years at a stretch. Then you could assume a lot of shared history, and amortize digressions to fill knowledge gaps for particular students. Better hope the students learn at a similar pace. When actively trying to solve a set of problems, with the students working independently with minimal guidance/help from an instructor, and if the only goal is problem-solving efficiency, then having more people is helpful, because different students will have trouble with one problem or another, and they can then confer and fill in the other answers at the end. Often the weaker students don’t fully understand everything to the extent they could solve a similar problem independently, but that’s often an acceptable standard. [Same story if you are trying to build some work project with many parts, etc.] But if the goal is to get everyone to understand every answer deeply and accurately, then in a 1:1 tutorial setting the expert tutor can ask leading questions, give appropriate hints, or just outright explain the answer if the problem gets to be too big a time suck. And the student can get more direct personal experience with trying to solve all of the problems with a fast feedback loop and without getting bogged down, and hopefully feel like they personally figured out most of the main breakthroughs. One issue is that often tutors (probably more than other types of teachers) are amateurs rather than experts in the subject or in teaching. For instance the tutor might be a slightly older student, a family member, a retired person volunteering, or the like. In that case 1:1 tutorial is still helpful vs. the student working alone, but obviously pales in comparison to highly skilled tutoring.
twunde 9y ago
The article correctly identifies consumer-facing education businesses as being incredibly difficult. I used to work in education and Chegg is the only consumer-facing company I can think of in the industry. Most other education companies have either sold or partnered with schools (Neverware, Clever, Jamf, etc). One of the interesting things with the market is that it's difficult to start penetrating districts since school budgets can vary year to year AND because many purchases have to be approved by school boards. But as soon as you're in, you essentially have a monopoly for a number of years. It's enterprise sales without the immediate huge money payoff. That said, there's a lot of money out there in education
- analog31 9y ago
  I'd add Texas Instruments, with their graphing calculators. They have an extremely low tech product whose prevalence actually detracts from kids learning to make effective use of computation. But they've established a monopoly position by understanding what real problems they're actually solving: 1) Moderating development to within a pace that teachers and the curriculum / testing industry can keep up with. 2) Keeping cheating under control. Disclosure: I have two kids in high school, both of whom need graphing calculators for their schoolwork. Both would prefer to use Python/Jupyter.
  - jrochkind1 9y ago
    When I was in grade school, 20+ years ago, TI calculators were legitimately an impressive high-tech product. (and in some classes or for some quizes, you weren't _allowed_ to use them). They... haven't changed too too much since then. Somehow TI got from there to here, maintaining market success the whole time, but completely changing in how they fit in the environment somehow. Odd.
  - japhyr 9y ago
    Do they use Python for their homework? I'm a math teacher and a programmer, and I can't wait to see the end of the TI dominance in education. I would happily let students in my classes use Python/ Jupyter for most of their work, and use calculators as needed to get ready for any tests that require their use.
virmundi 9y ago
Unfortunately I’m on my phone and I don’t have access to my laptop that has my research on this. Sadly, ed tech doesn’t work. The UK realized this. The US is starting to, state by state. This is not to say it can’t work. So far the startups have issues with not being able to provide an innovative product that works reliably.
zukzuk 9y ago
Top Hat — a Toronto based post-startup — has successfully gone against just about every point in this article. This article is full of whatever the inverse of survivorship bias is.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
orb_yt 9y ago
I understand this article is a bit outdated, but companies like Duolingo or Clever seem to prove a few of the author's arguments wrong. One would think there would be a market for Duolingo style apps for other subjects, such as mathematics, where the user is simply charged on a subscription bases. Could such a business not survive?
- azinman2 9y ago
  People want/need to learn another language for a very wide variety of reasons. While it is “teaching,” it’s also squarely in its own domain. I’m not sure they’d have an easy time transitioning to Duolingo for math. While I don’t have their demo stats, language learning often extends well into adulthood... many corporations will pay for employees to learn a new language, and English schools are popular world-wide. Not as many adults are motivated to learn calculus, which then leaves a younger market with less ability/willingness to pay.
  - orb_yt 9y ago
    I do think that the overwhelming majority of Duolingo users are likely learning on their own volition, rather than for their job. > While it is “teaching,” it’s also squarely in its own domain Could this idea simply be because, for the most part, language learning applications have been the most successful? Other than Khan Academy, which is mostly videos, i've never heard of another company building similar products for other subjects. I'm not sure whether it's because the market doesn't exist or that it hasn't been tried.
    - azinman2 9y ago
      Language is pretty unique. You can be interested in, marry into, befriend, worship in, born from, work in, read in, watch in, move to, befriend, and be moved to a new language. As humanity requires language, learning a new one can happen at any stage of life. Rarely do people spend casual time learning what is typically taught in youth. Yes there are always people interested in TED talks but that’s effectively TV. Yes people go back to school but that’s focused structured time. Language is better if learned interactively, in both casual and formal settings. I can read a history book and feel accomplished. Reading a French textbook without application won’t work as well. Language requires active learning, where as many other subjects do not. Language apps such as duolingo are well suited accordingly (even better would be a really great conversational bot that could help you better pronounce your words). I’m not saying there aren’t other markets, but I am positing it’s def not evenly distributed across subject matter.
avichal 9y ago
Ah yes, the annual resurfacing of this blog post :) unfortunately I think most of it is still true. I should do a follow up... Edit: I'll address the comments/thoughts here in a follow up blog post. Glad to see so many people thinking about this space. It's a great thing for the world to have entrepreneurs building here.
- sirspacey 9y ago
  About to take an edtech startup to the consumer market- would love to see your updated advice!
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  "The underlying culture will change and expose interesting opportunities in the long term, but probably not for another 5 years." Given those 5 years have now passed, what's your assessement of the situation now?
- jansho 9y ago
  I thought I had read the post before. Thank you for the insights, and I hope that you can do that follow-up! One thing not mentioned which I think is important is the ease of paying (whether the edtech is app or web-based). It’s all very well to target those in poorer countries, but many of them (consumers) still don’t have online banking, and payment gateways are often local and clunky (I did notice in my last trip to Asia that this is improving.) I’d love to hear your thoughts on this :)
- christophilus 9y ago
  I'm currently working in ed-tech, so a followup would be greatly appreciated!
10-6 9y ago
This article was written in 2011, and I think since then with the "learn to code" movement becoming so popular and coding bootcamps promising to help people get software development jobs, things have changed a bit--at least for edtech companies teaching programming skills. There are a ton of popular websites that teach people coding/software development/design skills online now that have grown incredibly over the last few years, but still not really getting to mainstream status. Treehouse, Code School, DataCamp, Udemy, Frontend Masters, Udacity, Thinkful, Codecademy are just a few popular websites where people can learn to code today and all of them have a subscription plan. I don't think any of these have reached "mainstream" status, but there are definitely a lot more websites and applications today teaching people to code via subscription plans than there were 6 years ago. Whatever your thoughts are on the whole "learn to code" movement, it's clear that the landscape for edtech companies teaching programming/software development has changed since 2011. Will any of these companies teaching people to code ever reach "mainstream" status, I don't know.
- bhaumik 9y ago
  Thinkful pivoted from a subscription model to being a school focused on job placement a couple years back. Our core products are remote immersive & part-time courses in software development & data science. But tying back to the OP, the immersive program has a no tuition till you're hired financing option, (which a few other schools offer too). It's been pretty exciting hearing the joy from applicants who wouldn't have been able to afford the course w/ traditional financing options.
adamnemecek 9y ago
Figure out a way to franchise high schools to make them into coworking spaces. All teachers are remote and all teaching happens over skype. The employees on site are there only to make sure the kids dont kill each other. Offer an insane amount of subjects (this is possible since there might be only 30 kids worldwide interested in xyz, now they can take a class on it). The future of education is something along these lines I think. One could really make a lot of money with this because the costs will be fractional compared with real high school. Also no "athletic departments" fuck that shit.
- colordrops 9y ago
  Sounds inhuman.
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    unlike high school? lol. you are right, being on someone schedule for idk 12 hours a day (classes + hw) is one of the most humane experiences. in my model at least you get to pick your own path and each student might get a pretty unique experience if they choose to. what's inhuman about this btw?
- visarga 9y ago
  I like the idea. The role of the teacher would be to coach students (like giving them advice, monitoring progress). What was missing from the MOOC formula was real person, in the flesh accountability for learning.
  - ivan_ah 9y ago
    Yes, human in the loop is definitely good. Reminds me a bit of the "Granny cloud": https://youtu.be/dk60sYrU2RU?t=12m https://youtu.be/dk60sYrU2RU?t=12m (talk is worth watching from the beginning)
  - anonymous5133 9y ago
    You can still apply humans to MOOCs through tutoring or private lecture sessions etc.
davidgh 9y ago
I appreciated the point that VCs think about education differently than the masses. Reminds me of the AirBnB guys pitching their original idea of people renting out their couch for strangers to sleep on and getting thrown out by virtually all of them. “Who would EVER want that??”
juskrey 9y ago
Because academic-style and bootcamp-style education is largely a bullshit. As opposed to apprenticeship which happens in real business conditions.
- itronitron 9y ago
  i would include self-apprenticeship as well since people can learn many things easily on their own now (via internet)... unfortunately taking a bad class can rapidly kill a person's interest, especially if they have already invested considerable time into the subject matter
  - juskrey 9y ago
    I think you wanted to say autodidactism (which is also legit). Apprenticeship implies following someone.. but yeah, not necessarily face-to-face.
booleanbetrayal 9y ago
I think what smart.ly is doing is pretty unique. Disclosure: I work there.
- kolp 9y ago
  Would you mind explaining what your company does and why you think it's unique? I visited your website and I am still none the wiser.
  - booleanbetrayal 9y ago
    We offer a free, licensed, MBA course and offset the operational costs via a hiring engine that takes a cut on employment match. Online only, interactive, non-video content. There's also an extremely low-cost, licensed, EMBA program for those people who are already gainfully employed and just want to develop their business / operational knowledge.
KirinDave 9y ago
Meanwhile, Udacity...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ChicagoDave 9y ago
I built Textfyre in 2007 and closed in 2011. Gates Foundation put our ideas in their grant program and put all their resources into existing publishers. Later, Pearson was on NPR spouting many of Textfyre’s pitch points. None of these companies have figured out Interactive education or reduced cost or improved quality. I still believe we could have, but we couldn’t convince others. Mostly because a real MVP would have cost millions to create. But we could have saved states billions by replacing textbooks with online, interactive, cross-discipline content. The market is closed to startups. The industry is fighting disruption in every way they can.
- anonymous5133 9y ago
  I completely agree that Pearson sells itself as innovative but it is anything but that! Their "mylab" type products aren't innovative. It is just the same old same old. I would even argue that it has been counterproductive because they're now moving to FORCE students to buy new expensive textbooks to get the homework grading code. Pearson has absolutely zero interest in disrupting anything. They only care about building their monopoly on textbooks. However, I am an optimist and believe that even with well entrenched interest groups (big textbook publishers, school districts, unions etc.) there is still paths to disruption. At a fundamental level, education is simply teaching someone something new. That's it! If you are providing something quality then people will naturally flock to it or share it. I think the future education startup simply needs to focus on building high quality learning materials. Then either give those products away for free or innovative monetization models (ie. watch 5 video ads to unlock the content etc.). Don't focus on trying to sell to school districts. Focus on going straight to the consumer: students or parents. Every student I know is already going online to get extra homework help, resources, youtube videos etc.
  - ChicagoDave 9y ago
    The only way we'll change education is to disrupt the classroom from a systemic point of view. We have to prove there is a better way. That can only be done with high quality content newly constructed for interactivity. This is where Pearson, Britannica, et al fail. They have a library of content created over decades with a guaranteed state-driven pipeline into classrooms. This content is specifically created by old school experts specifically for printed chapters in a bound book. Creating real interactive content would require content experts work within an interactive digital agency framework, which would require a sizable R&D budget with a lot of trial and error. We're talking millions of dollars spent before a completed product was available. But here's the upside. Textbooks cost each state roughly $100 per student per year. An online system might charge a fraction of that (Textfyre targeted $1/student/year). Imagine the state of Illinois saving $99 per student per year over several years. The investment is risky to a degree, but I view it no differently than Kennedy choosing to go to the moon. You decide to do it. You find the best and the brightest to enable the vision. You enact the vision. There is an upfront cost, but the vision and results would alter the course of history in the world. Interactive, adaptable education systems are the future. They would be able to reach everyone on the planet regardless of age, gender, politics, class, or any other identity labels. I have a second start-up (Wizely). I'll probably keep swinging if it doesn't hit a nerve. If I ever have one succeed and make (a lot of) money, I will re-invest my profits into education and what I call positive social engagement. My advice to ed-tech startups. Find a way to make money, but immediately redirect all profits to attacking the classroom. That's where we need the R&D to go. As the OP said, consumer-based ed-tech has its limits. The classroom is where we need to drive innovation.
analog31 9y ago
I've told this story before: Back when I was in college, I had a summer internship at a place that was a service center for the K-12 schools in a large county. Microcomputers were the big new thing. We had a facility with one of each kind of computer (Commodore, Apple, Radio Shack, etc.) and all the software we could lay their hands on. Teachers could come in and try things out. My impression was that the "educational" software was extremely crude and one-dimensional, basically glorified flash cards. Today, the "educational" software is Web based, and more flashy, but still retains that lack of breadth. It's hard and expensive to write interactive software, so a lot of the apps are basically one or two templates, with different sets of data / parameters for different lessons. Here's a picture. Move your mouse around. When something lights up, click on it, and a little box of text will pop up for you to read. I kid you not. This is real. Today. Now I have two kids who are in high school. We have acquired (can't say bought in most cases) piles of educational technology, yet little or none of it was "EdTech." The most glaring example was Microsoft Office. The kids used it to create reports, presentations, drawings, etc. It has been supplanted by Google Docs, which they now use heavily, including for collaborative assignments. We've played with Jupyter/Python. My son is learning solid modeling using some free app. One of them uses DuoLingo daily, as does my spouse. Some of their educational technology is still in the analog domain: Musical instruments. ;-) I think the take-away for me is that we are providing our kids with technology that supports their education, but it isn't written for kids. It's the same stuff that grown-ups use. Jupyter/Python is an example -- it's my primary computing tool for my job. Another common feature is that these are creativity tools, not consumption tools.
- geebee 9y ago
  Part of the problem is that programming is supposed to be "fun", as in "fun and games", not as in a serious topic that you enjoy so much you call it fun. This is why a lot of programming is taught through graphical games. I'm not knocking Minecraft style programming lessons, they can be very motivational and build up programming skills and thought processes. Unfortunately, I'm not that kind of programmer. I'm more the type who enjoys scikit-learn and kaggle than xbox. Even as a kid, I was more interested in programming to know who had the advantage in 3v2 rolls in Risk than programming a game itself (in other words, I wanted to program to get insight into a game, not to play the game itself). But I wanted to introduce my 12 year old to programming, so rather than trying to learn about Minecraft, I helped him install jupyter notebook and showed him how he could automate some of his math homework. We wrote a method to calculate mean, median, range, that sort of thing, and he learned how to feed a series of lists into it, and graph it. Believe it or not, this pleased him a great deal. He left feeling slightly buoyed, like he'd gained an edge. But if programming remains an add-on to a school curriculum, who wants to do more math in an after school program, or a summer camp? So "learning to program for kids" will probably remain heavily focused on graphics and games. Which may be ok, my interest in simulating a dice roll rather than programming a game per se may not be reflective of how most kids (who have great potential) are wired. And honestly, programming Minecraft is among the best of the educational software. Zoombinis was pretty cool, too, even if it was purely a game. Truth his, much educational software just re-teaches math, or history, but with buzzers and rewarding little cartoons for wrong or right answers.
jkuria 9y ago
What about companies like The Great Courses (formerly teaching company) that takes out full page spreads in the WSJ on a regular basis? Are they still niche?
- anonymous5133 9y ago
  Yup, still niche. If you look at their courses it is primarily consists of unique topics or subtopics of a bigger topic. If they want to be a disruptor then they need to start creating college courses and reduce the price. Create a certification system and create innovative learning systems for the courses.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
thelock85 9y ago
Lots of solution-focused dialogue here but from my experience, I've come to believe that education startups fail because the education marketplace is actually a loose confederation of communities and consumer preferences are more akin to individual values and beliefs. This makes it really difficult to market evidence-based solutions or scale your sales strategy.
smallnamespace 9y ago
Couple of other causes: - It's very hard to measure to value add of education; people have spent lives working on this - Only half the value of educational institutions comes from educating people; the other half comes from the credentialing where they pick out the 'brighter' individuals, but measuring how much a credential is worth is almost impossible for most individuals
- anonymous5133 9y ago
  Credentials aren't immune from disruption. Just look at how the trades work. They all are using some sort of independent testing company that certifies people. In the future employers might not care if you have a BA degree if instead you have an electrician certificate or some comptia certification. Those credentials might be more valuable. Perhaps in the future there will be certifications for programming languages that are industry standard. Accountants have their CPA and lawyers have their BAR exam so on so forth.
  - lostboys67 9y ago
    But theirs more than one way to do it :-) and from my dads experience chartered status is more about who you know not what. And in the USA in particular what point are BAR exams when you get people with ZERO experience of law appointed to senior legal positions - No offence to one of Obamas Supreme nominations but they had no real world judging experience - shades of E l Wisty
alexashka 9y ago
This is well written, and frankly off the mark. If online education got people cushy jobs the way university degrees get people cushy jobs - online education would be massively profitable. That's not the case. There's nothing else to it. Regarding online education in general: Universities/colleges should have to post their full curriculum, lecture notes and all textbooks and chapters used for each class - that's enough. There's no need for businesses here - just tell us what you're teaching your class, and anyone interested can go read the textbook. Make video lectures available as a bonus for a little bit of money, that's it! A lot of students already don't attend classes and just read the lecture notes and chapters needed. These online education start-ups remind me of companies that take Craigslist and start adding unnecessary bells and whistles to justify their existence. We already have craigslist and it works folks. Stop trying to make a buck by being so incredibly boring.
- anonymous5133 9y ago
  Universities already do that. Simply go to google, type whatever course you want to learn followed by syllabus. Some of the bigger schools have all the teachers list their syllabus on a central page as well. Obviously it is for the benefit of the student but indirectly the syllabus is the outline of the course - lists textbooks used, chapters covered, homework problems etc. To get notes you might be able to find online somewhere.
  - alexashka 9y ago
    Great. This is not obvious to most people. Especially people who've never been to university like me. So the last mile left to accomplish in 'online education' is to standardize the presentation of the syllabus/outline and inform people that that is a viable option.
Lich 9y ago
I'm currently working for an education startup right now. We are struggling. Have been for the past few years. The biggest problems I've noticed: 1. Cost. When you deal with school districts, you usually sell for X number of devices. So for example, all devices for 5th-7th grade, something like that. When you sell alot, schools will usually ask for volume licensing. Schools don't want to see prices above $5. This goes for devices for the quality of the devices they purchase. Often, the student device is cheap, low-powered, and in the case of Windows devices, packed to the brim with all sorts of software running in the background: web filters, virus-scanners, and some educational apps. Top that off with apps that students install like Spotify and games, it slows the machine down to a crawl or causes problems that might interfere with your software solution. 2. Different school districts have different needs. Although our software solution was initially meant to be for general use by all schools, we kept running into school district that needed very specific needs to that school or district. That lead to developing new features that only a small handful of school district would use, sometimes confusing users who did not need such features, or didn't even know we had the feature. 3. If your software solution works with student information systems data, it can often be a nightmare getting school districts to create that data. 4. School IT teams are...pretty terrible. Or rather, they're swamped with so many issues from so many products and devices, that they care very little as to learn how to deploy your product properly. Have documentation? Trust me, they probably won't read it. You will most likely get an e-mail asking how to deploy. 5. Trials, trials, trials. Schools aren't going to pay up just because they see a video demo of your product. They're going to want a trial at minimum for half the school year, maybe more. Then... 6. ...Politics. Decision to purchase needs to be approved by some board.
- discreditable 9y ago
  Coming from the grades 9-12 sysadmin side, I might be able to provide some perspective. Every school is wildly different, so I would recommend against applying my perspectives too broadly. 1. Cost: Windows licenses for student PCs are just under $20/PC/year (for us). Is your $5 software 25% as useful to students as their operating system is? Even worse, the reality is if I put your software on my 1000 computers I'll be lucky if 300 of them use it. That's something to keep in mind when working with per-device licenses. I agree installed system software bloat is a problem. That results from every department having different needs. We might be a little different in that we don't allow students to install/run foreign software (using AppLocker). 2. I agree different schools are amazingly different. I collaborate with a few other schools around me and whenever we meet I'm pretty floored by how differently each one approaches basic problems. These significant differences really add up and I can understand how supporting schools might be a pain. 3. It seems like every vendor wants access to my SIS. That's a privilege not granted lightly. I'm generally okay with automated CSV dumps of bare minimum data uploaded over a secure channel, but some vendors have the nerve to request direct LDAP or Oracle database access over the public Internet. No way! 4. I'll agree school IT teams are generally terrible. Among my peers and schools I collaborate with, I'm the only one with a degree in IT. Many are older and migrated to the role from something else (former math teachers surprisingly often). Some find themselves shoehorned into the role because they happened to be the most technically-inclined among the staff. These guys are uncomfortable in powershell/cmd and typically use contractors or local PFYs to handle technical details. Schools do not pay enough to attract decent talent. I could work for a local company and make 1.5-2x more doing less than I do here, but for now I like this environment. 5. While video demos can be helpful product overviews. I distrust video demos just as I distrust other marketing wank. I want to test drive the car before I decide to purchase it. That said, I wouldn't expect anyone to let me demo something longer than 60 days. The long time in my case is that exploring new software is usually a backburner project, and I am likely to have other things come up that take priority. I never put production data into trial software however. 6. Yes, purchasing processes are a pain. I 100% agree. I currently have a request for $60 of printer toner that's been sitting in the requisition process for over a week. Trust me, it's just as bad for us on the inside.
jv22222 9y ago
There's also the issue that single point tech solutions often don't help schools, or districts, in a meaningful way. This is because "the tech" is just the tip of the iceberg and there's a disconnect between the districts that purchase software and the teachers who are left to try and figure it out on their own. I wrote in more detail about this issue here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/11/13/want-a-modern-school-system-technology-is-not-enough/#272169d343c6 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/11/13/wa...
jondubois 9y ago
I worked for an Education startup a couple of years ago. They had a really good math learning product which blew away the competition in terms of software quality but they didn't achieve exponential growth. It was linear growth but at a very good rate. The trick was to sell directly to schools and educational institutions. There are new challenges there but it's also very high-reward. You can sell 1000 licenses from a single deal with a school. If you get a government public school contract you could be looking at 100k licenses from a single deal. I think that companies which do big b2b deals have become greatly undervalued. VCs are so obsessed chasing exponential growth curves that they seem to have forgotten that the earth only has limited population and that buying power has become much more centralized and is becoming increasingly centralized.
- meepso 9y ago
  There is truth to the centralization issue in education, we see more and more deals being done at 100k levels. Makes the current way of doing business on smaller language markets obsolete, I'm not sure it's for the better.
  - jondubois 9y ago
    I think a problem is that most parents (in the west) don't have any ideas or opinions about what learning tools are best for their children - Most parents are happy to let the education system decide what's best. I think most busy parents these days tend to see the school system as an end-to-end automatic education machine; you insert a young uneducated child, put some money in it and several years later an educated adult comes out. With that mindset it's easy to see why it's better to do deals directly with schools than trying to get the attention of the parents.
- pdg11 9y ago
  I work with an education start up now. Company does really well in the b2c space but we are looking into the b2b (educational institutions). Were you guys dealing with individual schools or going straight to districts/counties?
benzheren 9y ago
In China(or South Korea, or Japan), it is totally a different story. Majority of the parents think education as an investment, thus one of the best places to do an education related startup would be in China.
tonydiv 9y ago
I am trying to build an online coding school for kids ages 6-13. I mostly agree with what's being stated because we already have customers in China, Korea, and Japan despite doing no marketing there. They are hard markets to ignore, especially when US parents are a harder sell. In order for us to be successful in the long-term, we must be a cross-border company. Coding is one of the things that parents are increasingly willing to pay for, but it is still in the process of becoming a middle-class family demand. https://block.school https://block.school
tianshuo 9y ago
If you are a startup marketing for the Asian market especially China, feel free to send your BP to me(tianshuo@galaxyinternet.com), we are a VC that helps foreign startups (and local startups) understand the very complicated Chinese education market.
amitmathew 9y ago
Interesting article! If you're thinking about targeting consumers in edtech, there's a lot of good advice in here. My company mainly sells to medical students, which are a highly incentivized group of consumers, so we can avoid some of the pitfalls mentioned in the article. However, most of the action in edtech is focused on selling to institutions because that's where the money is. The good news is institutions are more willing than ever to try out new technologies if you can convince them you can impact recruitment, retention, graduation rates, etc. Of course, that's easier said than done. Not many startups can wait around for 5 years to do a comprehensive research study. And you get all the classic problems of selling to institutions (and magnified in education): slow sales cycles, multiple decision-makers, politics, etc. I think an interesting problem in edtech today is there are a lot of "startups" that fit in that dangerous area between a small business and a high-growth startup. You'll find dozens of companies that help improve mathematical skills, create STEM games, or build products for improving reading and writing comprehension. A lot of these companies might grow to be multi-million dollar companies over several years, but they won't fit that "classic" startup growth curve. Since venture money is flowing relatively well (and a few VCs focus specifically on edtech), a lot of these companies get funded. But there's a dilemma for these entrepreneurs: what do you do when you realize that your company is growing 2x each year (which is great!), but not at 10x where your investors want you.
0xCMP 9y ago
So education != tech education, correct?
ziikutv 9y ago
This really is a great read. Reading the first bullet alone is worth its weight in gold.
nargella 9y ago
I joined an edtech company earlier this year: yellowdig.com. I think the thing I'd echo from this post is that time definitely needs to be on your side. Having connections also really helps. I'll keep the points about cost in my back pocket.
smashingfiasco 9y ago
What this post is lamenting is the loss of some actor like MECC. We had great software written for students (not adults) at one point. Many of us here have used it and fondly remember it. Titles like Oregon Trail, Reader Rabbit, etc... Unfortunately, MECC got spun-off from the actual Minnesota education system, then purchased by a giant ed-tech company and left to wither. The endowment that MECC (in its purist form) left behind faded in time. There is still a lot of great educational software out there. It's just all locked away on a MacOS 9 box, tied to libraries and runtimes that never made the jump to Mac OS X and then iOS. From the business side of it, we'd honestly need something of a PBS-like software company to reconstruct what we lost with MECC. I think that's the only way it'd work. The software would have to be made, not because it was profitable, but because it needed to be made and was a good thing for our society to have.
pascalxus 9y ago
I must say, I really like how this blog does thorough use cases with deep information about the why things don't succeed. 2 thumbs up!
tmaly 9y ago
I have a 4 year old, and I have found most of the educational things that work well at a young age are crafts and STEM based kits. I was looking at the apple app store today as we were waiting for an appointment. It is quite flooded with all sorts of educational apps, but most that I tried were of low quality. Performing a search for the best reading or math app did not improve much. I think there may be an opportunity here, but it would take a team with diverse talents and not just a team of developers to build something good.

356 points by ALee 9y ago

There is another facet to this equation. Think about an investment banker. The skills an investment banker learns in college are largely irrelevant to his job. One could say that his degree was entirely a waste of time, yet in order to qualify for a job in investment banking you need to go to a prestigious school and excel. I see many spaces where education is largely irrelevant and functions only as a filter to reduce the supply of people who are qualified for a job.

anonymous5133 9y ago
That structure won't last into the future. Investment banking is already being disrupted through blockchain ICOs and similar stuff like that. More and more people are just using index funds so there is no need for an investment professional anymore. There will always be the goldman sachs and similar firms but how much people do they really employ?
- tonypace 9y ago
  The point is not solely related to investment banking. Education as social signaling will not be disrupted by the blockchain.

oceanghost 9y ago

Thanks for this. Working on an educational cost reduction thing... :)

japhyr 9y ago
What are you trying to reduce the cost of?
- oceanghost 9y ago
  The whole damned ball of wax.

shafyy 9y ago

Might have some good points, but: - As it says in the post, there is a lot of generalization. And usually generalized advice for something as specific as building a startup is not good - This is 6 years old - not sure if it still applies. A lot has changed in the tech possibilities since then

m52go 9y ago

Mods, please add (2011) to the title.

sctb 9y ago
Done. Thanks!

Spooky23 9y ago

This is interesting but not well structured. Basically consumer facing spending is about delivering cheap services, whether that be babysitting style tutoring, textbooks or slinging a minimally viable educational experience that aligns with government programs. Targeting schools is an enterprise play. You either have the ability to survive the public school sales cycle, or the connections to get the money people behind charter schools to buy your crap. Personally, I think this is a shitty startup market. It’s an insular industry, most non-content plays have entrenched competition or a bunch of players (Microsoft, google, apple) doing a half ass job for free/cheap. It’s easier to do enterpsie style business with normal government entities. Targeting poor people is dumb because poor folk give zero shits about education. If you have the political juice, targeting a government agency with money to burn on helping poor people makes more sense.

jeffmaxim 9y ago
“Targeting poor people is dumb because poor folk give zero shits about education.” Don’t even know where to start on this...
- Spooky23 9y ago
  How many low income households are spending money on Kaplan courses? You may find that harsh, but it’s reality. Doing what the author suggested (producing low quality cheap crap) may sound more sensitive, but in my mind is unethical. Things like Khan academy have traction because third parties pay the bill. Online degree mills have traction because an uncritical third party (ie the government) loans the cash to students.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

ivan_ah 9y ago

Good points. I think the blog post would have benefited from a definition of the "education product" the author has in mind, because otherwise it remains a little vague. I can think of at least a dozen educational services and products and it's possible/likely the optimal growth strategy would be different for each of these. For example, tutoring service (in person or remote), learning web application, learning mobile app, classic content products (print textbook, digital textbook, recorded video lessons), new-media content products (e.g. new apps or learning modality), etc. Then there is the whole "credentialing" aspect, which we all hope will go away but currently it's still a very important: people are easily impressed by big-name universities, and three-letter degree acronyms. The "edtech space" is very interesting. The OP is totally right that it's not obvious how to make money given that neither schools nor students have money... (Sure there are rich kids and motivated parents who can pay and they will enjoy the value, but it's a very ugly thing to deny access to knowledge to someone behind a paywall/subscription just because they can't pull out a credit card and follow the funnel.) In addition to the traditional for-profit startup model, there are big developments in the ed-tech sector by non-profits like Khan Academy. Some of the best learning UX/UI and content to come out in last decade is from KA. More generally, the open educational resources (OERs) are starting to be a thing now... there lots of good open content and there is potential for companies to be "service providers" on top of the vast sea of "commons." Open source gave us an interesting last two decades. Now imagine what will happen when open content becomes mainstream too? On the other hand being too open with the content and starting with a "yes take it all for free" strategy is a sure way to end up out of runway. How many non-profit projects shut down because of lack of funding. Aren't there always strings attached when receiving funding from governments, NGOs, and philanthropists. What if they change their mind next year? Or two years form now? There is something beautiful and robust about a self-sustaining project like a for-profit startup. I know teacherspayteachers and other for-profit projects that are doing very well. Definitely something to learn there. It all depends on what you want to optimize for, but the fundamental algorithm in the edtech space remains the same as in all other spaces: deliver more value than you capture and be in the right place to ride the wave up.

jldugger 9y ago

> The average, middle class person thinks about education as an expenditure, not an investment. The way I remember it, middle class folks in Kansas City suburbs really, really care about the quality of their schools and levy property and sales taxes to fund it. Rural Ohio townships where dual earners are making 17k less than the national median for such households may not have a lot of middle class to speak of. Cost and outcomes have always been a tradeoff. 1:1 tutoring is the gold standard for educational outcomes. We know that from there, outcomes fall as teacher:student ratios rise. This fundamentally puts a cap on returns to improved quality -- if your improved school outcome is comparable to adding one additional teacher per grade level, well, you better be cheaper than those teacher's salaries. And good luck finding that data in the first place. It's not easy to convince folks to run the experimental treatment on their children to get that data.

rahimnathwani 9y ago
"1:1 tutoring is the gold standard for educational outcomes." Is it? I'd be interested to see some data to support or refute this. I'd always assumed that students benefit somewhat from other students being around (due to observing how others learn, being pushed to be better etc.), so perhaps the ideal ratio would be in the 1:2 to 1:4 range. If people have really figured out that 1:1 is better than 1:2, 1:3 and 1:4, I'd love to see that data.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  I don’t know whether there has been large-scale empirical testing of this, but anecdotally it sounds plausible. I can typically have a deeper and more efficient knowledge-sharing conversation about some technical topic 1:1 than 1:4 (e.g. in a professional context). In a 1:1 interaction, it is possible to efficiently figure out where the two interlocutors’ common premises are, and then explain concepts in whatever amount of detail is necessary for understanding, skipping over any parts that are known, with frequent checks that the other party is following along (not just pretending, and not suffering some misconception). In a 5-way interaction, it is typical for each participant to be coming from slightly different background / preparation, and have difficulty with different parts of the new material, which makes it necessary to take time for (sometimes extended) digressions to fill in whatever details are missing for anyone. It’s easy to accidentally not notice that 1 or more participants is missing crucial background, because it is time consuming to verify that each separate participant has a solid understanding of every idea. A problem that is too hard for one student will be too easy for another. Things might be better if you had the same 4 students to 1 tutor for, say, 3–4 years at a stretch. Then you could assume a lot of shared history, and amortize digressions to fill knowledge gaps for particular students. Better hope the students learn at a similar pace. When actively trying to solve a set of problems, with the students working independently with minimal guidance/help from an instructor, and if the only goal is problem-solving efficiency, then having more people is helpful, because different students will have trouble with one problem or another, and they can then confer and fill in the other answers at the end. Often the weaker students don’t fully understand everything to the extent they could solve a similar problem independently, but that’s often an acceptable standard. [Same story if you are trying to build some work project with many parts, etc.] But if the goal is to get everyone to understand every answer deeply and accurately, then in a 1:1 tutorial setting the expert tutor can ask leading questions, give appropriate hints, or just outright explain the answer if the problem gets to be too big a time suck. And the student can get more direct personal experience with trying to solve all of the problems with a fast feedback loop and without getting bogged down, and hopefully feel like they personally figured out most of the main breakthroughs. One issue is that often tutors (probably more than other types of teachers) are amateurs rather than experts in the subject or in teaching. For instance the tutor might be a slightly older student, a family member, a retired person volunteering, or the like. In that case 1:1 tutorial is still helpful vs. the student working alone, but obviously pales in comparison to highly skilled tutoring.

twunde 9y ago

The article correctly identifies consumer-facing education businesses as being incredibly difficult. I used to work in education and Chegg is the only consumer-facing company I can think of in the industry. Most other education companies have either sold or partnered with schools (Neverware, Clever, Jamf, etc). One of the interesting things with the market is that it's difficult to start penetrating districts since school budgets can vary year to year AND because many purchases have to be approved by school boards. But as soon as you're in, you essentially have a monopoly for a number of years. It's enterprise sales without the immediate huge money payoff. That said, there's a lot of money out there in education

analog31 9y ago
I'd add Texas Instruments, with their graphing calculators. They have an extremely low tech product whose prevalence actually detracts from kids learning to make effective use of computation. But they've established a monopoly position by understanding what real problems they're actually solving: 1) Moderating development to within a pace that teachers and the curriculum / testing industry can keep up with. 2) Keeping cheating under control. Disclosure: I have two kids in high school, both of whom need graphing calculators for their schoolwork. Both would prefer to use Python/Jupyter.
- jrochkind1 9y ago
  When I was in grade school, 20+ years ago, TI calculators were legitimately an impressive high-tech product. (and in some classes or for some quizes, you weren't _allowed_ to use them). They... haven't changed too too much since then. Somehow TI got from there to here, maintaining market success the whole time, but completely changing in how they fit in the environment somehow. Odd.
- japhyr 9y ago
  Do they use Python for their homework? I'm a math teacher and a programmer, and I can't wait to see the end of the TI dominance in education. I would happily let students in my classes use Python/ Jupyter for most of their work, and use calculators as needed to get ready for any tests that require their use.

virmundi 9y ago

Unfortunately I’m on my phone and I don’t have access to my laptop that has my research on this. Sadly, ed tech doesn’t work. The UK realized this. The US is starting to, state by state. This is not to say it can’t work. So far the startups have issues with not being able to provide an innovative product that works reliably.

zukzuk 9y ago

Top Hat — a Toronto based post-startup — has successfully gone against just about every point in this article. This article is full of whatever the inverse of survivorship bias is.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

orb_yt 9y ago

I understand this article is a bit outdated, but companies like Duolingo or Clever seem to prove a few of the author's arguments wrong. One would think there would be a market for Duolingo style apps for other subjects, such as mathematics, where the user is simply charged on a subscription bases. Could such a business not survive?

azinman2 9y ago
People want/need to learn another language for a very wide variety of reasons. While it is “teaching,” it’s also squarely in its own domain. I’m not sure they’d have an easy time transitioning to Duolingo for math. While I don’t have their demo stats, language learning often extends well into adulthood... many corporations will pay for employees to learn a new language, and English schools are popular world-wide. Not as many adults are motivated to learn calculus, which then leaves a younger market with less ability/willingness to pay.
- orb_yt 9y ago
  I do think that the overwhelming majority of Duolingo users are likely learning on their own volition, rather than for their job. > While it is “teaching,” it’s also squarely in its own domain Could this idea simply be because, for the most part, language learning applications have been the most successful? Other than Khan Academy, which is mostly videos, i've never heard of another company building similar products for other subjects. I'm not sure whether it's because the market doesn't exist or that it hasn't been tried.
  - azinman2 9y ago
    Language is pretty unique. You can be interested in, marry into, befriend, worship in, born from, work in, read in, watch in, move to, befriend, and be moved to a new language. As humanity requires language, learning a new one can happen at any stage of life. Rarely do people spend casual time learning what is typically taught in youth. Yes there are always people interested in TED talks but that’s effectively TV. Yes people go back to school but that’s focused structured time. Language is better if learned interactively, in both casual and formal settings. I can read a history book and feel accomplished. Reading a French textbook without application won’t work as well. Language requires active learning, where as many other subjects do not. Language apps such as duolingo are well suited accordingly (even better would be a really great conversational bot that could help you better pronounce your words). I’m not saying there aren’t other markets, but I am positing it’s def not evenly distributed across subject matter.

avichal 9y ago

Ah yes, the annual resurfacing of this blog post :) unfortunately I think most of it is still true. I should do a follow up... Edit: I'll address the comments/thoughts here in a follow up blog post. Glad to see so many people thinking about this space. It's a great thing for the world to have entrepreneurs building here.

sirspacey 9y ago
About to take an edtech startup to the consumer market- would love to see your updated advice!
jamesrcole 9y ago
"The underlying culture will change and expose interesting opportunities in the long term, but probably not for another 5 years." Given those 5 years have now passed, what's your assessement of the situation now?
jansho 9y ago
I thought I had read the post before. Thank you for the insights, and I hope that you can do that follow-up! One thing not mentioned which I think is important is the ease of paying (whether the edtech is app or web-based). It’s all very well to target those in poorer countries, but many of them (consumers) still don’t have online banking, and payment gateways are often local and clunky (I did notice in my last trip to Asia that this is improving.) I’d love to hear your thoughts on this :)
christophilus 9y ago
I'm currently working in ed-tech, so a followup would be greatly appreciated!

10-6 9y ago

This article was written in 2011, and I think since then with the "learn to code" movement becoming so popular and coding bootcamps promising to help people get software development jobs, things have changed a bit--at least for edtech companies teaching programming skills. There are a ton of popular websites that teach people coding/software development/design skills online now that have grown incredibly over the last few years, but still not really getting to mainstream status. Treehouse, Code School, DataCamp, Udemy, Frontend Masters, Udacity, Thinkful, Codecademy are just a few popular websites where people can learn to code today and all of them have a subscription plan. I don't think any of these have reached "mainstream" status, but there are definitely a lot more websites and applications today teaching people to code via subscription plans than there were 6 years ago. Whatever your thoughts are on the whole "learn to code" movement, it's clear that the landscape for edtech companies teaching programming/software development has changed since 2011. Will any of these companies teaching people to code ever reach "mainstream" status, I don't know.

bhaumik 9y ago
Thinkful pivoted from a subscription model to being a school focused on job placement a couple years back. Our core products are remote immersive & part-time courses in software development & data science. But tying back to the OP, the immersive program has a no tuition till you're hired financing option, (which a few other schools offer too). It's been pretty exciting hearing the joy from applicants who wouldn't have been able to afford the course w/ traditional financing options.

adamnemecek 9y ago

Figure out a way to franchise high schools to make them into coworking spaces. All teachers are remote and all teaching happens over skype. The employees on site are there only to make sure the kids dont kill each other. Offer an insane amount of subjects (this is possible since there might be only 30 kids worldwide interested in xyz, now they can take a class on it). The future of education is something along these lines I think. One could really make a lot of money with this because the costs will be fractional compared with real high school. Also no "athletic departments" fuck that shit.

colordrops 9y ago
Sounds inhuman.
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  unlike high school? lol. you are right, being on someone schedule for idk 12 hours a day (classes + hw) is one of the most humane experiences. in my model at least you get to pick your own path and each student might get a pretty unique experience if they choose to. what's inhuman about this btw?
visarga 9y ago
I like the idea. The role of the teacher would be to coach students (like giving them advice, monitoring progress). What was missing from the MOOC formula was real person, in the flesh accountability for learning.
- ivan_ah 9y ago
  Yes, human in the loop is definitely good. Reminds me a bit of the "Granny cloud": https://youtu.be/dk60sYrU2RU?t=12m https://youtu.be/dk60sYrU2RU?t=12m (talk is worth watching from the beginning)
- anonymous5133 9y ago
  You can still apply humans to MOOCs through tutoring or private lecture sessions etc.

davidgh 9y ago

I appreciated the point that VCs think about education differently than the masses. Reminds me of the AirBnB guys pitching their original idea of people renting out their couch for strangers to sleep on and getting thrown out by virtually all of them. “Who would EVER want that??”

juskrey 9y ago

Because academic-style and bootcamp-style education is largely a bullshit. As opposed to apprenticeship which happens in real business conditions.

itronitron 9y ago
i would include self-apprenticeship as well since people can learn many things easily on their own now (via internet)... unfortunately taking a bad class can rapidly kill a person's interest, especially if they have already invested considerable time into the subject matter
- juskrey 9y ago
  I think you wanted to say autodidactism (which is also legit). Apprenticeship implies following someone.. but yeah, not necessarily face-to-face.

booleanbetrayal 9y ago

I think what smart.ly is doing is pretty unique. Disclosure: I work there.

kolp 9y ago
Would you mind explaining what your company does and why you think it's unique? I visited your website and I am still none the wiser.
- booleanbetrayal 9y ago
  We offer a free, licensed, MBA course and offset the operational costs via a hiring engine that takes a cut on employment match. Online only, interactive, non-video content. There's also an extremely low-cost, licensed, EMBA program for those people who are already gainfully employed and just want to develop their business / operational knowledge.

KirinDave 9y ago

Meanwhile, Udacity...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ChicagoDave 9y ago

I built Textfyre in 2007 and closed in 2011. Gates Foundation put our ideas in their grant program and put all their resources into existing publishers. Later, Pearson was on NPR spouting many of Textfyre’s pitch points. None of these companies have figured out Interactive education or reduced cost or improved quality. I still believe we could have, but we couldn’t convince others. Mostly because a real MVP would have cost millions to create. But we could have saved states billions by replacing textbooks with online, interactive, cross-discipline content. The market is closed to startups. The industry is fighting disruption in every way they can.

anonymous5133 9y ago
I completely agree that Pearson sells itself as innovative but it is anything but that! Their "mylab" type products aren't innovative. It is just the same old same old. I would even argue that it has been counterproductive because they're now moving to FORCE students to buy new expensive textbooks to get the homework grading code. Pearson has absolutely zero interest in disrupting anything. They only care about building their monopoly on textbooks. However, I am an optimist and believe that even with well entrenched interest groups (big textbook publishers, school districts, unions etc.) there is still paths to disruption. At a fundamental level, education is simply teaching someone something new. That's it! If you are providing something quality then people will naturally flock to it or share it. I think the future education startup simply needs to focus on building high quality learning materials. Then either give those products away for free or innovative monetization models (ie. watch 5 video ads to unlock the content etc.). Don't focus on trying to sell to school districts. Focus on going straight to the consumer: students or parents. Every student I know is already going online to get extra homework help, resources, youtube videos etc.
- ChicagoDave 9y ago
  The only way we'll change education is to disrupt the classroom from a systemic point of view. We have to prove there is a better way. That can only be done with high quality content newly constructed for interactivity. This is where Pearson, Britannica, et al fail. They have a library of content created over decades with a guaranteed state-driven pipeline into classrooms. This content is specifically created by old school experts specifically for printed chapters in a bound book. Creating real interactive content would require content experts work within an interactive digital agency framework, which would require a sizable R&D budget with a lot of trial and error. We're talking millions of dollars spent before a completed product was available. But here's the upside. Textbooks cost each state roughly $100 per student per year. An online system might charge a fraction of that (Textfyre targeted $1/student/year). Imagine the state of Illinois saving $99 per student per year over several years. The investment is risky to a degree, but I view it no differently than Kennedy choosing to go to the moon. You decide to do it. You find the best and the brightest to enable the vision. You enact the vision. There is an upfront cost, but the vision and results would alter the course of history in the world. Interactive, adaptable education systems are the future. They would be able to reach everyone on the planet regardless of age, gender, politics, class, or any other identity labels. I have a second start-up (Wizely). I'll probably keep swinging if it doesn't hit a nerve. If I ever have one succeed and make (a lot of) money, I will re-invest my profits into education and what I call positive social engagement. My advice to ed-tech startups. Find a way to make money, but immediately redirect all profits to attacking the classroom. That's where we need the R&D to go. As the OP said, consumer-based ed-tech has its limits. The classroom is where we need to drive innovation.

analog31 9y ago

I've told this story before: Back when I was in college, I had a summer internship at a place that was a service center for the K-12 schools in a large county. Microcomputers were the big new thing. We had a facility with one of each kind of computer (Commodore, Apple, Radio Shack, etc.) and all the software we could lay their hands on. Teachers could come in and try things out. My impression was that the "educational" software was extremely crude and one-dimensional, basically glorified flash cards. Today, the "educational" software is Web based, and more flashy, but still retains that lack of breadth. It's hard and expensive to write interactive software, so a lot of the apps are basically one or two templates, with different sets of data / parameters for different lessons. Here's a picture. Move your mouse around. When something lights up, click on it, and a little box of text will pop up for you to read. I kid you not. This is real. Today. Now I have two kids who are in high school. We have acquired (can't say bought in most cases) piles of educational technology, yet little or none of it was "EdTech." The most glaring example was Microsoft Office. The kids used it to create reports, presentations, drawings, etc. It has been supplanted by Google Docs, which they now use heavily, including for collaborative assignments. We've played with Jupyter/Python. My son is learning solid modeling using some free app. One of them uses DuoLingo daily, as does my spouse. Some of their educational technology is still in the analog domain: Musical instruments. ;-) I think the take-away for me is that we are providing our kids with technology that supports their education, but it isn't written for kids. It's the same stuff that grown-ups use. Jupyter/Python is an example -- it's my primary computing tool for my job. Another common feature is that these are creativity tools, not consumption tools.

geebee 9y ago
Part of the problem is that programming is supposed to be "fun", as in "fun and games", not as in a serious topic that you enjoy so much you call it fun. This is why a lot of programming is taught through graphical games. I'm not knocking Minecraft style programming lessons, they can be very motivational and build up programming skills and thought processes. Unfortunately, I'm not that kind of programmer. I'm more the type who enjoys scikit-learn and kaggle than xbox. Even as a kid, I was more interested in programming to know who had the advantage in 3v2 rolls in Risk than programming a game itself (in other words, I wanted to program to get insight into a game, not to play the game itself). But I wanted to introduce my 12 year old to programming, so rather than trying to learn about Minecraft, I helped him install jupyter notebook and showed him how he could automate some of his math homework. We wrote a method to calculate mean, median, range, that sort of thing, and he learned how to feed a series of lists into it, and graph it. Believe it or not, this pleased him a great deal. He left feeling slightly buoyed, like he'd gained an edge. But if programming remains an add-on to a school curriculum, who wants to do more math in an after school program, or a summer camp? So "learning to program for kids" will probably remain heavily focused on graphics and games. Which may be ok, my interest in simulating a dice roll rather than programming a game per se may not be reflective of how most kids (who have great potential) are wired. And honestly, programming Minecraft is among the best of the educational software. Zoombinis was pretty cool, too, even if it was purely a game. Truth his, much educational software just re-teaches math, or history, but with buzzers and rewarding little cartoons for wrong or right answers.

jkuria 9y ago

What about companies like The Great Courses (formerly teaching company) that takes out full page spreads in the WSJ on a regular basis? Are they still niche?

anonymous5133 9y ago
Yup, still niche. If you look at their courses it is primarily consists of unique topics or subtopics of a bigger topic. If they want to be a disruptor then they need to start creating college courses and reduce the price. Create a certification system and create innovative learning systems for the courses.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

thelock85 9y ago

Lots of solution-focused dialogue here but from my experience, I've come to believe that education startups fail because the education marketplace is actually a loose confederation of communities and consumer preferences are more akin to individual values and beliefs. This makes it really difficult to market evidence-based solutions or scale your sales strategy.

smallnamespace 9y ago

Couple of other causes: - It's very hard to measure to value add of education; people have spent lives working on this - Only half the value of educational institutions comes from educating people; the other half comes from the credentialing where they pick out the 'brighter' individuals, but measuring how much a credential is worth is almost impossible for most individuals

anonymous5133 9y ago
Credentials aren't immune from disruption. Just look at how the trades work. They all are using some sort of independent testing company that certifies people. In the future employers might not care if you have a BA degree if instead you have an electrician certificate or some comptia certification. Those credentials might be more valuable. Perhaps in the future there will be certifications for programming languages that are industry standard. Accountants have their CPA and lawyers have their BAR exam so on so forth.
- lostboys67 9y ago
  But theirs more than one way to do it :-) and from my dads experience chartered status is more about who you know not what. And in the USA in particular what point are BAR exams when you get people with ZERO experience of law appointed to senior legal positions - No offence to one of Obamas Supreme nominations but they had no real world judging experience - shades of E l Wisty

alexashka 9y ago

This is well written, and frankly off the mark. If online education got people cushy jobs the way university degrees get people cushy jobs - online education would be massively profitable. That's not the case. There's nothing else to it. Regarding online education in general: Universities/colleges should have to post their full curriculum, lecture notes and all textbooks and chapters used for each class - that's enough. There's no need for businesses here - just tell us what you're teaching your class, and anyone interested can go read the textbook. Make video lectures available as a bonus for a little bit of money, that's it! A lot of students already don't attend classes and just read the lecture notes and chapters needed. These online education start-ups remind me of companies that take Craigslist and start adding unnecessary bells and whistles to justify their existence. We already have craigslist and it works folks. Stop trying to make a buck by being so incredibly boring.

anonymous5133 9y ago
Universities already do that. Simply go to google, type whatever course you want to learn followed by syllabus. Some of the bigger schools have all the teachers list their syllabus on a central page as well. Obviously it is for the benefit of the student but indirectly the syllabus is the outline of the course - lists textbooks used, chapters covered, homework problems etc. To get notes you might be able to find online somewhere.
- alexashka 9y ago
  Great. This is not obvious to most people. Especially people who've never been to university like me. So the last mile left to accomplish in 'online education' is to standardize the presentation of the syllabus/outline and inform people that that is a viable option.

Lich 9y ago

I'm currently working for an education startup right now. We are struggling. Have been for the past few years. The biggest problems I've noticed: 1. Cost. When you deal with school districts, you usually sell for X number of devices. So for example, all devices for 5th-7th grade, something like that. When you sell alot, schools will usually ask for volume licensing. Schools don't want to see prices above $5. This goes for devices for the quality of the devices they purchase. Often, the student device is cheap, low-powered, and in the case of Windows devices, packed to the brim with all sorts of software running in the background: web filters, virus-scanners, and some educational apps. Top that off with apps that students install like Spotify and games, it slows the machine down to a crawl or causes problems that might interfere with your software solution. 2. Different school districts have different needs. Although our software solution was initially meant to be for general use by all schools, we kept running into school district that needed very specific needs to that school or district. That lead to developing new features that only a small handful of school district would use, sometimes confusing users who did not need such features, or didn't even know we had the feature. 3. If your software solution works with student information systems data, it can often be a nightmare getting school districts to create that data. 4. School IT teams are...pretty terrible. Or rather, they're swamped with so many issues from so many products and devices, that they care very little as to learn how to deploy your product properly. Have documentation? Trust me, they probably won't read it. You will most likely get an e-mail asking how to deploy. 5. Trials, trials, trials. Schools aren't going to pay up just because they see a video demo of your product. They're going to want a trial at minimum for half the school year, maybe more. Then... 6. ...Politics. Decision to purchase needs to be approved by some board.

discreditable 9y ago
Coming from the grades 9-12 sysadmin side, I might be able to provide some perspective. Every school is wildly different, so I would recommend against applying my perspectives too broadly. 1. Cost: Windows licenses for student PCs are just under $20/PC/year (for us). Is your $5 software 25% as useful to students as their operating system is? Even worse, the reality is if I put your software on my 1000 computers I'll be lucky if 300 of them use it. That's something to keep in mind when working with per-device licenses. I agree installed system software bloat is a problem. That results from every department having different needs. We might be a little different in that we don't allow students to install/run foreign software (using AppLocker). 2. I agree different schools are amazingly different. I collaborate with a few other schools around me and whenever we meet I'm pretty floored by how differently each one approaches basic problems. These significant differences really add up and I can understand how supporting schools might be a pain. 3. It seems like every vendor wants access to my SIS. That's a privilege not granted lightly. I'm generally okay with automated CSV dumps of bare minimum data uploaded over a secure channel, but some vendors have the nerve to request direct LDAP or Oracle database access over the public Internet. No way! 4. I'll agree school IT teams are generally terrible. Among my peers and schools I collaborate with, I'm the only one with a degree in IT. Many are older and migrated to the role from something else (former math teachers surprisingly often). Some find themselves shoehorned into the role because they happened to be the most technically-inclined among the staff. These guys are uncomfortable in powershell/cmd and typically use contractors or local PFYs to handle technical details. Schools do not pay enough to attract decent talent. I could work for a local company and make 1.5-2x more doing less than I do here, but for now I like this environment. 5. While video demos can be helpful product overviews. I distrust video demos just as I distrust other marketing wank. I want to test drive the car before I decide to purchase it. That said, I wouldn't expect anyone to let me demo something longer than 60 days. The long time in my case is that exploring new software is usually a backburner project, and I am likely to have other things come up that take priority. I never put production data into trial software however. 6. Yes, purchasing processes are a pain. I 100% agree. I currently have a request for $60 of printer toner that's been sitting in the requisition process for over a week. Trust me, it's just as bad for us on the inside.

jv22222 9y ago

There's also the issue that single point tech solutions often don't help schools, or districts, in a meaningful way. This is because "the tech" is just the tip of the iceberg and there's a disconnect between the districts that purchase software and the teachers who are left to try and figure it out on their own. I wrote in more detail about this issue here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/11/13/want-a-modern-school-system-technology-is-not-enough/#272169d343c6 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/11/13/wa...

jondubois 9y ago

I worked for an Education startup a couple of years ago. They had a really good math learning product which blew away the competition in terms of software quality but they didn't achieve exponential growth. It was linear growth but at a very good rate. The trick was to sell directly to schools and educational institutions. There are new challenges there but it's also very high-reward. You can sell 1000 licenses from a single deal with a school. If you get a government public school contract you could be looking at 100k licenses from a single deal. I think that companies which do big b2b deals have become greatly undervalued. VCs are so obsessed chasing exponential growth curves that they seem to have forgotten that the earth only has limited population and that buying power has become much more centralized and is becoming increasingly centralized.

meepso 9y ago
There is truth to the centralization issue in education, we see more and more deals being done at 100k levels. Makes the current way of doing business on smaller language markets obsolete, I'm not sure it's for the better.
- jondubois 9y ago
  I think a problem is that most parents (in the west) don't have any ideas or opinions about what learning tools are best for their children - Most parents are happy to let the education system decide what's best. I think most busy parents these days tend to see the school system as an end-to-end automatic education machine; you insert a young uneducated child, put some money in it and several years later an educated adult comes out. With that mindset it's easy to see why it's better to do deals directly with schools than trying to get the attention of the parents.
pdg11 9y ago
I work with an education start up now. Company does really well in the b2c space but we are looking into the b2b (educational institutions). Were you guys dealing with individual schools or going straight to districts/counties?

benzheren 9y ago

In China(or South Korea, or Japan), it is totally a different story. Majority of the parents think education as an investment, thus one of the best places to do an education related startup would be in China.

tonydiv 9y ago

I am trying to build an online coding school for kids ages 6-13. I mostly agree with what's being stated because we already have customers in China, Korea, and Japan despite doing no marketing there. They are hard markets to ignore, especially when US parents are a harder sell. In order for us to be successful in the long-term, we must be a cross-border company. Coding is one of the things that parents are increasingly willing to pay for, but it is still in the process of becoming a middle-class family demand. https://block.school https://block.school

tianshuo 9y ago

If you are a startup marketing for the Asian market especially China, feel free to send your BP to me(tianshuo@galaxyinternet.com), we are a VC that helps foreign startups (and local startups) understand the very complicated Chinese education market.

amitmathew 9y ago

Interesting article! If you're thinking about targeting consumers in edtech, there's a lot of good advice in here. My company mainly sells to medical students, which are a highly incentivized group of consumers, so we can avoid some of the pitfalls mentioned in the article. However, most of the action in edtech is focused on selling to institutions because that's where the money is. The good news is institutions are more willing than ever to try out new technologies if you can convince them you can impact recruitment, retention, graduation rates, etc. Of course, that's easier said than done. Not many startups can wait around for 5 years to do a comprehensive research study. And you get all the classic problems of selling to institutions (and magnified in education): slow sales cycles, multiple decision-makers, politics, etc. I think an interesting problem in edtech today is there are a lot of "startups" that fit in that dangerous area between a small business and a high-growth startup. You'll find dozens of companies that help improve mathematical skills, create STEM games, or build products for improving reading and writing comprehension. A lot of these companies might grow to be multi-million dollar companies over several years, but they won't fit that "classic" startup growth curve. Since venture money is flowing relatively well (and a few VCs focus specifically on edtech), a lot of these companies get funded. But there's a dilemma for these entrepreneurs: what do you do when you realize that your company is growing 2x each year (which is great!), but not at 10x where your investors want you.

0xCMP 9y ago

So education != tech education, correct?

ziikutv 9y ago

This really is a great read. Reading the first bullet alone is worth its weight in gold.

nargella 9y ago

I joined an edtech company earlier this year: yellowdig.com. I think the thing I'd echo from this post is that time definitely needs to be on your side. Having connections also really helps. I'll keep the points about cost in my back pocket.

smashingfiasco 9y ago

What this post is lamenting is the loss of some actor like MECC. We had great software written for students (not adults) at one point. Many of us here have used it and fondly remember it. Titles like Oregon Trail, Reader Rabbit, etc... Unfortunately, MECC got spun-off from the actual Minnesota education system, then purchased by a giant ed-tech company and left to wither. The endowment that MECC (in its purist form) left behind faded in time. There is still a lot of great educational software out there. It's just all locked away on a MacOS 9 box, tied to libraries and runtimes that never made the jump to Mac OS X and then iOS. From the business side of it, we'd honestly need something of a PBS-like software company to reconstruct what we lost with MECC. I think that's the only way it'd work. The software would have to be made, not because it was profitable, but because it needed to be made and was a good thing for our society to have.

pascalxus 9y ago

I must say, I really like how this blog does thorough use cases with deep information about the why things don't succeed. 2 thumbs up!

tmaly 9y ago

I have a 4 year old, and I have found most of the educational things that work well at a young age are crafts and STEM based kits. I was looking at the apple app store today as we were waiting for an appointment. It is quite flooded with all sorts of educational apps, but most that I tried were of low quality. Performing a search for the best reading or math app did not improve much. I think there may be an opportunity here, but it would take a team with diverse talents and not just a team of developers to build something good.