I worked in Higher Ed for a while, and when I left I thought "oh it should be really easy to create a company that makes better software than much of the academ

I worked in Higher Ed for a while, and when I left I thought "oh it should be really easy to create a company that makes better software than much of the academic software out there, probably for way less money as well". But then it hit me. Almost everything, even pretty inexpensive stuff is purchased by large and mostly unqualified committees (with a requirement that at least one member be insane). The process is usually drawn out over many months, even years (not just for blackboard scale sized products). The result is that to survive the key is not a great product, but to have patience and lots of salespeople in suits to send to listen to these committees and make them feel like you care. (In my experience even if you know what product you want, you still have to go through the ritual, the fastest I ever saw software purchased was 4 months, and that still required bringing in sales people even when we knew what product we wanted) A team of 1-3 smart developers could create a product that is significantly better than blackboard and orders of magnitude cheaper in less than a year. But the process of selling the product would take more energy and resources than they could commit. A team of smart developers would quickly realize there are much better ways to make money and sell software. I believe this is the core of why most academic software (institutional level) is terrible, the only companies that would put up with this are ones that are more interested exploitation than creating great software.