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“We were a tech-enabled therapy platform for children with autism. I recently decided to stop working on it, we sold part of the company, and I shut the rest do

“We were a tech-enabled therapy platform for children with autism. I recently decided to stop working on it, we sold part of the company, and I shut the rest down. It was a wild ride: we were sued, we raised millions of dollars, hired over 130 people, and I made tons of mistakes.” I’m going to be equally honest. How does it make sense on a base-of-system level? What were 130 people doing? What could the technology possibly have been to enable therapy for autistic children? What mistakes could you have made in such a situation, with what possible consequences? For who, the children or the technology?

julianeon 3y ago
My wife works in special ed and it's pretty straightforward for me to imagine how this could be beneficial. Briefly, there's a lot of time, effort, resources and people involved in treating this. The money is certainly there, being spent all the time - by parents, schools, etc. Not just in treating, but also testing (which seems computer friendly). So the question would be tapping into that, and making it useful. Of course I don't know the details of this particular story, but in a general sense, it's easy to understand why you might build such a business.
ArnoVW 3y ago
Don't know the product, but anything that acts as a force multiplier for education / healthcare without that value being 100% captured by already rich people, or quality being reduced, is a miracle. You should be proud of yourself for just having tried to do it.
- germinalphrase 3y ago
  A glance at recent ycombinator edtech investments seem to put a lot of emphasis on classroom-replacement/supplementation rather than tools for improving instruction. This is probably just a sign of the (post-)Covid era, but I do find it interesting when compared to the broader SAAS world that obsesses about “improving [professional’s] ability to do [job]” at increasingly granular levels.
  - DropInIn 3y ago
    Iirc it was the same precovid...

julianeon 3y ago

My wife works in special ed and it's pretty straightforward for me to imagine how this could be beneficial. Briefly, there's a lot of time, effort, resources and people involved in treating this. The money is certainly there, being spent all the time - by parents, schools, etc. Not just in treating, but also testing (which seems computer friendly). So the question would be tapping into that, and making it useful. Of course I don't know the details of this particular story, but in a general sense, it's easy to understand why you might build such a business.

ArnoVW 3y ago

Don't know the product, but anything that acts as a force multiplier for education / healthcare without that value being 100% captured by already rich people, or quality being reduced, is a miracle. You should be proud of yourself for just having tried to do it.

germinalphrase 3y ago
A glance at recent ycombinator edtech investments seem to put a lot of emphasis on classroom-replacement/supplementation rather than tools for improving instruction. This is probably just a sign of the (post-)Covid era, but I do find it interesting when compared to the broader SAAS world that obsesses about “improving [professional’s] ability to do [job]” at increasingly granular levels.
- DropInIn 3y ago
  Iirc it was the same precovid...