4 ms·

It's not a great territory for startups, because the buying decisions are made by such bureaucratic organizations. There's no group of clever, poor early adopt

by pg 18y ago

It's not a great territory for startups, because the buying decisions are made by such bureaucratic organizations. There's no group of clever, poor early adopters for a startup to start with.

thepanister 18y ago
Well, maybe if it's about k12/high school education, but if it's about computer education/CBT for example, the situation might be different! I had a website that I was selling advanced CBT on it, like PHP, C, cisco, perl training videos, and it was doing very good. I had to stop it because the items that I was selling were illegal, and this was the only reason. :)
flavio87 18y ago
Yeah I can relate to that. Selling to teachers/schools can be very tedious, and they are sometimes "anti-business", they don't want to see someone make profit in the classroom. You migh have an edge since your that young --> people will think it's very cool that you start something and you'll have "junior bonus". Try to capitalize on that.
gojomo 18y ago
So you need a longer runway and perhaps even friends in the bureaucracy to crack the traditional mass education market... things a teen (or ultra-lean startup at any age) might find especially hard. But maybe the idea can appeal to the growing nontraditional markets: tutoring, distance education, self-education, corporate training, for-profit higher-ed (U of Phoenix, ITT, etc.). Also: internet in the schools brings advertising at a level far beyond the controversies that affected ChannelOne/Edison in the 90s. Not all school computers have ad blockers, do they? So perhaps even an ad-supported model would work for a really lean educational web-app startup -- and there's little more lean than a single teen founder.
- pg 18y ago
  I think you're better off finding something that can start outside the education market, then have it be adopted by them when it reaches the point that it would be ridiculous not to.

by pg 18y ago

It's not a great territory for startups, because the buying decisions are made by such bureaucratic organizations. There's no group of clever, poor early adopters for a startup to start with.

thepanister 18y ago

Well, maybe if it's about k12/high school education, but if it's about computer education/CBT for example, the situation might be different! I had a website that I was selling advanced CBT on it, like PHP, C, cisco, perl training videos, and it was doing very good. I had to stop it because the items that I was selling were illegal, and this was the only reason. :)

flavio87 18y ago

Yeah I can relate to that. Selling to teachers/schools can be very tedious, and they are sometimes "anti-business", they don't want to see someone make profit in the classroom. You migh have an edge since your that young --> people will think it's very cool that you start something and you'll have "junior bonus". Try to capitalize on that.

gojomo 18y ago

So you need a longer runway and perhaps even friends in the bureaucracy to crack the traditional mass education market... things a teen (or ultra-lean startup at any age) might find especially hard. But maybe the idea can appeal to the growing nontraditional markets: tutoring, distance education, self-education, corporate training, for-profit higher-ed (U of Phoenix, ITT, etc.). Also: internet in the schools brings advertising at a level far beyond the controversies that affected ChannelOne/Edison in the 90s. Not all school computers have ad blockers, do they? So perhaps even an ad-supported model would work for a really lean educational web-app startup -- and there's little more lean than a single teen founder.

pg 18y ago
I think you're better off finding something that can start outside the education market, then have it be adopted by them when it reaches the point that it would be ridiculous not to.