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.
Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)
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Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)
#12Top 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.
Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)
#13[deleted]
Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)
#14I understand this article is a bit outdated, but companies like Duolingo or Clever seem to prove a few of the author's arguments wrong.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?
Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)
#15Ah 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.
Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)
#16This 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.
Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)
#17I 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?
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.
Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)
#18Ah 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.
About to take an edtech startup to the consumer market- would love to see your updated advice!
Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)
#19Figure 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.
Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)
#20I 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?
Is Duolingo actually making money?