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Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

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Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#141

Post by tonypace »

azinman2 wrote: post #65
orb_yt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. Ye…

English Central attempts the conversation bot but it is fairly terrible. Competition would be welcome.

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#142

Post by tonypace »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #90
crimsonalucard wrote: post #74

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 redu…

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?

The point is not solely related to investment banking. Education as social signaling will not be disrupted by the blockchain.

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#143

Post by [deleted] »

Symbiote wrote: post #113
Chris2048 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What year was that? When it was my turn to play on the computer at school, it was a BBC micro, and the game "grannies garden". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3_6r6_1D3M

That game is from 1992, and ran on an Acorn Archimedes. I've recorded a playthrough of the demo of the sequel, which is from 1994: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRWa6v-QEcY I provided the disc images of my copy of the original (not the sequel) to the people at this forum [1] — I think the "provisional images" must be mine — but they haven't released the game to the public. [1] https://forums.jaspp.org.uk/forum/view…

[deleted]

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#144

Post by richardknop »

askvictor wrote: post #138
richardknop wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, PayPal, Hulu etc are making money. I think the point is that if education is a good area for entrepreneurs to make money, there should be some example success stories already. So far, nothing worth mentioning in education segment.

My point was that you can be big (and successful for some definitions of success) without being profitable.

How? Other than non profit / charity, how do you get money to pay expenditures?

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#145

Post by analog31 »

japhyr wrote: post #34
analog31 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) Keepin…

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.

They don't. It's strictly recreational. Right now one is in 2nd year calculus, and the other is in "Algebra 2 and trig." There is little or no use of computation in their classes, perhaps because it's so cumbersome. When there is any computation, there is an emphasis on the graphing calculators because they're allowed by the standardized tests, and the teacher is familiar with them. The Algebra teacher even stipulates that he can only work with TI calculators, not Casio.

I think there are a couple of broader issues here. First of all, I'd like to see more of what I call computation for lack of a better term, in the K-12 math curriculum. This isn't for turning people into professional programmers, but because computation has had a huge influence on how people do both practical and theoretical math. Thus, a computation-free K-12 curriculum misrepresents what math is.

Of course the other issue is teacher training, and standardized testing. Changing the curriculum requires changes to both teacher training and the tests. If it's not on the test, then it can't be taught. Remember proofs in geometry? Gone.

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#146

Post by fludlight »

geebee wrote: post #58
analog31 wrote: post #53

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 "educationa…

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 th…

> Truth his, much educational software just re-teaches math, or history, but with buzzers and rewarding little cartoons for wrong or right answers.

Honest question: what's wrong with Skinner boxing kids to get them addicted to memorizing an introductory corpus of data? At some point you want them to get creative, but creativity is impossible without some sort of foundation.

My n=1 anecdote is that I now know way more about geography than most of my peers, largely thanks to playing Carmen San Diego 20+ years ago. That game had me look up facts in an accompanying reference book in exchange for a little cartoon reward. I played it many times and eventually retained the facts.

PS: Kudos on teaching your kid to use jupyter notebooks! I taught myself how to do stats in college by implementing it in lisp.

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#147

Post by jondubois »

meepso wrote: post #118
jondubois wrote: post #95

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…

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.

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.

Re: Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

#148

Post by pdg11 »

jondubois wrote: post #95

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…

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?
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