In 1982 Philip Neal, a Secondary teacher, became so frustrated with the way data was managed at his school that he wrote a simple program to try and solve a few of his problems. As word spread about this program, more and more people wanted in on it, and each with their own suggestions and demands.
Philip Neal was however an exception. He was actually able to program in code. He had a captive market audience to test upon, and he couldn’t find any other competitors. It is too easy to suggest that this is the norm now. In today’s climate, many of the traditional barriers to launching an EdTech startup have come crashing down – apart from one.
So what are the barriers and challenges to launching your own edtech startup?
Lack of Ideas
As Stef Lewandowski said in a recent article, ‘ideas are ten a penny’ – and in the Education world, this is never truer. With a hugely connected environment, people are happier than ever to share their opinions, thoughts and ideas. The culture of schools is changing rapidly, and lots of learning aspects are ripe to be developed, challenged and adjusted.
One difficulty that I have seen in my involvement with EdTech is people bringing solutions to problems which don’t exist. It is far better to come up with an idea which either:
solves an existing problem; or,
forks an existing solution to a problem.
Both these approaches look at the cause rather than the effect.
Lack of market research
Have you ever had Apple cold-call you and try to sell you something? No, me neither. There is a demand for Apple products, just as there is a demand for certain solutions in Education. Seek out that demand, and you will have customers coming to you, rather than you having to seek them out. Many vendors at the BETT Technology Exhibition that I spoke to were very firmly of the Catalogues/Sales Teams/Headteachers only route of selling. Here is an insider’s tip – almost 95% of catalogues never come out of their packaging, sales teams are unpopular, and Headteachers are often some of the staff who know least what the staff actually want to use in their classrooms. I’ve heard a Head turn down a £100 product, and later that day agree to a £2,000 purchase – because the teacher explained just how powerful it was. Get your teachers onside, and you have a virtually free salesforce.
How to get your market research? This is the easiest bit – get involved! Support a Teachmeet event, follow and comment on teachers who use Twitter (generally, don’t be pushy), and have a maildrop on something like Rocketstart to collect the emails of interested parties, to offer them a chance to beta test.
Lack of funding
The webspace is now awash with funding opportunities, for the small bootstrap startup to the product-ready company. Studentcraft, Kickstarter, Indiegogo all crowdfund projects of all types, including startups, but allowing you a platform to essentially pre-sell your product. No demand – no cash. This may well be the best type of market research that you will ever get for your product. The demographic of Kickstarter is young, mobile, has a comfortable income – if your product is suited to them but nobody buys it, the signs are incredibly clear!
For those with sales already behind them, or a successful MVP with sector interest, there a plenty of Angel Investors keen to get involved with the (growing) Edtech industry, for a percentage of the business.
Pre startup, what funds do you need anyway? If you take the philosophy bootstrapping, and are painfully aware that any money you borrow you actually have to pay back, the list of essentials drops considerably. Seth Godin put this very succinctly once: ‘Imagine you walk into work one day, and you discover that from this day onwards there are going to be no sales. What bills and extras would you cancel now? Do you therefore really need them now?’
Lack of Technical Skill
In his enlightening book ‘The Four Hour Work Week’, Tim Ferriss explains clearly how he utilises the online global village to ensure he gets any service he desires, at a price he can accept to pay. This includes technical know-how and programming skills. With sites like Freelancer.com, it is now more easier than ever to find the programmer to match your needs.
That is not to dismiss the growth in talent in the UK and abroad. There is a generation of keen programmers in bedrooms and student vaults who are only too keen to work on the next big thing; for a slice of the pie of course. While clearly you want to have a high calibre of programmer, with an innate understanding of scale and infrastructure, getting programming help is now more easy than ever.
Lack of Business acumen
Surely you need business acumen? I would contend that it is possible to begin a startup even with a lack of understanding how a business works. StartupWeekend, EdBootCamp and even events like The Pitch are all designed to marry skilled business leaders and mentors with those who have a drive and passion to create. You can have an idea and no understanding of business, but there are plenty of people who are willing to help, guide and support you along this journey at the same time.
What is most interesting about the lack of business acumen is that, from my experience, the community around EdTech startups is incredibly generous and supportive. I am involved in two startups at the moment, and have been overwhelmed by the goodwill, guidance, support and interest that has come from the industry itself as well as those outside the industry. If your business fails, it may be that you didn’t ask enough people for help, or even more seriously, you didn’t listen to the guidance you were given.
Lack of Drive
This is the only barrier left to tackle. In the various circles I work and mix in, I hear hundreds of ideas every week. Almost all of them go nowhere. Why? Drive. People write them off almost as soon as they mention them, and they disappear. Those with drive take an idea, note it down, mull it over, play with it, bounce it off each other and try to tease out if this is something really worth exploring.
The tools to build a startup are out there; the barriers have come crashing down, and the only one left is inside you. Are you prepared to take on the challenge of an EdTech startup? Are you someone who watches from the sidelines, frustrated by problems but not willing to find solutions, or are you someone like Philip Neal, who in 1982 invented what became SIMS Management system, used in over 80% of schools in the UK; a market leader who in 1994 enjoyed a turnover of £13.5 million and was able to sell his business to Capita.
Thanks Stephen, great blog. Any idea why schools have been particularly cautious about new ideas?
I think there is a hesitancy to look at Enterprise within the school sector. As a culture, we are happy to buy in materials and resources, but somehow less comfortable with creating then selling back.
There are exceptions to this, and we might assume that there is a bigger culture of sharing, but this isn’t as prevalent as you might expect.
Here’s an interesting model to ponder – a company approaches several schools and offers them £5,000 for some of the school’s IP – be it plans, in-house software or solutions (this is more common than one might think) or resources. What might the schools then view as saleable assets within their school? There is a lot of material with commercial value buried deep behind firewalls and pride, which would make a huge difference to both that school and any school who bought it, given the chance.
One way to track this might be to watch how schools react to the abandonment of Levelling, most especially at Primary Schools. How many products will come of of this, and how many of these products will have been driven by schools themselves, despite being probably the best experts at demonstrated the need for an effective and agile levelling/equivalent product?