> I believe education is a commodity market. Sales happen in bulk and large sales via public bids, government allocations, and lobbying. I suspect that in the first world, textbook companies are likely to be harder competitors than Wolfram Research: the market is a finite pie and the businesses are relatively low margin.
You are right, but only if you say that the education market is limited to apps and books used by schools. However, there is also a market for apps or books to help to prepare for exams or simply understand some notions better - tiplus mentioned math-42, and there are many others. My plan is to fight on this market first, and if I get some recognition, I will attack the much harder market of the schools.
> I don't think the technical challenge of building a symbolic algebra problem changes much with two cofounders, i.e. if there was a business person one person would still be writing all the code. Which is to say, developing a symbolic algebra package is audacious no matter how it gets sliced.
> The solo founder challenges are not so much technical as social and psychological. The educational angle means piling the study of pedagogical research and analysis of pedagogical methods on top of all the business stuff.
Another observation that is true: no matter how hard the work on symbolic algebra is, the work on the pedagogy is even harder - I am finding out at the moment.
> Because middle school age children are minors it also means it's going to be hard to get direct access to end users, comply with privacy laws, and separate willing use from mandated use.
In fact I am thinking of targeting parents who care about the education of their kids. I noticed that people who have a scientific background seem more interested in the concept of an AI to teach math than "normal" parents.