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Comment by npunt | Hacker News Reader

Are you aware of any other edtech companies that have built solutions similar to what you're proposing? That's a good place to start.

BTW, these YC guidelines are built on actual experiences from 100+ companies. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss their hard-earned wisdom.

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Nope, which is why I applied.

And I agree in the sense that I believe in YC more than anybody. But I disagree in the sense that no edtech solution to date is dramatically changing the world as much as a Facebook or Uber, so something must not be working. And I'm calling out Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, EdX, Khan Academy, Codecademy, Vidcode, Jumpcut, MakeSchool, AltSchool, HackClub, codings bootcamps and regular school itself. Honestly, the best solutions right now are in fact YouTube, Reddit and Hacker News.

YC won't do your homework for you. There's great resources out there tho - start by spending a few hours on EdSurge. I literally started the company to inform folks like you entering the space to learn what's going on, who's doing what, and how ed is different from other industries being impacted by tech. It's the best resource out there.

The main takeaway I have after seeing so many enter this space in the past 7+ years is that the incurious never get very far. Be curious and seek to understand the paths of others before you, and you may find your place in it all.

With all due respect, it's a total fallacy that edtech has to be different from other industries. There's no physical force in the universe forcing education to be any certain way. So if one way is provably better, we should just build it, and deal with the obstacles when they come up later. Kids, both privileged and not, have been dropping out for years because they're tired of things. I'm building this for them.

To quote Balaji Srinivasan of 21 & A16z:

"Don't argue about regulation. Build Uber. Don't argue about monetary policy. Build Bitcoin. Don't argue about it. Build the alternative."

Re:industries, you don't think that the fact that education is about humans, rather than say.. power grids, or financial instruments, or mines, or laundry detergents.. makes it at least somewhat different from other industries? Or that those being served (children) are often not in a position to be the sole determinants of what's best for them, and thus your buyers may not be your users (and all that entails)?

Re:physical forces, there's actually several that have defined why education is a certain way today, and that will shape it in the future. Probably the most powerful is that it's first and foremost about human relationships - foundations of values, trust, physical presence, belonging, etc. And the second most powerful is that poverty is a physical context that shapes outcomes in the most profound of ways. I only bring these up because a) they're taken for granted by many tech entrepreneurs who did not have to worry about them in their own lives, and b) they're the reality tech entrepreneurs grapple with when they focus on the core of education problems, rather than the periphery where most wind up.

You sound pretty dead set in thinking you've got this though, so I wish you the best of luck.

Great point! The wellbeing of millions of students, and the complex web of relationships a school creates in a community, deserves a well regulated industry.

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