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Comment by shii | Hacker News Reader

It seems Imagine K12 will/has solved the classic chicken-and-egg problem with education startups. I've been asking on how to get traction at schools online in different communities for years when I was working on a side project in this area. It's virtually impossible to sell to school districts, and unless pioneering teachers who are savvy enough to use something like Google Apps for their classrooms and see your product in the Marketplace or look for solutions on their own time while somehow fitting it in their already tight classroom curriculum and time budget, you have no way to gain traction from authority figures in the school system.

Enterprising students are basically they only way I've found that educational startups/sites can get active users to join on.

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"It's virtually impossible to sell to school districts"

This is exactly the problem I've been wrestling with. The best idea so far has been to appeal to private&charter schools first, and then attempt the big system. Public education is very much like a large company (risk-adverse, and process-oriented).

School districts have the sales cycles of Fortune 500 megacorps, the technical savvy of convents, and the budgets of hair salons.

As a general rule this is true. However in my experience there is a segment of this market in the US that is extremely lucrative; essentially the top X% of public high schools. These schools are private for all intents and purposes, as most of their budget comes from property taxes. These schools have massive budgets that approach $100 million, extraordinarily qualified and perceptive teachers, and a community that is heavily vested (and almost neurotic) in the success of the students. Also, the staff at these schools are surprisingly tech savvy, often with a large dedicated budget for technology.

All the above factors combine to create a perfect storm for a business with an innovative product. If you've got a product that will make students at these schools more competitive in the college admissions process, it will be purchased at a massive price tag. All the key players, the parents, the teachers, and the administrators, have the will and the budget to make these types of acquisitions.

Note, marketing to these schools is difficult. A connection in the administration or the education space is the easiest way, but I'm convinced you could bootstrap yourself through the teachers. They are smart and savvy and the senior teachers can have surprising influence. Further, the market is on your side. One you convert a few of the top schools in the area, it is likely most of the other top schools will follow, as not to be left behind. Top schools will follow the leader, as these things go.

Overlook this market segment at your own peril. :) There's only a (relatively) small set of schools that fit the above criteria, but they have a combined budget of billions nation wide.

You may note that I did not mention the top %X of private schools. That is because in my experience, parents (one of the key players) aren't necessarily as invested in the school on a day to day basis. There seems to be a higher rate of apathy with parents in top private schools, whether as a result of geographic separation or some other factor. The bottom line is that at top public schools, the parents made the effort to move to the community, buy a house at a ridiculous value, pay outrageous property taxes. In practice that seems to create a much more invested base of parents that will be much more involved in the school. I still think you can sell to top %X private schools, but it seems harder in my mind.

If someone is thinking about starting a product in this space, happy to chat via email.

Thank you, that is detailed, helpful, and much closer to the desired level of comments on HN than mine was.

I've been running a project targeted primarily at schools for about 8 years now (emusictheory.com), and I know this market exists (I attended a rich public school, actually), but I also have no idea how to target them without cutting out many of the public school teachers that have been my supporters over the years.

Can anyone point me to good writeups of how to build pricing to target the big players while still letting in the little guys? My pricing is currently too low (I know, I know), and I have some teachers who tell me to charge whatever, it's no problem, and others who it takes them 4 months to manage to push through a purchase order for $150 (and the school takes months to pay the invoice....).

I've been thinking about making an "enterprise"-level subscription that includes setting up the school's own mini-site on a subdomain, but I'm not sure what else I can offer to make the pricing jump seem non-ridiculous.

The pricing jump is probably only "ridiculous" to you. Schools (and government in general) make it so hard to sell to themselves that prices in the tens of thousands are normal to them, even for tiny districts.

I don't think the pricing is the hard part - it's getting them to buy. And I'm not convinced those two are completely related.

This incubator states that they are going to target charter schools as test beds. I assume that means they are already creating contacts for interested schools. One of my fears is that since some charter schools have agendas that vary greatly from publicly funded schools, E.G. religious charter schools

Another quick comment to solving the "selling to public schools" is community involvement. PTA groups often can play a powerful role in determining the agenda of the schools. Too often they stop at bake sales for carnivals, but in some cases they can be very effective in lobbying for change.

Makes me wonder if the same could happen with the health care / medical field.

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