When Education-Technology Startups Fail

To solve your customers' problems well, you have to understand their problems from their point of view. This is why technical people often need a business co-founder: one who understands the domain well.

I had a brief stint as a teacher (three years in a private school) so while my experience is not vast, I do have a sense for the teacher's point of view.

Teachers often do resent spending their own money on their classrooms, but it's not out of a sense of entitlement. Often the budget is tight, so teachers have to buy pencils, classroom posters, etc. out of their own small paycheck. Also, simple things like how many copies you can make are limited.

So imagine a software shop where each developer:

(1) had their bandwidth per month capped

(2) if they wanted an extra monitor, productivity software, or anything beyond the standard developer setup they'd likely have to pay for it themselves

(3) has their salary cut in half (or by two thirds)

So it's not a case of entitlement at all; it's a case of scarce money.

About teachers not wanting technology solutions: as a teacher I had very little time during the day. There were some days where I very literally did not have five minutes to spare and had trouble finding time to go to the bathroom (other days were more sane). My personality is one that craves change, but as a teacher I found that I was juggling so much work that I did not necessarily welcome changes to existing procedures. So I think there may be some truth to this in that teachers may not have the time resources to adapt to a lot of new technology. That said, target the teachers in the summer. They've got time to make changes then.

Knack for Teachers failure seems indicative of a larger trend in the start-up world, the explosion of doomed-to-fail start-ups founded by mediocre programmers with no understanding of their target market. These founders believe that their subpar efforts will somehow lead to the next airbnb or dropbox, ignoring the careful planning and sheer brilliance at the heart of all great start-up successes.

My fear is that just as interest in ed-tech is waxing, the field will be flooded by these want-a-be founders who fail miserably and then blame their failures on parent, teachers and children. Education is a complex and difficult market that will requires a founder to have deep knowledge of its inner workings. For the technological innovation that is desperately needed in education to be successful, our best hackers must step forwarded and accept the challenge. Nothing else will do.

I worry. However, John Resig's work at Khan Academy gives me hope.

Blaming your customers for failure is never a good idea.

I looked into doing a K12 school related startup and quickly concluded that it was a no go. The only money is in school budgets and the sales cycle is just too long and onerous.

The probability of success for an Edtech startup is inversely related to its proximity to schools.

Maybe I'm approaching this differently since I teach college. My initial response was, "Why was that guy charging a subscription fee for a gradebook?" Granted, the gradebooks that come with the Angel and Blackboard learning management systems probably aren't as good as his was. Still, they do what I need them to and I'm not paying for them.

I always figured K-12 teachers had similar services available. Assuming they don't, it's not that big of a deal to throw together a gradebook in Excel.

I feel bad for this guy; based on the demonstration video it looks like he put an awful lot of work into producing a well-polished product. I just don't see how using it would save me any time or improve my teaching.

sad times. The demo video looks polished and functional. The online gradebook situation reminds me of day planners and other organizational tools that look handy (and can be) but in reality take a lot of dedication and time to keep using them.

patio11, your thoughts? I think you sell directly to teachers.

I tried out the site that is the subject of the OP (Knack for Teachers). I heartily agree with the sentiments of the OP. The problem wasn't the customer base, the problem was the product itself.

In a word, it sucked. (Okay, two words). The product looks and behaves like an alpha. The UI is counter-intuitive and unpolished. It takes way too much effort just to enter a single student's grade for a single assignment. This service actually makes a teachers' administrative burden worse, especially compared to using the gold-standard Excel spreadsheet. Speaking of Excel...where were the export options?

This product doesn't do enough, or execute well enough, to justify being a paid product. (The demo video is the only truly polished thing on the entire site.) Hell, it isn't compelling even as a free offering. Expecting teachers to pay for it was wishful thinking at best.

This failed startup isn't useful as a data point for other startups seeking to enter the education technology market, except maybe as an example that execution matters if you've got competition.