The following is a guest post by Alastair Briggs from uHavePassed.com
In a search for peers to work with (and share frustrations) I keep an eye out for other education focused start-ups. Unfortunately in the UK there seems to be a problem: either I am rubbish at finding these companies, the start-ups are great at hiding or there are just not that many out there.
The market for Education in the UK is massive – there are 26,562 different schools in the UK, and 157 universities and classroom based learning is only part of the picture. There is also adult education, distance learning, workplace training and many qualifications that could be thought of as niche, but have high enrolments each year. On top of formal education there is informal education that is best represented by language learning and the “Dummies guide to” range of books.
Most of these markets have large established companies specialising in a particular area: school administration software, revision guides, educational software, language teaching etc. These large companies are very focused on maintaining their market share in competitive and established markets and not focused on disruptive ideas but maintaining the status-quo.
Prior to writing this post of I knew of the following start-ups (including ourselves):
• Sums Online – Proving a range of flash based maths activities to a school and home audience – becoming the leader in classroom based PDA maths – marketplace: schools
• WildKnowledge – Providing Windows Mobile based survey software for use inside and outside the classroom on PDAs – marketplace: schools
• Notely.net – A range of tools for students to plan and manage their studies – marketplace: university students
• School Of Everything – A connecting tool to directly link people who want to study with teachers of that subject – marketplace: individual learners and teachers.
• uHavePassed – Online quizzes that can be taken off line focused on Handy Education(convenience) – marketplace: (currently) students for UK driving test
• Learnitlists – Widget based vocabulary training, making personalised learning ubiquitous across many websites – marketplace: language learners
• Fonefonics – Complete multi-media language courses delivered via mobile phone, focusing on teaching English to those without computer access – marketplace: employment agencies, language learners
• Many other language based sites offering elearning
After Mike sent out a twitter question I also found out about coracleonline.com who focus on eLearning for the maritime industry and are the exclusive online provider for the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers.
This year will see the academic focused mLearnand school focused Handheld Learning conferences hosted in the UK. These conferences highlight two problems: mLearn will have lots of innovation, but little of this is being commercialised and Handheld Learning will be heavily technology focused with Apple, Sony, Samsung and Fujitsu all trying to show how their existing solutions can work in the classroom rather than designing new technology for students. It is not well known that the UK is leading the world in research and trials into PDA use in schools.
Technology has already made its impact on education with eLearning now well established in a lot of subject areas. Asus are really innovating with their EEE PC, which seems to fit the needs of educators and parents – is anyone pushing this device further? The iPhone and iPod Touch are perfect multi-media learning platforms (with restricted input mechanisms) for all ages and across all markets – who is going to innovate and disrupt with these? Social networking offers really new ways to collaborate and learn – who is going to turn this from academic idea into working products?
Let’s start the discussion – the questions for which I have no good answers:
What is stopping people from moving into this market?
Why isn’t there funding focused towards education? (perhaps one of those incumbents might like to think about that)
Why is there a strong bias towards language learning in start-ups? Is this because it is more consumer focused?
Dear Alastair,
Great post about a very interesting industry and one which can benefit hugely from the so called ‘Web 2.0′ and advancing technologies.
We also felt there is still a gap/ void to be filled and we are trying to do that with http://www.twidox.com. Twidox is a free, user generated online library of ‘quality’ documents that allows individuals and organisations to easily publish, share and search for them.
Documents on twidox are accessible to everyone online and will allow people to share their knowledge and help others with their work, learning, teaching and research.
The focus of the website is on professional and industry specific documents, research material, academic papers and articles, coursework and dissertations and data and statistics
The site archives and indexes every published text and makes it searchable to other users, free of charge. We will come out of private beta in October.
Mike has previously written about us (Twidox Is Like Scribd For Academics – Get 500 Beta Invites)
Best,
Nicholas
(Co-founder of twidox)
Nicholas – have you sought funding for twidox.com?
Have you found much funding available from VC or Angel investors for educational initiatives?
We have found it has been difficult to get interest in educational focused projects.
I’m not an educationalist as such, but I did spend a couple years working for Futurelab as their Business Development Manager.
Another education start-up to add to your list above would be BeanBag Learning in Bristol. http://beanbaglearning.com/
My experience and perception is that the UK Education market is very fragmented and disjointed from a purchasing perspective. Some schools buy their own technology / software, some through local partnerships, some through Education Authorities. This means there isn’t a ’standard’ route to market and managing those channels is a big overhead that only the larger players can achieve at a national level. There’s also huge disparity with lowest common denominator technology standards that can stymie national roll-out of innovative products.
Languages are popular, imho, because it’s an application that’s well suited to the PC/PDA/mobile technology. Flash animation, however good, is no substitute for actually blowing things up with chemicals, smashing pendulums together, and hacking up lumps of wood (all in the name of learning obviously). Languages involve reading, typing, talking and listening to others talk; all of which can be done very effectively and imaginatively on the computer.
And of course languages can be learnt at home, meaning you can sell to parents (with disposable income), and you can sell to the adult / informal market so all your revenue isn’t tied to the academic purchasing cycle / budget lottery.
John – Maths, History, Geography, English & Economics (to name a few) also don’t involve blowing things up with chemicals.
I think all of the above at times can suffer problems with engagement and interest – technology can help stimulate and engage students in these areas by personalising education.
Dear Alastair,
Yes, we have received funding and actually found our VC (Mediaventures.de) very interested in the idea. Also, we managed to get some very good advisors who are all passionate about the idea.
I think the difference to us compared to other traditional ‘learning websites’ is that we have a great ‘aggregator’ affect and have focused on combining new Web 2.0 technologies with one of the oldest task of mankind (see first libraries in Greece in the 5th century BC): gathering and storing knowledge.
We pool knowledge from different sources so that we create a ‘one-stop-solution’ for the academic sector, but also to other walks of live. For example, we also have private organisations that are creating an ‘organisation page’ on twidox and therefore twidox is also of interest to industry when they conduct research.
Feel free to contact me on nicholas at twidox dot com
I would differentiate between education and informal learning.
Educational institutions are closed off from market forces. There is no reason why they have to adopt anything new, beyond some LMS software and new textbooks from time to time. Targeting the students themselves is difficult because they generally don’t want educational products – lest their homework quota increase. Even if they did they want stuff this generation are loathe to pay for it online. Reaching the parents, as the decision-makers, then, is convoluted, too. They have to be sure their the kids will use the new products before they will buy, and most of them are not out there looking for such stuff anyway.
But perhaps even more fundamental is the nature of online or mobile learning themselves. I’m seeing a lot of people trying to stuff old educational habits into new web 2.0 clothes, but it tends not to work. In the same way you would not film a newspaper and put the contents on TV, learning objects for new media have to be designed for the purpose. I don’t see many start ups who are getting this part right. (This month we’re recording our 1,000th podcast at ChinesePod and we’re still learning and discovering new things about about the medium .) I think we’re at the early stages of the New Learning.
Ken – you are correct about the old educational habits into new web 2.0 clothes – this is the mistake many established players seem to make.
It is for this reason I think that innovation will come from new start-up companies that are looking at things from new angles.
But why are there not many doing that?
Dear Ken,
I am not sure whether I understood your comment correctly:
“Educational institutions are closed off from market forces. There is no reason why they have to adopt anything new, beyond some LMS software and new textbooks from time to time.”
but I do feel that educational institutions need to adopt. Web 2.0 now offers e.i. so many new opportunities that can save them money and time so they do need to adopt. For example, we will soon be offering an ‘open education resource’ feature on twidox were universities can create a university system to share all their learn material, lecture handouts and research, similar to MIT’s OpenCourseWare. This will save the universities a lot of money and their lectures a lot of time. They do not need to print out every lecture hand out (those students that want it can download it from the lectures profile) and the university can promote their activities to a huge audience.
I think there are a lot of advances that the education can take advantage of; they just need to embrace it.
To find out more about what twidox can do for the education sector, please see our blog:
http://blog.twidox.com/?page_id=6
Best,
Nicholas
Is the reason that there are few start ups that althnough the market is large in number as you say, the schools LEAs just don’t have any money? As people have said it’s quite hard to market to individuals, but the government does have money for these sorts of things and has been trying to encourage the use of such technogly? Therefore is that’s where the opportunity is most likely to be for start ups to go to with ideas and look for help to market advise and funding?
I think there is alot of work going on in this area already but a great deal of it is open source or publicly funded – people like Futurelab have been producing innovative web projects for education for years.
In the US people like Grockit, Teachstreet, EduFire and GlobalScolar have raised large sums of money (especially GlobalScholar) to tackle online learning in different ways.
At Beanbag Learning (which John generously mentioned earlier) we are implementing a number of ideas around online learning but are taking our time to ensure we have a product worthy of the market.
Matt
http://beanbaglearning.com
Dave what surprises me is that the market is so big and that schools and language teaching get such a large amount of focus when thinking about it.
Informal Education, Adult Education and workplace learning (to name a few) are hardly niche areas – and they all have large companies that are ignoring technology and innovation to their peril.
I am convinced that this is an area where innovation and start-up companies could really make a difference if there was more support and funding for them.
Looking into twidox above it is interesting that it is based in Germany and not the UK, which is true of another language start-up babbel.com. Both have found funding in Germany.
I think that there are two reasons that language products are popular – technology and audience.
I see so many new products coming online and find myself thinking… now if we tweaked this like that… we’d have an amazing tool for language learners. It’s a different world from when I studied French at school – we now have a dazzling array of opportunities for studying languages – from total immersion at a particular destination site to the pan-web advertising style techniques we are developing with learnit.
80% of the Internet is said to be in English, and 750 million people learning English, so there is the appeal of creating a tool for a massive potential market.
Al,
Thanks for the mention, and delighted to see that you have already created a debate. There are a few things I think SUMS Online’s experience can contribute.
a) Don’t believe that UK schools don’t have money. If there is a project that they believe in then they can find it – and an awful lot of new money is around for IT hardware – which then needs software. As there are 30,000 UK schools, potential income is huge. Not to mention the US etc.
b) Web 2.0 is great, but don’t believe that it is the only game in town. We offer fairly traditional subject based contents for pupil devices (PSP, ASUS eeePC, Windows Mobile devices etc). The new element about our maths and phonics software is that the pupils have their own devices to run them on – no more going to the IT room. As we adopt a game based approach, dive in and try rather than being taught, that also helps.
c) Why is it difficult to attract investment? I think it is because a very high proportion of new products fail in the education market as the competition is extreme. You need to build reputation slowly and establish relationships. Once you have done that, which I think is the stage we have reached, the need for funding becomes less as the cashflow turns positive. Before that, you are too much of a gamble and too slow.
d) Would we want funding now? I guess we might, but we would need investors who really understood the market and the timescales. In short, they would have to love the products and the approach, and be doing it in part because they believed they were making a difference. We are not actively looking though – too much new business and product development to concentrate on.
Best wishes,
David
david@sums.co.uk
http://www.sums.co.uk
From what I understand, new entrants must sell to a strong buying power environment, with long procurement cycles, high levels of formalisation, and low pressure to adopt. There are existing billion dollar players (education publishers), and early successfull niche players don’t tend to get bought out for high multiples. This is my impression , but its a good while now since I was anyway close to this market. But perhaps the comment might stimulate some thinking as to “structural reasons” why the market isn’t attractive to investors and start ups alike.
“What is stopping people from moving into this market?” can be answered by reference to a previous statement..
ie, “The market for Education in the UK is massive!”
I disagree. There are many schools and universities, etc, but there is nothing like a (free) market in education. Hence, the consequences for innovation and entrepreneurship in the sector are very bad, especially when it comes to the little guys.
So to take the comments from Ted and Paul Sweeney – the structural issues cause a lack of investment in Formal education.
On the flip side of this – the largest market for informal education is languages and that is why there are so many start-up companies that focus on this as it is much more investment friendly.
Does that easily explain everything?
Are there no other areas within informal education that are of interest?
How about education within companies and organisations?
What about the NHS? – isn’t it something like the worlds largest employer – is education not needed there – is that market also broken?
Hi Al
We have been busy beta testing our site (http://www.dexmo.com) with university law students from the University of Hertfordshire.
The site is a social network designed for study and revision of any subject.
We are also in the process of completing some free tools for use by students on the site.
So far we have made some good progress and received some very positive feedback.
We will be coming out of beta shortly.
So you are not alone.
Hi Ted,
You quoted my statement
“The market for Education in the UK is massive!”
and said “I disagree. There are many schools and universities, etc, but there is nothing like a (free) market in education. ”
Although the pendulum is swinging back towards central purchasing because of Learning Platforms etc, in general schools spend their own budgets however they want. It may be hard to sell to schools, but anyone can put a flyer through their door, or cold call the headteacher. There is no bureaucracy that prevents it. It is very, very competitive however and you need a relevant product.
Best wishes
David
@Ted – I have to disagree with your disagreement.
Secondary schools and universities *do* have a budget for external services (I worked for one for years) – and regularly spend huge amounts on often pretty shoddy products. However, the people in charge of the purse-strings are notoriously hard to pin down, change post every year or so, and their budgets often vary according to government whims, so it makes sales a tricky process.
By far the best online education format I’ve seen was the BBC Jam series but this sadly had the plug pulled. However, even if a startup came up with something similar, it’s hard to tell who the customer would be (@ken – good point).
The States seems to be forging ahead at the moment, especially the MacArthur foundation (linked with MIT) who are putting a huge amount of money into this. They’ve also just opened their Digital Media and Leaning competition fund this year to international applicants. I’d love to collaborate on an entry to this. Anyone interested please get in touch.
Jim
Hi Al,
You have a great discussion going here.
I think another reason why not many start-ups enter the ‘education’ sector is because it is very tough brining any deal to a close. When you deal with companies, everyone has a title and so you know who you need to talk to and who the decision maker is. In the educational sector it is rather difficult finding out who the right contact person is and who has the power to close a deal. It is even tough for us; and twidox is free to everyone!
P.S. Largest employer in the world: officially is Manpower.
Al,
Great post and excellent discussion. I’m in the process of finishing a product largely related to this market and would be keen on an ‘off-line’ chat about it if you have the time (contact details are at the bottom of my blog/linked to from my name).
Cheers….
@ David McAll
“in general schools spend their own budgets however they want… There is no bureaucracy that prevents it.”
I disagree: schools must follow the national curriculum. The level of bureaucracy in any government initiative is frightening (eg compare actual costs (per pupil) of public vs private schooling in the UK). Just imagine a genuinely free market in education — it is clear to me that education entrepreneurs would do so much better, and customers would get the education they want for themselves / their children.
@jim
I’m not sure that our positions are so different. However,
“By far the best online education format I’ve seen was the BBC Jam series”
Yet another government initiative! Of course government projects (eg BBC iPlayer) can turn out well, given the massive resources they receive. But real markets will always produce what the consumer wants better than any government. The problems the BBC create for tech start-ups has been well documented here on TCUK, etc.
A very interesting and timely article, thanks Al.
We’ve been developing a video start-up, nicely summed up by Mike Butcher as ‘a video Q&A site meets Poker’.
Whilst compulsive gambling has no place in the classroom, I feel developing a platform for information exchange, which is what Qajack is, filtered by relevance by the community, based on gaming principles and interface could be the 2.0 shot in the arm eLearning needs.
I’ve discussed this with a VC, who dismissed it, ‘what, letting kids use mobile phones in class?’, but exactly that reaction is exactly what could make this a disruptive platform. Surely education needs to be commuicated using tools today’s children are familiar with? Mobile, social networking, video and community are central to that.
I’d really value any guidance or help with this and how we might develop Qajack as a learning platform.
The last comment ‘What about the NHS?’ now has me thinking about other potential uses for the platform!!!!
I actually had to re-read the post title a couple of times before I believed education had made it on to Techcrunch – what a nice surprise and my thanks to Alastair for raising the issue.
I’m part of a very early stage start-up focused on education (product / service offering part developed, now getting down to serious business planning) and agree with many of the comments in this discussion.
Education is currently ruled by some very large players who (in most, but not all cases) are putting out what I consider to be sub-standard products and services. This is incredibly frustrating for teachers and pupils who all use the latest web-apps and consumer goods but wonder why they are so limited in their teaching and learning.
I have to say that from my own experiences in education (my mother is a headteacher and my father an ex-deputy headteacher, turned lecturer, now retired) and from the recent research I’ve done with regard to the business plan, education is a difficult place to compete. That said, my conclusions are the same as David McAll’s – it’s a case of working hard to establish relationships and growing those through the tight recommendation network that exists. If you are lucky enough to have an absolutely killer product with mass appeal, great, but expect adoption to be slower than in the private sector / on the wider internet.
@Ted – I’m afraid I have to agree with Jim and David McAll entirely. If schools want to do a project that badly, they’ll find a way to make it happen. I know of one primary school who had to put on two school discos just to make sure their new computer suite had adequate virus protection because they knew it was so important.
@Jim – I don’t have any ideas for an entry to the Digital Media and Learning competition but I’d also be interested in collaborating on something for this.
@ Mike
I’m afraid I don’t understand the import of your school disco story! Schools must follow a centrally-planned curriculum which changes with the political wind and are by no means in charge of the majority of their resource allocation, hence cannot offer what the customers might actually want. In my experience, one problem with any government project is that people cannot imagine what opportunities would have arisen if a free market had instead been in place — but it generally isn’t as much a problem for entrepreneurs.
@Ted
It has to be said that this BBC is not the government and so BBC Jam was not a ‘government initiative’ – not saying the BBC doesn’t cause problems for start-ups (both the BBC and Channel 4 have particularly big says in online education).
The issue with schools and their need to follow a national curriculum and having almost pre-allocated budgets isn’t going away – but an increasing amount of learning now takes place outside of the classroom and I think thats probably where the market is.
@ Matt
“an increasing amount of learning now takes place outside of the classroom and I think thats probably where the market is.”
Agreed.
“It has to be said that this BBC is not the government”
Then who collects tax money for it and regulates what it can and cannot do? My point was that the BBC, state education, etc are by definition not free market enterprises. The degree to which this is responsible for education start-ups not doing so well is debatable, but they definitely do not help.
@Ted
I was merely trying to demonstrate that if schools perceive that a product will make that much of a difference to teaching and learning (whether that be AV software, internet apps, interactive whiteboards, digital signage systems, new IT suites or curriculum software) then they’ll do whatever they need to do to better their learning facilities. That could be through reallocating resource or fundraising, as in my example.
Granted that schools do follow a centrally-planned curriculum that is subject to change (albeit normally with at least some advance warning) but they are certainly in charge of their resource allocation. It could well be that a lot of this is destined for building maintenance, books, etc but average IT spend in primary and secondary schools was ~£14k and ~£64k respectively last year. This has increased year-on-year for some time now. As Alastair stated in the original post, this presents a massive market IF you can get access to it.
I also disagree that it’s impossible to offer ‘what the customers might actually want’ – IT strategy is often poorly managed within schools and sees little collaboration between teaching staff who actually use technology to help people learn and those who procure and manage the hardware and software they need. Promotion and education by start-ups to both parties could go a long way to correctly allocating resource.
First Look at the BETT 2009 website and the list of exhibitors : huge.
http://www.bettshow.com If there was no money to be made there would be no show. The small guys are mainly bootstraped. However there are new companies who have followed the money (government initiatives like interactive white boards, learning platforms and Building Schools for the Future)
In the home/informal sector two majors VTech and Leapfrog had combined turnover of $1.1 Billion.- Leapfrog nearly made a loss btw. The Mouse paid a fortune for the Penguin.
Many developers (eg Manchester’s stardotstar) make stuff for other people.
History GCSE makes no demands on you using a computer – why bother then?
For my own part I am happy working with philanthropy to make what will be a great web2.0 project that will not make me rich but it will be good to be associated with the insanely great (http://tinyurl.com/57yy8w). There is a growing social capital market if you want to do good.
For my second part, you need to think big. On my other project I want to and will challenge VTech, Apple and Microsoft. I will not go for external funding until I have exhausted all the great support there is for start-ups in this country( see what I said about outside London start-ups)- until the value in my proposition is maximised. I comment here and elsewhere – but I am not going to shout until I am good and ready.
Great ideas need collaboration as well as inspiration. One of my better ideas (Futurelab’s Savannah) needed HP and the BBC NHU. IP was messy – so that when Disney got interested it could go nowhere. Yesterday in John Bradford’s piece on this blog John noted how Bristol’s Pervasive Media centre are making it less messy and making it possible to build good apps on the shoulders of giants.
Good education apps may need to have good educational thinking and research somewhere – I won’t get much cred for saying that (but it is how Caspian Learning started).
Hi Al
Great post and interesting discussion.
We’re not exactly a startup as you know, but from my experience a lot of the money in education technology (if there really is that much) tends to be spent on ‘kit’. I was very frustrated last year when the MOLEnet funding initiative was announced to kickstart handheld education projects, but the money was mostly ringfenced for hardware acquisition, not for software production.
When you walk around places like the BETT show, you see plenty of technological advances in hardware, but much less innovation and quality in software – whereas the non-educational Web 2.0 startups are all about applications, services and communities.
I don’t know whether that’s to do with pandering to the IT departments’ interest in gadgets, or the lack of understanding amongst the purse string holders that you need great applications and content to make your kit work hard for the learners. Just my observation of course…
@Ted, the BBC is funded by the licence fee, not taxes (a not insignificant difference). I’m admittedly biased, but I don’t completely agree with the often quoted assumption that innovation at the BBC stifles innovation in startups. BBC Jam was a hugely ambitious project, which sadly was very badly planned and mismanaged. Eventually it was also shot down by members of an industry body, who felt threatened because on the whole they aren’t anywhere near as creative and innovative as all the (BBC and non-BBC) creatives, technologists and educationalists which contributed to Jam. Tall statement, but I do believe that’s what happened.
Hi Wolf,
Tall statement indeed – but don’t lets get diverted onto the BBC Jam issue. The key thing is that the number of pupil devices going into schools are growing fast. Call them handhelds if you will, but included are all Windows Mobile devices, the ASUS eeePCs, Sony PSPs etc.
We have recently supplied our SUMS Maths and/or SUMS Phonics onto 1,000 plus installations (in multiple schools) of one or other of these devices in more than one local authority. That is a market and other software suppliers and start-ups will follow. We just got there early and waited, building up a reputation.
David
david@sums.co.uk
http://www.sums.co.uk
Hi
I’m part of a strategic project team at The Open University working on a platform for learning called SocialLearn – http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/socialearn/about/
SocialLearn is being developed in part as a potentially disruptive play that will straddle the boundary between formal and informal learning, providing services to informal (self-directed) learners as well as learners undertaking formal academic education or professional training.
As well as providing personal learning profiles for individuals, it is anticipated that SocialLearn will also offer a range of education and training related social networking tools and services for educational institutions and corporates.
Development of the core service platform is currently underway using the services of development team in the US, with an early release of the API to developers slated for later in the Autumn.
The governance model for SocialLearn is still underway as the details of the commercial side of the platform are being clarified, as are funding models for scaling the platform as and when we start to roll it out.
Content will also play a role in the SocialLearn offering, in part drawing on open educational content such as the OU’s own OpenLearn course units ( http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn ), and also building on from lessons learned from current explorations of what I guess we could call “OU2.0″ ( http://www.open.ac.uk/use/ )?!
There is an excellent education/homework site in Australia called Skwirk (www.skwirk.com). They built the site with scores of teachers and animators to bring the entire national curriculum online in a fun and feature-rich environment.
Unfortunately, after a couple of years in operation it still hasn’t taken off. I’m not sure why: it’s well designed, cheap for parents and largely free of competition. But I guess it’s just a difficult thing to market.
Tony – any chance you could expand on the reasoning for using a Team in the US?
I wonder whether your reasons for using US resources to help on this project might help shed some light on this whole subject!
Hi Alistair
An interesting and timely article.
I’ve created, built and sold a number of enterprises during my career mainly in the digital media space from early multimedia through early Internet and so on raising many £ millions along the way.
Something I have discovered in this time is that raising investment for propositions in the education sector is significantly different from those in the B2C or B2B sectors and there is a relatively small group of investment firms that truly understand the sector. This leaves much of the first stage investment to angel investors or high net worth individuals who either “feel good” about a proposition or can spare the time to fully understand it.
We all know the education market is huge, the UK alone is having more money invested in it than at any point in our lives. But the money, although coming from a single source, is like water being poured through a colander, i.e. it comes out of lots of different holes. You have to be a pretty effective organisation to catch enough. Many investors, quite rightly, find the education market, it’s arcane procurement practices, framework supply chains, trade associations and fiefdoms perplexing. Ensuring that the potential investor understands the mechanics of the sector alone is a major challenge for a candidate even before they get to the pitch by which time the investor is already yawning!
Then, of course, investors want to see some kind of guarantee that if the business does X and Y then this government department guarantees to buy this much of Z. Well, anyone who works in the business of education (particularly at the innovation end) knows the problem with this picture.
That’s not to say that VC firms don’t invest in education propositions it’s just that they traditionally like to see something that is already pulling revenues rather than the more speculative Web 2.0 style ventures arriving on their desks right now.
In the uncertain financial times of the moment, money from either VC houses or angels is more difficult to find particularly at sensible valuations plus there’s also the option for those with money to “wait it out” until they can get a valuation that suits them more. I think the non-technical term is “bottom-feeding”. Here’s a clue for anyone in this situation, go for a ratchet based on your propositions achievable performance.
These investor strategies are myopic for investments in the education sector particularly now because whilst many investment sectors are looking dicey – property anyone? – the education sector is probably one of the most resilient sectors of all. Regardless of whether the US or Europe slides into a “media-fuelled” recession; governments, businesses and people will continue to invest in education.
VC houses and other investors would do well to keep an eye on and begin really understanding the education sector because without a doubt this is where the smart money is going to be over the next few years. There will also be a lot of M + A activity also amongst some of the big boys and especially in the mobile/ubiquitous space.
Thanks also for mentioning our Handheld Learning event which I feel I must point out has never been a technology lead event. Unlike trade shows that are explicitly about technology you will find from our current roster of speakers and nearly 1,000 participants that the event is clearly grounded in new learning and teaching practice. Neither is the event geared towards schools only as “life-long learning” is a key theme.
Technology, after all, is something that happens after you’re born and this years event has an emphasis on how the “technologies” that form a part of most learners every day life, e.g. phones, game consoles, media players, web 2.0 technologies, social networks, etc., can be embraced within learning and teaching practice to enable powerful, deep, learning experiences.
Interestingly, last year we had over 30 representatives from the investment community in attendance!
All the best
Graham
http://www.handheldlearning.org
@Al
My understanding is that, in part, the technical architect leading the US dev team had worked with senior project managers from the OU on previous projects.
The SocialLearn concept originally grew up from a brainstorming session that included external-from-the-OU consultants from both the US and UK that included several well known web consultants, social media gurus and at least one futurist…
Just before the summer break we had a couple of residential sessions where we invited a couple of dozen per session interested parties from the UK for a preliminary sounding, and there’s at least one more residential session being booked (more for potential developer partners, I think?) sometime in September.
If anyone wants to know more/request an invite, keep an eye on the SocialLearn blog – http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/socialearn/
The OU currently has 150,000+ students, and the plan is to build something that can scale far bigger, so it could be quite an interesting ride…!
We decided to bootstrap since we suspected that this would be a difficult market to get funding for. Also our product (Wiznotes) is in many ways so new, innovative, unique and useful that we expected people to be very skeptical before it was being successfully adopted.
Over the next year we will be looking to partner with other educational software vendors. At the moment Wiznotes seamlessly integrates with Wikipedia and video sharing websites like YouTube. However we believe that students will benefit even more if we integrate with other educational resources.
One of our goals is to provide a comprehensive digital learning environment that combines disparate educational software applications and services. Students will benefit, educators will benefit and even small start ups will be able to quickly market directly to their target audience.
Elliot
http://www.wiznotes.com
I believe schools do have the money to spend if they want to, but from my experience as a student, I feel that they are spending it in the wrong areas.
Investment in IT at my secondary school led to a significant purchase of Apple’s Mac mini machines, yet these have been crippled by poor implementation. Don’t get me wrong, I believe purchasing these machines was a great decision and allow for great flexibility, with the option of running OS X, and Windows on the same machine.
Now I fully expected the Macs to be running perfectly – as the school spent at least 6 months investigating this option, as well as seeing if finance was available – yet this was not the case. From my viewpoint, the school only invested in the Mac minis at the till, and failed to consider what would happen when they were installed.
When the 20 or so machines were set-up for student use, I discovered that while the Windows partition connected perfectly to the network, the majority of the machines on the OS X partition would not connect, and within a month, none of the machines could connect to the network on the OS X side. Even after I reported this problem, it was never fixed during the few months I remained at the school.
When I was able to log on to the OS X partition at the beginning I discovered another alarming issue. It was just the standard, out of the box install. Therefore, just trials of iWork and Office, making OS X useless to students, unless they wanted to make a movie in iMovie or a music track in GarageBand. But I guess this was irrelevant, as soon no one could log onto the OS X side!
Even though I do not know how other schools implement changes in their IT infrastructure, at my school however, it seems they have the money, yet waste it on poor decisions.
Teachers have also tested some Samsung UMPCs, but I’m sure an eeePC would be more suited for that environment.
Hmm… after reading this discussion I had a chat with a teacher who acts in a purchasing role for their ICT department. The following I though might be of interest to developers:
Each school has an independent budget. Schools buy their own hardware and software. The national curriculum dictates that they must have a certain number of computers per head, and they must provide software with certain functions – word processor, spreadsheets, databases etc. In general, schools are discouraged from purchasing Microsoft products.
This would suggest to me that there will be massive variations from school to school, providing additional opportunities, and complexity.
Most ICT purchasing in schools is controlled at local education authority, not at school level. LEA’s generally have approved suppliers. Headteachers are not entrepreneurs, they will generally play it safe and buy what their LEA advises. There are some big entrenched players controlling the market. Companies that do well may have ex- council staff on the payroll. It’s likely products will have to pass an approval process by a government department or quango before schools will consider buying them. Schools that don’t want to open their cheque book at all have the BBC, committed to providing ICT across the national curriculum for free. Google has also committed to providing free resrouces for UK schools. Teachers want tools to help deliver the national curriculum. They teach to the tests. Most software is expansive promising more bells and whistles than schools have any need for.
Hi DDavies,
Sorry but we disagree on several things.
For the vast majority of software and PCs/handheld purchases in UK schools it is the Head who makes the decision – though obviously local authority advisors make recommendations – and sometimes central purchases. Heads are pretty independent creatures who very often go their own way.
Anybody can pitch to schools for software. There are no government departments or quangos with approvals processes for curriculum software. ELearning Credits, which set a very low level requirement, are now dead. The BBC (BBC Jam referred to earlier) have withdrawn from providing English language curriculum software.
In short, if you have good software then get on and start marketing it to schools. You do not need anybody’s permission, and there are 20,000+ of them. It is highly competitive and difficult nevertheless, for all of the reasons others have cited above.
David
david@sums.co.uk
http://www.sums.co.uk
01454 853539
Hi David,
Agreed , anyone can have a go at selling software to schools but they may find your advice wide of the mark: the majority of customer recommendations on your website are from local authorities. Anyone interested in this market shouldn’t listen to David or I, they should do their own research, it’s a very specialist market, headteachers are not mavericks in my experince and time spent on government sites like teachernet will prove invaluable in the early planning stage.
I’ll happily let you have the last word on this.
Have posted a summary of the discussion on our blog – click on my name above this comment to see the post.
Fascinated to find this post (a tad late but there you go) as I would agree you don’t find much discussion and info in this sector online.
We have been plugging away, slowly but surely and gradually building up a client base among schools for our nifty budget planning software, clickPlanner. As bursars/advisors to schools we decided to roll our own solution to simplify employee costings, produce better reports and assist with monitoring. Gradually it dawned on us that schools liked the software and that’s how we got our start.
It is tough getting awareness going in the education market but from my experience so far it’s about being in it for the long haul and building a presence. We try to sell to schools but also to the LEAs who do make key decisions and recommendations about financial management software.
If anyone wants some more information our website is a good starting point, http://www.efrgroup.net.
It’s an interesting debate, but having spent the past few years in the classroom and just left to run my own start-up, maybe misses the point.
Each teacher in each school has a particular way they like to teach. Technology is an enabler that helps us do this better. Aside from hardware, there are so many free services out there that teachers can use, why would we pay for something that may not be quite right.
How can teachers use free media sharing sites such as YouTube (and the less blocked derivatives TeacherTube and SchoolTube). What about blogging, wikis and social networking alongside mapping software such as Google Earth?
Shouldn’t we work with the teaching community to build capacity to use free services that young people are using anyway (and enjoy using)?
The one piece of software that does need making is a PC equivalent to iMovie. Adobe Premiere Elements is a little complex and Windows Movie Maker too basic.
In terms of virtual learning environments – moodle is free and Microsoft’s version often comes with the school bundle.
Heads of Department and not Headteachers are in charge of spending their learning budget on what they think makes sense.
Of course there are exceptions to this view, but I think it’s one worth considering.
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