Today, every industry and every part of our daily lives is shaped by technology.
It stands to reason that education would be no different. Education technology, often called EdTech, is a term that refers to the deployment of technology for imparting education. Over the last 15 years, we have seen a great number of EdTech solutions, developed by entrepreneurs, and the coming decade is bound to witness many more. Here are some of the most important factors for anyone who intends to start an EdTech firm …
Your niche
No one company can hope to cater to the entirety of the education sector. The first step that any EdTech entrepreneur must take is to identify their “solution statement”, which will clearly suggest their niche and the exact problem that they are solving.
Organizational clarity
Before the firm is founded, each co-founder must be clear on what their broad roles, degree of involvement and respective equity shares are. Entrepreneurs often make the mistake of trying to avoid such awkward topics. This is guaranteed to lead to major complications, down the line.
Your content
The quality of a firm’s content is a vital but often underestimated, factor in its success. No matter how cutting edge or attractive the software is, no EdTech firm can succeed without high quality educational content. Quite a few tech-entrepreneurs do not understand this, before setting up their EdTech firms.
Your technology team
On the other side, many academicians, who decide to use EdTech to reach a wider audience, do not consider the importance of technology. The technology is at the core of every EdTech enterprise and requires constant upkeep. Every EdTech firm needs a strong and stable technology team.
Keeping your first product simple
The first version of a successful product is never the final one. Do not try to craft a perfect product and accept that it will remain a work in progress. It will be much better for you to go-to-market early with a simple product than to craft a fancy product and launch it late. Once you roll out the product, you will encounter a steep learning curve and get lots of new ideas. This is why you should not spend too much time in the go-live and keep adding new features, periodically.
The beta testing
No matter how good your testing team is, some bugs are guaranteed to slip through the cracks. This is why once internal testing has declared the product to be bug-free, you need to put it through a round of beta testing. This will not only catch any bugs that were missed, but it will also tell you if the product is well liked or not.
Marketing
Your marketing plan needs to help you reach “critical volume”- the number of licenses sold that will get the word out and set sales rolling. You will need to make a budget and spread it across multiple avenues. Revisit the sales figures, periodically, and adapt your plan to emerging circumstances.
Feedback
Ensure that your software has ample feedback and reporting options. Each feedback, positive or negative, must be warmly acknowledged.
Crucial: Aim for profitability.
Your firm’s ultimate goal needs to be profitability. Do not get caught up in the idea of impressing investors. If you can prove that your firm will be profitable, you will have no trouble attracting investment.
