The EdTech Chicken and Egg Problem
by noemit | 2025-04-24 16:11:21+00:00
I've worked in edtech for almost 10 years now in B2B, B2C, and nonprofit contexts. I've seen real product market fit, and a lot of poor product market fit.

Edtech has been one of the largest tech disappointments of the internet era. The internet has transformed everything about how people learn. I always joke that Youtube is actually the best edtech product. And now, I guess chatGPT and other LLMs. But these products have a lot of problems, specifically around accuracy, pedagogy and lack of assessment. (Research shows low-stakes assessment is when the moment of learning often happens.)

Within the "Ed tech space", a lot of products have failed in my view. The best product I built was free online science simulations (virtual labs).

I've worked on products that were financially successful but its debatable if they helped helped users learn much.

Edtech companies that sell to parents are making a product for parents. The goal is often to make parents feel good about the choices they are making for their kids. For example, give your kids an ipad with Educational games, and now you're a better parent.

Edtech products that sell to business are making a product for employers. Much of these products end up being about tracking employees rather than real skill development.

The reason making a product for educators ends up being more effective in terms of learning outcomes is because most teachers have their incentives aligned - they want their students to learn more and be able to apply that learning.

Which leads me to this chicken and egg problem - because education is a system, technology either has to fit into that system or break the system. Breaking the system can be costly and have lots of undesirable side effects. I imagine this is a lot like healthcare / healthtech - you can't just move fast and break things.

Adoption of products in EdTech (via educators) is more involved than pure B2C but less profitable than B2B, making it costly and painful.

From both a product/context and business model perspective, it's hard. This is partly why I think the non profit model has worked the best in education (Khan academy, Phet, etc). Without having to optimize for profit, you have the freedom to build products that fit better into the existing system. You can serve people who can't afford to pay you, nor do they have the power to convince their administrations to pay you.

However - I still think we haven't done enough - what is the next step?

I think if someone asked me where the next 2B in edtech funding should go, I would suggest highly specialized nonprofits each with a focused goal like teaching meaningful reading skill at the late elementary level or getting kids excited about math at the middle school level. Focus these nonprofits to have educator obsession - the educators trying to solve these problems in the real world.

Ultimately, for real outcomes, all these products need to be free or sponsored. I do think paid products selling to school districts work (these businesses do exist) but this adds a lot of friction that slows product development down, and of course, mucks up the incentives. These paid products often want strong moats - so they lock districts into multi-year contracts and then stop improving the product. They generate metrics administrators like, with products educators are forced to use but aren't improving. Nonprofits have a magical freedom to be "moat-less."