Education tech – how to fund?

2 pointsby anonymoustoe4 anni fa5 comments

We built an AI tool to help graduate students learn and professors teach.

Profs at two universities keep reusing it and it surveys well with students.

I can't figure out how to get a school to pay for it. Admins dismiss it as a toy. The profs say they would pay, but that there isn't a budget. Students don't get a vote.

The application could be massively improved, and is already helping students learn important topics.

How do I figure out how to pay for development?

5 comments

supersync4 anni fa

Here’s the sad reality

Admin controls the money

They spend 99% of it on tools they use for their own jobs

The 1% is whatever fad they are supposed to buy into in order to maintain a semblance of legitimacy (“student success” for example)

If you want to make money in education

Get your state legislators to pass a law that requires schools to comply with a new regulation that makes your solution relevant

That’s how the big edtech companies got to $1B+, with only one exception: 2U

gcheong4 anni fa

If you're in the US, have you looked into what resources the Office of Education Technology has? https://tech.ed.gov

anonymoustoe4 anni fa

great response, thank you. I found the booklet and am reading it.

dave844 anni fa

One possibility is to make it open source like Moodle and sell consulting and services around it instead.

anonymoustoe4 anni fa

The open source approach is appealing to me. I guess I'm not sure that the consulting will necessarily follow though.

Are there other ways an open source approach can help find funding? Our team would really like to work on this idea more, but there isn't a clear road to profitability. Most people just want to join grants with us, which works, but I feel like we shouldn't be funding on grants forever.