There’s a lot of exciting
activity in Illinois these days around education technology start-ups. Just in
the last 30 days, there have been multiple events specifically focusing on the
new opportunities which the innovative application of various technologies
(both new and old) to our tired and flawed education system are creating for
both entrepreneurs and investors. And ultimately, the hope and the goal is that
the real beneficiaries of these improvements will be our kids.
More than 35
edtech start-ups presented at the Education Technology Start-up Collaborative
User Conference and Teach for America’s Pitch Day featured another group of
very excited young business builders who were all focused on changing the
education landscape. Finally, Tech Week Chicago 2013 also had plenty of education
offerings among the businesses there who were showing their products and
services to the impressive crowds all weekend.
So it’s fair to
say that we’re seeing the levels of entrepreneurial energy and enthusiasm for
the education space that we’ve been anticipating for quite some time. And the
companies who are entering the space seem solid, somewhat more mature than
expected and focused on solving real, near-term practical problems rather than
trying to change the world overnight.
What we are most
encouraged by is that we are finally also seeing levels of investor interest
and engagement that will provide the early-stage funding and support that these
businesses will all need while they prove out their offerings and before they
are realistically able to scale. Because
these businesses in the short term aren’t looking for millions of dollars, the
primary funding that is taking place is almost exclusively angels and
early-stage firms and (good news here) some corporate venture departments that
have been stuck on the sidelines for the last 5 to 10 years.
We really need
all these small and active players because these initial deals involve too
little in the way of funding for traditional venture firms and, in addition,
most of the bigger VC firms took big, early education shots and (a) have
basically been burned too often in the education space; (b) fear the 800-pound
gorilla-like bureaucracies that rule the large education systems; and (c) think
that none of us will live long enough to see major changes in the education
space. I sure hope they’re wrong, but, in any case, they’re not actively
playing in this space at present so their conclusions don’t really matter at
the moment.
What does matter
is that we give these scrappy new education start-ups all the support,
encouragement and resources that we can muster so they can help us change the
education landscape from a collection of clogged, constipated and clueless cod
liver oil classrooms into places of purpose and passion, and enthusiastic communities
of team-based and collaborative learning.
