I recently wrote my thesis on sports entrepreneurship. After interviewing and researching a bunch of entrepreneurs, I developed a list of traits that I believed were evident in entrepreneurs in the sports industry–and also apply to “non-sports entrepreneurs”. I posted the list in my blog and would love to hear what you think: http://tiny.cc/hf9li

Thanks

@proGRESHion

For example, if I wanted to start a medical device company, I'd probably need to know something about medicine or medical devices, wouldn't I? If I wanted to start an online poker community, wouldn't it be good to know something about playing poker, poker players, gambling, etc.?

One of the things that fascinates me about the dozens of new educational ventures I see today is that few of them actually do much educating. This reminds me of a “summit” I once attended back when I was a VP in the tech world. There were about 20 of us, one representative each from the top multimedia software players at the time. Some guy got up and showed “Reader Rabbit”. Remember that one? Everybody in the audience loved it. The rabbit was cute, after all.

Then I raised my hand and asked, “How do we know this works?” And the guy giving the demo furrowed his brow. He said, “Well, we test our software very rigorously.” And then I said, “Oh no, I didn't mean 'How do you know your software runs?' I meant 'How do you know this application actually teaches kids to read?”

Dead silence.

Then the guy looked around the room and a little smile broke across his face. Everyone else started smiling, too. Then pretty soon, everyone was laughing.

I didn't get it till later on that day: It didn't matter whether the software taught anyone tor read. In fact, as the guy pointed out shortly thereafter, they never claimed anywhere that it did. What mattered was that it was about reading and that it had a cute rabbit. Therefore, parents would likely buy it.

A few years later, I was in education, working with little kids on reading. I realized then that in order to use Reader Rabbit at all, a kid had to already be able to read, at least a little. So the software always appeared to be working since kids who used it appeared to be reading.

I think Reader Rabbit was published by The Learning Company. I think they made hundreds of millions of dollars. And I know now that none of their learning products were based on any research-proven methods. But I also know that that didn't make any difference to the Learning Company, or to the millions of people who bought their products.

So I guess what I'm asking is this: Does the fact that I'm an education expert, and a serial entrepreneur, give me any advantage at all in the ed tech space? Or is the actual ability to help kids learn a meaningless “trait” with little or no value? And is my personal commitment to learning more of a liability than a strength when it comes to product development?

Thanks,

Steve Peha
President, Teaching That Makes Sense, Inc.

For more details, log onto http://www.grheducation.com

Thanks for any assistance in driving ideas in the right direction. It takes a village … if not an uprising.

Good to see you blogging, as you seemed to have the mind that was ripe for it and ready to deliver. I'll be twittering about your posts and recommending them to others.

Thanks for any assistance in driving ideas in the right direction. It takes a village … if not an uprising.

Good to see you blogging, as you seemed to have the mind that was ripe for it and ready to deliver. I'll be twittering about your posts and recommending them to others.

You are exactly right re technical expertise. Actually, I would say precise
knowledge of the end user, and how simple front end speaks to that user and
flexibly interoperates with other web services and appliances is key. Clear
product road maps and communication between product manager and developer
will become ever more important as we reach for a SaaS tipping point in
education industry.

What is clear is that, as the digital immigrant increasingly exits the
education system, the teacher as digital native will adapt more quickly to
and readily accept changes in 21st Century learning and administration.

Just happened upon the blog while researching education. These are great points and I would add one more:
Technical Expertise. Although I believe the education sector is fairly “low-tech” compared to others, there amazing things you can do with technology even if the user doesn't realize it. You can literally engineer user acquisition and dramatically reduce friction with great technology. Even if the user doesn't appreciate it as a value prop to them, it helps increase the number of users on your service and optimize the funnels that bring them to you.

Would love your thoughts on this!

Best,
Gagan Biyani

http://www.udemy.com