Lessons from 1 year in EdTech

Hard blows and insights from an running EdTech startup

For newbies here, PleDu is my education venture which marries video games with maths content for higher maths (grades 8-12 and beyond). In plain English, 'play my game and understand Trigonometry better'. We rolled out the first set of games in October 2021. After multiple product iterations and studying user journeys and failures, now is an apt time to take a pause and reflect on learnings. These would be beneficial for anyone thinking of start-up in EdTech (or any domain really!). Some of them would sound controversial or cynical. But these are the lessons I got from a few hard blows in the trenches! So without wasting more time, here we go.

There’s only one EdTech product in India (or emerging markets)

The notorious Maruti car advert 'Kitna Deti Hai, a country obsessed with mileage' is true in education as well. There is only one product you are selling as an Education company: to help the learner make more money in future. Or as my friend Yash Thodage cheerily calls it ‘Hopium’. From test preparation startups to machine learning nano-degrees, the product in the end is the hope of a more promising future. The content and delivery methods are an add-on. This might be a put-off for an idealist. Sure most of the learners do care about understanding the content well enough. But, in a country plagued with low lifestyle standards and a huge population (read: competition), education is not an end in itself. It is a means to go to the next socio-economic class. It is not a cynical view, but a market reality that I fully respect. Yes, there is scope for radically new ideas in teaching methods and content (that's what PleDu is tried!) but don't expect viral growth (more about niche audiences below).

Only one way to startup: Hypothesise, Ship it and Learn

Some of my earlier attempts at building products fizzled out with users in a small network. Did it better in this attempt: if you have a hypothesis, you need to expose it to a sizable mass of users beyond your comfort zone/network. And then learn about that hypothesis. MVPs and iterations are not blind shots but deliberate sets of experiments. Exposing your brainchild to the world and (most often) failing is scary but that is where the gold is. All other startup Gyan is theoretical in the sense that you would only learn it from actually trying things out, not building castles in the air.

Distribution is hard for selling to a niche audience

Like an idealist, my view was that maybe we may not find success with IIT prep/school students (too time-constrained learners) to pursue learning maths as the ultimate goal. But there is an enthusiastic learners segment that wants to learn things deeply. We did manage to get a lot of users from this segment (and from 9 countries beyond India!). But distributing to any niche audience is hard unless there is an existing community of such users. For example, we find very deep engagement from specific Reddit communities dedicated to learning or teaching maths. But this traffic is not sustainable without spamming these communities constantly. If you are building up, think about distribution and community before you go to the solution. My observation is even Brilliant.org, another stellar product targeting the same audience is slowly focusing more on bread butter courses (machine learning, computer science) because niche courses are harder to sell.

Dwindled attention spans are reality

We hear about reduced attention spans. The school student segment loved PleDu because there wasn't much to read but highly interactive games and short videos. But we arrived at this point after watching them flat-out ignore any text content beyond two paragraphs in the first iteration of the product. It is a separate story whether we like it or not. But reality is interactivity >>> video >>>> text content for any education venture. Interactive content is expensive to make (so more runaway needed!)

Preparing for Three Deaths of a Loonshot

Does this somewhat gloomy set of learnings mean I got disillusioned with the core promise of PleDu or EdTech in general? Far from it. I may take a bit of pause and evolve into a different product 2 years down the line. But it remains life's work for a lifelong learner. In the book 'LoonShots, how to nurture crazy ideas..', Sofi Bahcall tells us to expect at least 3 deaths for a moonshot. If you have an itch for starting up, don't build castles in the air waiting for the right time. Take your first loonshot because anyway it may die 3 times on the way. And there is no shame in calling them loonshots because they become moonshots only in hindsight.

I have more spicy and valuable stories about this roller coaster ride . Please reach out for 1:1 conversation and I'll be happy to help.