Opening my email this morning reveals news of an Ed-Tech “startup” that has just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after having received in excess of $50m in funding. It’s hardly surprising when the amount of money injected into this part of the education market has been so significant in the last two years.
The education market is a strange beast with no clearly-defined routes to market for the provider of a service or product, particularly when that service or product is delivered online.
On one end of the spectrum we have the teachers and schools (mistakenly thought of by many as the core of the education market) with limited budgets, and on the other end we have a variety of educationally related products and services – many of which closely resemble each other, looking to access those very limited education budgets. Yet unlike many other industries, the marketing conduit between the supplier and the market is both ill-defined and expensive to use, especially when exposure is largely limited to either costly face-to-face representation, or costly media advertising options. (more…)
