Each year, the momentum continues to grow for investing in EdTech. In 2011, venture capital invested in the EdTech sector was $800 million. That number has increased each year since 2011. In 2015, the number reached $2.86 billion, according to PitchBook.
Though there are now more opportunities in EdTech than ever, selling your product to K-12 schools, colleges, and universities is a tough job. Once you’ve landed a school or university as a customer, getting teachers, professors, administrators, and students to use your product consistently is even harder. Raising capital as an EdTech startup can be especially grueling because there are only a handful of venture capital firms that specialize in EdTech.
Dreamit fosters successful EdTech startups. We provide EdTech founders and employees the tools, knowledge, and connections they need to build their companies into world-changing Unicorns.
Here’s 19 resources that will help you become an EdTech pro:
1. EdSurge — Covers the most interesting news and trends in the EdTech industry. You should also subscribe to EdSurge’s weekly newsletter and attend one of their many events.
2. Edtech Handbook — Covers fundraising, marketing strategies, case studies, product development, and more with information geared specifically towards EdTech startups.
3. Office of Educational Technology — A government initiative oriented toward helping EdTech startups within the United States. Further resource via this site include: Education Innovation Clusters, the National Education Technology Plan, and the EdTech Developer’s Guide.
4. Hack Education — Articles and OpEd pieces about following trends and succeeding in the EdTech industry. Also, this site runs helpful research projects about EdTech that you can benefit from or contribute to.
5. The 4.0 Schools Blog — An organization that runs Startup Weekend events for entrepreneurs interested in building the foundation of an EdTech company over the course of one weekend. Their Medium publication has tons of helpful articles to help you succeed as an EdTech founder.
6. Education Week — Education Week writes articles about how specific schools are using EdTech products and overall trends in the industry.
7. Edutopia — Helps K-12 teachers understand how to use technology in their classrooms more effectively. Teachers will be the primary users for many EdTech products, so this is a good site to learn more about how teachers think. It’s also a great place to get press for your startup if you sell to K-12 teachers.
8. Getting Smart — Writes in-depth articles to help teachers and administrators succeed and dedicates lots of articles to EdTech products and trends.
9. Startup Digest Education — A weekly newsletter that contains the best articles about EdTech news and trends from the people at Startup Digest.
10. Facebook for Educators — A Facebook group and page for teachers who want to exchange tips with one another and learn how to improve at their craft. This is a great community to learn about problems in education that you can then fix with your EdTech startup.
11. MindShift — Features lots of articles about how EdTech helps or hurts education and helps students and teachers become more successful.
12. This Week in Education — Aggregates the most important information, happenings, and articles about education and EdTech multiple times every day.
13. EDUKWEST — Writes about EdTech startups that raise funding and hit important milestones. Also, EDUKWEST covers interesting trends in EdTech and highlights opportunities in education that EdTech startups can improve on and disrupt.
14. EdTech Magazine — Covers news related to K-12 EdTech and innovation. If you run an EdTech startup, you should try to get EdTech Magazine to write about it. Also, you should go to EdTech Magazine to learn more about the EdTech market.
15. EdTech Startups — A LinkedIn group to network with, learn from, and provide value to other entrepreneurs, educators, and administrators interested in EdTech.
16. Dangerously Irrelevant — Opinions about the future of K-12 education and EdTech’s role in it from Scott McLeod, who is a professor at the University of Colorado-Denver. If you like honest, unapologetic innovation from an expert about the problems in K-12 education and how to fix them, then you will love this blog.
17. Eduwonk — Features news, analysis, and commentary about education and EdTech from the folks at Bellwether Education Partners.
18. Larry Cuban — Opinions from Larry Cuban, Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University, about problems and trends in education. This blog also features Cuban’s opinions about how to improve education and fix the problems in it.
19. The Education Startups Quora Topic — Has more than 20,000 followers and you can ask questions about how to build a successful EdTech startup in it. There have already been lots of valuable questions and answers here too.
20. University Ventures Newsletter — UV is the only investment firm focused solely on higher ed. The team is full of thought leaders in the education industry, and their newsletter, published sporadically, and blog are a must read for edtech founders. They conduct in depth interviews with notable decision-makers in the industry, giving entrepreneurs an inside look at how decisions are being made.
More Resources
eSchool News — This is publication has been around since 1998 and has become a go-to source for edtech in all aspects. It’s a great resource for the latest news, purchasing decisions, and collaborations of members of the edtech community.
Education in the US needs to improve, and EdTech startups are one of the best ways for realizing that improvement. By improving education with your EdTech startup, you have an opportunity to improve millions or billions of people’s lives. You should not squander that opportunity or risk losing it.
To give your EdTech startup the best shot at being successful, use the resources in this article to learn everything there is to know about the industry. Once you’re armed with knowledge about the EdTech industry, you and your startup will be much better equipped to conquer it. The time is now to build your EdTech startup, so go do it.
By Jack Kaufman.
