How to Build Online Education Startups with Sramana Mitra
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The 1Mby1M Methodology is based on case studies. In this course, Sramana Mitra shares the tribal knowledge of tech entrepreneurs by giving students the rare seat at the table with the entrepreneurs, investors and thought leaders who provide the most instructive perspectives on how to build a thriving business. Through these conversations, students gain access to case studies exploring the alleys of entrepreneurship. Sramana’s synthesis of key learnings and incisive analysis add great depth to each discussion.
Online Education and EdTech were big trends before Covid. But Covid has driven this trend to exponential adoption levels.
One of the bottlenecks in the adoption of online education previously was that people were required to change their learning habits. Well, Covid has created a Tsunami of habit-changing across the board, especially in online-learning.
Investors and entrepreneurs have noted. The time for doing new, creative ventures in online education has never been more favorable.
All the methodology building blocks you have been learning through Sramana’s entrepreneurship fundamentals courses apply. You can, for instance, bootstrap an EdTech startup with a Paycheck or with Services, then raise money (or not). You can build a Unicorn (or not). You can do your venture as a solo entrepreneur.
In addition, you will learn domain specific lessons from entrepreneur case studies and thought leader interviews. You will also listen to investor perspectives on marketplace ventures and new trends they (and Sramana) have identified.
Online Education and EdTech still have numerous open problems. Therefore, entrepreneurs looking for ideas to develop as new startups would do well to study the trend and the opportunities thereof. In the interviews, Sramana always spends time with practicing entrepreneurs exploring what open problems they see in their domains, from their respective vantage points. These serve as excellent pointers for entrepreneurs to go dig in fertile soil in search of pain points around which to build new startups.
In addition, discussions around Sramana’s own ideas are also included in this course.
The 1Mby1M courses are all heavily based on interview-based case studies on Innovation, Business Models, Go To Market Strategies, Validation Principles, and various other nuances of an entrepreneur’s journey. We offer extensive opportunities for entrepreneurs to learn the lessons from the trenches from successful entrepreneurs who have done it before and Investors who support their ambition.
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How to Build Online Education Startups
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Dutch Students Build a Large EdTech Marketplace: StuDocu CEO Marnix Broer
We’ve done a lot of EdTech case studies and also a lot of 2-sided Marketplace Case Studies. Here’s one from The Netherlands that compares/competes with CourseHero and Quizlet. Terrific story!
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Building an European EdTech Unicorn from Austria: GoStudent CEO Felix Ohswald
This is a terrific story of a European EdTech venture that has raised $600 million dollars and is scaling extremely well after 3 years of not finding a monetization model.
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Student Developers Bootstrap w/ Paychecks to 1M Users: TryHackMe CEO Ben Spring
Ben and his co-founder are two techies who started by bootstrapping with a paycheck. With zero marketing budget, they have scaled TryHackMe to a million users and significant revenue.
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Bootstrapping to $5M: Dow Janes Co-founders Laurie-Anne King and Britt Baker
Facebook gets a tremendous bad rap for its many nefarious side effects. Numerous small businesses, however, have been possible because of Facebook’s incredible Ad engine.
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Boom Cards CEO Mary Oemig on Bootstrapping and EdTech Company to $10M
Mary and her husband, Eric, have been scrappy bootstrappers through a decade-long journey building Boom Cards. Awesome story!
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Blaine Vess Bootstrapped StudyMode To $20M With Freemium Conversions
Blaine Vess, Co-founder of StudyMode, discusses how he made multiple business model shifts, and eventually scaled his company to $20 million in revenue with a sub 1% freemium conversion rate.
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Student Entrepreneur to $100M in Revenue with Course Hero CEO Andrew Grauer
We first interviewed Andrew Grauer in 2014 when Course Hero was at around $10 million in revenue. In 2018, the company’s website had 300 million visits. Revenue is approaching $100 million. And as for comparables, Pluralsight has gone public and has validated the business model of all-you-can-eat subscription-based online learning.
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Bootstrapping an Online Education Co. to $16M with Aaron Skonnard, Pluralsight
Aaron Skonnard, Founder and CEO of Pluralsight, one of the few EdTech ventures out there that are scaling at Unicorn levels, discusses his journey during this conversation from 2015. Aaron bootstrapped Pluralsight to $16 million in revenue before raising a $27.5 million Series A at almost a $100 million valuation. This corporate e-learning company went public in 2018. I’m also including our 2012 interview for you to read.
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Solo Entrepreneur Building a Venture Scale EdTech Company from India
Cuemath CEO Manan Khurma’s professor parents in Amritsar didn’t want him to be an entrepreneur. Now, he is changing the trajectory of Math education around the globe by leveraging an underused workforce: stay at home moms with strong mathematics background in India. Brilliant story!
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Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship with Bongo CEO Josh Kamrath
Bongo has turned a ~$1M investment into $6M+ in annual revenue with a compelling growth projection in the next couple of years.
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Learning House CEO Todd Zipper on Scaling to $50 Million
The white-labeled education services business is scaling rapidly, and institutions of all sizes are building online programs. Learning House operates in the small, regional college and university segment, and has built a nice business. Learning House CEO Todd Zipper talks about scaling this educational services business to $50 million.
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EdCast CEO Karl Mehta on Building a Fat Startup in Corporate Training
Serial entrepreneur and EdCast CEO Karl Mehta is applying consumer education models from MOOCs and such to the world of corporate training. Very interesting spin on online learning.
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Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship With Magoosh CEO Bhavin Parikh
Bhavin Parikh and his now departed co-founder Hansoo Lee have built Magoosh with textbook diligence and great discipline. Along the way, Hansoo died of lung cancer, a tragedy that hangs over the company both as misfortune and as inspiration. Read this wonderful story of young Berkeley students pulling together a great business and executing with straight up common sense.
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Spotlight on EdTech with Betsy Corcoran, Co-founder of EdSurge
During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Betsy Corcoran, Co-founder of EdSurge, for a lively discussion on EdTech.
We then went on to discuss another one of my startup ideas from 8 Startup Ideas for the Post COVID World: Startup Ideas for the Post Covid World: K-12 Education
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Future of Higher Education with edX CEO Anant Agarwal
Anant Agarwal is CEO of edX and my former professor at MIT. We have a wide ranging and comprehensive discussion on the future of higher education, complete with startup ideas and analysis of entrepreneurial ventures within education. Definitely worth a look at how a non-profit is operating in this space. This conversation took place in 2015, and I’m also sharing my two previous interviews with Anant as external resources for you to read.
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Funding for Online Education Startups with Deborah Quazzo, GSV Ventures
Deborah Quazzo is Managing Partner at GSV Ventures, a fund focused on Online Education ventures. This is a very good discussion on patterns of success and failure in the sector, and what investors are gravitating towards.
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More Case Studies of Online Education Startups
Here are several more case studies of online education startups for you to learn from:
Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L
Building to $10 Million in EdTech: Panopto CTO Eric Burns
Cyber Security Education with Felix Odigie, CEO of Inspired eLearning
From High School Drop Out to $20M in Revenue: Brad Lea’s Journey with Lightspeed VT
Scaling an Educational Services Business to $50 Million: Todd Zipper, CEO of Learning House
Bootstrapping an Education Company: Tod Browndorf, CEO of Coggno
Building a $10M Company Proctoring Exams Online: Don Kassner, CEO of ProctorU
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Discussing EdTech Exit Strategy with Seong Kim, Chegg, Inc.
Seong Kim, Corporate Strategy & Development for Chegg Inc., discusses exit strategy within EdTech.
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AR/VR Trends and White Spaces with Paul Kellenberger,CEO of zSpace
AR/VR is changing education. This podcast interview with Paul Kellenberger, CEO of zSpace, delves into the trends and the white spaces.
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Pioneering Online Learning with Gregory Marino, CEO of Kaplan Higher Education
Purdue University acquired Kaplan University in 2019 to create Purdue University Global, one of the pioneers in online learning. Gregory Marino, CEO of Kaplan Higher Education, explains why.
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Open Problems in Online Learning with Joseph Scuralli, Berkeley College
During this podcast, Joseph Scuralli, Dean of Online Learning at Berkeley College, discusses open problems in online education.
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Focusing on the IT Learner with Tim Broom, ITProTV
Online learning has produced some Unicorns and a plethora of niche businesses. ITProTV CEO Tim Broom talks about one that focuses on the IT learner during this podcast.
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Thought Leader in Online Education: Apex Learning CEO Cheryl Vedoe
Online education in K-12 has had very few ventures survive or scale. Apex Learning is one of those rare birds. We first covered their story eight years back. This is a catch up conversation with their CEO Cheryl Vedoe that steps us through the ongoing evolution of the K-12 online education sector.
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Thought Leader in Online Education: Calvert Education CEO Steve Gross
A very interesting discussion with Calvert Education CEO Steve Gross on the pedagogical gap in online-offline hybrid learning methodology for younger kids.
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Thought Leader in Online Education: Jon Mott, Learning Objectives
Jon Mott, Chief Learning Officer at Learning Objects, shares some thoughts on learning objectives driven instructional design.
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JumpStart Games CEO David Lord Discusses Online Gaming
This conversation with JumpStart Games CEO David Lord highlights Gamification in online learning.
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Remote Learning CEO Ron Olsen on Learning Management Systems
What kinds of technologies are missing from the portfolios of learning management systems that customers looking to launch online learning programs need? This is the subject of my conversation with Remote Learning CEO Ron Olsen.
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Study.com CEO Adrian Ridner Discusses Online Education Trends
Adrian Ridner started Study.com in 2002. Learn how the trends in online education have impacted the evolution of a very interesting business. Excellent story.
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Inspired eLearning CEO Felix Odigie on Cyber Security Education
Inspired eLearning CEO Felix Odigie talks about something very effective they are doing in Cyber Security education.
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Thought Leader in Online Education: Achieve3000 CEO Stuart Udell
McGraw Hill has now acquired Achieve3000. CEO Stuart Udell is an EdTech veteran who discusses the pre-K-12 literacy gap, personalized learning, as well as open opportunities in B-to-C education models driven by Covid.
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Modern Campus CEO Brian Kibby on Open Spaces in Continuing Education
Modern Campus CEO Brian Kibby discusses a gigantic white space in continuing education that colleges and universities have left open. Modern Campus is trying to address this gap, among other things. Very interesting conversation.
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More Thought Leaders in Online Education
First, I answer the question, "How can one start building an online education startup?" I'm also sharing several more case studies with thought leaders in online education to learn from as external resources:
Greg Smith, CEO of Thinkific: Online education is a booming field that is seeing entrepreneurship both on the platform and technology tool side as well as on the educator side. This interview covers both.
Adrian Ridner, CEO of Study.com: Adrian started Study.com in 2002. Read how the trends in online education have impacted the evolution of a very interesting business. Excellent story.
David Lord, CEO of JumpStart (2016): This discussion takes us into the realm of learning games and their future.
David Lord, CEO of JumpStart (2018): This conversation highlights Gamification in online learning.
Matthew Glotzbach, CEO of Quizlet: Quizlet is a user-generated and AI-augmented study guide platform that has scaled exponentially.
Karen Hebert-Maccaro, Chief Content Officer at O’Reilly Media: Karen discusses the trends in online learning including in-the-moment and multi-channel.
Bharat Anand, Faculty Chair, HBX at Harvard Business School: Online first or classroom first? This discussion delves into the design principles of the two models.
Bobbi Kurshnan, Executive Director of Academic Innovation at University of Pennsylvania: UPenn has both an incubator for EdTech ventures, and an entrepreneurship education program for EdTech. This discussion delves into both programs and more.
Peter Hirst, Executive Director of Executive Education, MIT Sloan School of Management: This interview is a great discussion about the various experiments going on in the world of higher education and how online learning is playing out there.
Todd Hitchcock, COO of Pearson Embanet: The Higher Education industry is going through massive adoption of online education. This conversation highlights the trends, as well as areas where Pearson is looking for partners.
Katya Andresen, CEO of Cricket Media: It almost always is the case that Edtech companies don’t have solid monetization models. Cricket media is experimenting with models that are worth understanding.
