Edtech Entrepreneurs Must Find New Ways to Build Community

Source: EdSurge | Repost Fight for Life Foundation 1/6/2023 –

The COVID pandemic has brought a rush of new people interested in building tools and businesses to help improve education. And today’s tech environment, with easy-to-use tools and social media, makes it easier than ever for entrants to reach global learners and sell their products or services, so that anyone with a good idea and a laptop can get started virtually overnight.

But as someone who has long helped entrepreneurs enter and grow within the edtech space, I can say that turning a good idea into a working innovation that helps educators and students remains a challenge. Sustaining these innovations takes communities that have become harder to build in these times of remote work and lingering pandemic concerns.

To oversimplify early-stage entrepreneurship, the process involves iteration and benchmarking. It requires the entrepreneur to absorb and process such “data” as, ‘What have I learned about myself, my team, my customers, my business, my community and the world?’ ‘How do I apply this learning to reframe the problem I am solving, or the solution I am building?’ Like a young child testing their capabilities to figure out their place in the world, those who build early-stage companies must then test each new iteration with the market, their community, and their own expectations and ethics.

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