Venture Capital in EdTech: Learning Patience

Venture capital in education—this is a mismatch if ever there was one. Not for anything other than time scale. The pace of innovation in education is deliberate, and the expectations of VCs rely on a quick return on investment. There are a lot of people with good intentions, trying to make a difference—but until the time scale issue is resolved, we’re going to see money spent on very little impact.

That leaves two options: VCs will either tire of this space or learn some patience. I’m betting on the latter. There’s too much potential, and too much money at stake, so I think that VCs will grow more accustomed to a longer time scale.

Education as a market is insulated from change by a complex ecosystem and a panoply of stakeholders. But the most important voice is often underrepresented—the student. With all the money swirling around in edtech, and all the talk that comes with it, the student somehow gets lost in the shuffle. Let’s offer a seat at the table to The Missing Voice, or it won’t really matter whether or not we sync the time scale.

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This is a summary of my op-ed piece published in EdTech Times last week. For the full article, please see: http://bit.ly/VCs-in-EdTech.

Check out my “Good Content Series” for EdTech Times too; the complete set of articles can be found on the series page: http://bit.ly/GoodContentSeries.