Anytime anyone advises you that something can never work, you should run screaming. "Never" is an extremely long time.
First of all, what's being referred to here as "education" is really dozens of different categories of products -- it's very challenging to generalize about all of them.
Secondly, the author asserts that building a meaningful education business will take 20 years. It's interesting that he makes that assertion since he didn't spend 20 years on his own education business. But consider that every meaningful innovation always seems like it's 20 years away. (Indoor plumbing probably seemed at least 20 years away the day before it was invented.) But then, as soon as something is invented, it immediately seems obvious and commonplace. That's how innovation works; that's why it fascinates us.
The big problem with education is that most investors work on pattern recognition, which is to say they want to see some variant of something they've seen before. So they fund shitty businesses that really act more like media companies or software companies because they think that's how they'll achieve scale. And it's unsurprising that students are indifferent, because students want to be actually educated and your highly scalable education business essentially rickrolled them.
I couldn't agree with you more. What you just said reminded me of how IBM first reacted to personal computers. The crux of innovation is disrupting the existing model. Thats what Apple did with its iPod and iTunes product.
The author has mentioned very few education companies outside of the standardized tests/textbooks/tutoring model. Companies like Wireless Generation, Khan Academy, P2PU are the ones that are really disrupting how education is delivered. Another education company called Zinch which was purchased by Chegg turned the admissions process on its head. These are the type of innovations that education industry will have. It will be sad if we all sit around with our arms crossed thinking that it can't be done for the next 20 years because the technology is ripe and so is adoption...
It's not at all clear to me that Khan Academy is really "disrupting education". They may be awesome and all, but when an industry is disrupted something more fundamental is at work -- other businesses are displaced and shut down, people lose their jobs, and billion-dollar market segments get turned into million-dollar market segments (or eliminated completely).
To compare, look at what's happening in the music or book industries right now. It's hard to find a retailer that sells CDs today because that business has been disrupted.
It's far from clear to me that KA is actually having that "disruptive" effect, or that they will be able to do that in the future.
Zinch - didn't really get off the ground. I know the founder and others on the team. Really great folks doing some great work. Part of the reason they sold is that getting any serious traction and turning it into a large business is going to take many many more years.
Put it another way. In the same amount of time that Wireless Generation was founded the rest of the Internet got: Facebook, iOS, YouTube, Wikipedia, DropBox, and much more.
There is a big difference between an industry being nascent (as the PC industry was in the 70s) and the fundamental dynamics in the industry creating certain types of companies (as is the case with education and some other industries).
First of all, what's being referred to here as "education" is really dozens of different categories of products -- it's very challenging to generalize about all of them.
Secondly, the author asserts that building a meaningful education business will take 20 years. It's interesting that he makes that assertion since he didn't spend 20 years on his own education business. But consider that every meaningful innovation always seems like it's 20 years away. (Indoor plumbing probably seemed at least 20 years away the day before it was invented.) But then, as soon as something is invented, it immediately seems obvious and commonplace. That's how innovation works; that's why it fascinates us.
The big problem with education is that most investors work on pattern recognition, which is to say they want to see some variant of something they've seen before. So they fund shitty businesses that really act more like media companies or software companies because they think that's how they'll achieve scale. And it's unsurprising that students are indifferent, because students want to be actually educated and your highly scalable education business essentially rickrolled them.