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Ask HN: I've bootstrapped a tech ed startup. Now what?

4 points by benkt ↗ HN
My startup does brick&mortar CS ed, but it also does some interactive java tutorials: https://www.ktbyte.com/intro . I feel like most of the companies in the space I'm in are venture backed. I'm not. Should I be?

6 comments

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virmundi
The question is: "Are you targeting Westerners with money?" American, and I extrapolate to other Western countries, don't care much for education after a certain income level. I don't mean they dislike education. They just don't see it as a priority in spending since they already have a public school system available.

If you are targeting this demographic, you'll need venture money. If you are targeting poor Asian countries, you need savvy. These countries are poor. They know the value of an education. As a result, parents will pay for their kids to get an education if they can.

If you can target poor nations, then you have to get your product known. The rest will follow. You should be able to do this on your own, assuming you've planned a runway.

benkt
I would love to talk more about your points offline if you had the time. ben [ at ] the ktbyte website

Can you speculate as to how the venture backed companies' business strategy works? For the free ones especially, is monetization part of their medium term plan?

thejteam
Just a few thoughts. The parent poster is absolutely right that people will not pay for education, as all of the failed tutoring centers outside of cities will attest to. I almost started one myself but caught myself before I lost a lot of money.

While they may not spend money on education, one thing that people will spend a lot on money on is daycare and summer camps(for the daycare). The brick and mortar classes here have a real potential to expand into full blown licensed after school daycare.

To expand, this could possibly be a franchise model, or possibly just be a training class for people who want to start something on their own. And then they can sell them class materials as well.

phantom_oracle
Java is not "sexy" and too difficult to learn compared to the dynamic languages.

My advice would be to instead focus on the corporate market (depending on how good you are with Java yourself).

For example, I am developer X working at bank FF. We're old school, so we use tech that was big 10 years ago. Our systems are all Java. I got my CS degree and have tried to keep up with Java updates itself, but I've probably missed a couple of things over the years. My company approaches ktbyte.com to come do some instruction lessons for Java 7/8. I'm getting the lessons for free and when I'm done learning, the knowledge I have will enable me to obtain a Java certificate from Oracle/Sun (you'll need to connect with them here).

Anyway, that is what I might consider, instead of the crowded "teach anyone to code" market. You could easily negotiate good terms with Oracle and because it'll only be you in the start, your main expense would be travel.

No need for venture money there.

benkt
We started with Java because our middle/high school students do algorithmic competitions, and the choice is either Java or C++. At least Java is also used on the AP Computer Science exam.

What you say about training is interesting though. I suppose I would need to start contacting companies to reach out to whoever does training. Do you have any leads here?

phantom_oracle
Are you based in the US?

Unfortunately, I am not, so I cannot assist with leads.