Last week, we attended SIIA’s Education Business Forum. It was a busy few days with many interesting folk afoot. Here’s what we noticed during our time at the conference.
Models not just technologies
The most interesting businesses in US education right now are the ones that have found success in innovative business models, not just innovation in core curricular technologies.
For example, Tammy Wincup, COO at Everfi, talked about how the business has used 3rd-party payer models to build an education business funded by sponsoring companies, not schools or parents.
And Kate Cassino, CEO of Hobsons, explained how her business has focused on broader life challenges (college readiness, wellness, personal development plans) to create impact outside the traditional education businesses.
Large Investor Presence
Michelle Dervan (Rethink Education Fund) spoke of their strong returns in the sector and that, while there may be a “cyclical edtech backlash” as ideas of excessive passive screentime for children and “evil AI” gain prominence, the sector still has enormous potential for better solutions and better businesses.
The RISE fund, a major social impact investor, highlighted three areas of focus for their investments:
- digital and personalised curricula
- career education
- international private education
The Innovation Showcase
Alongside the major investors and established businesses, EBF hosted the Innovation Showcase, promoting recent Codie Award winners to the SIIA network.
Adaptemy was joined by an innovative online tutoring company (GoStudent from Austria), a classroom gamification success story (Classcraft from Montreal), among many others.
Next up
Adaptemy will be attending BETT in January 2019 and LearnIT too.
Conveniently occurring in the same city at the same time, these are must-attend events on the edtech calendar. Will you be there? Let’s meet.
To explore Adaptemy’s technologies, tools and consultancy services in more detail, please get in touch.
