Ep 2: Revolutionising Education
This is Episode 2 of the series that I am writing to demystify Ed-tech for anyone outside the system.
Episode 2: Revolutionising Education
"Excited to revolutionize education together!" was the first line of my first offer letter titled "The Offer". I received it four months into the job. I, now, had to accept a job offer for a job I had already been doing for four months. The feeling of signing a contract like that was different, or better explained by words often uttered by my then-founder - familiar yet different. The designation - Author. Four months ago, I had completed my engineering degree in "Computer Suff", and now George R.R. Martin and I had the same designation.
"S" left behind, by his holy decree, three newly ordained 'lesson planners' including me. All of us were engineers and all of us with zero lesson planning experience before the 10 plans that we had just made. The other two were IITans, one of whom got drunk one fateful night, cursed us all, and we never saw him again. He left his T-shirts and a watch behind, which the rest of us split after he remained AWOL for three more months. What happened to him, and why he left, is still a mystery.
Two engineers with zero experience in lesson planning, making lesson plans that were supposed to 'revolutionize education'. We were in a position where we had to create the art that we were appreciating as spectators, a week ago. We were the chefs who were to cook a dish, without even knowing what the well-made version of that dish tasted like. Couldn't we have hired other people? We could have, but it would have been too late. For me to give you a complete picture, I will first have to explain the basics of an Ed-tech business.
All Ed-tech businesses, for-profits or non-profits, at their core have three teams - Ed, Tech, and Business. The Business and the Tech teams inside an Ed-tech are usually, and quite innovatively, named Business and Tech teams. Naming the Ed team, however, is a completely different deal. The name is driven more by philosophy or outward appearance, than by actual function. I think these names tell you more about the thinking of the founders than the actual purpose of the team.
If your founder has a business background - Content Team. If your founder has some passion or background in education - Education Team, Learning Team, Development Team, Academic Team, or Knowledge Team. If your founder has a flair for marketing or has hired someone in marketing, the names start getting complicated - Academic Excellence Team, Learning Design Team, Instructional Design Team, Learning & Development Team. And if you join a company and your team has a bizarre name like - Harbinger of Learning Team, Devourers of Knowledge Team, Instructional Design Daredevils, or anything that ends with Samurais/Ninjas/Rockstars - good luck.
In all, no matter the name, there are just three moving parts in all Ed-tech businesses - Ed, Tech, and Business. One that makes things, one that makes a platform for the things that are made, and one that sells the platform.
Our startup was no different. "Make learning fun for children by creating better lesson plans and hiring great teachers." That was the Ed part. "Facilitate this with an app." That was the tech part. "Make money by keeping a cut of the fees that children pay and handing the rest over to the teachers." That was the business part.
Of the three parts, we had two parts -- Business and Tech -- figured out. Selling is storytelling and we told beautiful stories. We had already sold the program to some parents. Also, we onboarded the teachers to teach the initial batches of children. The business part was a go.
Business people, especially salespeople, are impatient people. They want to 'close' customers - Startup-speak for selling something to people - and they want to close them fast. For their job, this attitude is a feature, not a bug. They are rewarded for it. But in an Ed-tech startup or generally any product-based startup, this attitude 'bugs' the people making the product. For us, it was the Tech and Ed teams that were bugged. These classes were happening next Monday, D-day. And the classes were to happen six days a week for Math, Science, and English in 2 batches.
The Tech team, just one person at that time, got bugged but said that we could use some presentation software and PDFs to do the job at an acceptable level. He would keep building and updating the platform as time passes. That was his D-day plan. So, Tech was also a go.
Now there was just one more thing to do - Ed. We had to make the content -- Ed-Speak for lesson plans, exercises, charts, and everything else that goes into conducting a class -- and make it now. It was D-day minus 7. If we slacked, then the teacher would have nothing to teach on D-day. So, if you ask me - Couldn't you hire people? No my friend, not today. Today, we were to revolutionize education.
