It’s a great time to be an education entrepreneur! Parents are eager for access to diverse education options. They continue to explore alternatives to district schools, including homeschooling, microschooling, virtual schools, learning pods, low-cost private schools, and charter schools.
The Wall Street Journal reported recently that public schools lost more than a million students during the pandemic, and many aren’t returning to a conventional classroom. Instead of competing with K-12 schooling alternatives and moving toward smaller, more personalized learning experiences for students, district schools are responding to declining enrollments by consolidating schools into much larger ones—a trend that’s likely to prompt more parents to seek other learning options.
The widening gap between what parents want for their children’s education and what mass schooling currently offers creates greater opportunities for today’s education entrepreneurs.
If you’re thinking about becoming an education entrepreneur in 2023, check out the advice below from several of the successful founders whom I featured on my LiberatED Podcast in 2022. These suggestions came from our podcast conversations throughout the year. The entrepreneurs range from former public school teachers who launched microschools to venture capital-backed startup founders who’ve built national education networks.
Some of their advice is contradictory, such as when one founder says to jump in and get started while another one says to take it slow and steady, but all of it can be helpful on your journey to creating a new education option for families this year!
Ada Salie, founder of the Life Rediscovered microschool in Massachusetts:
“I would say that having a community of entrepreneurs is essential. I didn’t really have that and I’ve been trying to create it. I have a small Facebook group of women who are running similar programs and we support each other just in terms of daily questions. I think that would have really helped me starting out and would have given me a little bit of a clearer path in terms of what needs to be done and what might be occupying most of my time.”
Amar Kumar, founder of KaiPod Learning, a national network of personalized learning pods
“Start with the real problem that you care about, that parents and kids and educators need solved, and then see how you can solve it. Seek out those complaints, those pain points, those problems that you hear from friends and relatives and neighbors, and then go and build those solutions.”
“It’s always good to start around a personal pain point you have, but you can also just have a really cool idea of something you think people would love. And I would just say, try it out as quickly as you can. Don’t sit for a year planning how the school is going to go and rent expensive space and launch. Really get what you’re offering into people’s hands as quickly as you can.”“I think it’s like any sort of entrepreneurial project: You just have to get it started and it’s going to be rough. The first go at it is not going to be perfect. Do you care about children? Do you care about families? Then start, keep going, little by little.”
“One of the things that was hard for us I think when starting was asserting good boundaries for ourselves, because this job will burn you out really quickly. There’s a lot of needs and—you saw the pace of our day—it doesn’t stop. You get here and usually still have cold coffee on the desk at the end of the day and it’s just very, very, very, very busy. So running a microschool, whether it has five kids in it or 35, is going to be like that and I think understanding that commitment from the beginning is important.”
“Plan, take your time, don’t feel rushed. Yes, there is a surge of microschools, but the most important thing is to research and get all of your ducks in a row, figure out who you want to serve. What’s going to be your niche? What is going to attract parents to you? And as you’re looking and building different components of your school, don’t forget to remain true to who you are and know what your mission is and stay focused and create programs that really align to who you want to serve and what you want to see.
