Incrementalism and Solving Meaningful Problems
Very early on with eduFire we set the intention to only grapple with extremely meaningful problems. We set out to do something very challenging and yet very meaningful: Revolutionize education. There are a million other things we could have done and to be honest a lot of roads that would be have been “easier” depending on how you define success (be it raising money, getting acquired, etc.). However, that didn’t have much appeal to us. Instead we want to take a really big swing and try to shake an industry to its core in the hopes that something much better would emerge on the other end. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do with eduFire.
Umair has a great post up on the HBS blog which I think everyone who’s an entrepreneur or a VC needs to read. In it he takes issue with the incrementalism that he sees coming out of the Valley.
But today’s revolutionaries are sheep in wolves’ clothing. They’re lost in the economically meaningless, in the utterly trivial, in the strategically banal: mostly, they’re cutting deals with one another to…try and sell more ads. That is, when they’re not too busy partying.
I gotta say it…Umair’s dead on. Instead of looking for the New New Thing that could revolutionize the *fill in the blank* industry it seems that a lot of people are instead looking for the New New Alert Thingy. You now, that service that aggregates all of my friend aggregators which in turn aggregates all of my friend feeds that aggregate all of the things that my friends do on all of the social networks that aggregate all of my friends…
I agree with Umair that there’s something more out there that we’re missing. Our time has an opportunity cost which is that the time spent on the trivial and banal is not time spent on meaningful innovation and creative disruption. In a world with so many (real) problems to solve my concern is that so many young, creative, ambitious people are chasing after stuff that while cute and cuddly perhaps doesn’t solve these real problems.
Maybe we have the luxury to not worry about food and education and energy and health. Maybe those problems will take care of themselves.
But maybe not. Maybe we’ll all look back one day and see that we spent way too much of our time focused on the stuff that didn’t matter and not nearly enough time focused on the stuff that did. As Tony Robbins puts it, maybe we’ll realize that we “majored in minor things.”
And that I fear is indeed the real Serious Business at hand.
How much of the world’s collective intelligence in online and indexable by Google?
Google’s goal is to index all of the world’s information.
How close do you think they are?
Certainly they’re doing a really good job of indexing a lot of the text information on the Web. But there’s a lot of other information on the Web that’s in the format of audio, video, etc. that Google doesn’t do a very good of indexing.
Then there’s all of the information/intelligence that never makes it to the Web. All of the college classes that aren’t being recorded. All of the corporate training sessions. All the one-on-one conversations where wisdom is exchanged.
So what % of all of the information/intelligence in the world does Google have?
10%?
1%
0.1%
Less?!
Are you “insane” enough?
Back when we were hatching the plans for eduFire I talked to more than a few people who were sure it wouldn’t work. One person (a successful guy who I respect) told me “Dude, you really think that will happen? I’d *never* invest in that.”
Then we went out and built what we said we were going to build and while we’re far from ultra-successful yet, people are using it and the feedback we’re receiving from tutors and students is overwhelmingly positive.
Now when I talk to most people their consensus is “that’s a pretty good idea.”
Which makes me wonder…are we missing something?
I think when a good percentage of people tell you you are insane (assuming of course, that you’re not *actually* insane) then it probably means you are indeed on to something.
I’m sure people told Ev he was insane when he was fooling around with Twitter (or Blogger for that matter).
I’m sure some people thought Stewart and Caterina were insane when they shifted from a video game to a photo sharing tool.
And I know a bunch of people told Pierre that he was insane…
“Don’t let people who you may respect and who you believe know what they’re talking about, don’t let them tell you it can’t be done, because often they will tell you it can’t be done, and it’s just because they don’t have the courage to try.”
-Pierre Omidyar
So I guess the question is when you’ve told your plans to someone recently have at least a few of them looked at you like you were insane? Or perhaps actually vocalized that opinion?
If not, maybe revising those plans is in order.
Have a great weekend everybody!
eduFire on BNET and TechZulu
Here are a couple of interviews I did recently about eduFire that I wanted to pass along.
First is with Zorianna Kit of BNET on the Dog & Pony Show. They somehow managed to edit out all the dumb stuff I said so it turned out pretty well. 
Second is with the TechZulu guys. This one is a little longer and I go into a little more depth into what our model is.
eduFire on TechZulu
Thanks to the people at Dog & Pony and TechZulu for the exposure!
eduFire in the News: Interview on SoCalTech News
Ben Kuo of SoCalTech News did an interview with me last week and it hit their site today. Worth a read if you’re interested in hearing more about where we’re at and where we’re heading:
Interview with Jon Bischke, eduFire
Education and the Edgeconomy
So I understand this edgeconomy stuff less than 1% as well as Umair but I’ve been reading him religiously for a while now and I think I’m starting to see how it all pieces together, at least in the industry I follow most closely. This post in particular was a little bit of a mind-blower for me.
One of the tenets of the edgeconomy, as I understand it, is that firms are founded to organize resources. In the industrial era it’s tough to argue that they did the best job of doing so. And this success built something powerful that is likely to cannibalize the very firms that can’t relinquish it: orthodox strategy. The notion that the best way to succeed is to maintain the status quo and do the things that caused you to be successful in the first place. I, like Umair, had that jammed down my throat during my time at business school.
But there’s a little problem here for those who espouse orthodoxy: The Internet. And not just the Internet but new forms of communication and peer production that lead to completely different ways of organizing resources than were possible in the past. Wikipedia. Google (now the world’s most valuable brand in a striking example of the power of edgeconomy). craigslist. Twitter.
These and other services are fundamentally changing the modes of production, distribution and selection. And it’s happening fast.
Does this impact education?
Massively.
Rewind 10 years. I’m teaching classes and doing private tutoring for Kaplan Education. Kaplan pays me $20/hour. Kaplan bills out my students at $100. I don’t complain too much about this because heck, what else am I going to do? Take out a classified ad? Al Gore hadn’t invented the Internet yet so I was pretty much stuck. Kaplan was organizing the resources in the most efficient way then and making a boatload of money doing so.
Fast forward to more recent times. I’m an SAT teacher trying to decide whether I want to teach for Kaplan or set up shop privately. Stuff like craigslist makes it much (much!) easier for me to go solo. I can find students without spending any money and build a practice. Maybe I charge $50 and now I’m making more than double what Kaplan was paying me and my students are enjoying a half-price sale. In this scenario Kaplan is providing the exact same “value” of resource organization but what’s changed is that the value they are adding relative to the other alternatives (e.g., going solo through craigslist) is much, much lower.
Now fast forward again to the present, or let’s call it 2012. I want to go out on my own and there are platforms on the Net (we’re building one, there will be others) that further improve the organization of those resources. In fact, their value proposition attacks the old model on three flanks: disintermediation (allowing buying and seller to transact directly…think eBay), connected consumption (you buy something, I know how much value you got) and removal of physical boundaries (real-time, in-browser video communication).
Any one of those three could topple the big players in a massive industry. Put the three together and it’s virtually impossible that the big players will survive. Their death could be quick (think what’s happening to record labels or the newspaper industry right now) or it could take longer but it’s imminent. And it will mean some interesting stuff:
#1 - As tech improves location becomes less of an issue. When’s the last time you needed to know where your favorite band lived? That used to be an issue but the technology to deliver music has made it a non-factor. The same will happen in education. My generation learned almost of what we know from people who lived less than 10 miles away from where we lived. My children’s generation will learn most of what they know from people who live more than 10 miles away. And that will be a good thing.
#2 - Value will shift from the center to the edge. Education is a $2 trillion industry and most of the focus right now is on the core/status quo/orthodox strategy. That will shift and new value will be created at the edges replacing the value decay at the center (I hope I don’t have to go into why there’s value decay at the center). The answers won’t lie in stuff like propping up old institutions but rather by re-thinking the notion of education and learning from the ground up.
#3 - Consumers *and* producers will win. In the music biz right now both bands (witness NIN, Radiohead, Arctic Monkey, Vampire Weekend, etc.) and fans are winning. Same will happen in ed. Teachers will win, being presented with amazing opportunities they’ve never dreamed of before. Students will win as well by having a global marketplace of teachers to tap in any subject imaginable anytime, anywhere. There will be losers as well of course (unimaginative schools of tomorrow = unimaginative record labels of today).
All this stuff is still rolling around in my head so please check my logic and assumptions. Still, regardless of how I look at this it’s really hard to imagine that a Revolution isn’t close at hand.
eduFire.com: The First 30 Days
Hey all. It’s been a while since I’ve posted (which means we’ve been busy) but I wanted to drop everyone a line as we’ve been live for about 30 days now (plus or minus a few…no one is counting…). Here’s an update on what went down in the first month since the official launch of eduFire:
#1 - Lots of sessions with our tutors! An open marketplace for in-browser real-time learning hasn’t existed before. When you’re doing something new it can often be slooooooow going at first. After all, you get a lot of questions, hesitant people, etc. We had no idea what to expect and have been pleasantly surprised at what’s transpired. Some of the most surprising things were a few international sessions (we’re not really set up for that but it’s been cool to see people doing video chat across the pond!), how excited teachers are getting about the proposition of learning from home and the relatively small number of technical complaints we’ve had. Things haven’t been perfect and it will take some time to nail the user experience but what we’ve seen so far has been very encouraging.
If you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend you to head on over to eduFire and sign up for a session with one of our tutors. You’ll literally be making history by being one of the first people ever to learn in real-time over the Web. It’s a blast and a great way to help support the tutors who have been so passionate (and patient!) during these first few weeks of getting off the ground. (In fact, the most common request we get from tutors is “Send me more students!!!” :))
#2 - Over 400 tutors signed up. For me the most fun part of the first 30 days has been getting to know our tutors. We have an amazing community already forming and that’s evident in several places on the site, most notably in our community forums which have almost 600 posts so far. Some of the most active tutors have been Spring, Patrice, Candy, Marco, Angeles…oh boy, I better stop there. I know I’m already leaving a lot of people out! Anyway, I’ve talked/emailed/eduFired with almost all of these people personally and it’s been a total pleasure. I’m so excited to watch this community grow!
#3 - Flashcards! One of my favorite developments of the last 30 days is the launch of flashcards. You can think of flashcards as a fun and easy way to practice your vocabulary in between eduFire lessons. Flashcards are totally free and what I really like is that you can challenge your friends and go for the top score in any language or individual set (e.g., just try and knock Carrie off in Spanish flashcards…I dare ya!). Flashcards just launched a few days ago so it’s too early to predict how popular they’ll get but the early indications are good (the most common word used in response to flashcards so far? “Addictive”).
#4 - A little buzz for eduFire. We’ve been keeping the site pretty low profile for now but mentions of the site are sneaking out here and there. Venture Hacks featured us (thanks Nivi!) and I noticed my buddy Dave over at TeachStreet wrote up a nice little post (kudos on the recent funding Dave!). Even got a quick mention in the LA Business Journal. More to come on that front as we start getting the word out now that we’re live.
Thanks to any of you who’ve supported us in getting here. Something big’s afoot I feel and what excites me most is not what that means for any of us here at eduFire but rather for the community of tutors and students we serve. Ultimately, we’re building eduFire for them in the hopes that education and learning can be more fun than it has ever been before and that we can help to create a future full of “entrepreneurial educators”, people getting paid to teach what they love.
I hope to see you on the site soon!
Music and Life
Can’t believe I haven’t posted this to our blog yet. I’ve seen it before but Obi sent it to me recently and I think it rings true for what we’re doing at eduFire. So much of traditional education is about reaching a destination (passing a test, getting a degree, etc.). It’s gone so far that many (most?) people have lost out on the joy of learning for learning’s sake. I’m all for education as a means of professional development and “getting ahead” but one of the reasons I’m really excited about eduFire is because we’re going to help show many people how much fun it can be to just learn. Stay tuned!
Seth Godin on Chaos Theory
Got goosebumps reading this Seth Godin post last night. He is describing exactly what we’re building at eduFire.
Education is largely handmade, not mass produced. That makes it difficult to share best practices and to figure out how to turn mediocre classrooms into great ones. Maybe, just maybe, video of the best teaching will do as much to encourage some teachers as the cell phone video does to discourage the rest of us.
Um, can I get a hell yeah?!!!
While the classroom videos in the post he links to are tough to watch they are a stark reminder of all the work that needs to be done. Optimal learning and creativity simply cannot take place in a fear-based environment. It’s going to be incredibly fun to work with others to radically transform this industry. It won’t happen overnight but as it starts to change it’s going to be amazing to watch.
I needed eduFire circa 2009/2010 today
I was editing a movie in iMovie today. I’m incredibly retarded with stuff like iMovie. Seriously retarded.
Anyway, I would have easily paid someone a dollar a minute to walk me through what to do. For someone who had used iMovie more than a few times it probably would have been a piece of cake. Let’s say 10-15 minutes.
On the other side of coin there’s someone out there who’s a passionate Mac user. Who loves iMovie and everything else that Mr. Jobs creates for him or her. And yet, assuming there isn’t a Genius Bar within commuting distance, he or she is stuck working a shitty service job somewhere doing something mundane rather than sharing love (in this case, love of Apple products).
This scenario is repeated millions (billions?) of times throughout the day in our society.
You’ll be aware of it from here on out. You’ll have that moment of “If only I knew how to do…” and “Search isn’t quite the right approach for this…” and you’ll think of our person of the other side of the value chain who wants to…would love to…is begging to…fulfill the other half of the transaction.
The future can’t get here quick enough.
