Coolican: Edtech innovation will start with non-consumers before moving up-market
D'Arcy Coolican · What's Next for Education Startups · Jan 10, 2019 · at 13:12
Darcy Coolican, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), explains how disruptive education technology will initially target individuals who currently have no access to formal education.
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“I think, you know, and I don't know if this is always true, but I think probably you will see the innovation come from the bottom up, and you will see the innovation come where right now the alternative is like non-consumption, right? So it won't necessarily be the person going to Harvard or Stanford or Waterloo or one of those schools. You know, and at the start it might not even be the person going to a kind of tier two, tier three, or vocational school or something like that. It'll be the person who's literally not getting an education right now, and that may mean that it starts out international and then moves domestic. You know, there may be different ways that that plays out, but I think probably you will see a lot of the innovation come in places where right now people are just not, not getting anything or not doing anything, and that's where they'll start to consume, they'll start to gain value from it, and then you'll slowly see it creep up the stack.”
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