

Imagine K12 - pg
http://www.ycombinator.com/imaginek12.html

======
MrTurner
SHORT COMMENT: Hey hackernews, I'm a teacher/hustler looking for a technical
co-founder. Let's build something together. Apply for this program. And worst
case scenario, we don't get in but we have a kick@ss product we can sell to
school systems.

EXPANDED COMMENT:I'm a long time reader of hackernews and I have never left a
comment. But this was the push over the edge.

I am a math teacher in an urban school. Before that I ran a (very non-tech)
business, and before that I was a business analyst (read documentation nerd)
for the mobile technology division in a very large bank.

I have been telling everyone that will listen that we can save public
education and make a bunch of money through innovation. All of our technology,
frankly, sucks when compared to similar wares that are sold directly to
consumers.

I am bursting with ideas and some I have already tested. But I can no longer
work in a vacuum.

So like dating ads of yesterday here is my pitch-

Me: Undaunted math teacher in an urban school with 2 years of experience.
Using data driven instruction my students achieved the highest passing rate in
my school system. While I can't hack (YET!) I can sell water to a whale and
snow to an Eskimo. More importantly I can take complex systems and teach them
to almost anyone. I have rewritten documentation for our 3 most popular
programs in my systems and I hold monthly workshops for other teachers where I
teach them how to use the technology in their classroom. Plus I understand
teachers and I have experience in market research. And did I mention, I am a
fearless hustler?

You: A) Want to change the face of education. B) Build stuff.

So let's do like voltron. Team up. Build something amazing. And if ImagineK12
doesn't want us, lets keep moving forward and kick down our own doors.

Mr. Turner

P.S. You can reach me at BRODERICK dot TURNER at GMAIL dot COM

P.P.S. Last year my school system's revenue was 662 Million Dollars. The money
is there.

P.P.P.S. A list of companies whose lunch we could eat with a good enough
product and A WHOLE LOT OF HUSTLE=

CARNEGIE LEARNING

PROMETHEAN

INFINITE CAMPUS

QWIZDOM

~~~
jtheory
Of course, it's "Mr Turner" -- what self-respecting teacher goes by their
first name or a silly nickname? ;)

Seriously, I love these kinds of pitches, though I personally am so over-
extended I can't do much beyond offer hit & run advice.

I don't know what other technical contacts you're making, but my biggest
suggestion is not to wait. There's a huge amount of work you can do without
being "the technical one" yourself, and the great thing about this work is
that it gradually leads you into a better understanding of the technical side
yourself -- which you'll need to do at some point, if you want to be centrally
involved in a tech business. You don't have to write code, necessarily, but
you have to learn a lot about the tech side.

All that really means is "details" -- take the best of your ideas, and start
breaking it down all the way into separate pages, separate bits of data ("so
we're letting teachers enter assignments here... that needs a name,
description, due date -- er, wait, some teachers will have sets of assignments
to do in sequence with no specific due date -- and what about extra credit
assignments?" etc.); how to enter data, organize it, show it to the users who
need to see it (and how to organize them). And so on. What do you do when the
user "does it wrong"? Will you handle different time zones, languages, etc.?
This is where the important work is; you have to add in solutions to problems,
then remove most of your ideas and strip it down to what's most essential &
useful & easy to build.

This process is much more difficult than the original brainstorming, but also
more rewarding -- your project becomes so much closer to "real".

------
pclark
This reminds me of jedc and his MBA research about startup accelerators and
how, and more importantly, _when_ to clone.

His #1 point was:

> You need to be unique, where unique is not just a seed accelerator in a
> different city

Imagine K12 is unique in their knowledge and connections. What a fascinating
proposition.

[http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2011/02/23/looking-
back-1-5-...](http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2011/02/23/looking-
back-1-5-years-since-copying-y-combinator/)

~~~
jedc
Thanks, Peter. This is _exactly_ the kind of program that I was talking about.
I hope their connections to schools are able to turn startups in this market
into businesses with real impact quickly.

------
gcheong
I'd really like to see a "request for startups" type post from this group.

~~~
PakG1
I think better it come from the schools than from the group, no? The schools
are the ones feeling the pain you're trying to solve, and it's a targeted
segment where you don't have to searching for a customer. Your customer's
right there, so the knowledge is right there.

Of course, there's the caveat that the customer isn't always sure of what they
really need. But in this case, I'm sure they could think of some good ideas.
:)

~~~
gcheong
I would hope that the requests/ideas would be informed by the people they are
building relationships with at the school level. So perhaps more along the
lines of "here are some things we are hearing again and again" rather than
"these are ideas we think are good" but I wouldn't want to exclude either
kind.

------
btipling
Something built around the model that Khan Academy presents would be really
interesting. Videos and learn at your own time. Home work help, helping
parents and students find tutors, helping with test preparation. The long
summer months are also a problem for a household where both parents are
working. There is a lot of opportunity to help students here. Will be exciting
to see what comes of it.

Good luck!

~~~
chrismanfrank
My company is tackling the tutoring component. We think with free content like
the KhanAcademy, the only thing missing is personalized help when you get
stuck. We're launching a summer program where K-12 students can work with
tutors from Stanford via Skype. The tutor will be like a coach, though, most
of the instruction will be from Khan Academy videos. What do you think? We're
at IgnitionTutoring.com

~~~
ern
Have you had to work around Khan Academy's CC noncommercial license?

~~~
Symmetry
Khan Academy would presumably we willing to permit this for a relatively small
amount of money.

------
prestia
This is a really exciting announcement! Education is probably the most
important factor in maintaining long-term competitiveness and the American
system is in desperate need of improvement. That said, the hurdles in this
area are overwhelming. To name a few:

-Layer upon layer of bureaucracy (states, counties, districts, individual school administrators)

-Teachers that are reluctant to adopt new technology

-Students that are difficult to motivate

I have a ton of respect for anyone even trying to take on this challenge.

~~~
shaggyfrog
I'll add another one: academia who teach education seem to have an almost
visceral reaction to any suggestion of for-profit educational product
development. There's this almost dogmatic principal that anything related to
education should be done not-for-profit. I speak from experience... I have an
idea for an educational game (software) and I haven't had any luck getting the
time of day.

~~~
ianb
OTOH, there are a lot of for-profit educational ventures, and they all seem
really skeevy to me -- places like Kaplan or Phoenix University, for instance,
or frankly a lot of educational software.

Perhaps a pro-market explanation is that the bureaucracy itself undermines the
market, creating a market that is not truly driven by stated goals (education)
but other factors. I'm not sure I believe that, but it's possible. The
difficulty of procurement might in part mean that heavy up-front marketing
costs dominate, and once you've made a sale it's both fairly large and neither
increases nor decreases based on the quality of the product -- poor products
tend to be maintained based on the commitment of the administration even when
in practice they don't end up being useful.

It would be interesting if teachers were allocated money to purchase products
themselves. While it seems somewhat chaotic, and challenging with student
turnover (which is generally very high in the US in particular), it seems like
the only way to actually have a market driven by real experience and taste
rather than politics or theory.

~~~
mahdireilly
I suggest you watch "Waiting for Superman" where they address the problems
teachers face with being given merit based pay, which they could reinvest in
product purchase. A quick solution for this is to create a localized version
of craigslist specific to teachers where they can request donations of
items/funds for specific projects. I tried to implement this many years back
with a focus on computer donations, but the school administration shot it down
because they feared the increase cost of their incompetent IT staff supporting
multiple hardware formats, despite them often being nearly new technology. I
did have teachers in Highschool who were able to build amazing labs based on
applying for grants. Unfortunately these grants were not widely known about
among teachers and they had no knowledge on how to write a good grant request.
My HS physics lab actually exceeded the quality of the lab I used at
university (UT at Austin). I was able to skip every literally single class,
with exceptions of tests, and ended with a final score in the top 5% of the
class.

------
shii
It seems Imagine K12 will/has solved the classic chicken-and-egg problem with
education startups. I've been asking on how to get traction at schools online
in different communities for years when I was working on a side project in
this area. It's virtually impossible to sell to school districts, and unless
pioneering teachers who are savvy enough to use something like Google Apps for
their classrooms and see your product in the Marketplace or look for solutions
on their own time while somehow fitting it in their already tight classroom
curriculum and time budget, you have no way to gain traction from authority
figures in the school system.

Enterprising students are basically they only way I've found that educational
startups/sites can get active users to join on.

~~~
BenSS
"It's virtually impossible to sell to school districts"

This is exactly the problem I've been wrestling with. The best idea so far has
been to appeal to private&charter schools first, and then attempt the big
system. Public education is very much like a large company (risk-adverse, and
process-oriented).

~~~
patio11
School districts have the sales cycles of Fortune 500 megacorps, the technical
savvy of convents, and the budgets of hair salons.

~~~
timsally
As a general rule this is true. However in my experience there is a segment of
this market in the US that is extremely lucrative; essentially the top X% of
public high schools. These schools are private for all intents and purposes,
as most of their budget comes from property taxes. These schools have massive
budgets that approach $100 million, extraordinarily qualified and perceptive
teachers, and a community that is heavily vested (and almost neurotic) in the
success of the students. Also, the staff at these schools are surprisingly
tech savvy, often with a large dedicated budget for technology.

All the above factors combine to create a perfect storm for a business with an
innovative product. If you've got a product that will make students at these
schools more competitive in the college admissions process, it will be
purchased at a massive price tag. All the key players, the parents, the
teachers, and the administrators, have the will and the budget to make these
types of acquisitions.

Note, marketing to these schools is difficult. A connection in the
administration or the education space is the easiest way, but I'm convinced
you could bootstrap yourself through the teachers. They are smart and savvy
and the senior teachers can have surprising influence. Further, the market is
on your side. One you convert a few of the top schools in the area, it is
likely most of the other top schools will follow, as not to be left behind.
Top schools will follow the leader, as these things go.

Overlook this market segment at your own peril. :) There's only a (relatively)
small set of schools that fit the above criteria, but they have a combined
budget of billions nation wide.

You may note that I did not mention the top %X of private schools. That is
because in my experience, parents (one of the key players) aren't necessarily
as invested in the school on a day to day basis. There seems to be a higher
rate of apathy with parents in top private schools, whether as a result of
geographic separation or some other factor. The bottom line is that at top
public schools, the parents made the effort to move to the community, buy a
house at a ridiculous value, pay outrageous property taxes. In practice that
seems to create a much more invested base of parents that will be much more
involved in the school. I still think you can sell to top %X private schools,
but it seems harder in my mind.

If someone is thinking about starting a product in this space, happy to chat
via email.

~~~
jtheory
I've been running a project targeted primarily at schools for about 8 years
now (emusictheory.com), and I _know_ this market exists (I attended a rich
public school, actually), but I also have no idea how to target them without
cutting out many of the public school teachers that have been my supporters
over the years.

Can anyone point me to good writeups of how to build pricing to target the big
players while still letting in the little guys? My pricing is currently too
low (I know, I know), and I have some teachers who tell me to charge whatever,
it's no problem, and others who it takes them 4 months to manage to push
through a purchase order for $150 (and the school takes months to pay the
invoice....).

I've been thinking about making an "enterprise"-level subscription that
includes setting up the school's own mini-site on a subdomain, but I'm not
sure what else I can offer to make the pricing jump seem non-ridiculous.

~~~
codeodor
The pricing jump is probably only "ridiculous" to you. Schools (and government
in general) make it so hard to sell to themselves that prices in the tens of
thousands are normal to them, even for tiny districts.

I don't think the pricing is the hard part - it's getting them to buy. And I'm
not convinced those two are completely related.

------
scottshapiro
This is fantastic.

But we also need a breakthrough in K-12 tech adoption.

n=1: my girlfriend is a math teacher at a better district in California. The
only technology they provide her is a desktop with Windows 98.

So she uses her own mac to admin a tumblog filled with photos of assignments
and answers to problems she uploads from her iphone. She uploads PDF's to
google docs and 'shares with everyone'. She links to Khan academy videos since
the school bans youtube and none of the district computers support flash.

Then her students use their home computers (if they have them) to consume this
content. They're excited about it (most never heard of Khan before this) and
it seems to be effective.

Back in the late 90's IBM installed a token-ring network at my high school. It
was obsolete before they finished the project and the computers we had could
barely get IE3 to load a web page.

So I hope this incubator does a lot not just to foster edu focused startups
but to also get the right people in education to push for decent technology at
schools.

~~~
oscilloscope
Many friendly Linux User Group members volunteer to install and administer
Ubuntu at public schools in the Bay Area. Ubuntu's a decent experience even
with 256MB of ram, so schools can even reuse those 8-12 year old computers.

Free software's great for all kinds of technical, practical and cultural
reasons. It's existed my whole life, but I didn't really feel its presence
until using Debian in a research lab 4 years ago.

We don't all need to be RMS, but it's a worthy thing to think about for anyone
who makes a living off free software.

------
mraybman
The economy of scale here will be huge - if the founders of Imagine K12 build
vertical expertise in promoting education startups (i.e. connections with
schools, VCs who invest in education) it will be a lot easier for startups to
do customer development and build/implement cool ideas. Our education system
will benefit big-time.

------
ericdobbs
Computing should be enabling us to start teaching physics and calculus and
linear algebra (among other advanced subjects) in elmentary school. When I
suggest such things to educators they look at me like I'm insane. But the
future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed.

In 1967 Seymore Papert was introducing elementary aged kids to LOGO. The
turtle graphics in logo are differential geometry -- very advanced mathematics
made completely accessible to young children. Papert's work in LOGO inspired
Alan Kay and his colleagues to invent most of what we recognize in a modern
computer: mice, GUIs, object-oriented programming. Kay's recent work to make
computing accessable to children includes fifth-graders recreating Galileo's
experiments and then building computer models of gravity to compare with their
experimental data, then going on to apply their gravitational models to a
simple computer game. That's physics -- newtonian mechanics to be specific --
made accessible to grade schoolers.

Here's his TED talk from 2007. Skip ahead to 9 minutes 30 seconds and watch
the next 9 minutes of juicy educational ideas:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_abo...](http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas.html)

Think about it. Fourty four years after Papert gave elementary kids a tool to
understand and experiment with differential geometry, we still don't see even
LOGO among educational standards, or any programming tools. The culture of
education has not recognized what a huge leap turtle graphics are for teaching
mathematics. In the late 1970s Apple II computers poured into many schools and
LOGO became widely available in education. But those thirty plus years ago a
bunch of adults saw some pretty pictures, shrugged, and ignored it as child's
play instead of recognizing it for the little revolution it really could be.

Moreover, Alan Kay and company have been actively pursuing educational
technology for four decades and still no traction for computing in education.
Four decades by the people who brought you OOP.

Education is a big mountain to move. I'd very much love to be proved wrong,
though.

------
philfreo
I'm excited about this program. Hopefully it will bring a lot more smart
entrepreneurs and developers into the edu-tech space. It's definitely an
industry that's in need of good talent, innovation, and creative problem
solving.

Quizlet.com (Alan Louie, one of this program's founders, is an advisor) is
looking for a few great people to join the small team in SF. If you have an
interest in edu-tech (or just working on a web product that's helping millions
of students study already), please get in touch. Email phil@[thedomain] or
<http://quizlet.com/jobs/>

------
detokaal
There is a basic problem with many of these ideas. Current research in
education is showing that technology alone is not enough enhance student
learning. In other words, putting a computer, device, method or software in a
classroom adds nothing to test scores or student outcomes. (As a time saver,
I'll let you Google up the citations). We have learned this far too late in
education, having spent billions and billions in this area with virtually no
return in concrete results. The trend is to use these things as fancy drawing
and typing and adding gizmos that simply replace pens and paper: a waste of
potential.

It is also true that teachers don't want to mess with more of this stuff. We
are already beat over the head on a regular bases with the latest and greatest
methodologies, books, ideas, etc. on a regular basis. Ask any experienced
teacher about their faculty development meetings and they will just laugh and
tell you about the last 30 years of innovations that were supposed to have
changed education.

Here is what someone needs to do in my opinion. Ideas should include LONG TERM
training (2-3 years) that is mandatory in their sales package, back it up with
solid research, and provide a payment model similar to a lease or student pay-
to-play (where you aren't hoping their newest principal or school board also
likes the idea the previous group did). In other words, PROVE it works, teach
teachers how to use it, and give schools a realistic way to pay for it over a
period of years. If not, you're just another one of the 40-50 "latest and
greatest" idea I've seen come and go over the decades.

Good luck.

------
Alex3917
For what it's worth, there is also a new SF incubator for physical products
called Magic Beans. I haven't seen them get any press yet, but it seems like
they have some quality companies.

------
maxharris
The major problem I have with any of the computer learning stuff out there is
that I still need to reach for paper and pencil each time I actually try to
solve a problem.

I wish there was an iPad app that taught college-level introductory physics
(with a place to draw with one of those 3rd-party stylus things).

------
codeodor
I don't know how most states are doing on education budgets, but the districts
around me in Texas aren't doing so hot. From what I can tell, we're cutting
budgets by 1/6. (I saw spending of 54 billion in 2008-09 with cuts of 9
billion this year in separate reports)

How does that play into this?

------
ilovecomputers
I have a naive notion of business, but does your startup idea necessarily have
to be a for-profit venture?

------
asuth
Alan Louie (one of the founders of Imagine K12) has been advising us on
Quizlet.com for awhile. What they're doing is terrific. I think it'll produce
some great companies.

(see <http://quizlet.com/about/team/>)

------
BenSS
This is fantastic, and aligns with a project my wife and I have been
discussing. It's frustrating that one or both of us would have to hit the Bay
Area to do it (on the wrong coast), but certainly going to consider it.

------
julianb
This reminds me of SchoolTool - <http://schooltool.org/>

It's a project conceived by Mark Shuttleworth, the Ubuntu project founder.

------
shortlived
This is nice and all but the _real_ issue lies with getting all families
involved in their child's education. All of the technology in the world will
not solve this problem.

~~~
chrismanfrank
Maybe that is an opportunity in itself.

------
u48998
Two things which should be basic human rights and absolutely free, are:
communication and education. But people wish to earn $$ off of them. And then
they wonder why the world is in such a messed up state.

Kudos to Khan Academy and Bill Gates for patronizing and liberating the
education.

~~~
btipling
I guess you expect publishers to print and give away textbooks for free too?

~~~
frak_your_couch
Well, I'd love and welcome a good high-quality open source textbook movement
that happens to also be high quality. It's the quality issue that's the major
problem at the moment, I'd say. I've LOVE to see, for instance, Math textbooks
written like they wrote "Real World Haskell" in wiki format with a single (or
a small,finite set of) editor(s) ensuring that content and quality is up-to-
snuff. I think that there really should be minimal educational infrastructure
provided for free or very low cost.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Quality isn't the issue for most subjects. There are plenty of free and cheap
textbooks with perfectly fine quality.

For example, when I took thermodynamics in college (in 2001), I used a thermo
book from the early 70's which cost me $8 on eBay (as opposed to the modern
version which cost $100). I also skipped purchasing many books entirely, and
just used free materials online, including this newfangled site called
wikipedia.

Agency costs and are the issue. The people assigning books don't have to pay
the cost of using them, so they have no incentive to select based on price.
Further, it's very difficult for students to use substitutes - if the
professor assigns problems 1-10 from the book, it doesn't matter how good the
material in your cheaper substitute is.

If you want to crack this nut, focus on problem sets, not textbooks.

~~~
frak_your_couch
Well, I do disagree on the quality aspect. I'd like to see a high quality Calc
I and II textbook that's free, coherent, and not aimed at MIT students. My
wife is a faculty member and if you can find me one, I'll pass it along
(they're constantly looking for one). It's just hard to _not_ choose
Stewart..it's a solid textbook for a broad range of students, but it's
expensive as shit. A lot of professors are getting that this (if they don't, I
make damned sure I mention it when we socialize with them) is a barrier for a
lot of students.

Anyway, you're absolutely 100% correct about problem sets. Good problem sets
go a VERY long way to making a good textbook.

~~~
ghshephard
It's been 15 years since I took Calculus I and II, but looking over:
<http://www.khanacademy.org/#Calculus>

Is there _anything_ in Stewart that isn't covered as well by Khan? You also
get advantage of the video tutorial on the topic.

I'm waiting for that point in time when we reach a tipping point and Higher
Education Institutions don't just delegate everything to Khan for a lot of
their topics.

My Calculus Course (151) at SFU took place in Images Theater at 8:30 in the
morning and had 450 Students listening to a lecture on Calculus. The ratio was
approximately: 1/8 of the students were bored. 1/8 of the students were lost,
1/8 of the students were attentive, 1/8 of the students were asleep, and 1/2
of the students didn't show up. (8:30 AM!)

I see little need for Stewart in the Face of Khan's Video Collection on
Calculus + a bit of wikipedia (Seriously - check out their section on
Derivatives and compare it to Stewart)

I will agree with you on the Problem Sets - and perhaps that's the missing
ingredient in Khan - He needs to more fully flesh out his test bank - but
<http://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard> is moving ahead nicely. (And,
in my mind, is far superior to any static test bank)

~~~
yummyfajitas
Problem set _quality_ is not the issue. If it were, I would donate a week or
two of my time and build a problem set generator.

The issue is that you need the _same_ problem sets as the instructor. If the
instructor uses Stewart and homework is graded, you get a 0 on HW. This is why
you can't even go back 1 edition of the book, and why the legacy publishers
print a new edition every 2 years with minimal changes beyond tweaking the
problems.

A startup idea I never pursued, but one I think has a lot of merit: build an
online problem cross referencer. It provides a) free problems to any
instructors who want to use them and b) crossreferences these problems with
existing textbooks (that way students who don't want to buy the book don't
have to).

I'm pretty sure that Int[ 1/Sqrt[3+5x^2], {x}] can't be copyrighted.

~~~
pixcavator
Int[ 1/Sqrt[3+5x^2], {x}] can't be copyrighted but a problem set that consists
only of exercises as routine as this would be almost worthless. A cross
referencer is a neat idea though.

------
thefreshteapot
"If we fund you, the goal will be to build a compelling prototype or demo to
raise money from appropriate investors"

\- Perhaps i'm a bitter competitor* yet shouldn't this read.

"If we fund you, the goal will be to build a compelling prototype or demo to
raise the standard of education for all, inspiring a thirst for learning"

I'm skeptical to private groups with funds who want to invest in a lucrative
market which is not purely based on "capitalistic ideals". To use a famous
quote in context "Education is for life, not just for Christmas".

* One day! for those who know me and my snail like pace at getting to a version 1.

