

Ask HN: Funding for a teen startup - gsmaverick

I am 17 years old and have had an idea for a new educational app for almost a year.  I have been thinking about it and fleshing it out in my head and I want to go for it.  There are a few problems though.  The biggest one being capital to build the product.  The education industry isn't an easy market to tap and I doubt I would be able to find good sales people to work for equity.  I was wondering what I should do?  Any advice or suggestions?
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pg
It's not a great territory for startups, because the buying decisions are made
by such bureaucratic organizations. There's no group of clever, poor early
adopters for a startup to start with.

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gojomo
So you need a longer runway and perhaps even friends in the bureaucracy to
crack the traditional mass education market... things a teen (or ultra-lean
startup at any age) might find especially hard.

But maybe the idea can appeal to the growing nontraditional markets: tutoring,
distance education, self-education, corporate training, for-profit higher-ed
(U of Phoenix, ITT, etc.).

Also: internet in the schools brings advertising at a level far beyond the
controversies that affected ChannelOne/Edison in the 90s. Not all school
computers have ad blockers, do they? So perhaps even an ad-supported model
would work for a really lean educational web-app startup -- and there's little
more lean than a single teen founder.

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pg
I think you're better off finding something that can start outside the
education market, then have it be adopted by them when it reaches the point
that it would be ridiculous not to.

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albertsun
What funding do you really need? Living with your parents takes care of all
your biggest expenses. All you have to do is write code. And you have plenty
of time to learn how to write code if you don't know how to.

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kobs
Quizlet (<http://quizlet.com/about/>) seems to be successful and is run by a
teen. I'm not sure if they've taken funding though.

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minalecs
build it yourself. If you believe in the idea that much, take the time to
learn how to do it.

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thepanister
Apply for funding from ycombinator: <http://ycombinator.com/s2009.html>

And you will know.

~~~
gsmaverick
I thought that ycombinator was more into the consumer web app side of things
but I will give it a try. And the other thing is that I don't have a cofounder
as of yet.

~~~
thepanister
Well, single founder is not good, but it's possible.

Just see if you can do it alone, if you can't, then try to ask one of your
friends to do it with you.

