EdTech startups are a lot like gym memberships.
Most people start with good intentions, but about 60% never make it out alive.
The difference is gym memberships just waste your money. Failed EdTech startups, on the other hand, waste everyone's time chasing the same Hollywood dream of becoming the hero who saves education.
Amanda Goodson, co-founder and COO of Edlink, took a different route.
Instead of trying to "revolutionize" learning, she focused on the boring stuff that actually matters—connecting Student Information Systems to Learning Management Systems. Now, Edlink serves major players like Carnegie Learning, all because she recognized that "revolutionary" often just means "reliably functional."
Here’s what’s on the dashboard this week:
Today’s Deep Dive: Boring problems that pay big money
Reading Rainbow: Girlhood influencers + broken pipelines
From Our Desk: Find us among the name tags
Watch of the Week: Felt puppets 101
Find boring problems that pay big money
Some believe start-up success comes from having insider connections or world-changing ideas. But for Amanda and Edlink, it came from treating EdTech like any other business and systematically testing what schools would actually pay to solve.
"We formed a hypothesis that there was this certain problem that we would be able to solve,” she explains, “and that people who experienced that problem would pay money for it.”
They then build a validation engine centered on that hypothesis, and operate it as a continuous cycle that either proves the assumption or forces them to form a better one.
It runs on four stages:
Test through cold outreach: Amanda skipped the warm network entirely. Cold validation eliminates false positives from people who are personally cordial but won't pay for a new product.
Validate with real money: Positive feedback means nothing without payment. When Edlink was transitioning clients, districts kept asking if they could buy the integration tools separately. Some call it “industry validation,” but they chalked it up to customers literally trying to give them money.
Refine against the hypothesis: Amanda stayed disciplined about the core assumption. "I think people get into trouble when they stray from their hypothesis and just say yes to stuff," Amanda adds. Every feature request that pulls away from the core offering was a potential death sentence.
Scale through systems: Build repeatable processes rather than relationship-dependent sales. The companies that survive create systems that work without the founder's personal network.
When EdTech companies focus on solving problems over flashy solutions, they actually change districts for the better. Boring solutions are the ones that make a teacher's day easier, a student's chance of success greater, and an admin's school system thriving.
The next hypothesis doesn't need to change the world. It just needs to change someone's workday for the better.
Teacher Becomes Regents Exam Architect While Making Rocks Exciting: Carolina Castro-Skehan from the Bronx is literally writing the earth science questions that will shape New York students' understanding of geology for years to come. She's the genius behind making sedimentary rocks actually make sense to teenagers, which is basically educational wizardry.
Five-Year-Olds Want to Be Influencers Now: New research shows girls as young as five feel pressure to have an online presence, as if childhood isn’t traumatic enough already. The study explores how digital platforms are reshaping girlhood—and how educators are adapting faster than most tech companies.
Teach Kids About AI Before They Become Our Robot Overlords: Education experts are pushing for AI literacy in elementary schools, recognizing that today's kindergarteners will grow up in a world where chatbots are as common as calculators. Teachers are already figuring out how to explain machine learning to kids who still think Siri is actually a tiny person trapped in their iPhone.
Women Leaders Pipeline Needs CPR + Some Duct Tape: New research confirms what every teacher already knows: the education leadership pipeline for women needs serious support and sponsorship systems. The Hechinger Report highlights how brilliant educators deserve better pathways to leadership roles, because running a classroom basically qualifies you to run anything.
Catch us on the road for the rest of the month:
DLAC Ignite, February 18-20 in Sacramento CA
CASE Winter Leadership Conference, February 19-20 in Loveland, CO
Rural Schools Spring Conference, February 19-20 in Austin, TX
KSBA Annual Conference, February 20-22 in Louisville, KY
Find us on the floor, and get in touch with [email protected] if you want to chat!
Our pick of the week: The Muppet Show
Why We’re Obsessed: With the upcoming reboot generating buzz, there's never been a better time to introduce students to the hot mess that is Kermit trying to manage a variety show… while Miss Piggy dramatically exits stage left every five minutes. This kind of wholesome pandemonium bridges generational gaps better than any team-building exercise, plus it teaches kids that even felt puppets can have existential crises.
Recommended lesson integration:
Theater Arts & Performance Skills: Students analyze comedic timing and stage presence by studying how Fozzie Bear bombs spectacularly yet keeps trying
Music Education & Rhythm: Use Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem to explore different musical genres and why sometimes the best art happen when everything goes completely sideways
Character Development & Creative Writing: Write backstories for minor Muppet characters and try to decode whether "Bork, bork, bork!" is actually a sophisticated cooking technique we've been missing
STEM & Engineering: Design simple puppet mechanisms, then calculate whether those karate chops should have launched Kermit into orbit by now
Emotional Intelligence & Conflict Resolution: Study how Kermit mediates between his completely unhinged cast members without losing his mind—mostly
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Thank you for joining us for another edition of On The Subject. We’ll see you again in a week, with more stories from the hallways.
The Subject Team
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