SharpScholar: Lessons Learned from a Failed EdTech Start–up
SharpScholar was started by Jawwad Siddiqui and some friends. Siddiqui was a junior at his
university and was dissatisfied with the varying quality of instruction in his classes.
SharpScholar was a software platform designed to better connect students and teachers. For
teachers, it allowed them to upload content, add interaction, engage students, collect analytics
on what was being learned and what was being missed, and improve their teaching. For the
student, the platform acted as a coach so they could learn the material and come to class
prepared.
At its peak, SharpScholar had 5,000 students, five top universities in Canada, and 12 professors
signed on. The service received plenty of attention. The founders appeared on Dragons’ Den,
Canada’s equivalent of Shark Tank. They were offered a $100,000 investment for a 15 percent
stake in the company, but turned it down. They won awards, got accepted into a prestigious
incubator, and interacted with people at the Khan Academy, GoogleX, and other high-profile
organizations. Yet, after only two years in business, SharpScholar shut down. What went
wrong?
In a thoughtful blog post titled “We Shut Down Our Edtech Startup. Here’s What We Learned,”
Siddiqui offered four pieces of advice for entrepreneurs based on SharpScholar’s failure:
Have a Direct Relationship with Your “Customer”
SharpScholar struggled to identify its customer. Was it the student, the teacher, the school
administration, the government? They were all intertwined. This meant if a teacher liked the
product he or she would have to keep in mind the student, the budget, the school policy, and
even get approval from administration. This factor complicated SharpScholar’s relationship
with the teacher. It also resulted in a lack of focus with respect to for whom the firm was
tailoring its product.
Don’t Confuse Your Customers, Consumers, and Capacity to Pay
In most industries, the person who pays for a product is the one who uses it. This is often not
true in education. The person who uses the product (teacher and/ or student) is often not the
one who pays for it. Teachers sometimes have budgets—but not always. Parent groups and
January – April 2021 Mid Term Test BB219 Management Ethics
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nonprofit organizations sometimes help—but that is hit and miss. Funding from school districts
for technology products varies dramatically from district to district.
Beware the Priority Gap between You and Your Customer
Teachers and entrepreneurs have priorities that don’t always align. An entrepreneur that has a
technology product to sell wants to close the sale and get the product in the classroom. Teachers
think about setup time, how much effort it will take to learn and integrate the tool into their
lessons, what to do about kids who lack access to a smartphone (if the tool is an app), and so