I went through the first class of IK12 back in 2011 with ClassDojo. My cofounder and I arrived in California with no connections at all, and only the beginnings of an idea.
Tim, Geoff, Karen and the whole IK12 family have been a huge source of support over the past 5 years, helping us scale to the point where ClassDojo is used daily in >50% of US schools.
From the beginning they've been driven by the idea of creating large-scale improvements to our education system, and right from the start they committed to that goal for the long term. I'm delighted by this news, because YC's network and resources will only accelerate progress towards that goal.
As someone who went through IK12 a few cohorts ago, I'd say it was an amazing experience.
The team there blended the depth of general startup knowledge from YC with a huge amount of education-specific coaching/learning/networking.
Although we were part of the 20% (from that article) that didnt make it, we learnt a huge amount, and it helped inspire me to continue to work in the ed-tech space till today.
I do hope that after the merge they can continue to offer the same deep-dive education specific talks/mentors/networks/etc that were so valuable, as it is a space with very different challenges than your typical B2B/consumer app plays.
As a benefit, I suspect the YC "brand" will be a big help to future edtech graduates when it comes to raise money; as typically they've struggled much more to attract investor attention than startups in other verticals.
> Although we were part of the 20% (from that article) that didnt make it, we learnt a huge amount, and it helped inspire me to continue to work in the ed-tech space till today.
I read the article several times but I can't see where they talk about companies that didn't make it.
Also, I am sorry that your company failed. I know from personal experience that it can be hard to get people to use your education product, so glad that you are persevering and still working in that field.
Like @dalyons said, we learned a lot. There was already a lot of overlap between YC and IK12 (for instance, YC partners were regular speakers, and @gralston is a partner at both).
To have them merging while still maintaining an 'edtech' vertical is a natural step that will strengthen both brands. Great news.
I think it would make sense at some point to do this for financial services / fintech. I think there is infrastructure that is very specific to fintech that some accelerator out there will nail at some point and it will help them become the default go-to for aspiring fintech companies.
Making commercial relationships with banks (money transfer, payments, account opening, lending balance sheet, etc), institutional compliance knowledge, etc would actually "accelerate" an aspiring fintech company in a way nobody really has. I think YC has the pull to actually do it.
I agree. I was a part of IK12 and there is a lot of industry-specific knowledge, activities, and connections that a vertical can offer that a general accelerator cannot.
For instance, IK12 has a "Teacher Day" that's similar to Demo Day, except startup founders present to a room full of teachers and school administrators instead of investors, with the intent of getting advisors, feedback, and even pilot customers. It also doubles as good practice for Demo Day, though the pitch is very different.
I could see similar industry-specific verticals playing out well in YC too, especially as it continues to grow.
I previous worked for an EdTech startup that didn't go through an accelerator (but did have some great advisors)
While it won't necessarily be the right fit for every company, I definitely see the value in having an education specialists within an accelerator, and merging IK12 into YC allows founders to pick an accelerator that is simultaneously strong across the whole startup space as well as the edtech niche. The alternative is that you feel like you might need to made a trade off on education-focus vs general expertise/ecosystem.
My experience was that succeeding in EdTech requires so many of the same things that other startups need, but it has quite niche requirements around how to build a business in that sector. Dealing with school boards can be hard, getting busy administrators to notice you, and take the time understand the your value you bring. Understanding how the school year needs to fit into your sales cycle, etc.
Now, all of that is true of other sectors. Fintech is different to Medtech. Software is different to hardware. B2B is different to B2C. But it means that there is immense value in getting advice that is specific to your particular sector, without thinking that your sector necessarily plays by totally different rules.
In the end if you're aiming for VC money then the pitch guidelines are much the same. The issues and questions around term sheets, hiring, infrastructure, UX, culture, etc aren't so different that you need (or want) to be in an isolated accelerator, just that you want to know that your accelerator has good skills and experience in your space.
This is great news for education tech. Also very interesting that YC is focusing so heavily on the "education vertical". Can't help but wonder if this is only the first such consolidation. Could easily imagine YC joining forces with other vertical accelerators that have deep expertise and networks in things like synthetic biology, hardware, food, etc.
In the hardware vertical YC has also partnered with Bolt [1][2][3], but that seems to be a partnership rather than acquisition, and I'm not sure if Bolt considers themselves an accelerator.
The only thing growing the incubator does is add to their expenditures, in a small way dilute the 'YC' bump for admitted companies (just think what Harvard would be like if they accepted 20k instead of 1k), spreads the partners a little bit thinner, etc.
The counterargument would be that, if they could expand like this and still keep roughly the same batting avg., all of this would just mean even more returns for YC. The problem is we haven't observed THAT part of the equation yet.
When it comes to these startups, swinging and missing is not nearly as costly as not being part of the ones who do succeed, so at first glance there is an argument to be made that growth in it of itself is a good thing 'cause it allows you to make more bets. But, clearly there is a sweetspot, or else the right VC strategy would be to hardly spend any time with companies at all and just make small bets in anything that's even remotely viable, thereby getting a "market rate" return for startups.
For all I know, that number is negative, so you unfortunately do have to find value by doing better than market basket -- either by selecting companies well or contributing positively to their chance of success. And that, sadly, gets harder to do the bigger you get.
Jury is still out on his effectiveness as VC, but looking from the outside, one thing you can say for sure is that they are working really hard and pushing initiatives which you can't help but be very excited about.
I agree that it's not guaranteed to be a slam duck investment strategy. Maybe it turns out that YC cannot scale and trying to expand it ruins it. But at least he's trying to innovate.
Remember that people were quite skeptical of YC when it first started, and their strategy turned out to be genius. Sam could have easily sat on that strategy, but is instead trying a whole new thing.
As you point out, there's no guarantee that this strategy works. (That's why I said "might.") Trying something awesome puts you in the running, but it doesn't guarantee a win. For that we need to see returns (including returns to the broader ecosystem and society).
Thanks but doing a lot of things is at best neutral; at worst it distracts you and you miss the next Airbnb (though on the inside at least, it feels like we say no to a LOT of thing we could do).
This is good. There has been a lot of criticism in YC as of late due to batch size increases and lower quality of companies at and past demo day; this should help bring in more experts when helping education related start-ups which will hopefully return higher quality at demo day.
I do wonder if there is a certain limit to how many companies YC can help shape. After a certain point it's going to be hard to scale helping companies to get off the ground and YC as the brand won't be valued as highly, right? Just thinking out loud here.
This is super exciting. I am a big fan of YC and My company SchoolMint was part of the ImagineK12's 2013 cohort. From day one, Geoff, Tim, Karen and the whole IK12 advisory network has been extremely helpful with everything (funding, hiring, distribution, employee-motivation0. SchoolMint would not have existed without IK12. I look forward to being part of this much bigger network now and get more help on scaling.
This is a great move. I've never heard of IK12 before, I thought Panorama Education was funded by YC but it's great to hear they're creating an Education vertical. I'm really interested in how the EdTech space will change in the near future and it's great to hear YC is going to be a big part of it.
I'm wondering if you select edtech when you apply to YC? My company, a social robot for kids, could be considered edtech but it is also a toy and a therapeutic tool. Who decides if my company is considered edtech or not?
How do you market it? Ed tech is more than products for kids. Your product must be geared towards educational goals and how the district staff will interact with it. If you need help shoot me an email. I'll gladly chat about it.
I was at ISTE 2015, did you attend? We probably met if you did. :)
As someone who works ed tech this is great news. There are so many areas to explore within this industry. Having more focus from major players is always good.
Tim, Geoff, Karen and the whole IK12 family have been a huge source of support over the past 5 years, helping us scale to the point where ClassDojo is used daily in >50% of US schools.
From the beginning they've been driven by the idea of creating large-scale improvements to our education system, and right from the start they committed to that goal for the long term. I'm delighted by this news, because YC's network and resources will only accelerate progress towards that goal.