HOW THE “EDUPRENEURS” MOVEMENT IS SHAPING EDTECH 3.0!
If you’ve been doing Edtech and L&D for as long I have or more, you probably know that:
The EdTech industry was always an underdog when compared to the likes of Ride Hailing, Logistics, E-Commerce & Fintech.
For the past decade these industries have outshined and out-funded EdTech by miles.
Now I’m not claiming that EdTech is about to take a rocket and go past the above industries, but there’s a new wave of brains, talents and funds being poured into EdTech that might make it reach its forecasted market size of $10 Trillion by 2030!
Introducing: The “Edupreneurs” Movement!
You can consider it an intersection point between the Creators Economy, Education, Technology & Entrepreneurship!
1) First things first, what is the creators economy?
In simple terms, it’s what many of us call the “influencer economy” where creators & influencers publish content on any online platform and in return potentially earn revenue or get followers which can be redeemed by a higher market value in the eyes of sponsors who are willing to pay the creator for an ad! Technology enabled this movement! (I would say Youtube is the OG platform for my generation & TikTok is for Gen Z)
2) What does the creators economy have to do with Education?
A huge chunk of the creators across these social platforms are fundamentally educators! Whether they teach/talk about crypto, mental health, financial literacy, yoga, gaming, languages, business or any other domain; in their hearts they are modern-day educators using a new approach, scope & angle in teaching! You probably don’t know that #LearnOnTikTok has around 450 billion views and Tiktok, Youtube & other social media platforms have teams dedicated to Education!
3) What does the creators economy have to do with Entrepreneurship?
Think about it this way, these creators (especially the educators among them) are not fooling around with videos and reels! If anything, they are actually more like a one-man-crew production team doing everything from scripting, shooting, editing and promoting. They are a swiss-knife in the sense that they are capable of publishing online courses on Udemy, delivering webinars on Zoom, building a community on telegram, archiving all their content on G-Drive and keeping up with all their followers by sending out a newsletter using Mailchimp.
They are basically innovating in the product they offer, the business model they use; all while solving a problem to their community. Basically, the Creators Economy has entrepreneurship in its DNA.
4) So what is EDUPRENERUSHIP?
Edupreneurship is when online educators and creators decide to make a consistent living of their online offerings, work on their brand and grow & monetize their community of learners/followers! It is enabled by a suite of online tools such as the ones mentioned in Q3 above.
5) Who are Edupreneurs?
Edupreneurs are easily accessible experts who have different formats of online offerings that they want to offer as free and/or paid digital products for their their learners/followers with the hopes of growing and nurturing them into a community that they can upsell to more offerings down the road.
You are probably an Edupreneur if you have:
- A Unique online presence across different channels
- A niche they you are an expert in
- A hardcore following/community even if it’s just 10 people
- A variety of online/offline offerings with a clear product packaging
- A will to grow your community on the long-term instead of just cashing out only on the short-term money making hacks
- Fluidity & flexibility in learning new tech enables, softwares, tools that enhance your capabilities in providing top notch learning experiences
6) Why am I betting on the Edupreneurs movement?
Last year I was managing an EdTech portfolio of startups and part of my mandate was to keep an eye on the latest EdTech trends. One pattern that was clear to me was that the “Upskilling” and “Continuous Learning for Workforce” are 2 main themes that moat Investors, VCs, Angels & Governments are interested in!
50% of EdTech global venture capital deals last year were dedicated to Upskilling & Continuous Learning!
- Edupreneurship creates revenue sources online for anyone, putting less pressure on governments to provide jobs
- Edupreneurship promotes the adoption and leveraging of digital skills which is an agenda supported globally (World Economic Forum, UN, etc..)
- Edupreneurship can be easily learned as the vast majority of younger populations are already riding the creators economy and are fully aware of it due to their usage of social media platforms!
- Edupreneurship encourages healthy competition by educators & creators who compete to offer highly engaging learning experiences to their learners, thus elevating the education industry and gaining slowly but surly the support of different stakeholders such as millenial parents!
So what’s next…?
I moved from Cairo to Dubai 5 months ago to contribute in shaping the edupreneurs movement with a great international team all sharing a similar passion of enabling edupreneurs to provide the best experiences for their learners while growing their business. This was a conscious decision I took as I believe this is the start of the wave of EdTech 3.0!
I’m personally passionate about this because I myself have been en edupreneur for over a decade & I want to solve a problem that I personally faced and found no precise solution for!
I have a lot to share about The Edupreneurs Movement, EdTech 3.0 & the insights I learned so far from my journey at Oktopi; but I’ll be sharing them over the next few weeks as they crystalize and shape up!
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