Education 3.0 created companies that were designed to replicate the social experience of college, a book club, or group class online. Part of the fun of learning a new skill is the social aspect, which is lost on 99% of edtech startups who think too transactionally and — dare I say — too efficiently.
There is a similar pattern for chat apps: WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat all have at least 100 million users. Why doesn’t the market tip in favor of one or two of them as the literature suggests?
Modern aspiration is not about having money to buy things, but having taste to know what to buy. That’s where human curation comes in, and why it’s increasingly considered both a differentiator in fashion, food, travel, wellness, design, and an important value-add for tech platforms from Spotify to Netflix and HBO to Facebook and Apple.
Make it easy for people to introduce you
Friends who make intros are doing you a favor.
Write the intro email so they can just copy and paste.
Here’s the email we asked friends to send investors: