Why Silicon Valley Abandoned Education

By Elliot Forwell

When SMART Technologies introduced the interactive whiteboard in 1991, it seemed like a footnote in the broader tech revolution.

By the 2010s, the humble Smart Board had accomplished something remarkable: it had completely eliminated the blackboard from modern classrooms, fundamentally changing how millions of teachers delivered lessons worldwide. This wasn't incremental improvement - it was wholesale disruption of a centuries-old interface.

So where are education's next Smart Board moments? Why, in an era where platform companies have revolutionized everything from transportation to hospitality, has the education sector remained stubbornly resistant to true technological transformation?

Consider the structural inefficiencies plaguing education today. A third-grade teacher in rural Montana develops an innovative lesson plan for teaching fractions through sports statistics. Meanwhile, her counterpart in suburban Atlanta struggles with the same concept, reinventing pedagogical wheels that have been turning somewhere else for decades. Both teachers spend their weekends scouring Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers for resources, operating in isolation despite facing identical challenges.

This is precisely the kind of coordination problem that platform economics solve brilliantly everywhere else. Uber didn't succeed by building better taxis: it succeeded by creating a marketplace that efficiently matched supply and demand while reducing friction for both drivers and riders. Yet in education, we're still operating with the equivalent of standing on street corners hoping to flag down a cab.

The numbers make the opportunity impossible to ignore. The global education market represents roughly $6 trillion annually, with K-12 education alone accounting for over $2 trillion. Teachers worldwide number approximately 70 million - a user base that dwarfs most successful platform plays. Yet the largest edtech companies have market capitalizations that wouldn't crack the top 100 tech companies by valuation.

This isn't just inefficient - it's actively harmful to educational outcomes. Research consistently shows that teacher collaboration correlates with improved student performance, yet the infrastructure for meaningful collaboration barely exists. Most teachers still share resources through email attachments and informal networks, operating with the technological sophistication of a 1990s small business.

Imagine if software developers worked this way - if every programmer had to write their own sorting algorithms because GitHub didn't exist. The idea seems absurd, yet this is precisely how we ask educators to operate. We've built sophisticated platforms for developers to share code, for designers to share assets, for marketers to share campaign - but teachers, who arguably need collaboration tools more than any other profession, are left with outdated forums and Pinterest boards.

Perhaps nowhere is the technology gap more apparent than in personalized learning. While Netflix can predict what you want to watch next and Spotify curates playlists that feel handpicked for your mood, most students still receive the same standardized curriculum delivered at the same pace regardless of their individual learning patterns, interests, or capabilities.

This represents a massive data problem that technology is uniquely positioned to solve. Every student interaction - every quiz question answered, every assignment submitted, every moment of engagement or confusion - generates data that could inform more effective educational experiences. Yet most of this information disappears into gradebooks and filing cabinets, never to be analyzed or acted upon.

The companies building sophisticated recommendation engines for consumer products could easily adapt these technologies for educational content. An AI system that understands a student struggles with algebraic word problems but excels at geometric reasoning could dynamically adjust curricula to reinforce weaknesses while building on strengths. Such systems don't require breakthrough innovations: they require applying existing machine learning techniques to educational data.

The Smart Board's success offers a blueprint for hardware disruption in education, yet remarkably few companies have attempted to replicate this model. Consider reMarkable, whose E Ink tablets have created devoted followings among professionals who appreciate the paper-like writing experience combined with digital convenience. The technology seems purpose-built for education - imagine students taking notes that automatically sync across devices, teachers providing feedback that appears seamlessly on digital paper, or textbooks that update in real-time while maintaining the tactile experience students prefer.

Yet reMarkable and similar companies have largely ignored the education market, focusing instead on business professionals and digital artists. This represents a profound strategic oversight. Students spend six to eight hours daily with writing instruments and paper - a use case that dwarfs most professional applications. A company that successfully replaced traditional notebooks in schools wouldn't just capture market share; it would fundamentally reshape how students learn and teachers teach.

The same logic applies to other hardware categories. Where are the purpose-built educational computers that prioritize collaboration over individual productivity? Where are the classroom audio systems designed for modern pedagogical approaches rather than traditional lectures? Where are the interactive displays that go beyond Smart Boards to create truly immersive learning environments?

Education's stakeholders often argue that public sector solutions will eventually address these technological gaps. This perspective reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of innovation dynamics. Governments excel at ensuring equitable access to existing solutions, but they rarely drive technological breakthroughs. The Internet wasn't invented by the Department of Education; GPS wasn't developed by transportation authorities; and the next generation of educational tools won't emerge from bureaucratic procurement processes.

Moreover, government involvement often actively impedes innovation through complex compliance requirements, lengthy approval processes, and procurement systems that favor established vendors over disruptive newcomers. A startup with a revolutionary approach to collaborative learning might take years to navigate the regulatory and procurement landscape, by which time their technological advantage has evaporated.

This creates a chicken-and-egg problem: innovative companies avoid education because of regulatory complexity, while educators lack access to innovative tools because companies aren't building them. Breaking this cycle requires companies willing to make long-term investments in navigating educational bureaucracies - precisely the kind of strategic patience that built today's platform giants.

Education possesses all the characteristics that make platform businesses extraordinarily valuable: high switching costs, strong network effects, and the potential for viral adoption. Teachers who find valuable resources on a platform become evangelists who recruit colleagues. Students who master digital tools in school carry those preferences into higher education and eventually the workforce.

Yet most edtech companies still think like traditional software vendors, selling licenses to individual schools or districts rather than building platforms that become more valuable as more users join. This represents a massive strategic error. The most successful technology companies of the past two decades - Google, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, Airbnb - succeeded by creating platforms where users generated value for each other, not just for the company.

An educational platform built on these principles could become extraordinarily sticky. Teachers who have invested time building reputations, accumulating followers, and developing collaborative relationships become unlikely to switch platforms. Students accustomed to particular interfaces and interaction patterns carry these preferences through their educational journey. Schools that have integrated platform tools into their workflows face enormous switching cost.

The solution isn't more incremental improvements to existing educational software. It's not better learning management systems or slightly more interactive textbooks. What education needs is companies with the ambition and resources to build true platforms - systems that make teachers more effective by connecting them with peers worldwide, that make students more engaged by personalizing their learning experiences, and that make schools more efficient by providing real-time insights into educational outcomes.

This requires treating education as a technology problem worthy of Silicon Valley's best talent and biggest investments. It means building companies that think in decades, not fiscal quarters. It means creating products so compelling that teachers become advocates and students become evangelists. Most importantly, it means recognizing that education represents one of the largest untapped platform opportunities in the global economy.