Founder of First Principles Education, Emil helps students become self-navigating learners without relying on tuition.
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Imagine burning hours of your precious family time to send your child to a grueling classroom. Your child might be frustrated by tuition, or private tutoring. The additional stress might also hinder your child’s joy in learning. Worst still, you may waste thousands of dollars every month. If this sounds like an abusive addiction to you, it just might be. Because even in Singapore, a nation with one of the best public education systems in the world, an overwhelming majority of students continue to rely on traditional tuition.
Yet despite numerous discussions on how traditional tuition can be more harmful than productive for young learners in the long run, tuition remains a billion-dollar industry in tiny Singapore. To disrupt this profitable but addictive tuition industry, my company followed these guiding principles to position itself as a leader in helping the next generation of students nurture lifelong habits and become self-navigating learners, without relying on tuition.
1. Know what the customers will want.
“Give the customers what they want” is common advice given to entrepreneurs. But to build an edtech empire that will have a meaningful impact, I believe we should “give the customers what they will want in 10 years.” To understand the desires of parents with children between the ages of 9 and 16, we interviewed over 1000 families in our research. We concluded that recent trends are all pointing toward a big shift in their priorities. As the millennial generation grew up to become parents themselves, many are viewing tuition as simply a short-term solution that does not promote lifelong habits nor nurture their children’s joy in learning. Some young parents disliked tuition then and do not want to put their children through the same stress today. What they will want is not for their child to get A grades but for them to become confident and independent learners when they grow up.
From these insights, we were able to focus our efforts to create a program specifically for parents who want their child to be able to learn effectively on their own without relying on tuition.
2. Know what the customers actually want.
Customers often struggle to express what they truly want. Henry Ford famously said that if he had asked what his customers wanted, most would have replied “a faster horse.” But we believe if he had followed up with “why?” the answer most likely would have been to “save time when getting around.” Therefore, we asked parents why they cared about their child’s grades. Most parents simply want their child to be able to live a meaningful and happy life in our society. Unfortunately, opportunities have always been given to those who performed well academically. But that may not be the case anymore. Singapore’s multiple initiatives to remove examinations and reduce the emphasis on grades is a clear sign that we are advancing toward a society that values other aspects of a person. Furthermore, we are also seeing Singapore’s Minister of Education actively encouraging students to be given the space to develop a growth mindset and to be independent learners. This is evident that what the children of today need for their future are resilient habits and the ability to pursue excellence on their own.
Hence, our team aligned ourselves with what we feel parents truly want. We built our expertise around helping students nurture lifelong habits and adopt smart study skills.
Disrupting The Educational System
For anyone looking to disrupt their educational system, my advice is for you to study your government’s stance on education and speak with local students and parents. Often, many companies love to look at shining examples of impressive education systems in the world; such as Finland’s or Singapore’s. But keep in mind that what kind of knowledge is valued in your society depends on your culture, your country’s economic direction, parents’ expectations and more. And when talking to parents, it is more important to ask them “why they want” instead of “what they want.” This can give you a true understanding of their desires and will help you build a great service they did not even know they wanted.
The two guiding principles above, while simple, were not easy to follow. Entrepreneurship requires vision from founders and the focus of the team to drive the company forward. However, vision can often lead to false assumptions about what the customer truly wants. Focus can also lead to tunnel vision syndrome where the entire team is so focused on the objective, that they miss the overall goal. Following these principles required our team to put aside our biases and our egos and get back down to ground level and spend thousands of hours communicating with our customers.
But in return, we were able to help mentor students in Singapore, change their daily learning habits and even gained recognition from government schools to help prepare their students for crucial national exams. Most importantly, it allowed us to make an impact in disrupting the traditional tuition industry, returning the freedom and joy of learning back to the children.
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