This week was the ISTE-ASCD conference in San Antonio, and there were a lot of Edtech (and Edtech related) announcements. Check out the headlines section below for more, but some of the biggest ones were:
Google dropped a bomb at ISTE with over 50(!) announcements about the next generation of Classroom, Chromebooks and Gemini. Topics included expanded video and visual capabilities, tools for early reading, privacy and safety, more than 30 powerful teacher tools— including NotebookLM and Gems for teaching and learning— and much, much more.
Quizizz, an Edtech giant founded in 2015 used in 90% of U.S. schools and 150 countries, is rebranding as Wayground to showcase their expansion beyond assessment (and into AI).
ISTE+ASCD made a slew of announcements, including their work with Meta to pilot and launch a School Partnerships Program (AKA “Instagram for Schools”) to improve reporting speed, and the expansion of their Edtech Index, fresh with tons of valuable info about almost 2000 Edtech companies.
More to come over the next week(s)!
Product-Market Fit Isn’t Enough: Edtech’s Real Growth Metric
Michael E. Spencer is the CEO and Founder of Global Expansion Strategies, a Silicon Valley based international, advisory, growth and investment firm working with early to mid-stage education companies to expand globally. Michael Spencer is an education executive with more than 30 years of global C level leadership, management, operational, business development and investment experience in the K-12 marketplace. In addition to serving as Senior Director of International Business Development at K12 Inc. and Senior Vice President of American Education Corporation, he has founded, co-founded and been a board member and advisor for numerous EdTech companies, including ASSIST Education, One2OneMate LLC, QuickPAD Technology Corporation, H45 Technology Corporation, and The Minden Group LLC. All achieved 100%+ growth year-over-year since inception, received multiple awards for innovation and led to A and B rounds of funding as well as successful exits.
There’s a classic founder truism: first-time founders are obsessed with product, second-time founders are obsessed with distribution.
What does this mean? First-time founders will focus on developing a great product. They believe that if you build a superior product, customers will naturally come to it. But, the difference between first- and second-time founders is that second-time founders understand a great product isn’t enough. Second-time founders know that they need to have a plan for how their product will get into the hands of their users and customers from day one.
This is especially true for edtech, and here’s why.
Introducing ‘Customer-Market Fit’
Everyone talks about Product-Market Fit (PMF). And for good reason – it’s the first sign that you’ve built something people actually need. But the reality is that PMF gets you attention. It doesn’t get you scale or the sustainable, recurring revenue required for your business to survive and generate transformational impacts for learners and educators.
Many first-time founders in edtech come from education backgrounds and believe that developing a superior pedagogical alternative is the key to success, because that is the key to user impact. But in edtech, success and impact are not exactly the same thing, because education purchasers suffer from major macro challenges.
We all know the uncertainties of the US domestic K-12 market, especially now that ESSER funding is done. Meanwhile, global edtech venture funding is at its lowest in a decade and dropping sharply year-over-year; early-stage activity is down and M&A volumes continue to decline.
But this year’s data has surfaced two crucial areas where investor interest is holding firm: AI-powered solutions and infrastructure, and scalable models in emerging markets. Asia and Africa alone account for 80% of upcoming global education demand, creating a $10 trillion opportunity by 2030.
How can companies unlock this?
While PMF tells you that users like the product, what I’m calling ‘Customer-Market Fit’ measures whether your solution fits the messy, real-world operating context of customers – their procurement pathways, pricing realities, infrastructure constraints, pedagogical norms and implementation needs.
Think of it like this:
Failing to achieve Customer-Market Fit is why so many edtech pilots never convert to sales, both in US schools/districts and in international markets. It’s why founders get stuck in an endless loop of demo, pilot, ghost. But get Customer-Market Fit right, and the growth story looks very different.
The Customer-Market Fit Playbook
So how do you create Customer-Market Fit at a global level? Here’s a playbook built from helping dozens of companies scale across 30+ countries. This is the cheat sheet I share with edtech founders when they ask why growth has stalled despite positive feedback from users.
1. Market Selection: Choose Focus Over FOMO
Market selection is where Customer-Market Fit begins. The world is big, but as an early-stage company, your resources are not. A common trap is to chase inbound interest or expand opportunistically across multiple markets. A better approach is to rank geographies against your product strengths and go deep in one or two.
Criteria to consider:
Is there a clear product need and budget alignment? Are you selling into private schools, public systems, ministries of education, education franchises or direct to parents?
Does your content model (e.g. test prep, ESL, SEL, Career Discovery & Exploration, STEM) align with local demand signals?
Do local schools use similar pedagogical approaches?
Is English proficiency necessary? Is your content adaptable?
Markets like LATAM, MENA, Southeast Asia and India are growing fast, but each has distinct regulatory, cultural, and tech infrastructure factors. Choose deliberately, not reactively.
Localization is often misunderstood as simply translating the UI. But Customer-Market Fit requires functional, pedagogical, and business model alignment. Questions to consider:
Does the platform work well on local devices or connectivity levels?
Are your pricing tiers affordable and aligned with local purchasing patterns (e.g. schoolwide licenses vs. per-seat)? Or is your pricing model based on US school licensing norms that don’t exist elsewhere?
Does your pedagogy assume models (like project-based learning or flipped classrooms) that aren’t commonly practiced in that region? Can your content be modularized, remixed or adapted for curriculum standards?
Localization shouldn’t dilute your core product, but rather amplify its relevance by designing with local context, not despite it. The best companies don’t “scale globally”, they embed locally.
3. Distribution Partnerships: Find the Right Local Advocates
In most international markets, your ability to reach customers depends on who you go to market with. Trying to sell, implement, and support in a new geography without local partners is like launching a rocket without ground control.
The best-performing edtech companies build their international strategy around:
Strategic Partners: local partners who already sell to your target buyer and understand the procurement dance
School Operators: networks of international schools open to multi-site pilots
Government, CSR and NGO Relationships: working with Ministries of Education or large donor-funded initiatives provides top-down credibility
Strategic partnerships are your implementation infrastructure.
4. Pilots ≠ ARR: Where Customer-Market Fit Really Becomes Visible
Getting a pilot is easy. Turning it into sustainable, recurring revenue is the hard part. If your first few implementations stall due to slow adoption or lack of local support, word travels fast. But when they succeed, you start to get powerful regionally-driven growth loops. To succeed, consider the following:
Invest in in-country representation (directly or via partners) to handle an implementation plan, onboarding, support, training and ongoing product awareness. Local champions can drive usage and help with alignment on success metrics.
Build playbooks for local teacher PD, support requests and integrations.
Track feedback and adoption metrics by market, not just globally.
Are You Customer-Market Fit Ready?
Bearing all the previous questions in mind, here’s a diagnostic that you can use to evaluate your readiness to expand globally:
If you’re waving red flags on two or more of these categories, it’s a signal that even if you find PMF, your company will still struggle to scale. The answer isn’t to hold off on going global. It’s to start building the infrastructure now to succeed when you do.
The truth that many founders I have seen learn too late is that it’s not just about having a great product. It’s about building a business that can thrive in the operating conditions of real, complex education systems — systems that vary wildly country to country, and buyer to buyer. Global Expansion Strategies has worked with dozens of edtech companies to unlock scale across LATAM, MENA and Southeast Asia, converting pilots to ARR within 6-12 months thanks to deeper CMF alignment. We’ve seen it work. And we’ve seen what happens when it’s missing.
So if you’re an edtech founder looking beyond the US to that $10tr global opportunity, ask yourself: do I have Product-Market Fit or do I have Customer-Market Fit?You need both to build a sustainable business.
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This edition of the Edtech Insiders Newsletter is sponsored byTuck Advisors.
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1. Google Overhauls Its Education Suite With Free, Powerful AI For All
Google has unveiled a major update to its education tools at the ISTE conference, making its powerful Gemini AI available for free to all users of Google Workspace for Education with no premium subscription required. The rollout includes teacher-focused features like AI-generated lesson plans and quizzes, student study aids via NotebookLM and “Gems,” plus new AI-powered Chromebook tools. This marks a shift toward AI as the baseline of classroom tech.
There are so many details in this release, we’re going to dive into all the nitty gritty in our upcoming “This Week in Edtech” podcast episode. Keep your eyes peeled here for when it drops!
The White House unveiled an “AI Education Pledge,” rallying over 60 major companies—including Adobe, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and NVIDIA—to commit resources toward K–12 AI education over the next four years. This effort aims to spark curiosity, strengthen workforce readiness, and reinforce U.S. leadership in AI.
3. The Trump Admin Is Withholding Over $6 Billion in Education Grants for Schools
The Trump administration has blocked the distribution of over $6 billion in federal education grants—including funding for migrant education, English learners, and after-school programs—just before the July 1 deadline, placing school districts nationwide in a state of uncertainty. State education agencies report that programs supporting English-language instruction, summer learning, and professional development are now delayed pending a high-level review, forcing districts to scramble on staffing and budgeting.
4. ISTE Launches Four New Initiatives to Improve EdTech Experiences
ISTE kicked off by announcing four ambitious initiatives: training 200,000 teachers in AI over the next two years, empowering instructional leaders with dedicated resources and certification, helping schools manage student social media use, and launching an enhanced EdTech Index to streamline tool evaluations and save time.
5. Quizizz Becomes Wayground: Announces New AI and Curriculum Supports
Quizizz has officially rebranded as Wayground, transforming from a quiz-centric tool into a comprehensive supplemental learning platform enhanced by AI. The updated platform includes AI-powered accommodations like translation, difficulty adjustments, and accessibility features (e.g., dyslexia font, read‑aloud), plus new offerings for fall 2025 such as curriculum-aligned resources, lesson bundles, an AI Generation Hub, and a middle-school program called VoyageMath.
6. Khan Academy CEO Predicts AI in the Classroom Will Be Like 5 'Amazing Graduate Students' Assisting Teachers
Sal Khan, CEO of Khan Academy, envisions AI in the classroom not as a teacher substitute but as a team of “four or five” graduate‑student–like assistants supporting human educators with grading, lesson planning, monitoring student engagement, and offering tailored feedback. He believes this AI support can ease teacher workloads amid staffing shortages, enhance student engagement, and provide real‑time insights to both educators and parents, while emphasizing that essential social skills and human connections in schools remain irreplaceable .
This edition of The Edtech Insiders Newsletter is sponsored by Starbridge.
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We have had some amazing guests on The Edtech Insiders Podcast in the last few weeks. One of our stand-out interviews from this past week is Jerome Pesenti, the founder of Sizzle AI, an AI-for-learning company whose mission is to make learning amazing for everyone. Jerome has worked in AI for the past 25 years, including as VP of AI at Meta, co-CEO of BenevolentAI, VP at IBM Watson, and co-founder of Vivisimo (sold to IBM).
Here’s a deep dive on our interview with Jerome, and we encourage you to give the full episode a listen for more!
Jerome Pesenti discusses how Sizzle AI is designed as a direct-to-consumer AI-powered study companion focused on test preparation and homework help. It aims to engage learners—primarily aged 15 to 25—by breaking down complex study materials into personalized, bite-sized, Duolingo-style activities.
“What we try to do in our case, is we try to not give you the answer right away, we try to show you the steps, have you think through the steps as you go through it. But ultimately, teachers have to know if the students want to answer, they can use GPT. They can use Gemini, right? They cannot figure out a way to get it. So you have to rethink homework in that new context.” - Jerome Pesenti
AI as a Study Partner vs. Shortcut
Jerome acknowledges the challenges and ethical considerations in using AI for education. He emphasizes that while students may be tempted to get quick answers, Sizzle encourages actual learning by offering step-by-step help and assessing readiness.
“These tools can be well used and can make us all more efficient. They can make us lazy. You have to kind of change your curriculum to make sure you adapt to that… If you can’t do your homework on your own, you won’t be able to pass the test. So you need to facilitate that step to get them there.” - Jerome Pesenti
Building Engagement through Gamification and Learning Science
Drawing inspiration from Duolingo, Sizzle incorporates bite-sized content and game mechanics to keep learners engaged. While not fully gamified yet, they are experimenting with features like streaks and leaderboards to enhance the experience.
“It lets you kind of learn the concept, like fill in the blank, multiple choice… it’s a stream so you can keep going at it. You can skip whatever you want and we’ll keep generating new ones. We also give you a study plan so it’s not just a crammer’s tool.” - Jerome Pesenti
Reimagining Assessment in the AI Era
Jerome suggests a shift in assessment paradigms—some tests should be AI-assisted, while others should remain AI-free. The key is helping students assess their own readiness, supported by AI-driven feedback systems, rather than focusing on traditional homework.
“I do believe that in the future there’ll always be tests without AI. And I think there’ll be some tests that are AI-assisted. And then will require a different kind of performance… if students are smart, they’ll figure it out.” - Jerome Pesenti
The Future of Personalized, Lifelong Learning
The long-term vision for Sizzle AI is to be a lifelong learning companion, assisting users through school, career, and personal interests. It aims to offer learning that is context-aware, goal-driven, and adaptive to each learner’s path and motivation.
“Well, today actually, you can do that… you can say, ‘Hey, I want to study how to become an astronaut’… and it will make your math exercise in that context… instead of being something that is pushed on you, it’s something that you really want. You understand the context. You understand the motivation.” - Jerome Pesenti
Curious to Learn More?
You can listen to our full interview with Jerome, as well as interviews with many other edtech founders, investors, and thought leaders at The Edtech Insiders Podcast! Check it out, and as always, we’d love to hear what you think!
Cooley LLP is the go-to law firm for edtech innovators, from early childhood through workforce. Informed by decades of experience in the education vertical, Cooley created the first edtech practice to provide industry-informed, business-minded counsel to companies and organizations at all stages of the corporate lifecycle. Cooley provides a multidisciplinary approach to client needs, offering seamless collaboration across offices and practices.
To learn more about what Cooley can do for you, reach out to Naomi May.
