One of my friends makes the point that almost all products we love were not the first ones to solve their problem. Google was at least the 25th search engine, Facebook had Friendster, MySpace and many others before. In fact, one of the smartest ways to think about new companies is when you see large user bases for products that you find clunky or hard to use. Changing one or two things about those products to improve them can remove a lot of the confusion and friction and serve customers better. Google literally worked exactly like yahoo, but it gave you a better result. That was enough.

In education, we have a large number of companies that have been successful because they found that significant user need, but they are very outdated because they have been skimping on product development for years. Three I would pick on — -

Abcmouse — plays on the fear of parents that their kids won’t be ready for kindergarten, with a set of digital activities in multiple subjects. Extremely well marketed, but with a mediocre to poor product, building an outstanding product in this category should have a good chance of finding a large audience.

Accelerated reader is a product that assesses kids comprehension of books they have read. I’m pretty sure the product hasn’t been changed for decades.

quizlet is a flash card app students use for studying. It is one of the top 50 websites in the world indicating a huge need, but the product is very long on the tooth.