Building EdTech software

Two questions decide most EdTech builds. First: do you build the thing yourself or buy an existing platform and bend it to fit? Second: how do you handle student data without stalling every school deal in privacy review? The guides here take each one in turn, in plain terms a founder can act on.

On build versus buy, the honest default is buy early. An off-the-shelf LMS gets you to real learners fast and cheap. Custom only earns its cost once a specific need appears: the feature that makes you different can't be bought, a tool you depend on won't connect to a school's systems, or per-seat fees have outgrown what a small engineering team would cost. Most healthy products end up as a blend, custom where it counts and bought everywhere else.

On data, the work starts in your architecture, not your legal review. The moment a school hands you student records you inherit its duties through your contract. Collect less, isolate and encrypt what you keep, log who reads it, and make deletion and export real features. Get that right and a district's security questionnaire becomes a quick answer instead of a six-week blocker.