Advisory for education technology companies
I am the buyer your product was built for.
And I can read your roadmap like a CTO. Most education technology is sold on features and workflow; institutions buy on a small set of outcome measures. That gap is where deals are lost and roadmaps go wrong.
The problem I solve
Your team understands software. What is usually missing is a precise reading of what your buyer is accountable for. Not in general terms, but at the level of which specific component of which specific measure your product touches, and by how much.
That reading changes three things at once. It tells you which roadmap items actually matter to a renewal. It gives your sales team an argument that survives a procurement committee. And it lets you price against outcome impact rather than seats, which is usually where the margin is.
Nobody inside a vendor's building can model the buyer's objective function. That is not a criticism. It is a staffing reality, and it is the specific thing I am for.
Where I am useful
Product management
Especially product design and user experience, from an end user's perspective: how faculty, admissions and placement teams, students and administrators actually meet the product. I have contributed to product design and UX as an institutional user, and that is usually where the reasons for weak adoption first become visible.
Roadmap and outcome mapping
Which features connect to which institutional measures, and which of your current priorities will not change a buyer's number no matter how well they are built. This is usually the conversation that reorders a quarter.
Ideal customer profile
Which institutions have the problem you solve badly enough to pay for it, and which will pilot you enthusiastically and never convert. Segmenting higher education by tier, ownership, accreditation status and funding model rather than by size.
Why pilots stall
A successful pilot that dies at procurement usually died for structural reasons: no budget owner, a data dependency nobody scoped, or a champion without the authority to change a process. These are diagnosable in advance.
Pricing and the ROI case
What an institutional business case has to contain to get signed, and how to construct one that a CFO and an academic council will both accept. Outcome-linked pricing where the outcome is genuinely attributable, and honest alternatives where it is not.
India and APAC market entry
For global platforms: the buyer committee, the regulatory frame (AICTE, NAAC, NIRF) and the economics of private-university promoters. None of this is visible from outside the market, and it is the usual reason a strong product underperforms here.
Access to the buyer
More than twenty-four years in the sector, including close to fourteen leading institutions, plus accreditation work across AACSB and EFMD. Introductions where they are genuinely warranted, not a rented network.
How this usually runs
Most often as an ongoing product advisory relationship: a standing engagement with the founder or chief product officer, with periodic deeper work on roadmap or go-to-market. Occasionally as a defined project: a market-entry assessment, a pricing review, a customer advisory board.
I have done a good deal of this informally already, as a client of education technology companies whose founders wanted a frank reading of their product. That was unpaid and useful to both sides; the practice now is the same work, done properly.