Sramana Mitra: Now, the equation starts to change as we get to higher education, right? There’s the big experiment that came out of MIT and Harvard edX, which started putting all the lectures online. It was the beginning of these massive online open courses (MOOCs). Today’s technology can go much further with all this personalization and Generative AI stuff. However, the same model of children being able to learn more with that personalized, infinitely patient teacher or professor in college still holds.
>>>
We are in 2025.
Hundreds of thousands of tech businesses have already been built successfully.
Let’s learn from those who have come before us.

Girish Navani started eClinicalWorks, a healthcare IT venture by bootstrapping with a paycheck. Girish scaled to over $500M in revenue.
Today’s 667th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, January 9, at 8 a.m. PST / 11 a.m. EST / 5 p.m. CET / 9:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup All are welcome!
Today’s 667th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting in 20 minutes, on Thursday, January 9, at 8 a.m. PST / 11 a.m. EST / 5 p.m. CET / 9:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup All are welcome!
Sramana Mitra: There is one other vector we need to consider in this – the human centric element. The history of education is that the human provides all the content. For a rural India teacher to teach English as a second language, he or she has to know English as a second language from that particular vernacular in the region first. But in this model, we are eliminating that requirement. Or are we eliminating that requirement? Does the teacher need to not know, know? What is the role of the teacher in this?
>>>
Do you need an inspirational story to start 2025?

Fred Luddy started ServiceNow, a Multi-Billion Dollar Unicorn, as a solo entrepreneur bootstrapping with a paycheck.
Sramana Mitra: I want to double click on English as a second language. In March last year, we were in India, and my father took us to see a school in rural West Bengal, quite far from Calcutta, which is the main metropolis in that region. These rural Indian towns and villages are not places where fluent English as a second language is that common. We were blown away by these ninth grade kids who were giving us tours of their labs and their learning process, and they were so enthusiastic, and the whole thing was in fluent English.
>>>
What are your 2025 priorities? Is becoming fundable among them?

Total Addressable Market (TAM) is critical for any new product or service. Why? Because TAM makes or breaks a startup’s Strategy and, as a result, its Fundability.