Thoughts: The paradox of competing in the market of good

We’ve been looking around for great educational websites for a little while, and often receive links from friends saying: “You can do better!”, or “Check this out: they do a great job!”… Nothing ever raised a red flag like two sites we discovered yesterday: TeachStreet and School of Everything. O Pain: they also want to do good.

Catherine and I were on the phone, horrified to read words like “democratization of education“, swearing when we came across “connecting teachers and learners independent of educational institutions“. Our very wording! Our revolutionary ideas! Our way to change the world!

How weird is that? These guys, respectively based in the West Coast and the UK, agree with what we preach: education doesn’t belong to institution and people are entitled to direct their education. That’s what we call consensual education: this reciprocal educational relationship between two consensual individuals. It is not about teaching nor about learning: it’s about an interaction which leaves two people better off.

That is the paradox of social entrepreneurship: even if our ultimate goal is to change the world, we need users and funding. Our existence can only be justified by demand. Demand for better learning opportunities, for safer neighborhoods, for a cleaner environment. Even in social entrepreneurship, markets can be saturated.

It feels irrelevant to drive on competitiveness in the social sector. But isn’t it what fosters excellence in a capitalist society? Yes, and that’s where the “social” of “social entrepreneurs” takes all its meaning: as social entrepreneurs, we measure our success in terms of “change” of benefits for the population we serve, not in terms of profits. While I was thinking about all of this in my bed, at 3:37am, I concluded that as social entrepreneurs, we need to support our peers who are doing great work (TS and SOE do an amazing job at connecting people who want to teach and those who want to learn), but to be aware of what could be done differently to better serve our users. And to do it.

At E-180, we don’t believe that democratization rhymes with “rates” and “fees”. How is learning democratized if it is still accessible only to the ones who can afford it? What we will do is to create a new economy, where people can redefine themselves and their “market value”. This value will not be based on where they grew up or where they studied, but on their knowledge, their passion in transmitting it and the learning experience of their students.

That’s our competitive advantage in the market of good.

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Question: Who does a great job at educating people online?

Many websites promote online learning and knowledge sharing, which is great since it contributes to what we believe: that human beings are entitled to educate themselves.

Still, we don’t want to address a need that would be already addressed, or, in other words, jump into a market that is already saturated. Which websites already do a great job at educating people? Any of them promote offline encounters?