How to Scale and Exit an EdTech Start Up with Peter Bencivenga

“Maybe if my son had been more organized, we wouldn’t be here today,” says Peter Bencivenga, who was a passionate teacher in the New York City public school system for 16 years, when he decided to take the leap into the EdTech space in 2008. He now serves as President of Operoo, which helps schools and other organizations achieve operational efficiency with their administrative communication forms. After seeing how many paper forms were getting lost at the bottom of his son’s backpack, resulting in missed appointments and deadlines, he was shocked to find that schools were still using paper for their internal and external communications. Not only did this waste time, it left data inactionable, and sensitive information, such as teachers’ direct deposits and students’ orders of protection, too vulnerable. The only solution at the time, was to simply convert the paper to PDF, ignoring all of the rich data contained within them. Recognizing this problem, Peter, combining his knowledge of the education system with his passion for coding. He found a company in Australia called Care Monkey, which was doing with medical forms what he wanted to do in the education space. He expanded it to become what is now Operoo.

Tune into this episode of Billion Dollar Tech, to find out the three most important components of a go-to-market strategy, what Peter looks for when entering into an acquisition, and the best way to develop and execute your exit strategy.

Quotes:

“I think a lot of people sometimes shy away from entrepreneurship later in their career. They’re more secure and so forth, but I actually think that’s where a lot of the big winners come from, Because you actually know the industry, you know the people, and you know what the problems far more intimately than you can looking from the outside in.” (3:52-4:11 | Brendan)

“If we fail, life is not over. You leave a lot of security behind, but that’s an entrepreneur. It’s not secure. You’re the risk taker. You’re the ones that are actually building great, passionate businesses.” (6:57-7:10 | Peter)

“Am I saving them time, am I saving them money, or am I improving outcomes? Those are the three things at EdTech, you could really build any product on.” (17:22-17:30 | Peter)

“Day one is the passion, right? You really want to solve a problem. If all of a sudden you’re solving a problem and thinking about an exit, you’re not passionate.” (37:46-37:54 | Peter)

“Build a great product that solves a pain point, and make sure you can explain it to a ten-year-old (40:29-40:35 | Peter)

“You have to show, ‘Here is where you’re currently at, but let me show you the future. And wait–here’s where you’re currently at, but let me show you the future.’ So, you have to show that side by side.” (58:20-58-31)

Connect with Brendan Dell:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell
Instagram: @thebrendandell
TikTok: @brendandell39

Buy a copy of Brendan’s Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Peter Bencivenga:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-bencivenga-5499a02?trk=public_post_share-update_actor-text
Twitter: @PeterBencivenga
https://www.operoo.com/

Watch Peter’s recommended talk, The Secret Structure of Great Talks by Nancy Duarte: https://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks?language=en

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How to Scale and Exit an EdTech Start Up with Peter Bencivenga

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