EdTech Lessons from Two Decades of Building

When we first digitized college application infrastructure, the assumption was that software would flatten access. In some ways it did — but it also created new gatekeepers, and new obligations for the people building the systems.

Scale in education is not the same as scale in commerce. A checkout error costs a customer a purchase; an application error can cost a student a year.

The lesson I take from those decades: build slowly enough to be trusted, and fast enough to matter. Institutions notice both.