Move fast, but be careful: The challenges of education tech

Facebook's old motto of "move fast and break things" is great when you're dealing with stuff like photo sharing and autoplay video.

But what about when you're dealing with something a bit more sensitive, such as how teachers, students and parents communicate?

Brian Grey, CEO of Remind, an app that helps students, teachers and parents do just that, joined Mashable's Biz Please podcast to talk about the opportunities and challenges of trying to innovate in the field of education.

"One of the big challenges is that really education is fundamentally about people and about the connections people have," he said. "Certainly student and teacher, but also teacher and parent, student and parent, principal and teacher. There's just a lot of important people connections that need to happen."

Education technology startups have attracted around $1.7 billion in the first three quarters of 2016, according to CB Insights. That puts the sector on pace for a significant increase compared to 2014, which brought in $2 billion. But this year doesn't compare to the explosive growth of 2015, when edtech (as it's colloquially known) took in $3.3 billion.

It's not just startups. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other major tech companies are getting into the education industry with mixed results.

"The more that big companies that have big resources can bring to this important industry ... the better," he said. "We really see ourselves sitting in the middle of an exciting ecosystem where ideally we can partner with everybody."

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