Quite recently, we’ve decided to shutter Certo - our AI driven college guidance platform. Since then, we've been running around like a headless chicken.

This is a round up of the lessons learnt, observations made, and future plans.

Why we shut down

Whilst we deeply love our mission of accessible educational support for all, it is becoming more and more apparent that we cannot build a company with values we stand by.

We wanted to create a market for a cheap, university guidance selling directly to teens/users - thus increasing accessibility and caring for each child.

We now realise, that is unlikely to occur, as
1. College guidance as a luxury good - and dropping prices doesn’t increase demand for it. This is a perception issue we could fix, but is complicated by the below:
2. Results are relative: you can always do better, vs dropping a set 10 pounds, it is very difficult to convince parents of how good we are
3. Inability to scale: parents flock to good track records, i.e. high concentration of good acceptances, but since university spaces are limited, scaling will inevitably mean worsening results
4. Therefore, there is no way for a product we build, to deliver in users minds 10x value.

We can fix the above by leaning into existing demand, fighting for market share in the low value, high margin space, but would compromise our values in doing so.

1. In all cases, parental involvement drives demand and ultimately pay
   1. As we work and engage with students we have realised that
2. To survive, we should have to pivot towards building for parents, which is something we are not keen on
   1. Given our conversations with parents, schools, and the industry, we know that catering for parents will involve bowing to their wishes, at the expense of their child’s happiness. We simply cannot do that.
   2. We also know that parents seek comfort - in the form of expensive brand names. Again, adopting such a model would go against the ideas of accessibility for all.

TLDR; we cannot see ourselves being happy building such a startup to survive.

Lessons learnt

What has been really interesting is learning about distribution advantages in EdTech - that the ability to foster a clientele is key, and perhaps even independent to quality. Being in the right age bracket and social circles matter a lot. I can't stop this nagging feeling that this was on me. The lack of clientele was because I didn't run enough ads, didn't sell enough, wasn't cut throat enough.

More importantly, we've learnt a lesson about willing something to life - it doesn't work and it sucks. This seems like an obvious lesson - certainly one I chided startups for as a VC. But the true meaning of the lesson didn't sink in until I experienced it. We wanted to build something for kids. Not for parents, but for kids. We wanted to drive people away from rote learning, from banking, and to pursue our passions. The truth is, Hong Kong is not ready for this. There is no passion economy to foster this acceptance, and culture is set. Indeed, our #1 problem was in imagining a future, and trying to bring that to life - instead of listening to the market. We have 150+ leads on a waiting list, but none of them really want our solution. Perhaps in 3-5 years time, the market will be ready for something like Certo.

Killing an idea has been difficult - I often wonder, maybe we haven't executed well enough. Why aren't we selling well enough? What more can we do? But, if we're no longer passionate about this solution - it would be senseless to continue.

What's next?

We're now back to the soul-crushing phase of ideation.

Several things are structuring our thought process:

1. Idea faucet --> innovation isn't a result, it is a process
   There are so many frameworks for innovation, but they all boil down to something: it isn't fate, but rather the result of a process. Like Edison's muckers, or Ed Sheeran's tunes, good ideas take time to come out - the important thing is to just start, and keep going until the good stuff comes out.

2. Scientific approach --> picking the best idea
   We now rank all our ideas across 4 factors: each founder's love of the idea, executability and market need. This gives us a starting point for discussing each idea.

3. Fast tests
   Once bitten, twice shy - we now have commitment issues in picking an idea to work on. We want to truly validate demand as quickly as possible. We now know, and wish, we had run ads up front, and asked more questions about the intensity of college admissions as an issue before wading in.

What is wrong with me?

For the longest time, I was raised in a traditional background - meant to work in something law/corporate. Somehow, I now feel like a tortured genius/starving artist, with less art and much less talent. I'm unsure why I love building, and what compels me to continue to do so, even though it sucks so much. Am sure someone dropped me on my head when I was born.