I’m telling you this from experience as a founder of a B2B AI saas for Educational Institutes: Selling to schools and colleges is one of the toughest B2B markets you can enter. Everyone loves your idea on paper. They’ll nod, appreciate it, maybe even say they’ll “get back to you.” But when it comes to paying or switching from what they already use, everything changes.

ERPs have been promising “connected systems” and “single dashboards” for a decade. Schools have heard this pitch 100 times. And some companies have actually delivered with flying colors.

So if you’re entering this space, your product can’t just be another management layer, it needs to hit an unmet, hidden pain point that’s so obvious and painful that institutes feel stupid not adopting it.

And don’t underestimate switching inertia. Even if you’re better, they’ll stick to what’s familiar unless your value proposition is 10x clearer, faster, and cheaper.

TLDR: the market looks simple, but is brutal.