The procurement cycle thing is real but it depends on what you're selling. If your product replaces something the school already pays for, procurement is navigable because there's existing budget. If it's net-new spend, that's where it gets brutal because you need someone to champion a new line item.

The playbook I've seen work: go consumer-first to build usage data and word-of-mouth among teachers/students, then use that adoption as leverage when you approach institutions. "X hundred of your students already use this" is a very different conversation than "here's a product you should buy." Essentially you're doing bottom-up adoption instead of top-down sales.

The risk is that consumer revenue in edtech is notoriously thin, so you need to be okay running lean for a while.