Entrepreneurial encouragement: solving real problems

Living in the SF Bay Area is a unique opportunity. Entrepreneurship is a cornerstone of the vibe. With that comes the challenges of starting a company. Sure, there are easy parts, but the hardest part is answering the question, will this thing fly? 

Having tried this before, I can tell you that there are ninety-nine reasons why your venture will never  get off the ground. I wouldn't suggest that you ignore them completely, that would be a fools folly, but you have to firmly believe in the one reason you believe this will fly.

As I started out designing Classroom2Classroom, it was a combination of on-line research, and discussions with teachers and technologist. After some work, my vision for this began to focus on what Classroom2Classroom would be, and what it would not be. 

Then, about two month's into the process, I received and email. A good friend had just landed a new teaching job. The email contained on the details and excitement one could pack into an email. She was returning to teaching after some time away. You could feel the enthusiasm she had about her return to teaching. 

A couple of days later, I received another email from our newly employed friend. This one was much more serious, obviously the stress of preparing the classroom was setting in. This email was a request for unused reading books appropriate for her grade level. 

Since we all have kids in school, we must have enough books that the kids had outgrown that she could pull together a library. In a perfect world, that would have been the case, the reality was that she was a year ahead of where our kids are at so contributions were few and far between. 

At dinner one evening, I asked her how her library was coming along. After the head shake, I knew it couldn't be going well. Hours spent on weekends hitting garage sales and second hand book stores. All to no avail. 

This is crazy! These teachers are working longer and harder then ever. Class sizes are growing, resources are being cut and now we want them to spend all their waking hours trying to outfit their classrooms? Wasn't this one of the benefits of the internet? And, so I stand committed to my one reason I can make this work... we can save teacher's time and money and help provide classroom's with engaging classroom libraries.