20 Innovative Online Education and EdTech Business Ideas You Can Start Today [2023]

In 2011, coming out of college, I miserably tried to start a penny auction website. I studied Political Science at University, which had absolutely no bearing on this idea. I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial and was consumed by this auction model. I had my own specific mechanics that I thought would make the game a lot more fair for the average consumer. But alas, 6-8 months later, after burning through thousands of dollars trying to get the technology right, I was absolutely nowhere.

I was resigned to not give up, but the mechanics of the auction are critical to the smooth operation of the website and if you can’t get it right you don’t have a business. So I decided to start taking on some freelance writing work, just to get some cash in.

One thing led to another and I started getting some bigger clients with bigger asks. Eventually, I snowballed hiring some writers and copy editors. Turning this thing into a full-time business operation.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost 10 years now - I started my first business in college - a meal plan service for college students. I worked on it on nights and weekends while I had a full-time job at a startup, eventually grew it to a 7-figure business, and was able to become a full-time entrepreneur.

I’m always looking for different tools and opportunities, and have been using many no-code tools including Zapier, Typeform and Squarespace before “no-code” was a trend.

About a year ago I came across Glide, a no-code tool to build apps using a google sheet as the backend. At the time, I was looking for a new side-project to start and decided to create a conference app business using Glide called ConferenceTap

I had been learning to code for some time and I was looking for inspiration from people who like me hadn’t learned programming at college. I’m a member of quite a few online communities and I had already been asking developers for a while about how they got into software engineering. I knew quite a few people hadn’t been to college and had still done really well in their careers.

For instance, an Austrian developer Richard was making six figures as a self-taught web developer aged 22 years old and I was really impressed by that. Also, Harry Dry made a dating website for Kanye West fans which went viral and he was basically learning how to make it as he went along. One of my biggest influences, Pieter Levels, is also a very successful entrepreneur and makes $600,000 as a self-taught web developer. These stories helped encourage me to keep learning to code so I thought other people would be interested as well.

I knew of course that interview websites like Indiehackers and Starter Story were a good way to start a business so I had some examples to follow already. I figured that over the next 10 years there are going to be so many people learning to code for the first time that I could get ahead of that and making a website for them. I was definitely inspired by the way Pieter Levels took advantage of the trend of remote work with his websites Nomad List and Remote OK aimed at people having a location-independent lifestyle.

I studied Philosophy and Politics at University, before spending the first few years of my career working in investment in London. Whilst I am glad that I worked in finance, it was never a career for me. I enjoyed meeting company management teams and analyzing their outlook to inform investment decisions. But, in truth, I always wanted to be on the other side of the table helping to build a business. That said, understanding the financial and operational structures of businesses, and how this relates to their plans, is undoubtedly valuable in building a business and working with investors.

I think success is often based on learning quickly enough from your mistakes, such that you are constantly improving.

My family is all entrepreneurs. Both of my parents are, which must have influenced me and my brother and sister. All three of us siblings have founded our own businesses so now we have a full house of entrepreneurs. I guess that growing up in this environment gave us confidence in entrepreneurship as a means of building a career and that the risk was worth it (even if that meant failure). Certainly, it helped to have encouragement and support from our parents that we should go for it and had their total support. I even remember being discouraged from my original decision to work in Finance!

Hello! My name is Ghazal Qureshi and I am the proud founder and CEO of UpBrainery Technologies. UpBrainery is a startup tech company that focuses on revolutionizing modern education to fit the evolving needs of parents and children.

Within our first few months, we have cultivated relationships with organizations like the Girl Scouts, Girls Inc., Whataburger, NASDAQ, and the Houston Rockets. We are in the works to build a large network of opportunities with other corporations to provide educational content to children in their communities.

Hi everybody, my name is Philip and I’m the founder of Tiiny.Host - the simplest way to host & share your web project online. It’s perfect for prototyping, demos, testing, learning to code, and small web apps.

I started it around 2 years ago and to date, over 40,000 websites have been uploaded. We’re currently at $2,000 MRR (monthly recurring revenue) and doubling every 3 months. It’s been a rollercoaster couple of years, we were making less than $100 MRR for about the first 12 months but revenue then skyrocketed. It just goes to show the trajectory of SaaS businesses on the internet.

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian founded Shemmassian Academic Consulting to provide students with professional academic counseling.

After years of providing his expertise for free, Shirag started charging for his services when he founded this consultancy in December 2013. Shirag charged his first paying customer $1,200. He had to edit 60-80 essays and spent countless hours helping the student, so his hourly rate worked out to be very low.

His proficiency is in advising students especially medical school applicants on which schools to apply to. Over time, this company has been able to generate $650k in revenue in a single year.

Read the full story on sidehustlenation.com ➜

My name is Neil Granberry and I am the co-founder of Cottage Software alongside my friend, Hunter Hodnett, who founded the business. Cottage helps web designers and developers turn designs into code fast and affordably via a tech platform powered by learning developers.

Right now we’re making $25,000 per month as a tech-enabled agency of just two people. Our success is proving our product’s value as we begin to sell the product directly to web design and development agencies.

Hello, my name is Marco, founder of MazingXR (alongside my two co-founders). I’m 27 years old, born and raised in Austria – no kangaroos – it is a small country in the center of Europe. You might know Arnold Schwarzenegger, he is Austrian.

I am Chhavi, the founder and owner of the blog and YouTube channel Mrs Daaku Studio along with my husband Amit.

Our blog, YouTube channel, and products are designed to help you achieve what we have (...and, more).

I’m Laura Bresko, an edtech entrepreneur for the past 25 years. I’ve had several successful companies during that time. My partner and I sold/exited our last edtech company in late 2017.

Students prefer to do their homework, classroom handouts, practice, etc. on TeacherMade because they get instant feedback on how well they scored. Educators love it because the app auto-grades student work and makes giving timely feedback to students a reality. Though we are still in the early days, TeacherMade is a fast-growing addition to the classroom.

ZenBusiness was launched in 2015 as the first one-stop guided platform customized for the entrepreneur’s path to launch, operate, and build a successful firm. Ross Buhrdorf, Shanaz Hemmati, JC Glancy, Rafael Lopez, and Art Flores are the co-founders who built the firm.

Ross Buhrdorf is one of the organization’s principal founders and current CEO. He has been a technology leader, entrepreneur, and corporate executive for over 30 years. In 2010, he received his bachelor’s degree in computer science from The University of Texas at Austin.

ZenBusiness is the latest Texas unicorn, becoming Austin’s largest SaaS finance provider in 2022. Oak HC/FT led the $200M Series C investment, including support from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and previous investors Cathay Innovation and Greycroft.

In 2022, ZenBusiness plans to launch a $5K Grant Program to help small company entrepreneurs support their ventures and passions. Forbes named it one of the “Best LLC Services” in the US for the second year, with a 4.9 rating.

The ZenBusiness platform has grown more than 400% since March 2020 and now helps over 200,000 US entrepreneurs on their journey from inspiration to business formation and growth.

• ZenBusiness launched to revolutionize the process of forming a business.
• The company has helped over 300,000 businesses by providing the tools and resources.
• It provides web-based products, support, services, and 24×7 business protection.
• It’s the solo org. in the Small Business Digital Alliance initiative alongside companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.
• The organization comprises a team of 380 FTEwith 150 engineers.
• Zen Business Broke the $40M Run rate and hoped to break past $50M.

Hey, y’all I’m Cinquanta Cox-Smith I hate putting myself in a box, but If I had to explain what I do: I’m a Multipreneur. (Author, Podcaster, and Entrepreneur) I’ve been helping entrepreneurs start an EASY Print On Demand side hustle from anywhere for about 3 years now. I’m originally from a small town in South Carolina called Georgetown. It’s historic in many ways, especially for the Geechee Gullah culture. I’m an Army Veteran and my Husband (Shawn) is an active-duty soldier. We have 2 kids Kyree (15) and Sharye (12). Let’s not forget about our dog ChuChu. He's most definitely the star of this show.

I’ve always felt like this was just a hobby, or I was just making shirts but Print On Demand is so much more than that. It’s helped me create $7,000 in one month selling POD journals on Amazon KDP, it’s helped me land a Magazine Cover with my T-Shirts for Stars & Stripes (American Military Newspaper). It’s helped me teach over 10,000 people how to create passive & residual income from home with just a computer and some wi-fi. Most importantly it’s allowed me the gift of TIME. Time to spend and travel with my family. Once we get further along into this interview. I’ll tell you about how I accidentally started in the Print On Demand industry 12 years ago.

I am the co-founder and CEO of Morningscore - an SEO tool built like a computer game. The tool gives you “missions'' that you have to complete. Once you do you level up your website. And as a bonus, you also grow your Google traffic in real life and make money for your business. We sell this software on a subscription basis. So we are a classic SAAS tool.

Luckily many customers seem to dig it. In roughly 3 years we managed to get +600 customers and reach an MRR of 40,000 USD. Nothing extraordinary but we did this without VC funding and still managed to do roughly 300% year over year growth on revenue the last 3 years.