Trust, Tech, Tomorrow: Overcoming Early Adoption Barriers in EdTech Gaming @ The EdTech Week 2025

Cutting-edge EdTech solutions face skepticism and the numbers show why urgency matters. The global EdTech and smart classrooms market is projected to reach $214.73 billion in 2025, growing to over $445.94 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 20%.

With The EdTech Week Festival 2025 approaching on October 20-22 in New York City, founders of promising US EdTech startups reflect on how they overcame early adoption barriers.

Convincing schools of ROI, proving measurable engagement and integrating tech into existing workflows all highlighted a common challenge of earning trust in classrooms where the norm is to stick with textbooks and a fixed set of lesson tools.

For Katalysts, theseCompany’s journeys underscore a central truth- early adoption is as much about trust as the technology. Successful startups align innovation with educators’ needs, demonstrate clear impact and cultivate communities that champion their solutions.

Breaking Barriers: Startup Leaders Share Their Journeys

Founder & CEO of Courtyardly, Radhika Kotwal, shares how building trust shaped the platform’s early days:

“Gaining trust with schools meant relentless listening and iteration. By tailoring workshops for diverse classrooms, we ensured teachers and students felt the platform was theirs from day one.”

Courtyardly empowers learners to create digital portfolios capturing skills and achievements beyond grades, proving to schools that technology can amplify personalized learning.

CEO & Co-Founder of Skilldora, DeMario McIlwain, emphasizes trust as the key early hurdle:

“In a crowded market, the question wasn’t whether AI could deliver. It was whether educators could trust it. We answered by securing global accreditation, proving our content meets rigorous standards.”

Skilldora became the first U.S. platform to launch AI-avatar-led courses with global accreditation, demonstrating that innovation paired with credibility wins educator confidence.

CEO of GameClass, Skyler Scarlett reiterates that trust meant proving gaming could meaningfully serve learning outcomes:

“We scaled to 9,000 schools without marketing spend, relying instead on teacher adoption. Meeting students where they already are, i.e., video games, proved to be an unbeatable approach.”

By aligning game-based lessons with classroom standards, GameClass turned skepticism into adoption and engagement.

Common threads in addressing Early Adoption Challenges

Despite differing approaches, these startups share strategies for building trust with students and their parents as well as with teachers and school administrators:

• Transparency and standards: Accreditation, product foundations and  feedback loops.

• Teacher-centric Design: Involving educators early ensures platforms feel intuitive.

• Proof of Engagement: Measurable student outcomes validate adoption.

Trust is not a one-time achievement; it is a continuous commitment. From showcasing predicted results with AI  to getting the right accreditation, Edtech founders have built trust over and over again across states in the US.

Katalysts’ Take on why trust is the Real Gamechanger in EdTech

At Katalysts, we don’t just track EdTech trends, we shape them with each client’s success. These early adoption journeys highlight a key insight: success in EdTech depends on trust, not novelty alone. In our experience, startups that scale are those that incorporate a focussed plan to educate the market and engage communities from launch:

• Maximise the initial reachout through multiple channels

• Build trust with specially curated media and content for target groups 

• Wow users with product support and resources

As technology evolves, Ed tech tools like digital portfolios, game-based learning and AI-enhanced instruction are becoming core enablers of a future-ready sphere of education. Trust is the force that determines which solutions endure.

"At Katalysts, we’ve had the privilege of helping bold, innovative tech ventures transform their breakthrough ideas into narratives that truly resonate across geographies. By bridging the trust gap between vision and real-world adoption, we design customized outreach strategies that educate audiences and drive meaningful engagement."

— Preeti, Founder, Katalysts

With the EdTech market expanding rapidly and The EdTech Week Festival 2025 just weeks away, the experiences of these new-age innovative startups underscore a simple truth- innovation succeeds only when it earns trust.

Edtech startups must prove value early, listen deeply and make educators true partners. For Katalysts, this mission continues through turning groundbreaking EdTech ideas into trusted solutions for students, teachers and classrooms.