Michael Horn warns that community-led schools and founder-run education initiatives often fail because founders skip basic financial planning: realistic budgets, founder pay, cash flow, reserves, and debt management. Without early financial guidance, promising schools become unsustainable.
Or look at this really great community that they've built. I think we have in certain situations overlooked, like, well, do they have a viable budget? Is the, is the founder paying themselves a reasonable salary? You know, I don't think anybody gets into this to make millions of dollars. Sure. But it should be a sustainable thing you could do for several years. Yeah, exactly. And so what we saw was, you know, a lot of founders doing great things. They had great families involved, everybody's excited. And then you look at the business fundamentals of the budget, the cash flow, the reserves, the debt, all of those things. And it was really kind of heartbreaking, candidly, because we really felt like if someone had gotten to these folks earlier and someone had really talked to them and engaged with them and been really clear with them about like, no, this is what it needs to look like. This is how the numbers need to add up. This is how to do this.
