How Crimson Education Expanded Across India and the US - Jamie Beaton

How Crimson Education Sold Elite Admissions Around the World

Crimson Education is a bet that elite college admissions can be sold globally. It started by helping New Zealanders get into US universities and now runs a global network of counselors and online school programs across more than 20 markets. The US is the prize because families pay for depth and because each state behaves like its own country, but that demand depends on visa policy and political stability. Beaton's strategy is to keep entering markets early and hiring local leaders who can build networks a foreign company cannot.

Takeaways

• Crimson bookings hit NZ$300m, quadrupling in four years. The company's last financial year passed NZ$300m in bookings, about four times the level four years earlier. North American operations grew 150% year on year, and the US became Crimson's largest market.
• US states act like separate markets. Beaton says the US offers high willingness to pay and depth because each state is almost its own country. It takes nuance to adjust go-to-market and product. Crimson entered through San Francisco about eight years ago and now takes about 6% of Stanford's early-round admits.
• India relaunch worked after a local leader. Crimson first entered India and pulled out because a leader hired from Michigan could not build local networks. It relaunched about five years ago under a leader who had run the College Board and Coursera in India. India is now a top six market.
• Acquisitions took Revision Village into 430 schools. Crimson bought Revision Village, an International Baccalaureate study platform led by Tim Vaughan, and took it from no schools to more than 430 IB schools in about two and a half years. It also acquired Collegewise and acqui-hired the sciencefair.io team.
• Foreign student demand carries political risk. About two thirds of Crimson's admissions revenue comes from foreign students heading to the US. Trump's threats to ban foreign students from Harvard and freeze visa interviews threatened that flow. China's ban on domestic tutoring wiped 95% off companies such as New Oriental.
• Mentors backed Crimson through failure and cash burn. Julian Robertson backed Crimson's seed round and kept supporting it through failure in India and high cash burn. Sir John Key improved governance through board experience including Palantir. Sundeep Jain taught Beaton about North Star metrics after helping scale Uber to nearly US$300bn.
• New Zealand must choose global openness. Beaton says New Zealand is caught between an inward-facing hermit kingdom and a globally open, competitive country. He advises entrepreneurs to export early, noting Crimson began selling into Australia within 18 months. He wants better maths education and more global technology companies.