[thehickmans]

I would caution you against looking at e-learning as a single market - there's the K to 12 market and then the post-secondary market. You also need to look at geography and the educational direction of countries, regions, states, etc. For example, the UK market is very different than the US or AUS markets, and potential clients in each country are looking for very different things.

Blackboard doesn't really play much in K to 12, but virtually owns the post-secondary market in North America. I think you could spend a lot of time and effort trying to build a Blackboard competitor and not get very far.

However, if you take a look at what teachers are doing with Moodle http://moodle.org/ or Joomla http://www.joomlalms.com/, there's probably a niche there to get your hands onto.

In reference to some of the sales comments - if you can connect with teachers, professors or curriculum oriented staff and get them excited, there's a good chance to find some budget.