Building Successful Edtech Companies with Patrick Ward of Rootstrap

Patrick Ward is the Vice President of Marketing at Rootstrap, a digital studio that provides UX/UI design, app and web development and staff augmentation to a variety of companies, including major edtech companies like Masterclass and Emeritus. In this conversation, we’ll talk about the marketing and technology strategies that top edtech companies use to grow, as well as the future of alternative education.

Recommended Resources
Section4 Blog by Professor Scott Galloway
Education IT Reporter by Scott E. Rupp

Transcript

Copy

Alexander Sarlin: 0:04

Welcome to Ed Tech insiders. In this podcast we talk to educators and educational technology investors, thought leaders, founders and operators about the most interesting and exciting trends in the field. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an educational technology veteran with over a decade of work and leading and tech companies. Patrick Ward is the Vice President of Marketing at Rootstrap, a digital studio that provides UX UI design app and web development and staff augmentation support to a variety of companies including major edtech companies like masterclass, and emeritus. In this conversation, we'll talk about the marketing and technology strategies that top edtech companies use to grow as well as the future of alternative higher education. Patrick Ward, Welcome to EdTech insiders.

Patrick Ward: 1:00

Thanks for having me, Alex.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:02

So Patrick, tell us a little bit about what bootstrap does, and what it offers for edtech companies.

Patrick Ward: 1:09

So Rootstrap is a custom software development agency. But as I like to say to people, that means nothing to no one. So the way that I like to describe us is we are the tech team behind masterclass. And that's really at the heart of what we offer to ed tech companies. We help them build software products that not only delight their students, but also scale over their lifetime. And, and that's a really important aspect for most edtech companies, as they're thinking about how can I serve 1000 students? How can I serve 10,000 or even a million students and what is the technology that underpins that that's really the service that bootstrap provides.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:48

So you mentioned that one of our straps big clients in the tech space is masterclass. masterclass, is one of the largest valued private edtech companies. It raised $225 million Series F last year at almost $3 billion valuation. And for those probably not too many on this podcast, but for those who may not be familiar with masterclass, it provides online courses taught by celebrities and pretty famous people, and then offers sort of a yearly subscription for access to the catalog. So, Patrick, tell us about roots Trump's relationship with masterclass and your role in some of the technical decisions and marketing strategy for that company.

Patrick Ward: 2:26

So the masterclass story is a really interesting one for us because it literally started with a single developer. And it started with a single developer purely because masterclass, knew that their platform relied on technical innovation in order to bring education to a new type of consumer and particularly a consumer that was looking for a solution based on technology rather than traditional forms of education. And so the challenge here for masterclass is they were up against all the big tech names, Google, the Facebook's that Amazon's all of these big companies make very large offers to the best and brightest when it comes to data science when it comes to engineering when it comes to software development. And so masterclass was in a bit of a tangle where they had a few developers, but they didn't really have the technical expertise that they really wanted. And so that's really where the start of the bootstrap engagement began. They leant on us as a true strategic partner to provide them with some guidance. Naturally, that guidance evolved into many different Pontes. We have teams that work on their mobile pod, we have teams that work on their web pod, and even expanding to different areas such as smart TVs, which is one of the most interesting areas that we've recently emerged into. And so where does this lie? For us, it lies with being able to provide them with the appropriate coding standards and quality, because at the end of the day, when you're building a product, your users are not going to care what programming language you used, but they are going to care about the experience they get. And so having a partner in us that can provide that sort of technical decision making is really critical. One of the things that I always like to say that is a validation of the value that we provide to masterclass is even now when masterclass brings on additional developers in house, it is our team that vets them is our team that goes through the technical coding standards, making sure that they're abiding by our processes. And that is really what it looks like to create a true strategic partnership with an edtech client and something that we've been particularly proud of over the now three to four years that we've worked with masterclass consistently.

Alexander Sarlin: 4:57

That's really interesting. So you mentioned In the Smart TV use case, which is a really intriguing one, especially for an offering like masterclass and masterclass is one of a pretty small handful of edtech companies, along with Udemy, Duolingo, Coursera, and a lot of poor profit universities, which use TV ads, which actually put out serious television campaigns to spread their message. So Rich app also includes marketing as part of your services. Do you see a future where more ad tech companies will do that type of large scale television marketing? Or do you see other channels being more efficient for user acquisition?

Patrick Ward: 5:36

Yeah, this is a really interesting debate, because what we're seeing is a real saturation of certain channels, right? So we talk about what does television advertising compared to traditionally speaking for the last five to 10 years, it's been digital channels. And the premise was pretty simple, right? We need to go to digital channels, because we can measure the user's customer journey, we can measure all the different touch points, we can measure their engagement, all of these types of metrics that ultimately defined towards user acquisition. However, the funny thing is, as everyone has come into that space, suddenly it's become a lot more crowded, suddenly, costs have ramped up very significantly. And so I don't see it as more so a return to TV, but more a return to channels that are underutilized. And I think this is a really good mindset for any marketer to get into. Because at the end of the day, it's less about the channel and more about what is that overarching strategy and for marketing, it's just about getting attention. So why not go to a channel that has been under invested, be that contrarian thinker, suddenly you're able to tap into new ways to acquire customers? I think what's really interesting to your specific example, Alex, about TV advertising, is that Consumer Studies show that the recall for a traditional ad is two times that of a digital ad. And I think that speaks volumes that TV, while it is often reserved as Oh, well, that was the old way of doing business, or my customers are no longer watching TV, there is still data that supports that going into a channel even that you might ignore, or you might think that, hey, that's not relevant, we are innovative, we are an ad tech product of the future. And therefore we should only be looking at digital channels. Don't get too married to which way you need to do it, look to those tactics of, Hey, can I find an area that is under tapped underutilized, and therefore get best bang for your buck? I always like to use this example from when the pandemic first hit, we actually doubled our own personal AdWords spend. And we did that because suddenly people were withdrawing in droves, suddenly, the cost would that much lower. And that was an enormous opportunity, you need to understand that marketing is not this complete, holistic view where it taps into multiple different channels, and there's all these different expertise you need to have. You just need to learn the basic fundamentals. How do I communicate? How do I capture attention? And how do I ultimately persuade someone to take an action, in this case, sign up for a course sign up for an edtech product?

Alexander Sarlin: 8:34

And so it's a really interesting point. So I'm hearing that sort of nuanced approach that it's really not about one channel versus the other. It's about sort of swimming against the tide, finding these underutilized channels, thinking strategically about how to stand out and how to make the most of your ad spend, and not closing off a channel like television because it may be seen as old fashioned, because actually, you might really stand out there. It may be more expensive in some ways, but not always. And you might be the only one sort of in that space and getting higher recall and really making a difference in potential customers minds versus more videos and banner ads and YouTube pre real and, and other ways that people market these days. Exactly. So masterclass is also what I would consider a pretty rare company that has a pretty clear built in advertising and marketing strategy. You know, there are courses with Spike Lee and Margaret Atwood and Stephen Curry from the Golden State Warriors. And you know, when you have people like that Martin Scorsese, they're going to be in the ads. But most edtech companies don't, of course, have famous people involved in them. And in fact, most ad tech advertising, at least that I've seen, usually focuses on the student experience. Most of what you're seeing in the ads is what the students are doing, rather than what the courses are actually, like. I'm curious how you would approach that for our listeners who have tech companies without celebrities in them, which is probably not all of them. How do you recommend they think about marketing themselves to a mainstream audience without doing the same old? Here's a picture of a student in front of a computer looking looking like they're concentrating.

Patrick Ward: 10:14

Yeah, absolutely. And I sympathize with that. Because what I always describe masterclasses is yes, it is in the education space. But in many ways, it's edutainment. So a lot of the advertising that you see even that we do on a daily basis with masterclass, it's more akin to a streaming service, rather than how an ad tech provider should really think about it. But where that edtech should focus, I like to use this quote from Aaron Ross mucin. Funnily enough, the co founder of masterclass who he talked about that, education really has four main pillars in what they are offering to a particular student, that is the knowledge that they have acquired. It is the brand of the institution, it is the social network that the student engages with. And finally, it is the physical experience. Now, when we look at those four, we can see obviously, most recently, with the advent of the pandemic, the last two there, the social network, and the physical experience really suffered. And as a result, institutions also suffered. So this is a really interesting case of disruption that were ad tech companies, and even more traditional forms of education, both collectively need to focus on how they advertise. And you need to tie your advertising to outcomes that students care about, like you said, traditionally speaking the picture of the student at a library or with some technology, or sitting in a lecture hall, or maybe focusing on parties, or clubs, and societies, all these other tactics, you could kind of get away just doing a rinse and repeat. And if you had a decent brand behind you, that did most of the job. But let's look at what students want these days. Why did those tactics work in the past? Well, in many ways, it worked. Because it was my generation, the millennial generation, who cared a lot about experiences, yet we see with this next generation of Gen Z, and even beyond that to Gen alpha, both of them are already showing signs of being far more practical. And this I think, represents a couple of things, one, the economic uncertainty of our times, and more importantly, where education has even failed. Why do we have such a surge in interest in edtech, now one argument can be the pandemic accelerated this transition. But more importantly, it didn't start with the pandemic, it's happened because suddenly, there is a gap between what students want out of their education providers, and ultimately, the service that's being provided. So if you can tap into that with your marketing, if you can show how you're aligning yourself with what those students want, because it's no longer just about the experience, when you've got generations that are changing how they perceive education, they're thinking in terms of costs, that thinking in terms of practical things like, am I gonna get a job in my field afterwards? Is this aligned with business interests? Is this aligned with industry, leaning into those sorts of areas for your institution or your ed tech solution? That's going to be the key to your marketing. I always like to say that most marketing is always trying to obfuscate the truth. And that's an example of poor marketing. What you want to do to be the best marketer possible, is, shine a light on the truth, lead with that radical honesty. Because when you lead with radical honesty, in your marketing, you send out the strongest signal possible to the market. And you make sure that the market knows who you are, what your service is, and what is ultimately the value you're providing to those end customers, in this case, students,

Alexander Sarlin: 14:12

as well, your point about Gen Z. And younger people being really practical and focusing on the outcomes and how to get there in the most efficient way. I'm putting words in your mouth a little bit, though, is really, really interesting. We spoke to a Gen Z Entrepreneur on the podcast recently, who said that as a student, as a recent student, she knows that every college student is constantly on YouTube, or looking up everything they need to know on the internet before any kind of test rather than reviewing course material. And it just jumped into my mind when you talk about sort of the practicality and the truth of that. I wonder if you just wonder if a university were to say, come do this with us at learn on YouTube and come do X, Y and Z with So that would be an interesting way to shine a light on an existing truth. Do you think that would get get a college anywhere? Or would it be a huge backfire?

Patrick Ward: 15:09

I think it can. I think that ultimately, every institution, and this is not even just education specific. But we need to trust that today's consumer more so than ever is doing multiple rounds of research. I know this, even from my own space, that the data says that consumers for root strap itself will spend 83% of their time away from us. And only 17% of the buyers process actually speaking with us directly. So there's no hiding now, there is all transparency is out there. So you can either embrace it, and try and communicate effectively. Look, this is what we stand for. If you want to learn this, this and this and get this outcome come and join us. If you don't, maybe another institution is better for you. It's better to embrace that than to ignore the reality

Alexander Sarlin: 16:09

that makes a lot of sense that people have a lot of ways to do that type of market research and understand what they're getting into. Maybe a better tagline for college would be, you can't do a chemistry lab on YouTube, or they don't have a particle accelerator or something like that. I wanted to ask one more tech question just before we leave this subject, because in my experience, that tech companies often have an interesting trajectory in which the MVP is created relatively quickly, and scrappily. And sometimes it just sort of hits an inflection point and gets lots of users early. And then companies have to make a choice about whether to keep the original infrastructure in place, and just sort of ride the momentum and build new things on top of it. Or to do the sort of tough decision to examine the original technical infrastructure decisions and create a more stable foundation to scale. Companies at all stages often have to think about this, but especially companies that have sort of just hit a little bit of an inflection. I'm curious about with your work with ed tech companies and with your technical consulting, is that the type of question that sometimes comes up where they have to sort of decide whether to pull out some of the underlying infrastructure and replace it to sort of prepare for the future and get rid of tech debt versus continually build new features.

Patrick Ward: 17:32

It's not sometimes it's always the scalability of infrastructure is probably the key concern that we deal with with every single ed tech client. And here's why it matters so much. Because, like you say, technical debt, it kind of sounds like it's a complicated concept, really, all it means is that if you build something in a way that doesn't have a solid foundation, think an analogy of like building a house, if you build it on weak ground, that house is going to shift, you can put all the bells and whistles, you can put five bedrooms on top, you can build a dam, you can build an attic, you can add all these extra features. But if the foundation is shaky, it's all gonna slide away. And so this is really critical to think about, particularly for Ed Tech. You're right, other companies and other industries have to think about it as well. But here's why the scalability matters, because that user experience will get impacted. And this is especially important. If you're an ad tech company that involves any use of video, one of the key focuses for us is on compression of video assets, so that we can reduce the amount of file size and therefore server load while maintaining quality. And why does this matter? This matters, because not only do you want your student to not have to wait. I mean, they're already in an instance where if a website takes more than a couple of seconds to load, they're clicking away. So we don't want that. But more importantly, your server costs. This is one of those things that people often don't think about. But it's one of the hugest fluctuations. It's been great that we've had things like AWS from Amazon, Google Cloud, They've all moved away from having to have physical server infrastructure. But the downside of that flexibility is, if you ramp up your costs, if you suddenly hit that inflection point, and you had 1000 students a day on your platform, now you have a million. Well, Amazon's only too happy to take your money. And they won't tell you about it before it happens. And this is especially important, like you say where an edtech platform has built their MVP. They've gone Little bit of traction, but suddenly, all of their money that they've raised in order to tackle the key problem or the value proposition that they're providing in the market, suddenly all that money can't be invested in improving the product, because it's all going to serve the costs. So you're absolutely right, Alex, this scalability is a really critical concern. And look, I get it, we start most platforms in a fairly scrappy way, I would always encourage people to think about proving that business case first, before you do anything, because if you haven't got a business case, there's no point building a product with the bells and whistles. Having said that, you do need to think, Okay, how many students Am I looking to serve? Is it supination? I can get away with only serving 500 1000? Or will I start serving hundreds of 1000s of students, millions of students? And then the one final thing I'll add is, can your infrastructure flex? So yes, maybe during 3pm in an afternoon, right before final season, it has all the users it's ever going to have. But does your infrastructure needs to always have that capacity? Or can it flex back down during 3am 4am? Although maybe that's a bad example, given the late nighters that many students do. Yes, being able to flex with the amount of usage you're having over time, also a really critical point in terms of managing costs, and, and obviously, technical debt.

Alexander Sarlin: 21:34

Yeah, I love all of those points. And I think the seasonality one at the end is also really key. There are so many edtech companies that focus on, sometimes it's standardized test prep, or it's certain moments of the year, maybe they are not used very much over winter break, if you're an in school platform. So the ability to sort of tune down and not pay those huge cloud costs, cloud computing cost during the times when you're not being used that much could save a lot of money and of course, agree with the infrastructure that sort of I think every developer who's listening to this is nodding along. Yes, you need to get rid of the tech debt and have solid infrastructure. So another edtech company that restrap has worked with extensively is Emeritus, it is a really interesting company. It's a Singapore based company that provides basically Online Executive Education classes in partnership with top business schools worldwide. Tell us a little bit about roots Trump's relationship with emeritus over the years and as well as how that company has sort of evolved and grown.

Patrick Ward: 22:37

So Emeritus, is a really fascinating example, which funnily enough was born out of masterclass. So the original VP of Engineering at masterclass, left, and went to emeritus and naturally brought us along with them, because they liked what we did at masterclass, and they wanted us to do the same thing and Americas. So America's value proposition, as you say, is a really interesting one where it is spreading education to countries that can't otherwise receive it. And what do I mean by this, specifically, in the area of executive education from prestigious brand name universities here in the United States, America has realized realize there was a number of students that would love to learn from these particular institutions, but wouldn't have the costs or the time to be able to come to the United States, it's very costly to go through getting a student visa or getting approved for that having enough money, being able to take off time from work to be able to do these programs. And so emeritus was able to partner with these institutions to deliver online learning from them, traditionally, in person classes, which had no online component, and packaged them in a way into certificates that could then be sold right around the world. And obviously, we use America as the example because the institutions, primarily our American base being some of the best universities in the world. And really, where roots strap first came involved was, again, just how do we distribute this premium online content in a way that is both accessible to people right around the world, especially in areas where perhaps Internet is a little spotty. That was, again, to my earlier point about compression. It's not just about saving your company server costs. It's also making sure that even if someone's got really low internet bandwidth, they can still access your platform, you know, that level of accessibility is hugely important. And then from there, it was expanding what the service offerings were, because traditionally, Emeritus was focused purely on partnerships with those key University institutions, we expand ended it to a platform called emeritus insights. Funnily enough, this was a masterclass style of content, but for the traditional education space, so suddenly, we were partnering with those professors directly to create a five to 10 minute micro lesson experiences, which then got distributed through emeritus insights. It's been, again, a wonderful journey with them now been a little over three years, where again, we continue to face those same challenges, but in a really positive way, where how can we make sure that education gets to people who want it? How can we provide an experience that matches what they're looking for an education provider? And ultimately, how do we help them achieve both their educational goals and their professional goals?

Alexander Sarlin: 25:53

Let's take a quick break. And then all of a sudden, Facebook got in there very cleverly, and they gave people free phones, which they couldn't afford anyway, with Facebook built into it. And now all of a sudden, the world's opening up and of course, you're gonna believe what you see on this amazing technology, right. And they were warned over and over again, that this was being misused in order to prosecute a genocide on the part of extreme Buddhists and the government, right, the UN actually said that Facebook had facilitated a genocide in Myanmar, and what happened to them nothing. So you're mentioning that America has has a model of sort of bringing the best education or really high quality education from great institutions all around the world, we're in a really interesting moment when it comes to enrollment and how students are thinking about what to do to enhance their education or to get meaningful and lucrative work. We're at a moment where we've just gotten a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, that shows that undergraduate enrollment in the US is down by almost 5%. The Graduate and Professional enrollment, which includes MBAs is down by 1%. Community College is down by almost 8%. And meanwhile, enrollment in two year college and skilled trade programs is increasing. You mentioned the practicality of Generation Z and the alphas who are behind them. And I just think of this really interesting people are doing comparison shopping for education in a way I don't think they ever have before. I wanted to give one quick quote from a report on this and then ask you a question about it. So the quote is from a US news report on this research, and it says, The enrollment data comes as a growing number of high schoolers and their families begin considering alternatives to higher education, both as a result of tuition expenses, and a growing body of data, highlighting earnings potential through alternative avenues. So emeritus is one of a large and growing number of edtech companies that are seeking to offer those meaningful alternative avenues to traditional in person college education. I'm curious, from your perspective, AdWords job working with ad tech companies? How do you think about the future of traditional college versus alternative avenues for higher education?

Patrick Ward: 28:14

I think one of the biggest trends that I've seen here, and where I think it's ultimately going is a democratization of education. Because when we boil it down to its simplest essence, and without labouring your audience too much, let's go back all the way in history, let's go back to the Middle Ages, who had access to education, it was essentially the clergy was a couple of religious leaders. And that's it. Now, we got to a place in the 20th century, where people who had the means and who had a reasonable amount of funds could access education. Now finally, I think we all know college costs in the last 30 or 40 years has far outpaced inflation, and far outpaced wage growth. And so this, I think, is a critical time period, where let's just say the bastions of knowledge no longer had the monopoly on it. And I think this is a good thing for both sides of the equation. It's good because it makes traditional college providers think really hard about what the value they truly provide is to students, and those that still provide that value, maybe have the brand names that can open doors for students, maybe they will still survive, but the others that had more tenuous foundations, just purely because they were sold on the premise that college is the key to a successful life. Again, no one size fits all that was never the case. And so what I really like is that both through the internet both through these variety of different measures that you've talked about, you know, Emeritus is a Great example of it. I like the fact that knowledge is not being held just for a few elite. But it really is accessible to all informs that are accessible to all, whether it's online, whether it's in person, whether it's cohort based, all these different strategies and tactics allow a student, like you say, a high school to really shop around to think about, hey, what do I want out of life? Do I favor something that is more stable? Do I look at where my earning potential is? Do I look versus passion? And look, I say this, as someone who came out of a traditional four year college, I still do think there is a place for traditional education, I don't think it will go away. But this one size fits all mentality that has existed. And honestly, I mean, many of my millennial cohort can testify to this who have boomer parents that would just said, go to college, get a job, everything will be fine. That premise is no longer true. And I think this is a good thing, because it gives people optionality, people can start to think for themselves, hey, if college is the right thing for my particular field, or my particular purpose in life, fantastic, if maybe I'm better served going to a trade school, or a two year college, or maybe I go to a boot camp, or maybe I learn it myself online, all of those options are available to you now.

Alexander Sarlin: 31:30

And more and more of those options are seen as legitimate pathways to a middle class, at least career, which I think, as you mentioned, the traditional thinking on it is that if you don't go to college, that sort of it, there's no other way to enter. It's because the only door. And it's starting to feel like maybe with all of the changes with the generational change with all of the offerings that are out there now, with companies and colleges and alternative providers all offering different options. It's starting to feel like that the choices are authentic. And it's not just a trying something on the side before you end up going to college, because it's still really the only way. It's what it feels like starting to happen these days. I love your point about education being democratized and being available to the clergy back in the Middle Ages. And that's a you know what Harvard and Oxford started like that. I've read some histories of higher education that really opened my eyes to this that really, it's absolutely true. It's been a steady opening of access for higher education for centuries, starting with the clergy. But then white men, there were no women allowed for quite a while that opening up to women opening up to different races opening up to that people without land or those who didn't come from a sort of money culture yet that opened up you had in the US you have these land grant universities that were designed to be really democratize education in a whole new way, all these great state universities that are amazing than the community colleges. If you really look at the trajectory of education, it really has gotten pretty directly in the sort of open, open, open, open, keep opening. And with companies like emeritus and all of these online providers, you're getting to the no matter where you are in the world, if you have a phone or access to the internet, that's all you need. Nothing else matters. You know, it's a really interesting moment. i It's part of the reason I got into edtech in the first place. So it's great to hear you talk about that. I have one more question, but a little bit of a complicated one. So, you know, we're talking about these alternative avenues. And really, at this point is there's a lot of different types of ed tech companies that are offering this type of alternative to higher education. You mentioned, you know, their technical boot camps that are usually a few months long that offer sort of career ready skills, online certificate programs like emeritus as well as edX MicroMasters programs, Coursera certificates, career accelerators, companies like fourth rev in the UK that offer work and learning in parallel. And in a shorter timeframe, cohort based courses, credit providers like outlier or next year university, which offer accredited classes for much lower cost online so that people can finish college and actually get credit in a in a shorter time with less debt. So you've thought a lot about this space. Patrick, what do you think this sort of adds up to there? Are all of these different models? Is there any one that you think is going to take the reigns as the major alternative to the traditional higher ed market? Or will they all continue to find different audiences as you say, there's no one size fits all, and people will have legitimate choices about what to do? And there'll be multiple ways to have a sort of fulfilling life in the middle class. Let's take a quick break. Have you ever wondered how Netflix keeps his engineers happy? Why engineers turned foul Bruce make some of the most successful companies, or how the CTO of an AI company talks to his friends and family about artificial intelligence dev interrupted as a podcast about engineering problems told by the leaders who solved them. Whether you're a VP of engineering, team lead, or at a coding bootcamp, Dev interrupted is the best weekly podcast for engineers who want to understand what's going on in the world of software in tech. Each week, we dive into the insights, processes, culture, and know how that turned engineers and leaders and companies into unicorns find dev interrupted, wherever you download your podcasts and listen today.

Patrick Ward: 35:36

I think that while each of them had their place, there is one that stands head and shoulders above the others, and that is technical boot camps. And why do I think this? This is because it ties very nicely with STEM job growth. And you might have seen a lot of the headlines recently of all the tech industries had trillions of dollars wiped off it, is this the end of the tech industry? No, it's not. Because you'd be hard pressed to find an industry that exists today, that doesn't have some technical component, right, we know the power of technology that underlies almost every industry in the world. And the fact of the matter is, there is still a lack of STEM graduates across not just the United States, but really across the world, in terms of companies demanding those technical skill sets versus what the market is actually providing. And so what I like about technical boot camps, is they have align themselves really nicely with this practical knowledge, where I've seen a lack in traditional education, when it comes to the tech space, is they tend to lean towards a traditional computer science degree. And I'm not saying it's not valuable to learn the history of computer science and how it all works. Of course, that's valuable as a theoretical underpinning. But what technical boot camps do is they get a person ready to work immediately. And that I think is going to be, it's going to collide with a couple of different trends that we've already talked about. One, it's going to collide with the trend that Gen Z and Gen alpha are already more practical. So they're going to look at this going, Hey, I'm already somewhat of a digital native, let me just increase my digital skills further. And I can get a stable job in STEM, it also tends towards the highest paying jobs. And that I think, given the economic climate is obviously going to be a key decision. So while that certainly some of those others that we've talked about, I definitely still see, you know, certificates, and course credit providers and all these other alternative forms of education, they'll still be well supported. But I imagine that the trend of both the practicality mindset versus also the market need is going to continue to collide. And therefore technical Boot Camps are going to continue to be the winners here. I've seen it firsthand where the developers we hired today, even something as little as five years ago, they used to all be computer science degrees. Now they're coming straight out of the boot camps. This is a trend that's just going to continue to flourish.

Alexander Sarlin: 38:31

Really interesting answer ever. Yeah, I appreciate that perspective. And seeing it up close working in development is particularly interesting angle. So my last question related to this is seeing all these threats to the traditional university model from a marketing strategy, technological perspective, like Bootstrap has, what would you recommend that a traditional university do in this environment of burgeoning ad tech options?

Patrick Ward: 39:00

So there's a couple of things here. The first is just very simply be more flexible in your offerings to students focus on what is the true value proposition you provide? You know, I want to give you an example here from my own university. So when I look back on my four year degree, did it provide me an amazing level of industry ready knowledge? No, it did not. But what it did provide me was a reading network in the United States. It provided me internships, opportunities, and study abroad opportunities in the United States, which ultimately, as my accent belies allowed me to move from my home country of Australia to America. So that was its value prop and it really does focus very heavily in my home country on saying to prospective students, hey, you need to come to us because we have more international exposure than any of our Australian competitors that I think is really critical have look deeply at yourself and realize, Hey, what is that one thing that we can stand head and shoulders above? I know that many universities like to focus on a particular niche. Now, is that time to double down? Are you a technical college? Are you really good at liberal arts? Do you have notable alumni, you can tap? Do you have existing business connections, look at all the potential differentiators because it's no longer enough to just have a group of students sitting on a grass and take a photo of them. And there's the ad campaign. And then finally, I want to think of the second aspect, which is colleges themselves have focused on selling the four year degree as a catch all to one specific set of students, the high school senior, right. And yes, that has been a good model for many of them to grow their revenue base. But one of the interesting phenomenons I found studying here in the United States versus when I was back in Australia, is here, everyone was basically the same, right? I walked into a freshman class, and everyone was around the age of 19. All having recently graduated high school, when I compared that to my experience back in Australia, where there were people as old as 5060, some that one class even had 70 year old people in just purely there to learn. And this I think, is a very untapped market of think about, yes, you as a university are sitting on a goldmine of knowledge, don't just sell it to one group of students think about how you can tap mature age students returning students, or students who, perhaps, maybe they didn't finish high school, but they got a equivalent work experience, how can you bring them into the fold all of these different life stages, because that is the other big trend that we're seeing, right? People are realizing that education is not something that you do your four year degree one and done. I'm not learning ever again, I know myself, I'm part of multiple different cohort based courses, even to this day, because I'm constantly looking to learn the next thing, learn something new, a new technology, a new theory, a new framework of looking at the world, and universities sit on so much of this knowledge. And if they just market it beyond just the 18 year old, they could drive revenue for themselves in many different ways.

Alexander Sarlin: 42:39

That's a great answer. And I think it ties into some of the things you've been saying earlier about democratizing education may be the age, the blindness of universities to only market to high school students, and that a little bit of continuing ed is sort of the last frontier of democratizing education. Shouldn't universities be open to people at all stages of life for all reasons, people who are coming back into the workforce or are retired, I think that would create a much more interesting and diverse educational landscape for and it's actually a really nice vision of the future of traditional education. So I love that. So we end every podcast with two questions. The first is, what do you see as an exciting trend in the EdTech landscape right now that you think our listeners should keep an eye on?

Patrick Ward: 43:31

So we've talked a lot about this idea of convergence. And convergence is common, not just in edtech, but across all different industries. But the specific trend I want to call out is how AI is going to come into the EdTech space. And it already is in small ways, but expect it to happen in far more profound ways in the future. One I particularly want to call out for your listeners, Alex is AI assisted on demand tutoring. There's a really interesting company called blocks.ai, which is applying itself in Indonesia, a very traditionally very poor nation, but a very large nation of approximately, I think 130 million people who didn't have access to education, and didn't have access to good tutors within the mathematics realm. Through this particular use of AI, they were able to pair students particular questions about math problems, to explanations from top teachers, and they've been able to show in that country, there has been a substantial increase in STEM outcomes and overall stem capabilities within their student body. And I think this is again, really exciting when it ties into what we're talking about in terms of democratization that AI when tied in the right way to EdTech can see We make students have better outcomes and more students have better outcomes. Because it's all well and good to say from an American perspective. Yes, let's get people to a middle class lifestyle. And I do agree that is a very noble goal. But let's not forget the overarching thing of what education has provided over the centuries, education has lifted millions upon millions of people out of poverty and can continue to do so. And so keep an eye on AI because it's going to keep impacting education, I hope in really positive ways.

Alexander Sarlin: 45:36

Extremely interesting. And I have not heard of that company, I'm definitely going to look it up right after this session. And what is one book or blog newsletter or twitter feed that you would recommend for people who want to go deeper into any of the subjects we talked about today?

Patrick Ward: 45:53

So I'm gonna cheat here a little Alex, and I'm gonna give you two. So one is Scott Galloway is section four blog, really fascinating company that's disrupting a lot of the education space in terms of providing different types of courses and their blog, in terms of continuing education is really a good read. And then I want to also add education, it reporter.com, which is by Scott Rupp, if you're interested in anything we've talked about when it comes to technical guidance, scalability of infrastructure, those sorts of semantic issues when it comes to building an ed tech platform. That's definitely a good go to as well.

Alexander Sarlin: 46:35

Excellent, terrific suggestions. And, as always, we will put links to those resources in the show notes for this episode, as well as to blocks.ai, the AI tutoring company that Patrick just mentioned, as well as to bootstrap itself. Thank you so much, Patrick Ward from Bootstrap. It's been a really interesting conversation.

Patrick Ward: 46:56

Thanks, Alex. Really appreciate it.

Alexander Sarlin: 46:58

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Ed Tech insiders podcast. If you liked the episode, remember to subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're listening on Apple, please leave a rating and review so others can find the podcast. For more ed tech insiders content subscribe to the Ed Tech insiders newsletter at edtech insiders.substack.com