Guest: Quinn Taber, Founder & CEO @ Immerse
Topics This Week:
Guest: Quinn Taber, Founder & CEO @ Immerse
Topics This Week:
Alexander Sarlin 0:04
Welcome to Edtech 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 at leading edtech companies.
Ben Kornell 0:27
Hello, everyone, it's Ben Kornell alongside Alex Sarlin. With this Week in Edtech. We're excited to come to you from New Orleans at the St. Conference. And excited to wrap up season one. We're on a hiatus in July before we kick off season two in August. Alex, you're not really taking time off, what are you going to be up to in July?
Alexander Sarlin 0:50
Yeah, so I'm really excited. This has been such an incredible journey with podcasts, I have to take a little time to do a new startup, which I am calling fatherhood. So we are expecting our first child just in a less than a week. And then from there, it's going to be some some leave and some time with sleeplessness and diapers and all of those fun things that I've heard about all these years, but never experienced firsthand. So I'm really excited about that. But that said, the interview podcast will be continuing to be published throughout July. And we'll be back with new weekend Ed Tech in August. I may sound a little bit sleepy or but it'll be a lot
Ben Kornell 1:29
of fun. It will certainly make for more interesting interviews and conversations in season two, why don't you kick us off with the headlines?
Alexander Sarlin 1:37
Sure. So we're gonna have a great guest at the end of this episode, which is Quinn Taber of immerse a really exciting new VR startup that sort of launching with meta, but some really interesting headlines happening this week.
The first one is that if you live in the United States, or follow the news at all, you know that there have been enormous political changes in the US over the last week. And they are actually already having impacts on campuses and school. So I wanted to just talk through some of the sort of Sturm and Drang and chaos, you know, without taking any political, you know, stances one, there was a really interesting article from Politico about how the changes to Roe versus Wade, that came from the Supreme Court this week are going to have major effects on college campuses, because students parents are 10 times less likely to graduate college on time than their peers without children. Student parents are actually pretty common, they're more than you might expect. So two in five black women in college are mothers according to a 2016 survey at about 28% of all women in college are mothers. So you already have lots of student parents who are much less likely to graduate on time. And this change to policy may significantly increase the number of student parents or people in college age who are who are suddenly become parents. And it's without getting into the incredibly complex politics of this. It's a it's gonna be really interesting. I think colleges have never been amazing at supporting student parents. That's not been their priority in most cases. And now they're facing a really an increase in the number of services that need to deliver. I'm curious, what do you think about this, Ben? Well, we've
Ben Kornell 3:28
talked in prior episodes about schools and education institutions becoming a locus point for services and service delivery. And as federal policy changes, restricting the right to health care, and access to health care, colleges are often called upon to step in and just as physician practices and others are having to weigh their options in terms of what they can reasonably do to support their patients, colleges are in the same boat and questions arise around. If a college if a student on a college campus or who's enrolled in a college request support to travel out of state will the college or college organizations provide support for that, etc. So as you mentioned, we're going to see this play out in really complex ways, and probably each state will be really different. The other big policy event this week, besides Roe v. Wade was the first meaningful gun reform action taken at the federal level. And it's in response to the Uvalde shooting. What we're also seeing in parallel and part of this bill is really about defense at schools. And how do we make schools a very safe place? Ironically, most of the data shows that schools are actually quite safe when it comes to gun violence and that actually, gun violence outside of schools still outweighs the risks to younger people than in school. But we're seeing that there's a $5 million crisis management service that caught County School District and Marissa at a Georgia has purchased in 2021, schools and colleges in the United States spent 3.1 billion on security products and services, compared with 2.7 million in 2017. And the legislation that I mentioned includes an additional 300 million to bolster school security. So connecting the dots here, the services that we talked about on the health care front, there's also safety services that are now going to be required and provided by schools. And managing those services to ensure that they're delivered well, and that schools are really safe, will be a complex responsibility of administrators. It's also an important place where, you know, cyber defense as well as security technology companies will be coming in full force in education.
Alexander Sarlin 5:54
It's a really interesting time for for this, because as you say, I think school shootings are so horrific, they're so memorable. We obviously have seen Columbine, in the 1990s. We've seen Virginia Tech, we've seen the Marjory Stoneman Douglas, which created enormous movement. And now, the ivaldi, just this year, which is after the $3 billion were spent in 2021. And they're so memorable. They're set, they stand out, they really rightfully scared the heck out of everyone. And it puts schools right at the forefront of this incredibly politicized movement. So it makes sense in some ways, obviously, nobody wants school shootings, and it's just that is universally agreed on. But the idea that schools are a less safe place, or are sort of a hub, a center of school shootings, gives administration's of schools sort of free rein to spend as much money as as they can, basically, on security systems and safety systems, which may or may not, you know, always work as intended. There's a great time New York Times article this week about how sometimes those security systems don't even sort of work properly, they cost a huge amount, but they don't always do what they say. And nobody would know that until an emergency happens. It reminds me of sort of, it's I feel like it's a microcosm of sort of defense spending writ large, right, and something happens scares the heck out of everybody, and then just money starts pouring, pouring, pouring into the solution, even though it's not necessarily clear that money is has been the problem.
Ben Kornell 7:26
This is part of why it's so important for folks in edtech, to pay attention to what's going on legislatively, because much of the money coming to schools is actually not going to teaching and learning to all of these other ancillary things. Meanwhile, most of the administrators and educators are there for the teaching and learning and so finding ways to actually improve the efficacy, whether it's safety and security, health care, access. Those are ways in which you can actually create space for the educators to be educators. You know, on the policy horizon ahead, we can see new bills and initiatives that on one hand, question the tax status of private schools and religious schools. And that's part of the backlash around Roe vs. Wade. We also see policy coming up around kids and social media related to mental health. Another area that's adjacent to teaching and learning but not direct. So the this Congress, especially as it heads to the fall midterm elections, is desperate to, you know, push policy through that will lead to meaningful change. But both parties still seem to be in such different directions that it's pretty uncertain times in this landscape.
Alexander Sarlin 8:43
Yeah. And so we've talked about, about Roe v. Wade, we've talked a little bit about the gun legislation. One other recent policy coming into schools in the US is, is the don't say gay bills that have been sort of started in Florida. But now there's about 15 states that are starting to consider legislation about basically, you know, the discussion of gender identity in in schools. And there's a really, I think, really heartbreaking editorial in the Hechinger Report this week, from a LGBTQ student saying that having a supportive adults and teachers who you can turn to is incredibly important for LGBTQ plus students and that having a an accepting adult in in one's life makes a big student 40% less likely to attempt suicide. So sort of citing all these statistics and saying, Hey, this is the flip side. Alright, you know that that may be an unintended consequence of this bill is that by removing the ability to discuss gender identity in schools, you actually remove an entire support system for students. I thought it was a really well written editorial and just something that I hadn't really hadn't really crossed my my radar and I hadn't thought about Got it in this way before and I think it's, it's something where, you know, as this country just continues to have these culture wars at every level. And as the governor of Florida is sort of quite likely to become a presidential candidate, I think we're just seeing this performative politics that has enormous consequences on people that they, it's just not unforeseen or people don't care about. What do you think about the don't take a step? And it's so it's so sad.
Ben Kornell 10:27
Yeah. And it not only is it sad, but you know, there were asking schools to do so much. And then we're putting rules on, you know, we're saying support the whole child do everything you can. It's not just teaching and learning. But oh, by the way, you know, here's all of the third rails politically that we're going to thrust upon you, and it creates a state of paralysis. So our headline number two is actually about ISTE conference in New Orleans. And it's been abuzz with these types of conversations around the politics of education. You know, at the ISTE conference, it's, in some ways, a form of group therapy, after two years of what has been a pretty crazy time in K 12. Education. There's an article that was published, where it said, there's a call for a major infusion of joy, we need more joy in the teaching profession. But many of these political headwinds are actually creating barriers to teachers continuing on with the profession. I was sitting down with a leader at curriculum associates. And they said that, typically, when they post a curriculum role on their team, they get between 203 100 applications from educators, which is great, you know, they sort through them and they find somebody. Now, with recent postings, they're getting between three and 4000 applications per posting the moly. And so the kind of constant reminder that educators are burned out and looking to pivot away from the classroom, that's very present. The second is, there are some really new sales models in K 12, that rely on educator kind of community. And what you're seeing is a lot of educator Ambassador programs here at ISTE. With the idea of bottoms up sales. Some of this is new, and some of this is not new. Freemium is of course, a well trodden path for tech companies to grow. But given the current macro environment, the dynamic of large sales teams selling enterprise through senior leaders at 100 $2 million contracts, that era feels like it's passed. And so you're seeing that with a lot of these events here geared to gin up, educator community. Point three on the SD conference is consolidation is here. When you look at the Microsoft booth, and you realize that they're, you know, Minecraft Flipgrid, all of these different education brands that they've rolled into one, they seem to be the big tech winner here at the conference. And you also look at things like amplify curriculum Associates, and a few other vertically Power School, for example, they are really making a big presence. And then by juice is here with a bunch of different brands and a relatively incoherent go to market articulation. But their booths are great, and they're handing out lots of free stuff. So the like, kind of the fourth point I have on the SD. So one was, you know, macro politics, shaping teachers leaving number two is really about this can move towards consolidation. The third point I would say is, what we're also looking at is a bunch of people who bought ISTE booths, like six or 12 months ago. And so there's somebody who has like an RV camper that's been fitted out for St. There's all kinds of lavish setups, and you just kind of wonder how much of that was like prepaid, that people are now like, Man, I wish we had half the spend. And so it'll be really worth watching. Coming up in a year from now when it's in Philadelphia, so of all in all, SC has been great. It's great to be on the ground. Definitely feel, you know, educators are happy to be in person. They're getting sloppy on Bourbon Street at night. But great conversations and and so much energy, despite all the headwinds around what's possible in our space.
Alexander Sarlin 14:39
It's a it's a great analysis, but and I you know, unfortunately can't be at SD this year, but I feel like I'm virtually there hearing your ear on the ground coverage of it. I can definitely see that. A couple of just quick reactions to that. I really think Microsoft doesn't get enough credit as as an ad tech company, but they have done some very smart acquisitions in the past and I think they've taken a very different approach than the Googles and apples and certainly then then Mehta, and Amazon and other big tech companies in that they really choose acquisitions that are really sort of like killer apps and they're very careful with that maybe Minecraft even when Microsoft bought Minecraft it was already one of the biggest properties in the world in gaming. It was this sort of, you know, superstar Swedish developer. Go Jiang I think it's called but it continues to dominate things like you know, Roblox or obviously based entirely. It's the next generation of Minecraft, but it's still there. Microsoft just bought Activision Blizzard, which gives them an enormous accelerant on the metaverse and gaming, they bought LinkedIn, which had bought Lynda, which gives them an enormous amount of incredible content. And for workforce. I think they're sort of the dark horse of the race that people don't think about Microsoft as as this sort of power player, but they really are. And it's great to hear that, that it's sort of coming out now at ISTE. Yeah, they're
Ben Kornell 16:01
definitely under the radar. And I think they're happy to let Facebook Mehta as well as Google, and Amazon take the heat. One, one thing that you also mentioned there is they're vertically integrated across K 12, higher ed, and workforce. And we are seeing that here at ISTE. One of the big players here is class technologies, which is built on the Zoom platform, and both zoom and class are here in full force. And we're seeing the Ed Tech landscape growing in higher ed, but also vertically integrating. So our third topic was just some pretty incredible news around that higher ed space, and especially emerging ed tech companies kind of changing the game. What do you have on that?
Alexander Sarlin 16:47
Yeah, so speaking of class technologies, and it was a really interesting interview with with Michael chasen, who is the CEO of class, and former one of the former founders of Blackboard, about sort of the, the landscape that we're all in right now. And it was really interesting, you know, that the moment when, when the pandemic sort of came down on everybody and shifted all of our ideas about what online education, you know, is or could be, or has to be an emergency, I thought he had some really good points to make that I was, you know, impressed about impressed, by the way he was sort of analyzing it, which is, you know, he mentions how a few years ago, pre pandemic, it was very much feeling like the future of Ed Tech was going to be a synchronous, it's cheaper to scale, it's much easier to handle large groups of students. And it was just sort of and and honestly, people just weren't that excited about the idea of doing synchronous online classes, and they were moving away from it, it was start seeing as a little bit old fashioned, and, and that's flipped enormously. And obviously, you know, if you're the CEO of class, you want that to flip. It's not that this is a neutral analysis. But I do think he makes really good points about the sort of the more you can make a live online environment feel rich and communicative and exciting. And like the best of in person learning, the better, you know, education, the better off education will be. And combined with everything you're saying, and that we've covered on this podcast about the teacher burnout, I think there's a really good case to be made that that at least hybrid and maybe even pure online, Ed especially synchronous, or take a humungous bite out of what we have thought about as as you know, education, it might be that more than then you'd ever imagine of College of K 12 actually happens online and companies like class and engage Lee and several other players who are really trying to change that landscape as you flow. I think there's a really interesting job of this sort of LMS that incorporates different kinds of input really may be the end zoom may be the biggest edtech companies. I don't think this is something I somebody, I've been a longtime fan of asynchronous education. I'm starting to really see the value and come around. That's one of the big things that's coming out. There's some other cool things happening in edtech. This week. So emerge education. Our friends across the pond in the UK, had some really great events this week, where they are basically announcing their 50 emerging higher ed and their 50 emerging workforce at tech companies. And eMERGE is in my for my money, one of the smartest VCs in the space, they have really, really well informed theses. They really think deeply about the trends in edtech. So I definitely recommend looking at what they're how they're how they're picking their 50 top companies right now, some of the companies are going to be ones we've all heard of. Anybody who listens to this podcast or listen will recognize others will not. You're also seeing something a couple of really cool models that I'm just really excited about. We'll obviously check in and how they go over time. But the European Education Alliance, which is a group of each individual, European countries, and tech alliances all put together it's a very EU kind of thing to do. combined with supercharger ventures have been putting together a an ed tech female fellowship. I think they're in their second cohort, but they're really working to accelerate female leadership and Ed Tech, which is something that is, you know, been woefully under underrepresented for too long and education. You know, we've always talked about how there's so you know, the percentage of educators who are female is incredibly high, the percentage of edtech founders has been historically way too low. So the tech female fellowship is really cool to see Restlet, which is a coding and Ed Tech coding platform, they might not even call themselves ad tech, but I think they are ad tech coding platform just launched an accelerator of their own replimat ventures where they're accelerating 13 companies in that in the coding space, and in the online education space. So we're starting to see just as you're starting to see consolidation at the top, and all of these big companies acquiring acquiring the middle tier companies and sort of putting together these stacks like by Jews, and Microsoft and Google, to some extent, you're also seeing some of the players down in the in the in the dirt, sort of finding really, really smart people all over the world, who are looking to often come out of the classroom, or come out of business school, and start the whole next generation of Ed Tech, I just think there's more enthusiasm among young people than I've seen in 10 years for Ed Tech. And I think just this crazy unsettled moment is actually creating a lot of creativity, and a lot of momentum for the space.
Ben Kornell 21:30
Well, in this is where, you know, the outcomes of the financial slowdown right now are very different depending on your time horizon. If you're early stage or series, A investor, it's actually a great time to invest and to grow companies, because you're getting a good valuation, as an investor. And you're also looking at a market maturity date of like, six to seven years from now. And so at that point, who knows what the market is going to look like, but you know, you estimate that things are cyclical, and that it will be back to somewhere in a stronger place. I also think that, in general, back to your original point from Michael Jason from class, we've, we've crossed the bridge, we're not going back to only 100% in person education across K 12. Higher Ed and workforce, like especially higher ed and workforce, there is no going back to in person in fact, you have to justify now you're in person overhead and expense. Now the with any technology. The question is how do you move from substitution where it's literally just taking what you did in person and putting it online to actually transformation or reimagining? You know, the Samer model is the common one that people use. Definitely, you know, talking to a lot of CEOs here. You know, when I talk to educators, there's a sense of burnout and politics and challenge. But when you talk to the CEOs, there's a sense of, on the longer term, I've never felt more bullish about our ability to impact people. And part of that is your total addressable market is way larger now, given that people are willing to dial in from anywhere. And that could be everything from I can now provide professional development at a fraction of the cost because I can deliver that all virtually so no plane ride or hotel. Or it could be the learning experience that I launched, I can have 30,000 users rather than 300 users because the lecturer course at the university can now be open to all or it can be on your sales model. I don't have to fly reps across the world. I can have somebody who really understands the product, get online and sell and people are buying and selling. So all in all that like positive energy, I think is is in here for the three to five years. Now on the on the downside, the layoffs have continued so that's our headline number four, we saw several startups laying off the big one is masterclass, laying off 20% of its staff. masterclasses you may have heard was the darling of venture capital, just four or five years ago, the idea of bringing the greatest minds in the world creating high quality, super well produced classes, and your mom can learn cooking from a master chef for acting from Robert De Niro. And you know this layoff of about 120 people really is taking some of the shine or shimmer off of masterclass. Of course, the CEOs message is that the change was made to adapt to the worsening macro environment and get to self sustainability faster. But there are real questions about these high burn models where content creation is very costly. And then monetization is spread out through scale, the alternative. You know, you're also seeing a lot of creative economy companies, laying people off too, which is generally viewed as the alternative content creation model, where you have a community of content providers creating your supply of content. So there's no real magic wand here. No secret sauce. How much of this do you think is masterclass? Just getting caught up in the macro trend versus a conclusion about masterclasses model that might be relevant to Ed Tech?
Alexander Sarlin 25:32
I think that masterclass benefited from swimming a pretty directly against the grain of most edtech companies. It was always b2c. It's a subscription model. It's modeled much more after Netflix and Hulu than on power school or work Class Dojo or anything like that. And I think that was really fantastic for them for quite a while they they weren't limited to an education audience at all their classes are not really framed even as as regular education. They have Stefan curry they have Spike Lee, they have Neil Gaiman and James Patterson. I think that after the pandemic, and as people are getting back to regular life, a lot of streaming services have been in trouble, including Netflix, and I think masterclass is caught up in that macro environment. I mean, it's arguable that if masterclass is even in a tech company at all and I love masterclass, I have finished probably seven masterclass classes. I'm not I am not saying that as a as a negative thing. But masterclass in a lot of ways is a is a consumer entertainment company. And I think consumer entertainment companies have got have really suffered. So I don't think in terms of the lessons that it take for Ed Tech. I think maybe the lesson could be that it felt until very recently, like betas direct DTC direct to consumer and business consumer models. Were a safer bet. But maybe people will look at masterclass, which is about as safe a bet as you can think of when you have that level of celebrity and say, Oh, well, actually now the school budgets are getting bigger, they're willing to spend a lot more money on on different things. They have all this relief funds, and it can be you know, contracts. I know that that model might be going away to your point earlier, Ben, but maybe there's actually some power in the B to B to S models instead of the b2c that would be the potential takeaway masterclass. But, realistically, I
Ben Kornell 27:26
think it's just that they're caught in the, in the sort of downturn of entertainment. Well, and the ups and downs of b2c models are harder to navigate because of higher churn in any direct customer model. Yeah. You know, I've talked to a number of people in the last few weeks, and made the point that actually education b2b is quite recession proof. If you look at the last 30 years of total spin in education, whether it's K 12 or higher ed, the spin has never gone down, even in the housing crash, and oh nine, the spend stayed roughly flat. And especially now that you've got educator shortages at all levels. Yep. You know, that's normally 80% of the spend. And so if you've got these vacancies, that actually means disposable income that you could be spending to close the gaps with those vacancies. So, obviously, you know, our view is we'd like to have teachers well paid and all of those positions filled. But if those positions are open, that's actually a really reliable revenue opportunity. And it's, in some ways b2b education, healthcare, and like liquor and alcohol. Those are counter cyclical bets because they survive every recession.
Alexander Sarlin 28:43
Yeah, unlike entertainment options that you know, like masterclass, where spending x dollars per year on on this type of class makes sense when you are stuck in your house. But when you're back to work, even if it's virtual work, maybe it becomes less of an appeal. And they have I'm sure they're having lots of subscriber churn.
Ben Kornell 29:03
Well, speaking of people who are on the up and up, let's go with funding and m&a highlights. What do you have this week on the funding front?
Alexander Sarlin 29:12
Yeah, so the biggest funding round that we came across this week was leap, raising $75 million. That's pretty serious leap has multiple different platforms, providing test prep, university selection services, financing services, to students all over the world. It is a India based company, but they've been working with hundreds of 1000s of students all over the world to help people get into colleges around the world so $75 million. That's a pretty big boost for for the Indian edtech space.
Ben Kornell 29:44
Yeah, I was not so following job get and fountain and I know you've been really deep in that space. Alex Job get got 52 million and fountain last week raised 100 million. What's your take on that space?
Alexander Sarlin 29:58
So the These are both companies that are around about trying to help blue collar workers, which is a space. You know, when you mentioned Ben, the changes to the workforce environment. One of the things that's been really interesting in the change from in person to online is that in person training and in the corporate space was very much targeted towards leaders, you'd have managers and C suites, getting all of these amazing retreats to learn and all these things. And as they move to, to more online, it actually opens up that budget and changes it because it's not that much more expensive to give online training to many more people instead of 10s of 1000s per person for leadership development. So we're seeing companies now that are really focusing on managing blue collar workforces, or training blue collar workforces. And that's what job get and fountain are both about job get as 12 million blue collar workers signed up to use their platform, which is really exciting. It's a sort of social media. It's a social media platform for blue collar workers that involve that also includes job postings, but there's, I think, an education component to it as well. And then you have fountain, which is about large employers bringing their blue collar workforce online as well. So I think you're seeing this revolution where I remember seeing an really interesting stat once about the among college graduates, LinkedIn was the number one social media platform, but among non college graduates, I think it was Instagram or Facebook. And I think your people are recognizing that gap and saying, We're gonna make really good social media, job search and education platforms for blue collar workers. I think it's a great, I think it's a great move. I also think
Ben Kornell 31:37
it's fascinating that fountain is coming from the employer side, around upskilling, acquiring and training, whereas job get is coming from the employee side and empowering the employee to build their skills and find jobs and in some ways, you need both sides of that ecosystem to work. on the smaller side, we had Wilco raising $7 million. And Wilco provides game like workplace simulations, such as being notified via the workplace messaging app about a mysterious issue with the company's application. And basically, it's a skill based learning platform where people or employees have to react to scenarios. Now, there's a degree to which their their growth at Wilco is connected to hacker rank, which rates about 16 million in fundraising back in March. Hacker rank is simulation software mainly focused at developers. And so this model of you know, simulations reminds me of business schools, in use like a case study method. And so as we see both on the tech side with hacker rank or generalist side with Wilco, people are leaning into more progressive models. Also, we had Neil which facilitates membership community that up skills and deploys people on paid consulting projects, they raised $5 million. And you know, consulting projects are another form of experiential learning. And basically, they bring members together and they have a web three driven ownerships structure, kind of like a management consultancy. But the idea is that the projects are both an opportunity to earn revenue for the company, but also a chance for people to upskill
Alexander Sarlin 33:22
we saw cinematic health education raise $4 million for video training content, specifically for certified nursing assistants and health professionals. That's a really exciting space and with a huge amount of job growth. We talked recently to to Troy Williams of achieve partners where they acquired Bo clips, which is a really interesting company that also does that kind of video content and saves everybody money by doing really high quality video content that can be used in multiple arenas, just on the Wilco space. Eat it, longtime listeners of the podcast will recognize that we are at least I am always looking for companies that are going to do more authentic simulations. It feels so like such a gap. I'm really excited to to see their workforce simulations in action. That's really, really great. And then lastly, our friend of the podcast obey Bukola raise $2 million for Kibo school. Anybody who's listened to keep a school you listened for a while recognize the Kibo School provides Computer Science Degrees very low cost about $6,000 to students in Africa, specifically Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana and they won the GSV Cup this year so good for obey. Obey is an amazing entrepreneur and I'm really excited to see that they're getting some money to expand in their target cities and even do some in person meetups.
Ben Kornell 34:43
Well on the m&a front we see a big companies trying to get bigger go guardian and degreed made our headlines on the go Guardian inside they acquired tutor me where they're adding essentially tutor me as their one on one online tutoring platform. It's really interesting because NGO Guardian started as really a safety platform. And the fact that they're trying to become now the quote unquote, ultimate learning platform is a really interesting shift. It also makes me wonder about the timing of the deal and was tutor me, you know, suffering post pandemic because during the pandemic, they had over 1.5 million students with free access to one on one guidance 24/7 They had incredible growth. And this kind of live one to one, you know, always made me wonder, how are they able to sustain that from the degreed side, they actually reacquired their former CEO and founder David Blake. So David Blake left the degree at I think he was still chairman of the board. But in 2018, he started learn in as well as this online book club. And he essentially was brought back on to the leadership team at degreed. It's hard to know whether this was like an aqua hire or true acquisition. But ultimately, he's now at the helm again of degreed and, you know, for those who have, who are Oh, geez, in the space degreed was one of the first ad tech companies to really make it big. And bringing David Blake back is a return to their kind of successful management formula. What were your
Alexander Sarlin 36:24
Oh, yeah, so part of the degreed story as well as the David Blake's Brother Taylor Blake, who was also one of the sort of lead folks at degreed for a long time was, at some point, also the sort of CEO and founder of learning. So this is a really an Ad Tech family that are very, very, very smart. Yeah, I, I can't tell exactly whether, you know, whether it's an aqua hire or how it sort of works, but I do think that degree and learn and have some similar have a lot of similar DNA, both corporate DNA, and family DNA, in that, you know, learning is really about sort of paid almost learning sabbaticals. Lad. Least that's, that's my understanding of it. So trying to give their their thesis is that, you know, employees should be learning on an ongoing basis throughout their life. We all sort of agree with that, in theory, but they often don't have actually time to do it. So learning sort of creates a model where companies can actually give their employees time to go upskill in particular areas instead of having to do you know, weekends and nights for years, which I think is a fantastic idea. And I think it goes really well with the grid's model of bringing together content from anywhere so that people are lifelong learners, even as their employees. And as for the Guardian acquisition, I mean, talk about being you know, in the right, in the right space right now, at ed tech. I mean, as we just talked about, the spending on safety in schools has skyrocketed over the last few years. So a company like the Guardian suddenly finds itself with lots of contracts all over the place. There's nearly 25,000,000k 12 students are signed up for go guardian in one way or another, that's about half of the students in America, and then they move into the tutoring space, right, as the pandemic or you know, right, sort of at the end, when the pandemic has just absolutely exploded the tutoring space. It's a very smart strategy. I mean, because how could a school leader right now not invest in a company that's going to combine school safety and on demand tutoring that's designed for different learning styles? It's a bet that's like the two sides of the coin in school in K 12 schools right now. So I'm bullish on unco guardians acquisition. It's very smart.
Ben Kornell 38:41
And this is a this is them firing a signal saying we're going to be one of the roll up companies. Yeah, it does make you wonder, you know, this go Guardian get gobbled up by a private equity firm to continue funding this rollout? Are they the next one to go public because, you know, from a public market standpoint, GoGuardian has to be high on the profitability side, given the security services that they provide in that part of the business. And so this move into tutoring should be a warning shot to people like paper, who are not diversified in their revenue, that not only is there consolidation in your vertical, but you may have to consolidate across verticals so that as you're selling into schools, districts or higher ed, you you are essentially bringing a bundle of products that can help you maximize that relationship.
Alexander Sarlin 39:34
So one more late breaking headline, as of a couple of days ago by juice is said to have offered over a billion dollars to acquire to you. This is according to a Bloomberg report reported on as well by Phil Hill education journalist extraordinaire. This would basically be a global push for by Jews to be able to enter the US they are saying the offer is about 15 dollars share to use board. This is all in rumor state, the bid is not yet public. But this would be a 60% premium on the current stock price of two, you, this is definitely a big deal in the tech space, it's going to be up to two years board whether to accept this or not. But if they do, and if 5g is acquires to you, not only are they're acquiring to you, they're acquiring edX, trilogy, education, get smarter, and all of to US university partnerships, it is a very big deal for the US ed tech space and the International tech space and potentially for by Jews, we will follow this story as it develops, definitely check it out. If this is of interest to you, make sure that you are following this news.
Ben Kornell 40:42
So we're going to be off here for the month of July, our predictions, so we were going to our game. Alex, our game this week is three predictions you have for the month of July. And that tech space and feel free to be generous with that. And then we'll come back in August and see which of those came true. And and so I'll get started first like one, I would say this trend of consolidation, I expect other deals to be made maybe may or may not be announced. July is a common time for the industry to go quiet. And then we'll see a bevy of announcements in August, right as we get to back to school. Number two, I think the lack of employees. So there is a teacher crisis for sure. That's not new news. But there's also an incredible lack of all the other roles, from reading specialists, to secretaries at schools to office managers. In higher ed, I'm hearing about a lot of open positions. And generally when the economy tightens up those positions, you know, fill up because people have have, you know, needs for employment, but they brand of education of around how low the pay is and how hard it is to work, I think we're going to reach crisis levels, where schools are going to be in jeopardy of being able to open successfully in August. And then the third thing that I think we're going to hear about is cybersecurity, the last year and the year before all of the big hacks happened in August, and student data, lots of issues with the student information systems. And the most vulnerable time is when you are in the summer, and your IT team is working their butts off, they're switching you over to New Tech stacks and things like that. So, you know, if I'm listening to this podcast, and I run a school district, I'm really trying to think about, Okay, how are we going to deploy all of our technology changes so that when August one of our educators come back, it's all set up, that also creates vulnerabilities in the system and creates error. So I am going to be watching out for news about that type of thing. What about you? What are some trends that you expect to accelerate?
Alexander Sarlin 42:59
Yeah, those are great predictions. So my first trend that I'd expect to accelerate it's a little bit it's it overlaps with your take about teacher shortages. But I think that as the summer rolls on, and as the entire education ecosystem starts to realize the you much of what you just said that when that coming back in September, there is going to be way too few teachers way too few special ed teachers, way too few guidance counselors, you know, there's really going to be a little bit of a haunted house feeling in some of the some districts, I think some very intrepid edtech companies, especially some of the ones that already specialize in homeschooling, or micro pods, or companies like outlier chi pod that we've talked to, are going to start offering basically full alternative to schools and pretty aggressively, pretty aggressively advertising for them. I mean, the combination of this Uvalde shooting, and, and the teacher shortage and the pandemic and still Omicron variants bouncing around, I think there's a really interesting opportunity for some of these tech companies to go kind of whole hog and basically try to either convince or meet the needs of all of the parents who are really on the fence about whether they're going to send their kids back to school in September. And it's going to be a really interesting sort of arms race, I think you're going to see a lot of companies, some of which are the bigger players, some of which may be some of the the smaller ones like we talked to Prisma health, health. We've talked a Prisma recently about, you know their model, I think there's going to be a little bit of a sort of Wild West feeling where people instead of going back to traditional school, start start shopping around for different versions of school. That's going to be really interesting to see. I have seen more and more signals about metta really trying to lean into their education plans. There's some really interesting ads that they're running. There's some interesting plans they've been sort of hinting at. And I think what we're also going to see this year is Meta make a very full throated call to basically try to be the metaverse of the free education. And as we've talked about on this show, there are other viable candidates, including unity, including Microsoft, including a number of other VR companies. But I think you're going to start hearing a lot more in a lot more frequent cadence about how, you know, the future is met the future education is of Metaverse, and that is a meta, a meta property. I think they're going to really lean into education and Metaverse that may include some acquisitions, it will definitely include lots of partnerships. And that'll be interesting to watch. And the third is, you know, we've seen these incredibly mixed signals from Indian ad tech over the last few months, I think, you know, every week, there's either a scandal on one side or a expansion or another are these big, you know, $75 million rounds coming to different companies or a new unicorn, I would guess that when we come back in August, I actually think Indian edtech is going to be on a little bit of a rebound, I think it's going to be on the up and up for some of the same reasons, I think you're going to see that in India, there's also a, even though India has snapped back much faster to in person schooling than than the US has, I think there's still going to be a little bit of a shake up. And I think, you know, buy juice has been the standard bearer for India for a long time Indian tech, but we're seeing companies like Yun Academy, and leap and others sort of become much more visible. And I think that what's going to happen is those companies will realize that they maybe don't want by Jews to be the first name and Indian Ed Tech. And you're going to start seeing some more concerted efforts to sort of raise the profile of the sector in a sort of post by Jews, Indian ad tech world, and we'll see what that looks like. But that's my prediction for the end of the summer.
Ben Kornell 46:49
Well, if it happens in July in edtech, you'll hear about it here in August on the weekend Ed Tech. Thank you all for listening this year. Thank you. For everyone who's been a part of making season one so successful, special shout out to all the interviewees that we've had on the podcast. And shout out to our families who've supported us on this passion project. We're excited to take some time off this summer. Enjoy Alex as long form interviews, and we'll see you again in August, signing out BK out.
Alexander Sarlin 47:48
For our guests today, we have a really exciting guest, it's Quinn Taber, who's the CEO of immerse, immerse is a virtual reality based immersive language learning program that is being launched in the meta store. It's the first direct to consumer education app in VR and is quickly becoming the number one VR education app in the meta store. Welcome, Quinn. Yeah.
Quinn Taber 48:14
Thanks, Alex. It's a treat to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Alexander Sarlin 48:16
I'm really excited to have you here. You know. So tell us a little bit about the story of immerse How did you get to this moment? How long have you been in the VR space? How did it get to this really exciting launch? Yeah,
Quinn Taber 48:28
thanks, Alex. It's it's probably like three key seasons, the first season that lays a little bit of the groundwork. I actually grew up overseas with parents or in philanthropy, and then worked for a large impact investor and philanthropist, right out of college for three years traveled to like 50 countries lived in refugee camps and slums, and ultimately, got super fired up on the power of language learning for opening doors for the least of these people that are looking for visa is or study abroad, or just employment and the core of it really, in my experience, and all of the learning science pointing to immersion. If you want to learn a language, you have to practice with real people in real places have real conversations. And right as I was experiencing that VR was coming onto the scene. So 2016 2017, I started business modeling, and then pitching and raise the first little round of funding. And thankfully, one of my best pals was a stud VR engineer at the time. So we built the first prototype in early 2018. At that time, there were less than a million VR users globally, like we were earlier. So it kind of almost forced our hand to license our tech and metas headsets, to some of the big education companies around the world. So we have deals with the largest education company in Japan, the largest in the Middle East, one of the largest in Europe, large one in Latin, and we're able to really battle test our technology and in the process build the first ever proprietary Metaverse, curriculum, pedagogy, a lot of these like critical building blocks. And then fast forward a couple of years we've been steadily building when a key headline hits Facebook rebrands to meta, and they are going all in on the meta first. It like as that happens, we're able to raise more funding, but then Mehta calls us up and says, Quinn up until now VR has been used as like a supplemental tool. In the classroom. It's a little add on, you can maybe watch some immersive recordings or do an immersive chemistry experiment in the safety of VR. But in the metaverse, we think VR is going to disrupt all of education, not just be this little add on, and your app is the best positioned to go and watch the first ever direct to consumer classes and experiences and programs. So that's exactly what we did. Today, as I'm talking to you. It's June 30, exactly seven days ago, we launched the first ever direct to consumer learning experiences where you can sign up on your headset for classes for immersive experiences, activities, you can hang out in our VR learning lounges with other learners to practice your Spanish and then in about three months, we're going from just Spanish, we're gonna launch English and then in the spring, we're launching French in Japanese. So that's, that's kind of the unique moment that we're in. We're really proud to be pioneering and a lot of ways to say, hey, let's not just kind of think about how we can use VR is this small add on to the classroom experience? Let's redefine learning entirely. Using all of the affordances all of the capabilities of virtual reality
Alexander Sarlin 51:47
is fantastic. We talk about skating where the puck is going you're you're doing VR immersive language learning for years before the meta headsets, you know exist in the way they do before Facebook was meta. And suddenly you have this incredible distribution platform, which is the meta store. We've talked on the on the podcast a lot about how the metaverse is becoming education is one of the sort of beachheads of the metaverse, which we've been really excited about, you know, you can technically do anything in a Metaverse, it's just a virtual world. But ation is something that people really, really see the vision of. Tell us a little bit about how you see education as sort of the bleeding edge of what can happen in Metaverse, technology generally. Yeah,
Quinn Taber 52:31
man, it's such a good question, Alex, you're you're entirely correct. Oh, I hope kind of without sharing some of the confidential conversations. I've had chats with senior leadership at meta, and they've said exactly that, VR. Right now, it's not for gaming, but the next most natural and really immersive field is going to be education, you're going to see a lot in STEM biology, chemistry, you're gonna see a lot in engineering. There's a couple of buddies of mine that run some of the major like enterprise upskilling, companies like Stryver and Tailspin that help companies train their employees on soft skills and HR practices. I think the the thing that I spend so much of my time thinking about talking about building a team that's focused on is asking the question, okay, let's not just take our 2d expectations for what a chemistry class looks like. But let's let's really, almost go back to the first principles and reimagine what these different academic fields will look like in 1020 years, it casts that big vision. And then let's build it. Let's build a roadmap to get there. So for us, it wasn't a hey, let's let's just record some Spanish speakers in VR and let people watch it. The core building blocks of the metaverse are that it's social. It's persistent that it's real world that it's gamified. So let's let's create the first Metaverse for learning where people can enter into our virtual world. They can go on these learning missions, they can meet with teachers live, they can do homework together, let's reimagine it from the ground up and build an entire ecosystem and world around learning which for us, we're once again we're proud that we're that we're the first ones to really break ground in that way.
Alexander Sarlin 54:23
Super exciting. I remember working with Barbara Oakley, who is one of the big Coursera professors and she would always say, to teach chemistry, you should shrink yourself down to the size of an atom and go and see how things are bonded. And she's like, that's and you know, that's finally available to do in the metaverse. So I want this to feel very real for our listeners. Because I mean, yeah, please go out, immerse get in there, but give us the sort of day in the life so you sign up for immerse on the meta store. What is your experience, tell us what it actually looks like to be immersed in a
Quinn Taber 54:55
cool, so probably the most surprising thing for a lot of users is that every thing that we do is live, we actually don't have any pre recordings, when you get into it both vote from the business side, that average learner has taken a lot of Duolingo and not felt a ton of tangible success. And they know that for this next step, they want to meet with real people. So that's, that's the first thing is you're gonna enter, you're gonna go through this really fun immersive 3d tutorial learning the controls and some of our, like, pedagogical frameworks, but then the first thing you're gonna do is quite literally, within VR, or we've got a little companion, like web and mobile platform where you can schedule your orientation with a real teacher, anytime the day say like, Okay, I'm free in 20 minutes, I want to go through my rotation, and then maybe, if that's 3pm, at 5pm, I want to come back and I'll take my first language lesson, where it's really focused on maybe that grammar concept for the day and then using it in relocations. The probably the most fun ones, though, are what we call our like immersive experiences, where you aren't just drilling grammar or vocab, you're practicing real life tasks, but completely immersed. So if you're learning Spanish, we're not gonna say, Oh, we're gonna teach you this in English, we're gonna take you to the airport and have you practice checking in through the entire security working to get your ticket printed, all the way to getting onto the plane, all in Spanish with a small group of other learners, and a certified Spanish teacher that's quite literally in that virtual context with you. And then within the platform, you can book that those types of lessons, like I said, 24/7, so you'll, whether it's any of those different types of activities that are available around the clock to you.
Alexander Sarlin 56:38
So it's immersive, in that the learners are in groups with other people who are learning the language as well as a native speaker. And they're actually performing real tasks or attending virtual lessons they can be, yeah, as you see an airport or a library or a grocery store, or a post office, or all the other things we learn when we learned a new language, you can actually be there
Quinn Taber 57:00
doing it. Precisely. Yep. That's That's exactly it. You've got it, Alex,
Alexander Sarlin 57:03
and how are your users reacting to that? That sounds incredibly fun.
Quinn Taber 57:08
Yeah, well, so I'll honestly, I'll be a little transparent. And say, if you were to look at our reviews right now, of the last 50 reviews, we've gotten 10 of them have been surprised and confused, because they're like, Wait, this isn't education app, I thought that like we did gaming in VR are what you can meet with a real teacher, what the heck, like we've never even imagined this. But then the other 40 reviews are the students that have actually signed up, jumped in with a teacher done some of these tasks. And the reviews, like from the cohort that's gone through our app are almost all five stars. It's focusing, oh my gosh, I'm finally using my language in a real context, the capacity of using an avatar instead of like, me being in Spain, I can feel like I'm in Spain, but I actually my anxiety drops precipitously, because it's in this fun gamified 3d world. So across the board, we're really excited. Our reviews have been so positive. I think the the uphill battle is going to be just conveying the concept to the world, with our with our ads and our thought leadership with like, yeah, this, we really believe this is the future of education, it might take two 510 years, but we're gonna keep skating to where the puck is going. And we hope that everyone comes along for the ride.
Alexander Sarlin 58:25
So a little bit of a curveball question, but when do you think you're gonna see your first marriage of people who met in a
Quinn Taber 58:35
row, it's, that's a little too spot on the number of students that have said. So this whole language learning thing is awesome. I've made some really cool friends and there's this one girl that's really really fun to be around. Like, you might have a separate business model on your hands. So we keep saying No, we aren't getting into virtual dating. Well let someone else figure that market out. But yes, we've got some funny anecdotal stories.
Alexander Sarlin 59:06
I can imagine I can imagine I would every virtual world has had has been marriages inside World of Warcraft. I know in my Coursera days, we were always talking about Hey, I wonder if we should do a dating app on the side all these people are so excited to meet up the only other person that is interested in Egyptology that they've you know, I think you're you might be onto something there. We'll see. We'll see how that goes. So Quinn, one more question. So you're going to new languages, you're going to new languages throughout next year, when you go to English as a language that is the number one most learned subject on the planet is English as a as a language. Where do you see the international expansion here? Is this are you going global on day one? Are there particular markets that you're looking for for English learning? How are you thinking about that English Learning? Audience?
Quinn Taber 59:53
Really smart? Yeah, man. Such a good question. And honestly, that's one of the key things that we're spending a lot of time doing market research on. The key markets that we've had success in thus far are in Asia, Pacific, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, we've we've had a couple of deals in China. But from a geopolitical kind of lens, it's been a little bit challenging. So right now, and don't hold me to this, the first few markets that we're going to really focus on and pour a lot of marketing into are going to be Japan and Korea, mind you, through a couple of partnerships that are still can't speak to quite yet. But there's a couple new headsets that are coming out this year that we're going to be on that are looking to compete with metta. And we're looking to be their number one education platform. Each of those headsets have different markets that they're focused on. So just as an example, one of them is really focused on Germany. So I think that'll be probably the third market that we optimize for. But once we're once we're on the platform, and we're available, if you're in Chile, if you're in Kenya, you name it, and you've got a decent enough bandwidth to have a zoom call, you can jump into VR and still sign up for a class. So we won't restrict access. It's more where we're, we're really like focusing our go to market strategy on
Alexander Sarlin 1:01:07
and as somebody who has been all around the world and you said 2550 countries, you must have such a global perspective on where people are learning and how I have one more, I promise. That's the last question, but I have one more. So if you're if your English language learning is starting in Japan, and then your Japanese learning is coming just a couple months after do you envision a world where you have native Japanese speakers learning English and native English speakers learning Japanese interacting in the metaverse?
Quinn Taber 1:01:38
Oh, that's such a fun one. Short answer. Yes. One day. Absolutely. Like that's just that's going to be such cool, low hanging fruit. Right? functionality. Yes, exactly. The functionality, I think is still probably a year, a year and a half out. There's a couple other projects that we're really excited by. And if it's alright, I'll do like the 32nd pitch for your investors. And even the folks at Mehta, and these two or three other hardware companies that we're partnering with. They're really intrigued by not just us being a virtual world when it comes to others, the 3d scenes and the 3d characters, but unlocking the full extent of the metaverse with things like virtual currency and virtual real estate and virtual certifications, all leveraging the blockchain. So that's, that's really the next big initiative that we're doing a lot of planning on my call before this call, and after this call on that subject. So in the next six to nine months, you're gonna see a couple headlines, that hopefully we make a big splash around. Okay, versus the first true educational Metaverse as defined by real world, real people collaborating, but then even more so building virtual economies, where we can better both reward our teachers for their hard work, but also reward our students for their learning, not just the satisfaction, but with Blockchain based certificates that they can take anywhere with them or even, there's this really fun concept around play to earn right now in the metaverse, where, by users engaging in the platform, they actually get a little bit of ownership over it through a virtual currency. That's one that just my imagination goes wild around. So that'll that'll be the next thing that I think you'll hear from us that I'm really excited to share. So we'll have to have you back on a couple months, Alex?
Alexander Sarlin 1:03:34
Absolutely. Yeah, well definitely reconnect them and then learn to earn models are starting to happen as well. So it sounds like you're, you're again ahead of the curve on that. So that's super exciting to hear. Quinn Tabor, thank you so much. I know this is a big week for you. You have 1000s and 1000s of signups for Merce thanks for being here. We can add tech from Ed Tech insiders. Appreciate it.
Quinn Taber 1:03:54
Thanks, Alex is total treat.
Alexander Sarlin 1:03:56
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