Edtech Insiders

At Edtech Insiders, we interview founders, investors, operators, educators, and thought leaders about the future of education technology. You’ll hear from leaders across the education technology industry and learn about all of the important edtech trends happening globally.

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Edtech Insiders

This Week in Edtech with Ben Kornell, 10/12

October 12, 2022 • Alex Sarlin • Season 3 • Episode 21

0:00 | 41:35

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In this episode, guest host Matt Tower of Edtech Thoughts and Alex discuss:

1. The Possible "Second Boom" of the Edtech Investing Market as per Brighteye

2) Addictive Game Mechanics Used For Good

3) Dark Web Hackers Attacking LAUSD

Hackers Release Data Stolen From Los Angeles Schools in Ransomware Attack - The Wall Street Journal (subscription model) - 2 October 2022
Cyber Gang Posts Los Angeles Students’ Sensitive Data on Dark Web After Hack - The 74 - 3 October 2022
Los Angeles schools’ data leaked after ransomware attack - K-12 Dive - 3 October 2022

4) The Continued Rise (and funding) of Social Emotional Learning

5) Big Tech and Edtech Working Together

Plus Fundraising:

0:08

Welcome to Season Two of edtech insiders, when we talk to the most interesting thought leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, educators, and investors, driving the future of education technology. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an edtech veteran with over 10 years of experience at top ed tech companies. Welcome to the Week in ed tech for the week of October 7 2022. We haven't been here for a couple of weeks. So there's a few things to catch up on. We have a special guest today. Then Cornell is traveling, doing all sorts of edtech deal making. So we have the one and only Matt tower of edtech. Thoughts. Welcome, Matt. Hey, Alex, thanks for having me excited to dig in today. It's always great to talk to you, you keep such a great eye on this space. So let's just jump in our first topic today is about there's a bright eye report that just came out this week about the EdTech landscape. And the sort of headline of the TechCrunch article covering it is Ed Tech's honeymoon might be over but expect a second boom, that's the article that the head of Research at bright eye is going with, they're saying, hey, investments are definitely down. Rounds are down. Public companies have lost enormous valuation. There's been a lot of problems, but there's a silver lining, there's hope. It's moving the future. So Matt, what are your big takeaways from this report? Which of course we'll link to in the show notes. Yeah. So there's always a lot to kind of unpack with these reports. And I'm glad that somebody does them. I'm also glad that it's not me that has to put the data together. So no, I, you know, I'm grateful that they're out there taking stock of the market. It's a little bit like, you know, the narrative is not the most interesting to me, because it fits in with everything we know about the market today, right? We had a ton of funding last year, and the broader market is down. Most of the late stage at tech companies that dominated the the kind of volume of dollars into the venture capital market last year, are you know, they raised money, they raised hundreds of millions of dollars last year. So yeah, in a down market, they're probably not going to raise another set of hundreds of millions of dollars, unless their name is by dues. But to me, the metric that is more interesting that usually these reports kind of struggle with because it involves tracking that super early stage data is volume of investments. So not total dollars raised, which is often skewed by the late stage companies and whether or not they happen to be fundraising in a given 12 month cycle. But is there a high velocity or volume of companies raising at the early stage? And you know, that's that's kind of the thrust of what the article says, like, but there's hope, you know, so it's yeah, there are still early stage startups out there raising, from what I understand it's, you know, it's a tough market to raise no matter what stage you're at. But as long as there's activity at the early stage, I don't honestly worry a ton about the overall volume of dollars going into the space. Yeah, those are good insights. And they definitely reflect some of the trends that, you know, that we've been talking about on the show, and that you've been you've been reporting on as well. And they've been to IPOs and or specs for edtech this year, compared to 15. Last year, which is a, you know, enormous drop off. But on the flip side, there are, you know, a good number of mergers and acquisitions, they say their 139 m&a is of edtech startups this year, so far. And, you know, that's on pace to be almost as many at least as we had in 2021. Lots of consolidation. I agree. There's maybe not too much. That's super new here. But I do, it's interesting for me to see it all in one place. I mean, they make the pitch that that education is a enormous market that's under you know, under invested in in the tech world, they focus because bright eye is European, they do focus on some of the European, you know, the new unicorns, like the multiverses and the papers, and, you know, go student, and know that, you know, Europe is growing. It's still way behind us and India, but it's growing. I mean, I think there's some interesting takeaways from the report, but I know what you mean, it is a lot of charts. It's a lot of numbers. And I think at the end of the day, it's the message is sort of similar to what we've been saying and sort of what what people already feel and believe about the sector, which is that it's gone way down. It's consolidating, people are trying to think about what's next. And you know, but it's not dead in the water. It's probably I personally think it's sort of overcorrected to being undervalued. I mean, I think the valuations were cut so in such a big way And the rounds have been cut in such a big way that it may be is overcorrecting. And I think they sort of imply that a little bit in this report. They don't say it directly. Well, and I'm glad you brought up Europe specifically because I think I'm gonna screw up the names. But I believe there are three new 100 million dollar funds in Europe, which is like, incredible for the ecosystem. So like, there are certainly bright spots. And I think it is kind of what do you do with the charts and data? Right, again, like volume? Yeah, kind of not super interesting. But volume of dollars, volume of funds, volume of startups. Those are interesting, because it's like, oh, okay, that's what setting us up for the future upgrade. And I think, you know, we have these, this handful of big companies, maybe 1520, that have either gone public or Specht or sort of really sort of dominate the landscape. And they're starting to look around at all of these early stage companies and pluck them up. But the activity in the precede and early stage companies is still really, you know, there's still a lot happening, it's it's certainly harder to raise money. But there are more people still involved than there were at least five years ago, I won't say there are more people than they were last year. But there's certainly way more people there are five years ago, especially in Europe. And I think that's also true in India. Still, it's a worthwhile report. But yeah, headlines are a little tricky. But maybe we'll try to reach out to response who's been on the podcast before, who is the head of Research at Bri who put together this report and get it straight from the horse's mouth and a future episode. So let's move on to our second topic is a really interesting one. So there were a number of, of articles from around the sort of media landscape this week about sort of the downsides and the the sort of negative aspects of technology, including how they relate to education, but also sometimes how ad tech can actually be a solution to some of the problems in tech. And, you know, one of the ones that really stood out to me was this great Times editorial from a mobile gaming developer who has made lots of incredibly popular mobile games. And basically, it's this sort of confessional that saying, I make mobile games, but I would not let my kids play these games, because I know exactly how addictive they are, I know exactly what we do to make them addictive. I know exactly what we do to you know, make it, you know, impossible to stop and to get people to pay more money and all those things. And so now I'm pivoting and I'm going to apply some of that thinking to educational gaming, which is like, you know, music to my ears. Do you see that editorial man? What do you think I did? I have many thoughts. I will start with I just recently in the past month finished rewatching madmen, the series and the parallels to Don Draper giving up smoking or giving up cigarettes or like, you know, almost too on the notes. So, you know, it's hard not to be like, you sold your video game company. And now you're like thinking about what's next. And, you know, you can pivot from video games to education, you know, it's a great narrative. But I think there is like a really interesting, underlying, I don't even know if it's an issue, but kind of debate going on here, which is, what is the, like, appropriate amount of screen time for children. And, you know, a lot of this is centered around social media, but it also has to do with with all the technologies we're bringing into the classroom, right? If you're just putting a kid in front of a tablet, eight hours a day like that learning, you know, I don't know. And, you know, I think where I would love to spend some time talking today is thinking through the ambient computing aspect of it all. And one of the companies we're going to talk about later teach effects that raise $10 million really is in this kind of ambient computing space, where it's, you know, they, the teacher in a classroom turns on their cell phone, and it records the lesson. And at the end of the day, you know, produces a feedback report for the teacher, not for the school. And that's a, again, a important stipulation that the CEO talks about, and tells you how they did. And you could imagine similar applications for students. So it's kind of the betwixt in between that is a little bit more interesting to me of, you know, I think, hopefully, we're not going to live in a world where it's eight hours a day in front of a screen, even if that's what our current working worlds often look like. But there's got to be some sort of middle ground and I don't know what that looks like right now. Well, I will say that I think that a lot of people in the ed tech and gaming space definitely feel like that future has to do with the metaverse or the Roblox world, or, you know, I think when you talk about the ambient data collection, or the idea that, you know, students would be doing something that generates all kinds of learning data, but it doesn't necessarily feel like they're just you know, drill and killing are on on a tablet or on an app. I'm not endorsing this approach as early but I think a lot of people are vying for Well, we think students are going to be in a Metaverse or in some kind of virtual world. And if while they're in the virtual world Whether that's a, you know, a university space or a gaming space, you know, everything that happens in there is tracked, that's different than the teacher effects approach, which is about, you know, both online classes, but mostly, you know, in person, classroom teaching, you know, classical teaching, and tries to find the data within that, which I think is really, really interesting. But, yeah, I think it's a little bit of a, you know, it's there's different kinds of dystopian futures for edtech. And I think one of the dystopian futures is the world in which students go to school and sit in front of devices and don't interact with each other and don't do any kind of projects and don't have any kind of, you know, relationship with their instructor. A different kind of dystopian future is one where people are logging in Allah Ready Player One, and in a virtual, you know, Metaverse type world, that is where their school takes place. Is there one of those that you particularly fear, Matt, it's so hard, right. And, you know, just talking about ambient computing is like, super big brother, he, so I don't know what I prefer, right. And then, gosh, it was probably a couple of years ago that the New York Times that like, all the rich people are taking their kids are just saying no screens whatsoever. So it's like, you've got the kind of inequality problem, you've got the kind of screen addiction problem, you've got all these problems, and very few solutions. Unfortunately, you know, I think that's why these types of op eds are actually important, where it's like, okay, you know, this dude really knows the industry. And he talks about the features that they would put in the games to make them specifically addicting. You know, I think like, net net, I'm happy that he's on the lookout, to make sure that, you know, his daughters and you know, other people's children don't fall into those traps, at least until they're adults, till their brains are fully functioning. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, maybe this is naively optimistic. But I think that I love how this article really isn't about education. It's about accepting nature of video games and mobile gaming. And only in the last like, paragraph, basically, he says, so now I'm going to try to do ad tech. And you can read that one of two ways, right? You can say, hey, I'm pretty skeptical of that baby. That's just, you know, lipstick, you know, it's a way for him to do his penitence after addicting, so many kids video games, or you could read it, as you know, this is a positive use of these incredibly powerful social forces, you know, taking what addict kids to tick tock to gaming. I mean, if we could get that into the education and ed tech world could be actually used for good, I hope that's not naive. What do you think I will tell anybody who will listen that I learned more about strategy and like Resource Management from playing Sid Meier's Civilization than any course I took. So like, I'm, I'm the first proponent of video games, it's just, you know, it's trying to figure out the appropriate use case. And then that's going to vary, you know, by age, by kid by, by all sorts of things. Yeah. And I think, you know, last point, just calling back to your your mention of teach effects. I mean, one thing that is also very interesting about Teach effects, the way they go, they get away from being big brother, and we talked to the CEO of teach effects last week, you know, on the show is by making sure that the data is one, totally anonymized and aggregated, especially when they're doing anything at a district level, and to really sort of controlled by the teacher. So the teachers get information about, you know, what was said in their classes, what words were said, who spoke the most, all of those things, but that data isn't sort of sent to some, you know, big brother admin who's watching from a centralized room with, with cameras in our sort of like our darkest fears. And I think that that's a really interesting approach. And I know that, you know, Ben has mentioned this as well, that may be a little bit of a beacon forward about how to do that kind of ambient computing, if you're going to collect all this data, don't make it about every single student and sort of make every single student's behavior visible to everyone or to an admin. Think about aggregations and anonymous relations. And how do you create a system where, yes, you have a million kids in Roblox, and you can tell who's learning what and who's doing what. But it's not about, you know, monitoring every individual kid, it's about finding those big massive trends, and being able to use that to optimize the system for good, hopefully. What did you think there was a you know, LA was hacked a few weeks back in a giant ransomware attack. And what happened this week is that the data stolen from that attack was leaked, which is so it's all this sensitive student data was leaked onto the dark web. It's a little bit of a jarring segue from our last piece, but I think it's related in that, you know, when you are collecting sensitive data, even if you're trying to keep it private, there's always the risk of something like this happened. How do you read this? AZ ransomware attack and the release of student data on the dark web. It's pretty crazy. Yeah. I mean, I just think that if the data had been on the blockchain and would have been fine, yeah. Interesting. Tell us more serious, how can you protect data? If it's not anything like new tests on the blockchain? Otherwise, it's not secure? No, I like, you know, I think that it's tricky, right. Because like, you know, any technologists will tell you that the more data they have access to the more personalized they can make the service that they're, you know, building, the more, the more they can do, right, more data, more stuff. But, you know, both early stage companies and publicly funded institutions are always kind of fighting for a small amount, a small bucket of resources, and, you know, security, gosh, there's, there's got to be a quote on this, I just can't remember it. But it's, it's like, it's the last thing you want to invest in until you like, desperately need it. And then you're willing to pay, you know, whatever it costs. So it's, it's kind of a tricky thing to wrestle with. So like, you know, frankly, I'm sure there's a school being hacked right now, like the second, and we may or may not learn about it. Who knows, like, for schools, it's either, you know, you, you lock down the data and say, you know, we're just not going to share data, or we're going to go back to learning under a tree or whatever, for you, you know, and this is where, sorry, this is a little bit of a tangent, but it's like, that's where big, big companies like Google, like Amazon, like Microsoft, like Facebook actually matter, because they can build with the resources to secure data, you know, in transit, and whenever and startups can call their data, even blackboards can call their data without the same level of risk, as you know, if you just give everything to an early stage startup. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. And I agree with you that these data breaches sort of bring up these really, I don't know, these tensions that are sort of inherent in ed tech, where, you know, many people who are super bullish on ad tech, many entrepreneurs, many investors feel like getting more data is always better, it's better for learning, it's better for companies, you know, moats, it's better for having options about what you're going to do to personalize that activity. There's this sort of hunger for data. And I think in some ways, that is a carryover from the social media world, or Google or some of the other, you know, big tech companies that sort of act like that. I mean, there are all these stories about how like, you know, Amazon and target and can know more about their customers than they do, because they, you know, aggregate all this data across so many sites. And it's sort of built into the Silicon Valley DNA to sort of be want more data period. And then, on the flip side, you have this idea of all this data can be super sensitive, it can be very personal, it can be very, and now, as we're moving into social emotional learning, which, you know, we'll talk about in a moment, you might have, you know, medical data, you might have data about students, you know, IEPs, and what conditions they suffer from, and their behavioral backgrounds, like, the idea of getting all the student data in the same place is terrific for whole child learning. It's also incredibly disinterred for you imagine, to keep her well that I don't want to be that cute. Enough. I thought of the quote, it's like, you know, the the seaso is the chief security officer or chief information security officers paid basically, so they can be fired as escaped a lot of money, you know, for as long as you don't get hacked, and there's not much you can do about whether or not you get hacked, and, you know, it's roulette. Totally. That's what we saw with a Twitter leak recently, it feels like very much that kind of story, you know, or at least you know, somebody who comes in and makes a fuss about what how it's not working. And that's not actually what people want to hear Claire, I don't really believe that to be the case. CIOs are, you know, great individuals. I know them like, great, but that's the, you know, unfortunate. Zeitgeist II joke. Yeah, no, I get it. I mean, LA is the biggest, you know, I think its biggest second biggest district in the country, one of the biggest in New York has made it but then we're gonna lay a second and the idea of packers going in finding this data releasing on the dark web, the idea that schools are like a legitimate target. And they really are and they have been for a few years for hackers is just should scare all of us. But I don't know, is it going to mean that it drives the data back into, you know, into snowflake or Google or like, I mean, does it mean that that big tech has to sort of step in and secure school data or Palantir? Or does it mean that data should have been who knows what the data lake world or the sort of data world is so tricky, and I think people are really struggling with it at all levels. I mean, companies get hacked all the time, too. And countries get hacked and journalistic outfits get hacked. So it's not like this is unique to schools but school All data getting hacked really feels scary. So you know, we talked briefly about social emotional learning. And just a couple of headlines came out about this week, we try to follow this sort of SEL beat because it's been really in the news and something people have talked about a lot. For the last few years, it's been a focus of a lot of investors, a lot of entrepreneurs, especially in the wake of COVID, where you have enormous depression, anxiety, you know, all sorts of mental health crises, and basically, k 12. And universities. So, you know, we saw an article about investors remaining bullish on SEO, learning and how it's still going. People are really interested in figuring this out. There's a mention a little otter, which is a company actually founded by somebody, I used to work with it, Chan Zuckerberg and her, it's a family company all about mental health. And they just acquired a school brand called Little renegades and are putting together this sort of like back to school mental health kit, I thought that was really interesting to think about. There's also a millions 200, plus almost $300 million suddenly opened by the US Department of Ed, for people trying to address mental health in the classroom. The US Department of Ed this week announced that it's accepting applications for big grant programs for mental health in school. So there's no sign of this slowing down, either from the government side or the investor side. What is your take on this SEL world map? Are you skeptical? Are you enthusiastic? Where do you land on this? Yeah, and you know, I'll work in another one of the fundraisers this week, a company called cartwheel, which provides kind of insurance compliant mental health services to K 12 schools raised close to $4 million, which, you know, I think this has to be a trend just given where we are societally post COVID, like, you know, most of your listeners are adults, I believe, but like, I think that even they have, you know, tons of kind of, you know, post traumatic whatever, from COVID, I can only imagine what it was like to be a, you know, 10 year old or a 13 year old going through that. So, you know, I think the obvious question to ask, and I don't know, where I land on it, but is like, what is the role of school to play in that? Right. And, you know, I think the pandemic really kind of shoved in front of our faces that schools were playing, not only an academic role, but also a childcare role. And, you know, this is more of a social services role. Right? And, you know, is that correct? I think a lot of people would say, yes, like, when schools play this kind of whole body, holistic role, I don't know what the right word is. But children do better. And like, you know, I think I would love more data to point people in that direction. But But I think you still have to ask the question and make sure that, like, our schools even equipped to be choosing these types of programs, or do we need kind of different bodies figuring it out? So do you have thoughts on that question? It's a really important question. We I mean, we've talked a couple of times on the podcast about how schools are sort of being expected to be hubs for society more and more into sort of providing more and more, including, you know, job training, including mental health, including food. I mean, one of the big stories of the pandemic was that, because schools weren't providing school lunches and nutrition, huge numbers of people were suddenly without food, it's a lot of pressure to put on an already strained system and childcare, of course, I think that in the US, we really don't have another option, which is like a little bit of a scary thing to say, but like, I don't think our healthcare system is equipped to do something like, you know, imagine this wasn't the US Department of Ed, imagine it was like, you know, the Department of State saying that, or I don't know what department it would even be, I guess it'd be the CDC or something, saying that, we have to get this many more, you know, mental health providers for children through the health care system and cover them with insurance and all this stuff? How would that even work? We just like if one system is more broken than education, its health care. So I think that in some ways, there's not a lot of great options for where to reach kids. And I think I agree with that. And what I think is missing is we haven't reframed the conversation around. Okay, if we believe this, if we believe schools are going to be acknowledged as childcare as academia, as you know, mental health services, what have you nutrition, like, we need to fund them as such, right? Like, we can't pretend that we're just going back to the old way. Right. And I haven't seen that type of conversation happening. Maybe it is it's obviously more of a policy conversation than it is a, you know, a business conversation, but I just I wish I could see more of that happening. Given the trend that we seem to be moving in. I always think back and this might be you know, some a somewhat of an outdated reference at this point. But I think back to the Harlem Children's Zone and Jeffrey handed his work there. And you know, and I'm sure there, this has been replicated and there are other there are other cities doing this, as well. But years ago, there was this sort of recognition that you had to put social services inside the schooling system, social workers and have medical care and have after school, babysitting, and all of these are childcare, there was a recognition that the school could serve as a sort of central hub for a neighborhood for a society for provide food, provide all sorts of things. And it feels like that idea was so far ahead of its time. And it has, over the years gotten lots and lots and lots of funding. But it's philanthropic funding, of course, I think there are models out there for you know, in a world where the school is expected to sort of make really intelligent choices about mental health supports and who to work with, actually track the results actually make sure their students are suffering from less depression, anxiety. And this also applies to universities. By the way, we haven't mentioned this, but they're also going through a lot of the same struggle. I think there is a world in which the funding could follow and where people might be able to figure out how to sort of fund that and make that actually work, again, maybe naively optimistic. That's a theme of the show today. But like, it does seem like a lot. I mean, and you know, you see this $280 million in grants, like That's some real money, you know, the question is, will it last after the pandemic? I mean, is this just a moment where everybody sort of realized how vulnerable we all were, and how central schools are, and there's this sort of one time infusion of money. And then when that money runs out, you know, all the tutoring is gone, all the mental health is gone. And we're sort of back to square one. I really hope not. But it is possible. And we, you know, we talked to during the pandemic, we had had a lot of edtech companies were having these huge, you know, boosts accelerants because of the pandemic? And would they stay accelerated was at an inflection point, or would they come back down, and I hope they would have been accelerated, but a lot of them have come back down. You've seen a lot of the public companies miss their earnings and have their stocks be cut in, you know, by huge, huge proportions. And it's possible that that same pattern will replicate itself in a broader way with schooling, it might be that in five years, the money's gone. And we feel like oh, well, it didn't work. There was a lot of money that went to different companies in different schools, but it didn't change how Schools Act. Yeah, I just want to reinforce for your listeners, I didn't know about the Harlem Children's Zone until a couple of weeks ago when I talked to somebody who was a part of that initiative. And I just, like, encourage folks to read on that. And then also, California has this Community Schools initiative that I think, I don't know if it's a direct offshoot, but you know, has a similar kind of mission statement. So both of those are worth spending time looking into because they really do treat the whole child and produce Yes, as a as a result. 100%. So you know, you mentioned Google and Facebook, or your Facebook, meta and Microsoft as companies that may have a little bit of more security around their data processes. And you know, another bit we cover a lot here is when these big tech companies sort of start overlapping with the ad tech world, which is pretty often. So you know, the great article about you know, Metaverse stuff this week, little bit, you know, fluffy but interesting article about the metaverse and meta, but some really specific partnerships, also with big tech that I think are kind of interesting. So we saw a Future Learn, which is the British sort of British European MOOC platform that sort of rose during the MOOC movement, and has been bumping along growing but having struggling in some ways, partnering this week with Microsoft to bridge the widening tech skills gap. That's in the UK, which is exciting, I think to hear. And we also see springboard, which is a sort of mentor based online training sort of boot camp ish program, mentors sort of mentors structured, becoming a one of the most recent sort of addition to the Amazon career choice list. So that means that Amazon workers can get coverage or reimburse for working with springboard to learn tech skills, which I think is pretty interesting as well. What do you think, Matt? Yeah. So on both fronts, there's kind of interesting topics of debate. I think the news on FutureLearn is kind of interesting when you juxtapose it against the Twitter chatter about FutureLearn. And I don't think it's, it's been reported yet. So this is all kind of people on Twitter, you know, twittering, there was a report earlier this summer about FutureLearn being kind of unstable financially, and that you can actually track back to in the UK, you have to submit your finances once at least once a year. So that was, you know, relatively substantiated. And then the news this week that was kind of floating around was that the Open University which is the public distance, it was started as a correspondence school that was part of the British government, you know, in like the 70s and has grown into a large online player there is trying to sell their stake they own 50% of FutureLearn. I think Seco As most of the rest, they're trying to get out of their stake. And, you know, you can imagine why after a report about financial distress, somebody might be trying to sell their stake. So there's perhaps an interesting story there. How that relates to Microsoft? I don't know, but it seems seems important. And then on Amazon, you know, I think they kind of fun thing to think about for me is, so they're partners, as far as I know, are they they partnered with instride, which was reason to do mission assistance benefits for a portion of their workforce, not the entire one the way I think this applies to. And then they have deals with lambda School, which is, you know, for profit, pretty intensive, like nine month bootcamp, Kenzie Academy, which is now a nonprofit owned by SNHU boot camp, that's like, three months, and springboard, which you know, is also for profit, but a little bit shorter than than lambda school and has slightly different tracks. So it could be that they're just, you know, picking different tracks by different providers to insert into the program. But it is kind of funny to think about, like, what is like, why this selection of partners relative to others, right, and that I haven't been able to discern but find interesting. Yeah. And also outlier. is also in that. I forgot about that. Yep. Yeah, it's a great question. And, you know, we've talked to a couple of those companies on the, on the pod. And I think, you know, they're obviously very excited to be chosen. There's an application process, there's a vetting, there's a whole structure for the Amazon, you know, Career Choice Program, it's obviously, you know, Amazon, I believe the biggest, again, maybe the second biggest behind Walmart employer in the US. So it's a humongous number of employees who get access to these learning opportunities. And I don't know exactly how they make the choices. Personally, I am very excited about the Amazon Career Choice Program, if only because luck, instead of going with a guild, you know, instead of sort of doing it entirely through a partner. They're sort of, you know, keeping it branded as Amazon. They're saying, right, it's the Amazon Career Choice Program. And then partnering with both traditional community colleges and universities, and these alternative providers like the springboards and outliers. I think that's pretty clever. I think that's, you know, that's a very modern strategy. And I think hopefully, it'll pay off for the employees. Yeah, I think the most interesting thing about it is the scale at which they operate. Right. And like, you know, we won't be able to see any of these company's financials anytime soon, because they're, you know, Series B ish. But I would love to see the juxtaposition of like, pre Amazon and post Amazon. I hope for all of them that it is, you know, a dramatic increase. But, you know, that's selfishly, I would love to see that. Those numbers. Yeah, you also have like places like Southern New Hampshire on the Amazon Korea Chase. It's a really interesting grab bag of education options, and some really amazing ones. But that was a great synopsis of the different partners, by the way, like, yeah, you just rattled that off. It was beautiful. I couldn't do that. So speaking of, you know, we've talked about a little bit about cartwheel and teach effects, but you are the master of the funding announcements. And can I pass it to you to tell walk our listeners through the funding highlights of the week? Yeah. So why don't I spin through this real quick, and then maybe we circle back to talk about kind of the kind of most interesting ones. So the first is Ocelot which I'm just going to flag to come back to because of the the specifics of who and how they raised teach effects, which now that you've said you had them on the pod. Last week, I recognize this actually, last week's funding, but they raised $10 million, super stoked for them, co Ries raised $8.5 million, which is interesting in the sense that it is a new entrant into the kind of enterprise upskilling space. But with a thesis built around a more curated library, most of their competitors are focused on, you know, lots of creators and lots of courses and just choice arises like yeah, I don't know, like data analytics is data analytics, like we'll do a good job on one of those, and we'll focus on go to market. So I think that's kind of interesting. biblis, you did an extension round. I think that's an important in and of itself, I think we'll see a lot more extension rounds over the next kind of six months, just because of the way the market is turning. It's a little bit unfortunate for founders because they'll they'll end up being diluted a little bit more than they might have liked. But, you know, that's you do what you can to stay alive. And then cartwheel which we talked about a little bit raised $4 million. They are trying to bring mental health services to K 12 schools in a kind of insurance compliant way, which, you know, I think is important for the whole child thing that we already spend time on. And I think we'll see even more folks trying to enter that space over the coming months and years of fantastic there's one more fresh off the presses acquisition which is that Duolingo a couple of days ago bought the animation studio that they Aqua hired it. And you know, it's Detroit based business. Jolin goes in Pittsburgh, and they basically, you know, are Pittsburgh headquartered and Duolingo is, as you know, is super into its animation and gamified elements. So I think by bringing that in house, you can expect them to go even even deeper in that. But let's circle back to Ocelot. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, so one, like, I don't have insight information, but I think I was a little disappointed in that coverage of it, because it was framed as a venture round, but the sole investor was clearly a private equity company. So I think framing it as an $170 million fundraise is, doesn't really agree with an annual round, so to speak. So I think like what is missing, and what I would like to know is, you know, how much money actually went to their balance sheet, which is companies raise venture capital, to have cash to deploy for, you know, growing the business, right, whether that's go to marketing people, product people, or what have you. And it's unclear, you know, did Oslo I get, you know, 100 million dollars for that $50 million $10 million, I feel relatively confident it is not $100 million that they can now deploy. But, you know, the difference between 10 million and 50 million is vast. And so I was frustrated. I feel like this would have been a, you know, relatively easy question to ask, and we don't currently have an answer. Yeah, that's a good insider take. And I agree, it was it was a little bit, you know, after that whole report about how there are so few big, big rounds and sort of late rounds, and then seeing this 100 million dollar plus round come through, it felt a little off. And I think you're I like this flag that it may not be exactly as it appears. I realized this last year to where they said they raised the like billion dollar series A and it's like, No, you didn't like that equity company bought, like, that's fine. Call it what it is. Don't tell us that nearly as excited does it as a billion dollars. It's exciting, though, because it means like, you know, you're growing up as a company. And I just, I don't know, maybe this is me arguing over semantics. I realized there's one more acquisition we should report on. It's a slightly oddball one. But I think it's worth noting for our listeners here, which is that genius group, which is this sort of Singaporean based education. I won't say conglomerate, but it has sort of a few different arms, acquired a Utah based media production company this week for $10 million to create basically, video content for their educational videos for their entrepreneurial platforms. Genius group is all about entrepreneurial education, were slightly wacky story, I'm just sort of seeing that come through now. But but maybe maybe sort of a sign of, you know, when you see that the bread, I report about all the mergers and acquisitions, maybe for a company like genius, which is public, you know, they could just do a contract with a media production company. But if they're so confident that they're gonna have to do lots more media, this is about documentaries, maybe and things are down right now. Maybe they're gonna buy them instead of just doing a contract. We may see other deals like that. I think the Duolingo deal probably kind of falls under that to Duolingo. Its first acquisition, it's not another education company. It's basically a vendor, it's a sort of integration play. Yeah, I think you know, and we talked about how we'll probably see a lot of maybe less than idealistic m&a from a from a valuation standpoint over the next couple of months. And the advantage that companies that have cash right now have is they can kind of pick and choose what capabilities they want to add. And though there's going to be a ton of talent, kind of on the block that companies can acquire at a relatively reasonable rate if they're smart. So I think that's like, from a corporate strategy perspective, something I'm going to be watching closely is okay, like, given we know, X company is struggling, you know, can we acquire them for talent? You know, is there are there any assets we can salvage, and I think we'll see a lot of entrepreneurs going into big companies, and maybe some interesting stuff coming out of the big companies as a result. I think there's a kind of tech Zeitgeist II thing around hiring entrepreneurs into companies and that kind of positive, wins tailwinds. That creates. So I think we'll probably see a lot of that not necessarily for the greatest reasons, but you know, I think it could be interesting, its effect on the ecosystem. I agree. You know, mergers and acquisitions are, I just saw a stat about how I think 80% or some, some huge percentage, you know, don't work out the way that people expect them to. But when they do, it's totally transformative. And in edtech, where I think people are, you know, always trying to do the, you know, at heart always trying to sort of keep moving stay abreast of the new trends and the new needs of their students. Ideally, some of these will actually work the way you say where you know, if your company acquires a sort of fat Fast moving agile, smaller company and creates this intrapreneurial spirit and really gets the bigger company to keep innovating. I love that takeouts. I think it's uncharacteristically optimistic from you. I like that. So yeah, I think that's about all we have for weekend ed tech this week, lots of stuff going on. We hope to have the CO Rhys founders on the show. Next week. They're all x Coursera. And people who I've worked with in the past, and they're doing really interesting work, as you mentioned, Matt, so hopefully, they'll be able to talk a little bit more detail about their round. It's an exciting time, you know, some scary headlines with all these hacks and all the mental health crises. But I'm hoping that, you know, we're coming into that that second round, what do they call it? The second boom of edtech is, we're at the bottom of that next hill. You think? Big? It's coming that? Yeah, I mean, I think we'll see kind of what the public markets do. But I think the bottom line for me is there's still people coming up with really interesting ideas. And, you know, I think as long as the early stage ecosystem is fighting and trying to create new and interesting things like I'm going to stay optimistic about space, I love that. Let's definitely end on that note. Thanks for listening to this episode of edtech insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the tech community. For those who want even more and Tech Insider, subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.

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