Edtech Insiders

Week In Edtech 11/11/22 with Guest Host Matt Tower

• Alex Sarlin • Season 4 • Episode 2

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Alexander Sarlin:

Welcome to Season Two of edtech insiders, where 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 tech companies. Welcome to This Week in ed tech from Ed Tech insiders the week of November 9 2022. We have guest host Matt tower with us today from Ed Tech thoughts. Welcome back to the pod what's on your mind in ed tech this week? Hey, Alex,

Matt Tower:

thanks for inviting me. This is an ad tech related, but I do want to report that I just ate six Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, we're finishing off the last of our Halloween candy. They were miniature size, but that just made me want to eat more.

Alexander Sarlin:

There's interesting studies about if you give the students an m&m, after they finished every math problem, they'll do more math problems. I don't know if you've ever seen that kind of study. But it's about the easiest way to motivate students. So maybe you're onto something with your races,

Matt Tower:

whatever it takes to keep the energy.

Alexander Sarlin:

Exactly. So let's kick off this week with a brief discussion of the US elections. So people who are followers of the podcast know that we've been talking for the last few weeks about these upcoming midterm elections in the US and how they're going to affect education and ad tech. Unfortunately, as of the recording of the podcast, we don't have final results on which political party is going to control either the House of Representatives or the Senate in the US, which means it's a little bit of a anticlimactic but I think we can pretty much you know, know that we're going to have at least one run by the Republican Party, which is the opposite party of Joe Biden, meaning that we're going to have divided government. And so that might affect education funding, or sort of bring things a little bit to a slow down. What do you make of the not quite finished midterm election results? Matt?

Matt Tower:

Yeah, I mean, I think the core takeaway is, we probably won't see a ton of new federal policy around education just because of the divided government, you know that the Higher Education Act continues to just kind of I think that Chronicle said it was languishing, I can't think of a better descriptor of it. That's been out of date since 2013. And, yeah, I just don't see anything new and novel coming down the pike. So we'll we'll have to work with what we got.

Alexander Sarlin:

The forgiveness of student loans that Joe Biden put through just a couple of months ago seems to have had very little effect on these elections in either way. It's being held up now in court from a suit from, I think, five governors, I believe, but it I don't think it was a major issue for very many voters. So we'll have to see how that pans out, as well as a political issue. But we're still a little bit on the fence, seeing where things land, I think that the local elections are also happened to all the school board elections all over the country. I know that in Florida, there's a pretty hard rightward shift for school boards. And we're happy to report that our regular host, Ben Cornell, won his school board election in San Mateo County. So that's fantastic for him. But we'll still have to keep an eye on how things shake out. And whether schools continue to be sort of a at the forefront of the culture wars and whether school boards continue to get, you know, pilloried for quote, unquote, indoctrination. But in any case, the election was a little less dramatic. And maybe that's actually a good thing. A little less dramatic of a change than I think many expected in the US.

Matt Tower:

Yeah, I think you're spot on. We'll see what the next two years bring and 2024 will be just as if not more interesting. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin:

we will keep our eyes on Florida as well. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida got reelected quite handily. He's being considered as a front runner for the presidential election coming up. And and Florida has a long history of positive, you know, education policy in edtech. But it's a very divided and, you know, intense vote place for for school boards and for schooling. So let's move on. We will obviously revisit this as the results fully come in. One thing that caught my eye this week, Matt, and I know you know a lot about this is Andreessen Horowitz, which is a very big marquee venture capital fund, NSF announced that they really are continuing to invest in edtech. We had Joe Connor of Odyssey on the podcast last week, and he got a funding round from their American dynamism practice. They've also invested in prisms, VR, wonder school, and Maven and there was a nice overview from one of the partners about why they're investing in edtech. So Matt, what is your take on Andreessen Are we entering the space sort of publicly? Yeah,

Matt Tower:

I mean, I think it's very exciting. Whenever you know, a name brand wants to get more involved in tech, I think it's also validating, and a lot of the work that the philanthropists and investors have put in over the past 10 years to really make it a market. There were firms that dabbled in ed tech, they'd make, you know, a couple of investments here, a couple of investments there, but you rarely saw an actual thesis built around at Tech. And Catherine a16z, really seems to be cultivating that as one of her core verticals for investing. So for me, it's exciting. It's more money coming into the environment, which I think we need. And, you know, I think the American dynamism, portfolio is really kind of neat. In and of itself, it's not specific to Ed Tech, although it's inclusive of Ed Tech, and built around redefining and rebuilding the infrastructure of how America operates, which it's a really grand bold statement, but we often associated with streets and highways, which I don't know if you've seen it, but I've got a lot of brand new streets, repave streets, in my neighborhood here in Philly. And I'd love to see that transferred to the schools too. So I think having Andreessen you know, beating the drum for getting dollars allocated to Ed Tech is nothing but a good thing.

Alexander Sarlin:

I agree. I mean, I think it invites a longer conversation about, you know, the role of, of government versus private capital in sort of, in developing an ecosystem for education. But I think all things being equal, we're at a time with a very divided Congress and lots of it's hard for state funding to sort of find problems that are so specific the way the venture capital does, and take lots of pitches, and basically say, here are the leverage points that we can really use to make a difference in education. So I think the combination of government and private funding can be really interesting. I mean, what struck me is the sort of concept of the American dynamism practice. And they, you know, there's a quote from this article about basically saying that, you know, the massive overnight shift to remote work and schooling across the country, for millions of parents opened up a new interest in alternative ways to educate their children, which creates opportunities for companies in the private sector to meet their needs. And as we know, from Odyssey, that's all about sort of alternative educational routes. But it also speaks to their sort of broader perspective of, Wow, this huge pandemic just happened, it changed our social norms a lot. And instead of just assuming they're going to snap back, there's this opportunity space where parents are saying, hey, maybe there is something other than traditional school, we've talked to, you know, chi pod on this podcast, lots of different people looking at different ways to do that. And they're saying, let's give parents that option, rather than sort of letting it regress to the mean. I think that's a powerful thesis. You know, everybody I've talked to very few people want things to sort of go back to exactly where they were.

Matt Tower:

Yeah, I mean, what I always come back to with pandemic learnings is, I think the core assumption that school in particular, like K 12 schooling was about educating students. And the reality is it's educating and providing childcare. And, you know, I think that the pandemic really showed a lot of parents very directly. And I think that's the way to learn a lesson is have it directly happened to you that exact problem, or whether it's a problem or not, I guess we could wait. But you know, now we're going to have folks who who push to, you know, quote, unquote, unbundle and then we'll read bundle, and then we'll, you know, tree bundle. All the bundles, right? So yeah, I'm excited to see some more novel approaches emerge.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, it begs a lot of interesting questions. Last thought for me on this, it makes me think about how, in the early days of the American continent, at least, you know, fire departments were private companies, and they would compete with each other, and they'd want to be the fastest one there. And there were even like fistfights between different fire departments for who was going to take over and put out the fire because they were the ones who were gonna get paid. And, you know, obviously, that's not how it works anymore. They became a completely public, common good, you know, municipal function. And, you know, you think of education as something that, you know, arguably is, is moving a little bit the other direction where it's, we've all taken for granted for so long that at least public education is common good. It's out there. Everybody has access to it. That's a wonderful thing in the US, and amazing people working in it. But it also sort of removes that urgency and that competition and that sort of feeling of dynamism and hey, you know, how do we outsmart the competitor and really do the best job. And I wonder if introducing a little bit of that, that tension back into the system might create some really innovative, you know, ideas that people haven't tried before. I love the old school model of bringing, you know, great teachers from anywhere into any school, and there's just a lot there. err, totally, some crazy stuff has been happening in the big tech world this week. What is your burden, especially around layoffs from big tech companies and major stock decreases? I'm curious how you've been seeing, you know, what has stood out to you? And what do you feel like it means for Ed Tech?

Matt Tower:

Yeah, it's difficult to pick what to talk about here. You know, I think just to provide a broad strokes overview, Twitter has certainly been in the headlines, they fired half their staff, which, you know, the results have been chaotic, to say the least, including asking many of their fired staff to come back meta, the artist, formerly known as Facebook fired 11,000 people, which was somehow only 10% of their workforce, which is kind of crazy. Stripe, which is one of the big payment processors, that's a well known kind of Valley darling, because of how well managed they're supposed to be. Did a I think 7000 person layoff lift, laid off six or 700 people? It's, it's really kind of across the board. And it's inclusive of Ed Tech. You know, I think we saw a bunch of ad tech layoffs over the summer and coming into this fall, just last week. I think you guys talked about the bad use layoffs.

Alexander Sarlin:

But there have been more since we left.

Matt Tower:

It's everywhere. So you know, I think like, it's really hard to talk about layoffs in general, it's just not a fun subject. The like, glass half full side of me says, Well, there's a lot of talented people who are now looking for their next adventure. And, you know, I hope some of them will come towards edtech we're gonna have to do some work to kind of learn them in our direction. But yeah, I think it definitely kind of ends the year on a pretty sour note. And I think we'll have a lot of people thinking pretty conservatively, going into 2023.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's the sweeping scale of some of these layoffs speaks to a couple of things. I think, one, it speaks to how large some of these companies have grown. That, you know, these are Twitter, you know, when it reduces its its headcount by 50%, which is a lot. You know, that's 1000s 3700 jobs, I think, is how many they're cutting. And yeah, Matt, as you mentioned, 11,000 we've been following by Jews, and you know, they had done two layers of cuts in the I think, I don't know if this is rumor or full fact. But the last thing I've read is that 12,000 12,000 Yeah, 12,000 is in there. I think that's unconfirmed. Right, exactly. We also saw this week Indian ad tech Unocal, dummy cut 10% of its jobs, we saw brainly, which is a Polish European ad tech darling tutoring company, basically let its Indian team go. So that's the Polish company leaving making cuts, but it affects Indian workers. And you know, earlier this year, we've seen Yeah, we saw two you major cuts, we've seen a few serious downsizings. And so you're seeing it sort of both in tech generally and in in a smaller way within edtech. I like to take the glass half full perspective as well. You know, one thing jumped out to me this week, I thought it was it was so I guess inspiring slash odd. But I think a good thing would coming from the global head of talent acquisition at Duolingo. Basically, hey, is the LinkedIn posting, you know, easy assumption, if big tech is doing layoffs, Duolingo probably is too. But the truth is, we aren't and won't be we're financially stable and still hiring our business models subscription based and not ad based. We have 50 rolls open and we're gonna post even more. And, you know, in some ways, this is a big thing that happens in the in the sort of California Silicon Valley ecosystem where it's a little bit of like humble bragging, like, you know, we're sorry, all the people leaving, but we're doing great. So come join us.

Matt Tower:

I was like, man, Pride goeth before, a little bit, you know, not to branch too far afield. But we saw that the crypto industry had like, the ultimate example of that happened this week, which, you know, I don't even know how much your listeners want to talk about Chris

Alexander Sarlin:

Brinkman fried Yeah, he,

Matt Tower:

I basically spent all summer as the white knight scooping up all the companies that were struggling and, you know, opened himself up to a bank run and was taken over himself, just like yesterday, so I don't know I Pride goeth before the fall just feels really apt for anyone saying, you know, we're fine. The stock market Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin:

it is a tough market and there's something speaking of pride before the fall. I mean, there's something a little bit exciting about seeing companies like Mehta and snap and chime and all these crypto companies that have been the sort of stripe you mentioned these huge darlings. You know, start to say oh, wow, we maybe were a little had a little bit of hubris during the pandemic and by keeping hiring and growing the way we were open door reduce staff by a lot because home purchases are Weigh Down, everybody's sort of suffering from the from the chaos of, of the American economy. And then to see, you know, Ed Tech, you know, Duolingo, one of the big ed tech darling, say, we're actually doing okay. Even in this world of really chaotic tech, there's something a little bit like, vindicating, I don't know, I because I Tech has been suffering all year, having a really, you know, major stock decreases, there's something a little bit a little bit vindicating to see the rest of the tech world sort of, you know, see some of that same downturn rather than thinking it's an ed tech thing. But that's probably not the right take on this. It's, it's a scary time for I think a lot of people and I hope my glass half full read is not only when people go into edtech, but a lot of the engineers and designers and sort of really, you know, powerful and people with extremely high demand skill sets, that, you know, start companies, they take ideas and run with him here, they do something that's closer to their, to the legacy they want to leave in the world. And you know, some of that might be ad tech, some might be climate tech, some might be, you know, other types of charity work, I would love to see some of that incredible energy go towards positive ideas.

Matt Tower:

Yeah, exactly. Right. And, you know, I think for any listener, who is in a position to hire people, instead of posting on LinkedIn that you're doing, all right, I encourage you to reach out to the companies that are affected and say like, Hey, you know, we'd love to interview some of the folks who unfortunately had to leave. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin:

health tech, still doing quite well, lots and lots of movement in that space. And I feel like, yeah, exactly. I think that's a good attitude, you know, rather than sort of a humble bragging, sort of showing how well your company is doing, really, really, really make it a, a meaningful reach out that can get kept some of these incredible people who have sort of come in from all over the country all over the world to do the most impactful scalable tech work they can and now are trying to figure out oh, and actually doubling down on that, you know, h1 B visas is some really interesting talk about us. A lot of these tech workers are on h1, BV skilled worker visas, which means that if they don't find another job in a relatively short time period, they can actually be forced to leave the country in the US. So that's raises the stakes even more for people who have been here for years and have their families here. So definitely a good time to, you know, be charitable, reach out, make sense of and get, you know, incredible talent. But let's be sensitive. For med techs not like we're we're killing it entirely. I wish we were but Duolingo, maybe aside. So I want to talk about what I think is your favorite topic, something we tend to talk about every time you're on, which is the absolute circus that is Indian ad tech, we mentioned you'd Academy. We've already mentioned a little bit of what's going on inside us. But there's more news from by just this week, and the theme of this segment is Indian Ed Tech is messy. Why is it called that?

Matt Tower:

Well, it's important to say it's messy with an eye, it's not with a lot. This story's actually pretty fun, you're gonna have to bear with me a little bit because it ends up being sort of convoluted, but I'll do my best to make it simple. So five years, the Indian ad tech company, signed quote, unquote, I don't even know what you would call it. He's Lionel Messi, the famous Argentine soccer player, he have the 430 million Instagram followers. That's a real number, which is frightening to be an ambassador for their nonprofit. So it's not actually the core company. It's for the nonprofit, which is which is nice. And I think it's like by Jews for all to help, you know, bring more educational opportunities to kids around the globe. What's interesting about this deal is by Jews lead investor is the Qatar Investment Authority, which is a sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, the the country in the Middle East, Qatar, the country and Middle East is hosting the World Cup, starting November 21, two weeks, so the preeminent soccer thing in the world by Jews, the EdTech company whose major investor is the Qatar Investment Authority, sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, the country where the World Cup is being held, happens to be a sponsor of the World Cup. That's true. You can draw the lines as you will. Additionally, Qatar's we'll call them leadership, Qatar, the country, the leadership of the country owns Paris St. Germain, which is the football club. They call it football in Europe that the one and only Lionel Messi plays for. So you can draw the lines however you like, but not a lot of connections between these three stakeholders. So my take is, this is actually probably a pretty good deal for by Jews, they probably didn't have to pay cash that much for either the World Cup sponsorship or the ambassadorship. But messy. So from like a business from a strictly business perspective, I think Bhaiji is probably did pretty well, and all the

Alexander Sarlin:

better brand marketing and then World Cup sponsorship around the world, it's pretty amazing.

Matt Tower:

Right? Now, we, I feel obligated to bring up the concept of what's called sports washing, which is trying to paper over any potential, let's call them wrongs for lack of a better descriptor that a country may or may not have committed by buying a famous sports team hosting a famous sports competition, etcetera, etcetera. Qatar, the country has been accused of this, again, like your listeners should do their own research. I am not opine on the concept, but I feel obligated to introduce it and to say, again, from a business perspective, I think 5g is did very well here from a host of other perspectives. Who knows.

Alexander Sarlin:

I mean, I have two reactions to that one, I love the sort of JFK style unveiling of you know, back into the left and look at the Qatari sovereign funds actions. I love how you put together this whole web of of complexity and business interests. And I'm sure that there is a there there, somewhere in there. And it's just fun to hear you think about it. It's what's the one thing I love about the way you see this space, you see all the hidden connections. The other thing I would say about this particular situation is I think, you know, we've mentioned on the podcast how Baidu uses we've called it sort of a macrocosm of the ed tech world, like it's a company that is so big, and so sort of spectacular in its moves, every all the numbers are so big when it raises money, we they're talking about a potential billion dollar IPO just for Akash, which is one of their subsidiaries that they bought, like, the numbers are so big, and when they make moves, it's things like this, they're gonna bring in, arguably the most famous athlete in the world, as your spokesperson. And it makes me think of sort of, we're used to the ad tech industry being sizable but sort of humble in its its moves, it doesn't do things like the massive big tech companies or big oil or Big Pharma does, but some of the moves that bite is doing kind of reminds me of big, big pharma actually, it's a good connection to to FTX, the crypto exchange that we were just mentioning earlier, which also had sponsored a sports stadium before, you know unceremoniously selling itself out of desperation, too crazy time. But yes, listeners can do their own research and find the connections. It's, you know, we don't want to talk about by Jews every week on this podcast, but they're just always doing something so spectacular and newsworthy that we sort of can't ignore them. You know,

Matt Tower:

you guys may have talked about this. But just quickly on the Akash thing, it's like a little bit stunning that they would choose that business to IPO right after the news that they had borrowed money from that business for the core business. So it's like, sorry, you IPO in the Akash business, or you IPO in the Akash business so that you can prop up the core business? And like, it's so frustrating to have to ask that question. But like, you simply have to ask it. And that's like, I share your I don't even know what to call it. It's hard to cover by Jews every week and you don't want to be negative on it. But like you have to ask the questions just because of the track record.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, yeah. One other sort of interesting theme of Indian ad tech this week is that several of the the major players we've seen this from you know, Academy from upgrade from the dawn to and from budgies itself, including with Akash, which is in person centers are doing what the press there is calling an offline push meaning moving away from purely digital delivery and into hybrid, or they call it phygital. I've never heard that phrase before, but phygital like pah YGIT Al has meaning. That's a new one, you know, models where there's some in person learning. And that's partially because the Indian education system really did snap back to in person much more than some others. So So I think that all of these ad tech companies that were really celebrating the move to digital during the pandemic are trying to figure out how to reach people. So and there's, there's a question about, you know, you know, we saw upgraded earmark $30 million for offline expansion. They're opening 10 campuses next year. So these are like four of the biggest, I think they may be the biggest Indian edtech companies all making the same move at the same time. And whenever that happens, it means it's either there's a really good reason it's a really good playbook or they're all following each other and, you know, off a cliff, but I think we'll have to watch that and see if offline, you know, helps them retain their revenue and sort of, you know, keep them from having to do further layoffs. What are your thoughts about this offline expansion?

Matt Tower:

Yeah, I think it's the right strategic move for the vast majority of them. In that market, it's mostly about earning the share of wallet, where, you know, parents, as a percentage of their total income are willing to spend more than perhaps we are in the US, but it's going to be really dependent on what's available to them. And like you said, the Indian education system is already fairly privatized. And, you know, parents have lots of options. So, again, strategically makes a lot of sense, I think what we haven't seen and frankly, probably won't see until and unless one of these companies goes public, is what that does to margins. You know, anytime you have a physical building, that that changes the structure of your business and the margins that you can earn. So I think they do it out of necessity to continue maintaining their or growing their share of wallet. But I would have to believe that it compresses their margins away from you know, SAS software style margins, that they probably pitch their early investors to something that looks a lot more similar to the for profit high schools and universities that we have here in the US,

Alexander Sarlin:

I imagine that they're in their decks, they probably talk about, you know, hybrid a lot, or how they're leveraging their, you know, the popularity of their apps to bring people into the centers. So there's less need for marketing or, you know, there's all sorts of ways to sort of spin it, but I think you're, you're right, that it's just a very different kind of business, if you're doing tutoring centers, or in person campuses, than being fully online and app based, and it's all about, you know, content and tech, so it's gonna be interesting to watch. And I think it also maybe has a limiting factor in how much these internet tech companies become international players and, uh, you know, by Jesus has been trying to grow all over the world, that's part of the at least the purported reasoning behind the World Cup sponsorship is they want to grow everywhere. But if they're spending a lot of their, you know, time and capital on building in person centers in India, then that doesn't have much effect on international expansion. So, you know, going offline locally is, doesn't have a direct line to being able to expand very rapidly internationally, you can still expand your your in person centers internationally, but it's just a very different proposition. For all the reasons you said, you're suddenly caught up in having to own real estate and do or do rent things and rent property in different countries and much higher overhead. It's an interesting move. I mean, I think it's logical, but I also think, you know, as an edtech, advocate, it feels like sort of a step away from edtech, a little bit more towards the sort of Kumaon style, you know, type of learning, then the sort of free flowing, video based app based live tutoring over the phone, that I think is really the actual future of this field. But we'll see how well, I don't know.

Matt Tower:

I mean, this is probably a longer conversation, but like, in, frankly, he's probably more learner focus, right? Were in my newsletter this week of like, you can't just expect a kid to sit in front of a screen for eight hours. And, you know, just kind of accumulate knowledge via the screen, right, there is a physical component education, and, you know, investors are gonna have to figure out how to reconcile that. Like, are we okay, investing in these hybrid businesses? Maybe not? Maybe it has to be a different type of investor. And maybe it does segment and it truly isn't ad tech. But I know, I know, these hybrid businesses have to exist, whether they're ad tech, whether they're, you know, high margin, is another question. Yeah.

Alexander Sarlin:

Or whether they can happen through partnerships with university campuses, of which there are many, many, many in India that are fighting for students. So, but yeah, it's very fair. And yes, yes, more, you know, dedicated learning time more FaceTime can have very, very good effects on education and educational outcomes. Even so, that's not my personal love borderless global nature of edtech. But, you know, no question that there's more than a little room for in person learning in the world. So the B experiment, sort of a pandemic field experiment in what physical learning, you know, can and should look like, if you have three or four different huge companies all coming at the same time trying to compete with one another, they could do some really interesting thing. So it's always good to keep an eye on that, you know, so one more topic to talk about, but it's really, you know, this is I don't know if there's sort of a true through line there. There's a couple of articles that I think were so interesting that I do want to recommend them to our listeners and sort of, we'll put them as links in the show notes this two different articles in actually nature. The the peer reviewed science journal, relevant to education and an edtech. One is about hierarchy and dynamics in US faculty hiring and retention this came out in September, but it's getting some coverage throughout the sort of popular media because it's about how 80% of the professors at universities really attended the same few colleges and how this this enormous prestige hiring and sort of self replicating move. And what that's doing is creating these huge generation of graduate students that are questioning whether there's any room for them in academia. So there's another Nature article called, I don't want this kind of life, graduate students question career options, and basically graduate students talking about how they learned academic skills, but very few, you know, relevant business skills like management, or budgeting or developing a business plan, and about half of them are dissatisfied with the level of career guidance. So there's a little bit of this sort of ROI shakeup at the PhD level. And then that sort of feeds into some of the things we're seeing with with coding boot camps. There was a great editorial from Aaron Rasmussen, that outlier and masterclass about the Generation Z, not being sure about the return on investment of a degree. And they're thinking about alternatives. And of course, they present themselves as as a great alternative, and they're offering associate's degrees that are mostly online, or I think entirely online, you just seeing all of this sort of frothiness. That's how I read it around the idea of is education worth the major investments is higher education worth the major investments? And I think it's starting to reach a, you know, continue to reach a fever pitch where all these different groups that are really very different from one another, are questioning it at the same time. So I know there's not quite a true thesis there. But I'm curious what you think about it. Matt, what do you think about when you think about this sort of labor market? Education, relationships?

Matt Tower:

Yeah. So bear with me again, here. I'm going to tell a story that circles back to it. So one of my favorite writers is a guy named Ben Thompson. He writes strict hackery, which is kind of like a strategic analysis of what's going on in big tech. And he writes, you know, three or four times a week, he's great. And he writes about, and it's all of his subscribers pay $100 A year entirely b2c, he does not advertise his subscription numbers, but it's probably somewhere between five and 15,000. People pay $100 here first, so he's doing quite well. And he has sway among the tech Zeitgeist. And he talks about this problem that when he was growing, he was super responsive to feedback that he got on Twitter, because that was a channel that he used to help grow his following. It was kind of mutually reinforcing with his newsletter. And there came a point where he realized that the feedback that he was getting on Twitter came from mostly people with the same viewpoint. And they didn't, their feedback was important and relevant, but it wasn't necessarily reflective of his entire base of his audience. So he got to the point where he realized that, yeah, like, I have to consider the opinions of these folks. But I also have to be cognizant, and look for data specifically across my broader base to make sure that the feedback I'm getting is correct. And that's what I think about a lot with these discussions of like, the end of the college degree, and the ROI of education, and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, where a lot of really smart people think this is happening, that there's there's something we're we as a society are questioning the value of a college degree. And, you know, I think they have a lot of really good arguments for that. And frankly, good data, too. It's not like they're pulling it out of their behinds. But like, if I walked into, you know, a gap store in Columbus, Ohio, and Columbus, Ohio, I picked specifically because it is the demographics of Columbus are uniquely reflective of the broader US, they almost perfectly mirror the broader US, which is why it's kind of the retail capital of the world. Because if you can sell stuff in Columbus, you can sell it anywhere, at least as I understand it. So if you walk up to somebody in a gap in Columbus, Ohio, like, what do they think they're 17 years old? My guess is they're still, you know, applying to college. And so that's why I really struggle with this of like, is it a trend? Is it an emergent trend? Is it the start of a trend? Like where are we on that line? I have no idea. Like, I know, these smart people think it's coming to happen. But I don't know where on the trendline we all know,

Alexander Sarlin:

that's a really fascinating take. I like that thought process. And it's interesting, because I think maybe one of the reasons that it may not be representative, as you say, you know, the 17 year olds, the high school age students who are this traditional demographic that would be thinking about you know, how To optimize their education, don't get exposed to that much. I mean, there was we covered an article last week, a really cool, really interesting article from Hechinger Report about a 17 year old who went to Western Governors, because his father had just done that. And then got this. Yeah. And it's like, well, yeah, if you see your apparent, do that, then you know that your URLs, but outside of it, you're not often exposed. But it brings me to, like, you know, and I think the place where a lot of people are seeing this kind of alternative education is actually ironically, at work. They're seeing it on the job. And there's, from their employment, there was a really an interesting survey from emeritus online edtech company, Americans this week about all of the results of the sort of upskilling classes that they offer. And they said, you know, 94% of people saw positive career and 61% found new meaning and inspiration in their lives. 20% salary increase, you know, more engaged at work. Now. 89% said, they're more engaged at work. So they're basically saying, hey, when you give people who are already working really great educational experiences that don't force them to go back and get a masters or don't force them into follow traditional education with dead, they'd get all sorts of benefits from it. And then, you know, I think that kind of thing does spread among workers, but I don't think it's restaurant high school kids, there's definitely a huge gap between what high school age students are aware of, and what is out there. I love that bowl.

Matt Tower:

And as much as I admire the emeritus team, and I think they've done a lot of good. They focus on the cream of the crop, they focus on the sea level, they focus on the high potential young leaders like they're not. And this is where guild, of course, has to enter the conversation, because they're really working with the meat and potatoes of America's workforce. Right. And like they're doing good work on that. They cover I think the number is like three or 4 million employees, which is a lie. And maybe the stats are similar at Guild as they are at Emeritus, I don't know, it's just so hard to tell. And you know, I think the same principle applies for the people who are going to jump on name for calling out a 17 year old, I think it still applies for a 30 year old who's trying to figure out what's next. Maybe it's hard to figure out where we are in the cycle. It is,

Alexander Sarlin:

I would posit that there are more ways to learn about alternative education, if you're 30, than you're 17 right now, but that doesn't mean that the you're actually you're actually doing it or that it's really hit the public consciousness. I mean, longtime listeners of the podcast know that I'm very bullish on the sort of grow with Google, the Google it search in the Google search. And part of the reason I am is that, that is a program that is comes from, you know, one of the very best known companies in the world that sort of super aspirational, but also is designed to be visible if they've actually advertise against it. At one point, it was put on the homescreen of Google, like the Google Search screen, they actually had a note at the bottom saying, Hey, we have these certificates, which is like, unreal, that's the you know, the most viewed billboard there is. And I think that kind of marketing is required. And you can have you know, your amazing Southern New Hampshire's, but you need they spend a lot on marketing to and please don't get I don't think your you know, your average 17 year old knows that you can go take an MIT executive course, instead of go to college, or, you know, or, or even consider that, that option. There's a visibility issue. And but I think you're right at heart, you know, nobody knows how all of us and tech insiders, all of us who talk about this and watch these headlines every week, it's hard to know how how much these options are understood, even bootcamps, which have been around for many years, I think a lot of people don't know they exist, even now.

Matt Tower:

And that was the point I was trying to make with the Ben Thompson story is, you know, you and I talk about this all the time. We've we've talked about it on this podcast before. And that almost makes me weary to conclude like, Well, Alex, Matt know this to be true. Right? It's like, well, think about it. It makes logical sense. It does. And I want to be super clear that it makes logical sense that this would be a change that's happening as more information is available to prospective students. I am somewhat reserved, in my judgment, almost because it's such a zeitgeist, ya

Alexander Sarlin:

know, I think that's well founded skepticism. So to close up this week, we are going to go to you because you are so good at collecting all of the amazing funding and mergers and acquisitions that happen in edtech each week in your ed tech Thoughts newsletter. So take it away. Tell us a little bit about what happened with funding rounds and mergers that week of November 9.

Matt Tower:

Awesome. So the first is class Sarah, which is a San Francisco based company that actually does most of its business in the Middle East North Africa region. Mina They raised $40 million to continue growing out their platform both on the product side and on the go to market side it sounds like they are interested in doing more on the corporate learning space and in the Asia Pacific region. The next is Florio, which does VR related therapy treatments for neurodiverse children, the founder himself does not is not artistic, or at least is not known to be autistic. But that was the initial focus of the company. And they developed a doctor approved therapy treatment. And so now, this round will go towards the continued kind of study of the treatment, kind of like drug development, but not quite This is that kind of fun, middle ground of things that are kind of therapies like a drug would work, but not actually kind of playing with your body chemistry, etc. Raise 5.7 million. They are a virtual reality experience building company. So they build simulations for companies to train specific skill sets on the job. They have a cool stat where they improve worker competence and their skill sets by 275%. I had honestly this week because I was out last week. It sounds like you guys talked to Joe, they raised $4.75 million to help grow their education savings account facilitation business working with states like Idaho and Arizona to deploy isas across those populations emerge career, which is a training company for incarcerated folks. They help those who are incarcerated get commercial driver's licenses, nursing assistant certificates, and welding certificates while they're still incarcerated and then get a job once they're released, they raised 3.2 million company called Ed Casa based in Pakistan and Lahore raise $320,000. They're kind of cool because they are working with tick tock to provide a social educational experience. I think that's a trend that will be kind of emerging next year is hearing the word social, a lot more and tech products. And then to round us out iCIMS the famous or not famous but well known HR is HR information system acquired Skill Survey, which helps companies evaluate the skills of prospective employees and Times Higher Education bought, which is a UK based education media company by data he which is a UK based data analysis company that helps schools recruit students. So any of those particularly interested in you, Alex?

Alexander Sarlin:

Well, so over the last two weeks, we talked to Joe Connor from out of the end to Mohammed Al Madani from class era, because that is they're working in emerging markets, the through line that I like hearing in that is this this desire and money going into expanding the market, right. So I mean, I mean, you know, class era has offices in four different Middle Eastern countries, as well as San Francisco, and they're trying to go into Asia and into Africa, and really bring edtech to people who don't have as much access to it as they should hearing about emerge, bringing education opportunities to the incarcerated, you know, high demand skill sets to incarcerated populations. We've seen a VPS in that space in the past, but it's really our APDS, right, a PDP DS, you know, a few others play in that space. But I am always very excited and bullish when there are companies that are truly trying to sort of expand the pie and reach people who would not see educational technology as a possibility. So those are ones that stand out to me, how about you, but any, any that make that sort of make your brain go?

Matt Tower:

Yeah, well, first of all, I agree. You know, there is something most heartwarming when you talk about accessing markets that really don't have a ton of educational opportunity today. Those are the like, kind of nice reminders of like, oh, yeah, I like working in this industry. There's just something generally good the vibes are good on that front. And then you know, I have this kind of growing interest in companies like Florio that I don't even know how to explain it super well, but they sit kind of they're not they're not a drug as we kind of think of drugs, right? Like you don't take a pill, your beer in VR, but there are ways to measure the efficacy and potentially, you know, in Florio's case help serve. I think neurodiverse is the general world word, I'm going to say autistic because it's, you can kind of visualize it maybe a little bit more concretely, kids operating the world. And I just think that's, like, such a cool premise, but also so hard to do effectively. Right. And that's, you know, I think the age old problem in ad tech has been, you know, are you actually efficacious or are you You know, just spending a lot on marketing or But, and I love that Florio specifically is is taking the, we're gonna do this basically as if we're developing a drug. That level of rigor is great. It's not for everybody. It's really hard. It's really expensive. But I'm hoping by setting the pathway we'll see more companies doing.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, that's a great point. They're trying to behavioral therapy. They're trying to actually be sort of qualified, certified as behavioral therapists going to hospitals. Yeah. Amazing. Awesome. So we've covered a lot of ground from politics to injuries into big tech layoffs, Indian Ed Tech and cannot pet away from bite us for one week. And some of this is the buzz around the ROI of education and sort of alternatives. And I think you've made great points about it. That's all we have for you this week on This Week in ed tech from Ed Tech insiders. Next week, we're continuing to be a lot of things happening and we have a couple of really great interviews next week with the the deputy general counsel of amplify learning Evan, how Ries and the founder of patent tax, Trevor scheme to talk about IP and the law in edtech, which is a fascinating and deep topic. Thanks to my co host here, Matt tower. It's always great to talk to you Matt.

Matt Tower:

Thanks for having me, Alex. This was a lot of fun.

Alexander Sarlin:

Thanks for listening to this episode of Ed Tech insiders. If you liked 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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