Edtech Insiders

Year in Edtech, Pt. 1: Ben and Alex's 2022 Trends and 2023 Predictions

January 01, 2023 Alex Sarlin Season 4 Episode 12
Edtech Insiders
Year in Edtech, Pt. 1: Ben and Alex's 2022 Trends and 2023 Predictions
Show Notes Transcript

2022 was a consequential year for Edtech. Join us as we review some of the top trends of the year!

In this super-sized episode, Ben and Alex review top trends from the year that was and make some predictions for 2023. 

We discuss:

  • The "Edtech winter" for startups worldwide, with a renewed focus on profitability
  • The crash in Chinese edtech and the continued rise for India, Europe and other regions. 
  • Increasing consolidation in the sector through mergers and acquisitions
  • The rise (and fall?) of the online tutoring sector
  • The politicization of k12 schooling in the US
  • K12 staffing shortages and their effect on Edtech
  • The opportunity to address pandemic learning loss
  • The ROI crisis for university degrees and the rise of industry credentials and college alternatives
  • Sea changes for higher ed, including enrollment decreases, closures, focus on adult learners, the rise of test-optional policies, and more
  • OPMs expanding their reach and competing to be the lifelong learning solution
  • Workforce learning on the rise
  • How the Education-as-a-benefit model survives an economic downturn and evolutions of the talent war
  • The past and future of the educational multiverse, VR/AR/XR, AI, and Web3.0

In Part 2, several of our top guests from the year weigh in on their reviews and predictions! Stay tuned.

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 the top edtech company. Hello, tech insiders family. It is Ben and Alex. And we have come to my personal favorite episode of the year, which is our end of year wrap up as well as our predictions. Now let's be real here. This is also basically our one year anniversary of the pod. So we haven't exactly done this every year, but we had some predictions last year. And so today's episode, we're going to take a look back at 2022. What were the key themes and stories, we're going to take a look forward, what do we think is going to happen? And what are some of our bold predictions. And then we're also going to follow up this episode, with some single episodes of other expert insiders that we've had on the pod all year long, we're going to go back to some of our great guests and ask them for their prediction. So we felt it was only fair for us to record this one first before having heard from these way, smarter way more accomplished people. So you're gonna get the beat Team on this one, which is Alex and Ben. And then we'll add on the kind of expert episodes. And you know, we also before we get in, we just want to thank everyone who's supported the podcast, supported a tech insiders in our community. It's amazing to see the newsletter picking up the downloads, our global reach. It's far beyond what Alex and I ever really truthfully imagine. And so, you know, it's I think it's only right to start with that note of gratitude. Absolutely. And that's a, you know, a note we sounded on Thanksgiving as well. It's really I mean, you know, we started, I think our first week in edtech was, I believe, the beginning of January of 2021. So it's literally been, you know, I'm sorry, 2022. It's been the it was the first week of 2022. So the entire week in edtech, has really been the 2022 year in edtech. And it's been a really crazy year. So why don't we just jump in? What do you think is the biggest story overall of the year in the ed tech sector? Ben? Well, first, let's orient our format. And then we can talk about some of the biggest stories. So we're gonna talk about Ed Tech overall. And then we're gonna kind of go segment by segment. So we'll talk about K 12, higher ed workforce upskilling, as well as you know, tech trends. And we're going to start the first half is really going to be the look backwards. And then the second half is going to be the look forward. So we'll try to put in that timestamp. If you want to just get to 2023. And forget all about 22. I do. I wouldn't blame you. It's been that kind of year. So as we've talked so many times on this podcast 2020 do it's just been an insane year. And I almost feel like our podcast is a time capsule of the year that was 2022. The one that stands out to me Alex is we kind of went from Ed Tech summer to Ed Tech winter. In January and February, we're still seeing deals done at incredible valuations huge amounts of cash. And there was an optimism around the potential and path of education and edtech although we were starting to see some cracks, and so that shift to Ed Tech winter really started around February, March. As capital markets started tightening up, we started seeing the stock market starting to come down especially around, you know, our kind of benchmark companies like to you Chegg And Coursera. We saw some acquisitions and roll ups as companies were shortening runways, although that's just starting to pick up. And then, you know, as we kind of pulled through the quarter of the year, you know, it's been a theme, this fall of layoffs, and focus on profitability. So rarely, I think, in a 12 month period, have you seen such like, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow to like, get profitable, get profitable, like extend your runway, that shift has just been profound on that or any other ad tech overall trends? What's standing out to you? Yeah, I mean, you look at 2021, which had this record number of IPOs, these humongous valuations. And it just felt like sort of the Ed Tech was coming of age and sort of entering the world in this pandemic moment. And it was it was very, very sort of bright eyed. And then this year, you know, as you mentioned, we've seen most of the big public ed tech companies, including those that went public in 2021 blues 62 70% of their stock market value, we've seen the, you know, systemic stuff happen in the economy where, you know, between inflation, and then the the US, you know, fed raising rates again and again, which panic the markets which lead, you know, there's just been all of this stuff. But I think at Tech has almost been hit harder, he got a bigger boost in the pandemic and then was hit harder from all of the withdrawal. So it's sort of higher beta, you know, they say that then a lot of the rest of the market really, really weird here. Yeah, I'd say on the good side, though, we were shocked in January and February, as we saw edtech explode in India, and in Europe, and in other parts of the market. I'm very bullish on Indian and tech market, in part because the supply versus demand dynamics, the demand is incredibly high, and the supply is incredibly low. And there's a quality bar or threshold that, you know, is achievable with tech. And I think when you look at disruptive technologies, you have to think about what is the disruptive technology replacing and the US, it is hard to replace a brick and mortar school down the block if the quality is of a certain level. But if your choice is a like education experience in a field with like 60 other kids, or if your your education opportunity is like, go read a book that was published 20 years ago, because you can't get access to university course. Like, it doesn't take much for the technology to really surpass that. And I think that's what we're seeing in India. I'm more bearish on Europe, because I think the same dynamics in the US are at play in Europe. And I do think that governmental and state players loosened up during COVID, but are likely to, like tamp back down, we can talk about that and predictions. But we saw a global edtech community emerge. And we saw education entrepreneurs think globally first, rather than kind of just focusing on their individual market. So I'd say, you know, when we look back to 2122, we're gonna say, wow, like global explosion of edtech. Definitely, I think that's our second theme is just the rise of global tech. And of course, we can't go too far without talking about the collapse of Chinese tech, which happened in the, you know, the same period. So India rose enormously over the last two years, China, because of its own internal regulations went all the way back down. And then you're seeing more European and Latin American, you know, companies, you know, up here and a lot of hunger and interest in a lot of capital that wasn't there in the past. I think I'm more bullish on Europe than you are been. And we won't get into the predictions. But just because this year, I have seen so much energy out of the European ad tech ecosystem, there are so many people who love this field, who are jumping into it, who just are passionate about education at all levels. And that's workforce K 12 and higher ed. And it just feels like the momentum is only starting to build there. And there's so many more sort of hurdles that they could pass to make it even more of a sort of publicly known tech sector. So I know it's they also have regulations, they also have economic downturn that they're facing right now. But I just if you look at Eastern Europe, in particular, they have some of that same dynamic you mentioned in India, where, you know, some of the countries have had incredible revolutions in their education, others are still way behind and getting a you know, getting an app where you can get a really good personal tutor or you can get great quality instruction is still a huge value add over what you see in your local environment. So global ad tech is here, and we're all watching the different regions sort of, you know, grow and mature. And we've been an Indian Ad Tech has been fascinating, obviously, by Jews and youth academy and upgrade and some of these, you know, you know, physics Wallah. Like a lot of really interesting companies sort of coming into play and getting really big really fast. For all the reasons you said, I think our third theme overall has got to be the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. I mean, I'm saying aftermath even though obviously, the COVID pandemic has not actually fully disappeared and may be with us forever. But the return to school the return to real life learning in universities did return the opening of schools in even the countries that were the most cautious. And I think there's a real depending on the region, you're looking at, sort of a snap back to okay, we tried the tech online thing. Now some of us are just going to go back and get right back to business as usual. And others feel like the world has changed. hybrid learning is here to stay and how How can we, you know, create a new strategy. And it's been this really interesting dance to watch. Yeah, and, you know, one of the we'll talk about sector by sector, what the kind of post COVID landscape has looked like. I think there's an overarching theme, though, that there's like, there's some new empowerment of the consumer, to make choices in ways that COVID unlock their either unlock their ability, or just open their eyes to the potential choices out there. And so that might be parents making choices and might be individuals, students making choices, and employers making choices. But you had a new dynamic, which was people seeking out and proactively making choices rather than defaulting into things. But this kind of snapback, I actually think is probably one of the most lasting effects. In some ways, you wonder, has this pushed remote and hybrid and online opportunities forward? Faster? Have we seen, you know, five years pass in five months? Or have we actually taken a step backwards, because there's this almost innate reaction or view of these things as inferior. So without further ado, let's dive in then off of those three themes into sector by sector, the K 12 sector, I would say, this kind of snapback was totally present in K 12, where people were incredibly eager to get back to schools, I often say that we all realize that there's three purposes of school childcare, social, emotional support, and learning in that order. And with that also came politics. So the K 12 landscape in the US, but globally, has really transformed into a capital P political realm, where we see things like Liberty moms running for school board, we see curriculum coming under fire for whether it is too liberal or too conservative. And you know, that politics has eaten up a ton of airspace bandwidth and thinking and made it even chat more challenging. On the practical side, too, we've seen the data show that severe learning loss occurred, particularly in math, and particularly with low income at risk youth. And I think that, you know, in the early days, there was some debate, has there been learning loss? Has there not been, and then a crescendo over the summer into the fall of data that really shows that we've taken a big step back in terms of our gap and opportunities? And then the last one, I would say, in K 12? That kind of has been a landscape accelerant is this, the teaching shortages and staffing shortages. And so just as you know, everyone's saying, I want inverse. And they're also saying there aren't enough educators to staff it. And that has to do with, you know, celebrating trends that have existed for 20 years, as well as teachers being burnt out from COVID, as well as new teachers not coming into the profession. So, you know, against that backdrop, there were kind of other topics, other themes, you know, I'd say, like, in the business side of it, you know, S or funds have really defined this era. And now we're rapidly approaching the SR cliff, which basically means huge amounts of government funding, kind of retire and expire. And so what will the sustainable business models mean? And this year, I think we've started to see the rise and fall of tutoring as a K 12. Industry. It was kind of this gold rush as her funds, kind of lifting all boats. We saw people ranging from really, really deep, intense, you know, targeted tutoring, to like homework help with text messages, and that full range and, you know, kind of a confusion among buyers around. What is high dosage tutoring here, what is not, what is the right thing to buy that's equitable and accessible to all, but also provides the kind of impact and value we're looking for. And I think that story's still shaking out real time before we move on to higher ed. Alex, any reflections as you've looked at K 12? Space? Yeah, I mean, it I just look back at the year and you mentioned the sort of Time Capsule aspect of the podcast. I remember week after week back in spring, and we were wondering whether there was a real teacher shortage, not now you see Miguel Cardona, the Secretary of Education and sort of everybody across the board saying, okay, officially, there's a humongous teacher shortage. We've really don't know how to address it. We're starting to think about sweeping policies like minimum wages, and it's just it's interesting to watch that be people We'll sort of side coming in slow motion, this idea that as everybody comes back, and as all of these teachers leave the profession for a wide variety of reasons, you know, what's going to happen next? And I think, you know, the question of what's going to happen next is still an open one. But it was interesting to watch that sort of emerged as a story from sort of rumors or a few, you know, pulse checks on the field to, okay, officially a crisis in many, many states. Yeah, so let's talk about higher ed, if you want to say like K 12. It was like a slow motion surge or change. Iran felt like a freight train running through what were your main takeaways. I mean, coming out of the the COVID era where colleges and universities were really sort of making very rapid emergency decisions and sending whole classes of students home and bring some back and quarantining others. This year felt like an interesting sort of settling in a little bit of the COVID era. But it was replaced with a wildly diverse set of stressors for the university landscape. For one thing you're seeing across the board, a huge number of alternative credentials and pathways open up many from within the EdTech industry, we saw a multiverse become a large unicorn out of Europe, basically, predicated on the premise of you really don't need to go to college, you should really just get a job. And we'll teach you anything you need to know there. We've seen, you know, alternative certificates from lots of different MOOC providers from lots of different boot camps from lots of different players of all kinds certificate programs from almost anybody, employers are a big one. So I think college, you mentioned sort of people's eyes were open for the first time maybe this year, to all of the different options that they actually have when thinking about an education. And you know, I always use this phrase, you know, higher education has had a monopoly on mobility for a long, long, long time. In the US, probably since the Second World War, or, and it's suddenly starting to look, you're looking at big companies starting to reduce their bachelor's requirements, it's suddenly really starting to look like the standard bachelor's degree is not as much of a sort of the key that opens all doors, as it has been for quite a number of years, people are just really accepting that there may be other routes, and there may be other ways to do it. And I think this is putting universities, the presidency universities, the provost, and just sort of the whole community on a little bit of a warning. I mean, they're seeing demographic changes about enrollments going down, they're seeing this return on investment crisis from many students. And people are complaining about the tuition that they were paying during COVID. I think there's a real shift in the making about colleges really, really rethinking what their value proposition is to students. There was a great editorial just today from Jeff Slingo, basically saying it's higher education, you know, blank canvas moment where they actually can sort of reset and think what are we really doing for this generation of students who have YouTube who have access to MOOCs who have access to many things that others never had? So I think number one is definitely this ROI crisis from lots of directions in higher ed, which is leading to smaller schools closing or merging at a higher rate than ever, or higher rates in quite a long time. A second piece of, you know, trend we've seen a lot in this year in colleges is a lot more companies that do university partnerships becoming super what we call the multi denominational. So that includes online program managers like to you and Coursera and academic benchmarks and wildly, and people are just starting to say, hey, this model that we used to have where colleges were the only game in town, so we would help colleges get, you know, market or get out there in the world. That's sort of the end of the game. It's really not feeling like that anymore. And a lot of these companies, not only have they lost a lot of their valuation and stock price, they're also just looking at much more broadly at what their role is, in society. They're looking at, you know, and their business model is they're doing shorter contracts. They're doing, you know, b2c and b2b, they're doing university partnerships and open market where they can do, you know, get consumers and partnerships with employers, they're looking, you know, some are looking at the same kind of long contract that they've done in the past. Others are doing piecemeal, you know, pay for service, OPM, where they might just do one aspect, and it's just become a very complex and messy space. But I think it's actually a maturing space because the OPM market previously I think, was sort of propping up high prices, and high tuitions for universities and just just sort of keeping the status quo is like Online learning is here. So now you can get your degree from home for the same price, with much less service with much less, you know, access to facilities, it just was a ridiculous proposal in the first place. And I think people have now questioned that into sort of beginning to be less and less of the status quo. So and then, you know, a third one is that colleges, I think, come again, coming out of the pandemic, are truly, truly realizing that the future is going to be hybrid, it isn't or have online components and have in person components, you know, for the most part, not for everybody, but they're not going to be caught with their sort of pants down again, and having to send whole classes of school home and getting sued for tuition. I think they're really starting to think more broadly and doing some really innovative things. By the way, higher education is very adaptable, despite, you know, they move a little bit slow, but they get big things done. They're starting to look at models about you know, what does it really look to have an amazing hybrid and online offering? And how can they sort of really make that space? Incredible, instead of just sort of it being secondary? So I think, you know, ROI crisis, OPM diversification, and this sort of college is trying to truly adapt to a hybrid and online future where the biggest trends I saw this year, then let's talk about oh, yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that as well. And then I want to talk about the workforce, because it's so interesting. Yeah. And I feel like many of these themes blend over into workforce. So, you know, at the highest level, I would just say, this, like question about ROI for undergrad in the workforce, it's gone the other way, which is saying, We can't hire talented people, the ROI is high. Let's lean in. And as we've kind of seen, university institutions almost become disrupted and further fragmenting the university experience. In the workforce space, we're starting to see consolidation, where the prevalence of boot camps or you know, like Workforce Solutions, now you're starting to see many more of them having a b2c b2b and university partnership component, and you're seeing employers step in as the aggregator of the learning. So ranging from Chipotle offering, you know, degrees to its employees to the rise of guild to you know, a number. I mean, I think it's just interesting Corsairs business model is, like, largely b2b enterprise workforce dependent. at the micro level, I would just say, we just see a lot of employees thinking of education as a benefit, not as something I have to go on, on my own and find out. And so I do think that, you know, we talked at the very beginning, like, what is COVID change this mindset of what I can expect from my employer, education as a benefit, and then this idea that I get, like certifications, or learning modular learning, just in time to be able to upskill into the next thing. The one thing that I will say has been surprising, is the venture capital appetite has gotten really cold, like a tech winter for K 12. And it's gotten really cold for universities, because the b2b models there are challenging with the purchasing process. But they've actually been really continued to be pretty aggressive on b2b models in workforce. So this idea that selling to small and medium businesses or enterprise clients, a bundle of educational benefits, that's actually been pretty hot still. And I'd also say the other interesting thing that's been surprising for me is big tech getting in here. So we're seeing Facebook offer courses online, Amazon offering, of course, on Google certifications, anytime big tech is starting to get in there, you know that there's a general consensus view that this is a huge potential market and people are starting to seek out territory. So while we talked about a trend, overall being this attack, you know, from summer to winter attack, I think this is the one space where it's a little bit different. Anything's you want to add around workforce and upskilling. Before we wrap our look back with veterans, the only thing I think I would say there is I think, right as we get to the end of this year, because of the inflation, the economic changes, the layoffs that you mentioned earlier, I think, you know, we had been in a position of lots and lots of, you know, employees having a lot of the sort of power in a lot of the technical industry. is for quite a while, and there were lots of, you know, high salaries and perks. And, and I think, you know, a little bit of a mini consensus is starting to emerge that as the economy shifts, as there are many more people in the labor market, it just changes sort of the nature of the talent war, and it changes a little bit the nature have, you know, the big groups of benefits that you that employers feel like they, you know, they have to offer their employees to retain them and attract them. That said, I don't think that you know, that companies have responded by removing those education benefits, because the education benefits aren't only for attracting and retaining workers and internal promotions and things like that. They're also because the companies themselves are really don't know where the world is going. Things are changing very quickly. And you know, we've called this this vague, hand wavy thing of digital transformation for many years. But with the recent tech, which really feels almost hyperbolic in terms of the amount of change, it suggests, it's becoming extremely important for companies to actually find ways to keep their workforce up to date on what's happening. So I think, you know, as the power of the employee may be starts to wane in this period, I don't think education is a benefit is going to get cut, because it's actually has a benefit to not only the employees, but also the employers. Obviously, there are different models that Chipotle and Amazon, you know, frontline worker, tuition benefits are a little bit different than the sort of internal upskilling for data science and AI. But either way, I think that, you know, it's not the first benefit that's going to get cut. And I actually think that's a really good thing. We've seen food get cut, we've seen offices get cut, but I think education is starting to become a expected and meaningful benefit. Yeah, I mean, it might also be a way that you save money in that you upskill your lower skilled employees into capabilities that you might have previously paid somebody more or, you know, education can be the payment for somebody who's now taking on two jobs because there was a layoff or something like that. So stepping back, there's, you know, we wanted to start with the big picture, and then go kind of sector by sector before we wrap 2022. There's also some tech trends that have intersected with education that we wanted to look back on, what are some of the tech trends that you're looking at Alex, we can keep these really brief because any listeners of this podcast over the last year will have heard all of these many times. The big tech trends of this year, I think without question, the first would be web three, or crypto, aka you know, cryptocurrency we have seen a incredible fall from grace of cryptocurrency in the last few months, obviously, you know, superstars in the field going to jail, bankruptcies, domino effect, and it's gotten really quite a bad rep. Meanwhile, the web three part of it, which is sort of connected to the currencies, but it's using this decentralization in different ways, has sort of gone a little bit underground. This was something that the beginning of the year everyone was talking about lots of VC interest. And in this sort of messy world, it's obviously it's gotten a little quiet. So that's one. Secondly, the metaverse and virtual reality augmented reality, extended reality. This has been something that we've talked about all year, lots of startups starting to move into that space, lots of VC money there, lots of big tech interest from very big companies actually around the world. But, you know, Facebook Mehta, which has sort of rebranded itself to be synonymous with the metaverse has had a lot of layoffs as well. There's been a lot of complaints internally and externally about what they've done in the metaverse itself is a little bit. It's sort of coming down from the hype cycle right now. We'll talk in the predictions about where we think this might go. But I think the metaverse is something that is it has held incredible promise, and I think everybody agrees on that. But whether we can meet the moment and actually use it for effective education, still a big open question. And the third is obviously very recent. But it's artificial intelligence, and specifically the new rise in generative artificial intelligence. This is on the way up, it's really at the top of the sort of Gartner Hype Cycle. I wouldn't maybe not the top, it's probably heading up, but it's starting to become, you know, household name, the fastest growing open AI was the fastest growing tech product, arguably of all time. And I think, you know, this is the one that's sort of coming in right at the end of the year, and offering yet another vision of the future that might be, you know, completely different than today. That will keep it there. But I do have anything to add about those tech trends. Ben No, I mean, I would just say like one it's hard to be to avoid being a prisoner of the moment where you're like, oh, you know, AI hype. The hype cycle on the rise, crypto on the down, I think the tech trends are more are better situated, if you look at on a five year trend going backwards and forwards. And I think what we're seeing is that this was really the year of Kryptos. Fall. And this is part of the longer period of VR AR and the AI figuring out, and whether you call that arise, or whether you call that more like, we've discovered applicable use cases now for the technology that we've invented. You know, unfortunately, education is often the type of place where great tech fingers say we've, we build this great tech, now let's push it into education, I think what we're starting to see is actually use cases that make sense for real problems. So it's not really about tech, it's about the challenges. So as we've kind of moved towards the predictions and the go forward, we wanted to start again, with big global themes or trends that we expect for 2023. And Alex, I'm going to also hold us accountable, we'll come back a year from now and like look at these. So let's be realistic, it's 23, we're not talking 2030 here. And then we'll also kind of just take a couple like a skip down the different segments as we think about what's going to happen in K 12, higher ed, workforce and beyond. So let's talk about the big themes, what's coming up for you as one or two really big ad tech themes more broadly. So I think the global ad tech scene is going to continue to grow, not only grow, but I think we're going to start to see some of the other regions, especially India, I think also, you're really start to come close. And to the US, in terms of the sort of size and scope of its ed tech scene, I just think there's going to be because of the huge latent demand, because a lot of these countries are interconnected. I mean, India is not only India, it serves a lot of countries around it. South Korea does incredible at Tech, and I don't think gets enough credit for it. So I think we can definitely predict to that, you know, when we talk about our funding rounds, for this next year, a good half of the rounds, you know, or more are going to be global are going to be outside the US, I would predict that. Yeah. And on that point, I do see with the politics, the kind of shortage of people, and you know, real limits on bandwidth of US institutions, that would be k 12. And Ira, that I and the kind of economic cutbacks of companies, my bold prediction in this would be that actually investment outside the US will exceed investment in the US in seed A and B stage companies. Now on the private equity front, I do think we're going to see a raft of consolidations. And those consolidations may have global themes around consolidating long, multiple deals with vertical consolidations. So one of the other big things that I think we're going to see is actually the big dollars in more mature markets are actually going to be private equity players coming in, they have lots of money, they've borrowed some of that money that they have, they actually borrowed at the old rates. So there's an ability for them to put that money to work. And I think that there is a lot of latent value in consolidating channel and consolidating operating infrastructure. So you know, when a private equity company comes in, one way they can add value is they just cut a lot of operating costs to create cash flow for that one company. But I actually think in education, so much of the b2b value is around your sales channels that, you know, putting two or three or four companies together, I think that that is going to be a winning strategy. So expect people to be very active in the m&a. And on the global side. If you're a seed A or B Company, it's going to be tough sledding. And I would really encourage you to think global first, how might your product play on the market side? I am less bullish. I'm bearish on Europe, actually think European privacy regulations will continue to ramp up. I think this kind of era of cross border sales and marketing will be challenging. I think our you know, unicorns, like go student are going to have a lot of problems in Europe. And so I'm looking at Asia as like a really important growth market, given that buyers are very motivated, and that there's a lot of a willingness to adopt quickly and less government regulation. In my bold prediction, this would be Langham. Watch Mexico, watch Brazil, watch some people consolidating Central and South America, I think that there's a big appetite, especially on the workforce side. And as US companies offshore more aggressively during this time, you're going to see a ton of innovative companies that may be too small dollar for like big, big VC players to pay attention. But I think that there's a lot of entrepreneurial powder there, that's going to really take off. Second area that we talked a little bit about is this setback from COVID. To in person learning. I think hybrid is going to be the theme here for modality. And this idea that I show up for some classes, and I have other classes provided online, that is going to be the new normal that we go to. And I think the most accelerated places of that are going to be workforce and higher ed, last acceleration in high school and the least in you know, K eight. But I do think the idea that every high school student by the end of 2023 is thinking, which online class should I sign up for, in addition to my classes, I think that will be the norm by the end of 2023. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that this current snapping back to in, you know, real life centers, you mentioned go student, they've just acquired a series of, of in person centers, we've seen this happen in India, too, I predict that they're going to come to not be that happy with those strategies. I think that there's some sort of epiphany that I don't think the industry has quite had yet, which is that, you know, there's a reason why some learning should and could be in person and she couldn't, couldn't be online, like online, and especially mobile, which I think doesn't get enough, you know, discussion when it comes to this format kind of conversation. Mobile learning is incredibly convenient. And this generation z that is literally on their phone every moment, I just don't think people have really understood how much you can do for them if you make things mobile first. So I think you're gonna see enormous, you know, I wouldn't say investment necessarily, but realizations, at least this year, that mobile technology can deliver anytime, anywhere learning. And if it's designed really well, it can be incredibly, you know, compelling and fun. And the in person parts of learning, they really should be social, basically, you should really never be bringing students into a lecture hall at this point. I know that sounds a little kooky to some, but like, if you're going to have a hybrid learning environment, and people are going to be learning and practicing on their computers, and especially phones, when you're when you get them to come to campus, you know, for those two days a week, or you get them to come in for that semester, however the models are going to work. It has to be social, it has to be discussion based, it has to have a purpose for why you're in the room together. And it certainly is not going to be to listen to an instructor. So I think if the I think as the higher ed and workforce, especially workforce, actually because they used to have a huge amount of in person training. And if that's really sort of dried up quickly, I think as hire and workforce, really start to sort of think about these making these hybrid models work. And especially work in a sort of customer first environment where users you know, where if students have lots of options, they're going to be some innovative and interesting models of what is done online and what is done on campus or in the high school or in when you have to come to the office. And I think we're gonna see a lot of innovation in that particular space. Yeah. On the global themes. I think the third theme that I would call out is, I think that the EdTech winter continues for VC backed companies. But I do think seed and a heavy check companies will get funded well, so that includes AI, VR, AR, and companies that leverage heavy tech infrastructure to solve education related problems. That's really where VCs need to head. And VCs only work with high growth. So from a financial construct standpoint, they need like 100x return. And they can't do that with companies that are off trying to optimize for profitability and cash flow. So that's going to push them to earlier stage and heavy tech. When we're going to see some thawing is more in the BC range, where private equity, I think it's going to have a really good year in terms of coming in acquiring and rolling up companies. And so that's where you actually have a big enough business that you can do cash flow optimization and cash returns, and where you're consolidating channel. So I think it's gonna be a really, really tough year for our friends who are non technical. And for people that are in, you know, the AB kind of zone. And, you know, back in like 2012 2013 2014, we just saw this crevasse occur in startup land where it was easy to get cDNA like, especially for heavy tech products. And it was easy Earth to get C and D funding. But for those abs, they were really, really challenging. And so I just think that that golf is going to open up even more than it has now. So if you're listening stick with it. But you know, be really thoughtful about that runway extending beyond 23. If you're in that danger zone. So Ben, tell us about what's going to happen in the K 12. world, in particular over the next year. Yeah, so k 1220 23 is a pre election year for, you know, Trump Biden DeSantis Gavin Newsom, I don't know, you know, who knows what it's going to be. But it's going to be a woke versus non woke kind of political dynamic. And so I would expect that we have some surprises on how those groups think about what's right and what's wrong for education. The areas that I think have demonstrated staying power is homeschooling and micro schooling. I think that that I think we see that trend solidify. And instead of, you know, 1% of total market, I think that goes to 5% to maybe even 8% of total market. One thing we have to realize is that homeschoolers are now no longer this one way door, where I'm going homeschooling, and I'm never coming back, I think people are way more willing to take a year of doing home school or two years of doing home school coming back to the system. But I think the politics are driving that, as well as just frustration with the efficacy of the system. Tutoring, I think we are going to see our most controversial headlines in K 12 happen around tutoring companies that go belly up. And for the tutoring companies that are doing really well, you know, doing really great work, highly efficacious work, I think things will be good for them. But not great, because everybody knows that, you know, when the funding party is over, even if you're doing great work for kids, usually, it's still a real grind. The bright spot in K 12, I think, is workforce replacement solutions. And when I say replacement, I don't mean that we should replace teachers. But I think that the reality that certain verticals have clear gaps, like I believe it's Illinois and Wisconsin have a computer science requirement for high school students. And last I checked in Wisconsin, there were only eight fully credentialed computer science teachers in the state in high schools aid. So I do think that companies that figure out how to kind of provide staffing bridge solutions, that also goes for the mental health side, you know, there's just all this like, we're gonna hire up a bunch, you know, 100,000, mental health workers. Well, good, good luck finding them. I think that tech as a bridge for humans is actually a great solution set. And it also is a huge cost bucket where you can you can do real thing with that money, so optimistic about any of those roles. And then my bold prediction is that we will have two or three states that opt into a voucher model next year. So currently, Florida and Arizona offer the equivalent of vouchers, I think we're going to have a wave of states, probably 15 total, that are going to adopt vouchers as a model over the next two to three years, where if you go to a private school, the public's will pay for it. I think that that is a funding trend that will dramatically change, education, expect it to come in the red states, maybe Colorado or sunlight Mountain States where there's a liberal senator and a red, rural, but vouchers are on the rise, and that will be on the ballot in the 2024 presidential election. Those are my predictions K 12. Any comments on that before you do your higher ed ones? Those are amazing. And I think they're really, really thoughtful. I guess a question I have more than a prediction is in a world where the country continues to be so politicized and polarized around education. Do you see any curriculum providers either existing or new, growing purely to serve the sort of conservative Red State market? They say, hey, stop your contracts with McGraw and Wiley and these coastal elites work with us because we're in a, you know, we're in Alabama, do you think that that's something that can happen or is just in the red tape too much for that to even make sense? I think it's already happening. And many of those companies are going for the homeschool market first, that's red meat for some of those homeschoolers. And just to make sure we're not paying with too broad of Rush, homeschool, has like some pretty interesting factions, the number of African American families opting for homeschool, because they believe that their school systems are not serving kids are systemically racist, and not providing the job, like pathways for their kids. The homeschool reaction is not a, you know, blue or red reaction. But I do think that that is opening up channels for Christian curriculum companies, for super conservative curriculum companies around history and defining our democracy. And I think it's also opening up kind of liberal or project based or, you know, experiential. The truth is that theme that we talked about in 2022, of parents being empowered and like this new consumerism applied to education, I think this is the kind of outcome of that which is there will be more fragmentation. And in terms of the EdTech, winter, you know, many of the big curriculum companies no longer have, you know, VC or capital markets to pull from to invest in lots of new curriculum efforts. So they're largely, you know, sitting on the content that they're going to have for 2023. And so I just, I think that that's going to be more of a stalemate. And 2425, you know, depends on who's elected federally, will have a lot of say into, you know, just Common Core totally go by the wayside, or, you know, what, what ends up happening? Tell me about higher end? Yeah, so my first prediction in higher ed is that we're going to see a sort of continuation, and maybe even a rapid uptick of a trend we've begun seeing this year, which is really the combination of traditional degrees with employer based training. And that's going to happen, I think, in a few different ways. One is the fact that schools I think, are going to increasingly offer career based certifications as part of their offering at for undergraduates and even grad students and start to bring in, you know, the Googles and IBM is in into its and, you know, big company, and, you know, Salesforce and MongoDB and all these companies education, into the, into the ivory tower, you know, inside that insight onto the campus, so that students can actually graduate with, you know, multiple types of credentials. And we just saw a really interesting announcement that I think is a harbinger of things to come, where the Texas State and University of Texas systems are now offering Google certificates to everybody in the system getting, you know, a bachelor's degree, that's an enormous system. And basically, I thought this quote, really stood out. And I think it's something you're gonna see more and more of this year, pairing a bachelor's degree with a Google certificate leads to graduates who are both broadly educated, and specifically skilled, a winning combination for students and employers, that feels like a quote that, you know, we're gonna look back at the end of 2023. And say, Texas did this. And then it there's a little bit of a domino effect, where a lot of different states started pulling employer really sort of semi vocational education into their traditional, you know, bachelors offerings, you may even see and this is a little bit more controversial, but you may even see more universities starting to offer actual credit for a vocational education that happens outside their walls. We've seen the University of North Texas accept the same certificates for up to 12 college credits, we've seen outlier this year, create their degrees plus program where students get both a degree and a curse if if you get from Google or IBM or Salesforce, it's this starting to be this sort of expectation and sort of normal normalizing of the idea that the company based education will happen in college. So that's my first prediction. The second it sort of we talked a little bit about it, but it's, I'm calling it making hybrid learning sexy, right? I think that something that we have under discussed in this move to hybrid learning, quote, unquote, is that you know, there was a moment during the first few months of the pandemic where there were some really interesting things starting to happen. You're starting to see students were all off campus. They were banned from campus. Many places, and they were starting to sort of find ways to connect with each other or find offline communities or go travel and do their classes from from another country or, and I think, you know, this felt like a little bit of a pandemic era adaptation. But if you think about where colleges are at, there's enrollment crises, you know, demographic crises, hybrid learning is growing, I think one of the things that you're going to see universities do more and more of is start to take advantage of that hybrid offering and actually make the offline portion sexier and more interesting make the online portion more flexible. An example of this so like NYU already has a what they call first year away program. So their freshmen can choose to spend the first year at NYU in London, or Paris, or Florence or DC or Madrid. That's pretty cool, you know, idea. But it right now, it's they're very small programs, they're offered to people in particular schools within NYU or particular majors, the London one is just for business majors. But if you're, you know, a school that's trying to compete with others for these rare enrollments, and you say, you can take your first year from any country you want, or from our amazingly cool, you know, satellite campus in in Paris that has a dance club attached to it, like, Oh, my goodness, that's a pretty sexy offering, right. And I think you're gonna see more thinking like that start to happen, because it's there for the taking, the classes are all online, they can be all online. And I just think there's going to be some real sort of innovation around the fact that we learned that online learning is effective in large introductory classes, it can speed up graduation, it can ensure that students can get into their required classes. So especially for the first year, for higher education, I think people are going to start offering some really like cool experiences that really take advantage of the hybrid environment. The other aspect of that, that I think is important is that also allows students to work. So if you're a student in, you know, in Dallas, and you get into UCLA, maybe your first year is not in LA, maybe your first year is living in a house in Dallas of other UCLA students, you go to work during the day you do your classes at night, you still feel social you but you are paying much less you're not on campus, you know, you're getting job experience, I think there's going to be some really interesting sort of twists in the, you know, in the traditional campus experience, based on the fact that online learning is on the rise. And I don't think we've seen much of it yet. But I think we're going to see a lot more this year. And my last one, and this is a little wacky, I don't know if it's a bold prediction, or not. Some parts of it are bolder than others. But for many years, we've seen the sort of liberal arts departments of universities, you know, decline there, many fewer majors, their study after study showing they make less overall money over their careers. And you know, as the tuition has gone up, it's harder and harder to justify degrees in, in a lot of the different liberal arts, including education, by the way. And I think that, you know, universities have sort of seen this happen. And it's been another sort of slow moving train wreck over over years. But I think there are a few strategies that they've been able to do for a while. And I'm going to boldly predict that this year is a year where they're actually going to sort of they're going to jump on them. And a couple of the strategies I think they're going to do are one is this, you know, cost sharing model. We've seen this, a few people do that this year, which is like smaller colleges can borrow basically classes or departments or, you know, entire majors from larger schools, or from one you know, one school has the complement department, the next school has the French Literature Department, and neither one has the, you know, they're complementary. And if you want to do one, you take it at the other school, I think there's a lot of bandwidth there. I mean, there's a lot of room to run there. It's not the sexiest solution necessarily. But if you use technology, and sort of, there's a way to make it kind of interesting. I also think we may see, this is probably the boldest prediction because I don't know, I don't know if universities will would bite for it. But finally, a little bit of price variation based on college major, this is something that I think has been a real third rail for schools. They have not wanted to touch this for a long time. But if we know and students know that if they major in English, they're, you know, they're signing up for a half of the income of a chemical engineering or computer science major. Wouldn't it kind of makes sense that they pay something less, or they also don't need huge labs. They don't need new buildings every 10 years for chemistry, like there's a case to be made there. And I don't think it's been made very much. And I think it's that case is accelerated by the fact that we are going to see some of those same workforce replacement technologies you mentioned in in K 12. I think starting to come into the higher ed space basically reducing the cost of instruction through the use of AI. And so, you know, filling in missing instructors, you know, when needed for AI. So, you know, we've all seen artificial intelligence do some incredible things, you know, just in the last few months, I imagine, you know, that large freshman psychology class, whether it's in person or online, now it has, you know, 30 sections, and they each have a TA working with them. And it's a big undertaking, imagine if the class is online, and every section is run by a, you know, intelligent AI avatar that makes these really amazing discussion prompts. And, and they grade everybody's papers in a way that is totally reliable, you can see a lot of cost benefits of, you know, reducing the cost of delivering instruction that can come through the use of AI. And I, you know, as you mentioned, none of us want to replace teachers or adjuncts or professors. But I think the technology allows different kinds of models. And if the choice is that a school has to completely eliminate a department, which they often do, or they can offer it with, by cost sharing, or by lowering the cost of the majors and reducing the cost of instruction to match, I think maybe the, you're gonna see some people start playing with it this year, it's not going to be, you know, a huge trend, I think, this year, but I think you're gonna see some cracks in the ceiling of these models that you've sort of never seen before. What do you think, one, I would just say, like, your past, I don't know, five or six minutes feels like pure gold on where things are headed. So I'm, especially this idea that one thing that's resonating with me with what you're saying, I interpret as there's going to be content providers, and there's going to be marketplaces, and some of these content providers, and will be narrow, and others will be, you know, aggregated, some will be in person, some will be virtual, some will be hybrid. And, you know, one thing to think about is, in general marketplaces are all about, like gathering the scale. And the providers often are about gathering expertise, or like neat, or depth. And so in a way, I think what you're just talking about with higher ed is similar to workforce, which is, I think we're going to see the continued rise of aggregators. How will they be able to capture value is a big, big question, given that their role is often connecting the content providers with the learners. And this idea that, you know, from a creator, economy theme, like our content providers are quite diverse. And yet, there's a way this kind of fractionalization of learning, and this our focus on ROI, actually might open up avenues for these marketplaces to be more successful than ever, in terms of going with the workforce. I think, you know, my bold prediction is that Amazon and Walmart, and Google will launch a formal University. And I think that the Walmart one will be the most successful, because Walmart actually has like every step of the ladder, to, you know, that incentivizes the creation of a full indent University. And I believe that, you know, we're thinking about big tech players. And we're missing, you know, a huge set of players that are in retail sectors that actually deal with a huge number of our employees in our economy. But Amazon is one Watch, I will say, just given the number of employees, and why do they, you know, I love Gil's value prop of packaging up these programs. But I think we've gotten to the moment where it's flipped. And I actually think that, you know, my dystopian view of the future is, you know, we instead of allegiances to countries, we have our allegiance to like Facebook, Google, you know, Microsoft, and so on. I do think that a university system run by these corporations might actually be more effective than the university systems that we have today. And the reason why I'm putting this in the workforce bucket rather than university bucket is I think it's primarily serving people that are age 22 and above, not, you know, our typical university segment, but I think the ramifications will be incredibly huge. Meanwhile, on the workforce side, I also think that the kind of degree on the wall value is going down, and pragmatic assessment of your skills is going up. So I expect A big boom and assessment products in workforce. And what we know in K 12. And in higher ed is that these are generally the best selling products. But we have not seen that happen in workforce. So I think, you know, once you start losing these governing bodies, controlling like universities that are credentialed and controlling things, then it puts a premium on assessment of capabilities. And I think with AI, and with, you know, remote ability assessment, the cost of assessment has gone down dramatically. And then the last thing I would say is, I foresee a federal role in employment growing dramatically in the next like, 24 to 48 months. Think of like a Works Progress Administration. I think that this upskilling, this crisis, and like upskilling, where you have a number of people getting displaced in their jobs, and not having the requisite skills to meet the needs of the upcoming jobs, I think is a gap that individuals are not equipped to perform themselves. And I do think, you know, we have some friends that have been thinking about how do we create startups that leverage federal employment funds to create upskilling pathways? I don't know if that's how it's going to play out largely, I think it'll be a governmental bureaucracy. But you know, as we face real unemployment and displacement of jobs, I think that will be a big driver in workforce. The last area that we have for predictions is just what how do we think big tech? And you know, larger trends are going to play out? You know, and what are our bold predictions? Alex, what are some of the top ones that you have? Yeah, so some of these may be a little counter intuitive. So let's see what happens. I felt a little bit of cognitive dissonance, thinking about these because I've been, you know, all year covering the rise of the metaverse there, right, you know, and web three things. So I actually think what is going to happen, let's start with the crypto world. Obviously, the cryptocurrency world is in serious brand jeopardy right now, there's a lot of money being lost, there's a lot of value being lost, a lot of companies are going under rapidly, a lot of sort of formerly well known folks in the space are sort of disappearing in various ways. They're, you know, those of you who have listened, you know, people have listened to our talk about web three, this year, know that, you know, web three is intended to be a little bit broader than the concept of, you know, currency. It's really intended to be around the idea of decentralization, you know, period. And I am hoping, frankly, that one of the sort of core concepts of web three, which is this idea of education, Dows, which are decentralized, autonomous organizations survive, they, I hope they rebrand, they run as fast as they can from the crypto fallout. And they sort of rebrand as almost like, a lack of, you know, like community based or even almost a libertarian bent of education. And it's basically what an education dowel could be. And what they've been hoping that it will become, are basically groups of learners who come together, sort of band together, run their own school, they run their own university, they run their own classes, they bring in whoever they want, as educators, the ownership of the university is completely shared and decentralized. They have a lot of, you know, options of how to run it, they all the rules of the university are voted on. It's a really, you know, radical proposition in a lot of ways and sort of goes back to, you know, I don't even know Walden or something. But it's a very interesting idea. And it's something that, frankly, should not disappear, in my opinion. Just because, you know, as embankment fried goes to jail, that seems very silly. So I'm hoping that the people who really think wouldn't care a lot about web three and education, find a way to separate themselves from the chaos of crypto, and sort of restructure the ideas that they've been having about how to use education for web three, which are still nascent, even a year later, and start to, you know, think about how to bring people in without needing them to have digital wallets without them needing to buy some kind of a coin or a token, or make the token, you know, just make it feel different. Because I think, you know, especially older learners would love the idea of an education now, the idea of being able to, you know, band together with a bunch of people who are like minded and just run your own school, bring people in, as instructors, you know, just set up the whole thing. I think it's an amazing concept for older learners who don't don't have that, you know, easy access to other kinds of learning on older learners are not going to create their Metamask wallets. And that's always been the problem. So I'm hoping and somewhat predicting that education does survive the cryptocurrency winter and sort of make it through to the next year and you start to actually here are some that are that are worth joining in a really interesting. The second. So we've talked about Metaverse, there's been some interesting sort of shoutouts from the side as this year, you know, Facebook and meta, you know, Facebook slash meta has been trying to sort of own the metaverse space, you know, I think, Apple and bytedance. And, you know, the potentially Amazon, a lot of really big tech companies unity are sort of sniffing around trying to think about what the metaverse might look like, I think that you're seeing some people say, Hold on a second, you know, we did this amazing thing when we made the internet. And what we did is we made this a government project that was decentralized and not owned by anybody that had, you know, that really could sort of grow to an global, you know, literally world changing scale, without having, you know, a single Elon Musk, you know, running it to crash it into the tree, whatever he is in a bad mood. Like, I think that there's gonna be rising interest next year in the idea of a non commercial metaverse. And, you know, earlier this year, I would not have predicted this. But I think that some of the fallout and some of the sort of Emperor's New Clothes moments we're seeing with all these tech, luminaries are starting to give credence to the idea that you know if the metaverse is going to be real, maybe it shouldn't be run by any, you know, one tech company or tech leader. So rising interest and a non commercial Metaverse is my second one. And the third, and I'm calling this the bold one. But frankly, this is probably the most likely so maybe I have it upside down here is that I think artificial intelligence is really going to become like the central technology, fueling many of the ad tech startups for the next year, you mentioned this in the sort of funding landscape. But the sudden moment we've just seen in AI becoming more accessible. And that doesn't just include the generative AI, which is amazing. But it also includes things like Google's TensorFlow, and Amazon sage maker, and all of these, you know, big data, really powerful machine learning products that get better and better, that are cheap or free for people to use. And open AI, I think you're just going to see it become like a slide and everybody's deck is, here's how we're using AI. And if you don't have it, the investor is gonna say, how are you using AI? And how are you using it intelligently. And I think you're gonna see a lot of interesting things happen in the AI space, incredibly rapid and cheap, educational content creation, which may be somewhat threatening to traditional publishers, we've already seen Adobe launch, artificial intelligence, stock imagery, which is just fascinating, the ability to provide educators or learners with ways to personalize materials, so you can, you know, print out a different worksheet for every different student, and it can have their favorite, you know, animal on it, you can do that almost immediately with this kind of technologies with the generative stuff. And, you know, teachers can do this user generated content, there's going to be enormous sort of internet spawned culture of creation of just unbelievably strange new types of media of all forms. And I think they'll make their way into education, including video, I think you're gonna see AI tutors, and chatbots, just about everywhere, that I think a lot of companies are going to be competing for that space, and they'll they'll, and they'll be competing both on how funny and interesting that tutor is, and how good this tutor is actually getting the students, you know, to pass their summative assessment. So there's a lot of really cool stuff that's going to happen there. And my last one, maybe this is the boldest prediction is, you know, we've seen over the last few years, it's been sort of in the corners of a lot of the media, but the rise of certain AI based personalities. So there's like pop stars and in Japan, that are not real people. They are personalities generated entirely by artificial intelligence. They act based on an artificial intelligence. So they perform, and they but you know, in from the American standpoint, you look at them and they still look a little bit like cartoons, they don't look very realistic. They don't look, they don't really feel like real people or they're close, but not really. But the new AI that's coming out is really kind of like people that are sort of indistinguishable from real people. So I think we're gonna see a slew of sort of virtual reality celebrities next year, like people who are movie stars or who are you know, ad spokesman who are not real people. And I think that we may have our first virtual teacher celebrity, our first you know, Sal Khan in the AI world. And my guess is that's going to happen in South Korea or Japan first, where there's a huge education and AI unit infrastructure and a sort of interest in this kind of world. But I think we're going to start to see, you know, I think back to Ask Jeeves at the beginning of the internet, where you, you have this virtual Butler, and you'd ask them questions literally in question form and give your answer. I think we're going to have a website that is a person, it looks like a person. And you can ask them anything, and they know everything. And they'll answer any question and they'll give you hints about how to do your math homework, and they'll explain it to you 10 different ways. And I think it's going to be some pretty hot tech. So that's my bold prediction for 2023. Well, I'm in all your predictions yet again, these are great things to look forward to, I do feel like, you know, we're talking about evolving from like YouTube celebrities to like online learning celebrities, That one seems to me, like, total direction to go to. And if you ask my kids, you know, they probably name a couple of YouTube celebrities that David already considered to be, you know, educational celebs, I think, you know, picking up on on your themes, my I'll categorize my predictions into good, bad and ugly, on the good, I think we are finally realizing the potential of AI, as you mentioned, and the driver, I think, are both use cases, and no code interaction with, you know, AI databases. And so let's be real, like, the potential for AI is probably greater in many other industries, where it's around optimizing advertising, or using gigantic datasets to infer intelligent information or even healthcare breakthroughs. In education, the unlock has been that it's conversational AI, that many people are building these interfaces that are actually usable, and interactable, with teachers or students who have, you know, very low technical capability. And so I'm very, very excited about that. On the bad, I think that we are going to see a new era of government regulation, sweeping it. And I actually think that as much as I am bullish on Indian tech market for a long time to come, I do think that Indian and tech market is the next big regulatory shoe to drop. And just as China went totally off the rails, anyone who is looking at investing in or supporting Indian tech should be really, really engaged right now with governmental entities. Because this has the potential to be an FTAs type situation where there is a backlash and extreme swing, or a China overreaction. Instead, there should just be some rule set so that those who are doing quality work could continue to thrive, and those that are not, are not. And I think we know a number of these big Indian tech companies as they go, that will affect the regulatory environment. But I would say, you know, it is coming. And then on the ugly side, I actually think that this 2023 is the year that will have at least one ad tech investment firm shut down. And, you know, we've basically seen a proliferation over the last decade of ad tech funds and firms, and that it's not just been ad tech specific, but generalist funds and firms have been in the space. And I just think it is going to be very hard to raise a fund 3d fund for fund five for some of our ad tech VC friends. So that's not like, that's not a good thing for anybody in the ecosystem. You know, it's not good. For the entrepreneurs, it's not good for the VCs. It's not good, I think for the world, because I think we need that investment. And on the ugly side, I think the private equity firms snapping up some of that real estate also does not necessarily equate to better outcomes for kids or necessarily for entrepreneurs. Not that I think private equity firms are always the bad guy. I actually think in many ways, they're a natural part of the process. But I think we're coming to that point where we're going to have some culling of the herd, some like tightening of the screws, and so we'll see a VC players step out and we'll also see, you know, private equity step in now for bold, futuristic ideas. I believe so this theme of homeschool and micro schools, I think is like not a hockey stick growth curve. I think it is a steady climb. But I do think somebody is going to figure it out. How to build a school on a gaming or virtual platform and aggregate large numbers of people in a way that we haven't seen before. And so if you built on Roblox or you built on ClassDojo, or if you built on, you know, Facebook Metaverse, I think that there is a new school that will be launched in 2023. For k 12, probably, you know, upper elementary or middle school school that will capture our imagination and be bringing, you know, 100,000 kids in the door over a two or three year period of time, just think that that kind of thing can happen. Now, the my view of what that school is, is it's probably not a full time school. My view is that it's probably one of those schools where you can take one course, you can take your full degree, and I don't necessarily think it's Sora, or one of the other existing players, I think there's kind of a new entrance here. But I do believe that parents and kids are have an appetite, where they would say, I want to be part of that kind of a model. And then the just wrap, I would say, my message to everybody in 2023 is, you know, keep an eye on the long term. I think 2023 will, you know, if you feel like this year was up and down, I feel like we're in an era of increasing beta, which means that the amplitude of the highs and the amplitude of the lows are going to be far bigger than we've experienced in decades in the past. And I think that's across our whole lives. But I do think that as you look at that amplitude going up and down, as you look at the kind of line on a five or 10 year basis, I still think it's up into the right for Ed Tech, and for the future of learning. And I think it's just an incredibly exciting time. So to the degree that you can have your lifejacket on or buckling your seatbelt or, you know, hold on to the ride. We're in a high amplitude era, but with accelerating progress and results. Yeah, I will just one very short one to wrap us up. One thing I'm very heartened by is that we talked about all these new technologies and, you know, assessment technologies and AI and VR. And I think, you know, we're in a really interesting era where the newest technology that comes out, is used in education pretty quickly. And that wasn't always true. You know, it used to be that the newest technology was for business. It was for manufacturing, it was for science, you know, as lasers, things like that. We're in a place where a lot of the energy in the entire, you know, tech world, or at least some of the most known tech trends that are happening right now are actually relevant to the education tech world. And that's really exciting because I think that gives a lot of people the way to get in. I mean, when you mentioned that Roblox University, or Roblox school rather, you know, that seems like a pretty logical that it doesn't sound crazy at all, building the school in Minecraft, or Roblox or fortnight or anything, why not. And I mean, it's one step closer to that, that Ready Player, one dystopia on one hand, but it's also one step closer to this incredibly engaging, immersive learning on the other hand, so it's gonna be a wacky year, just like 2022 was, but stick with us. We're gonna be covering it every week trying to make sense of it. We'll check in in a year and see if you know how many of these predictions came true. But it's been an amazing journey over this entire year with you, Ben. And with all of our listeners out there, I've been hearing from some of our listeners that they're really excited about, you know, all the coverage we've been doing and all the guests we've been bringing on. And we're just going to try to ramp it up and make it even more relevant, even more interesting for everybody here. So please, you know, reach out, we're going to start adding some chat functionality to our substack newsletter soon and more channels to feed back to us. And we're really excited to sort of engage with more and more review over the coming year. Thank you, everyone. Thanks for listening to this episode of edtech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more edtech insider subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.