On this Week in Edtech:
On this Week in Edtech:
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. Hi, everybody, it is the weekend ed tech. I'm your host, Ben Cornell, along with my co host, Alex Sarlin. We're so excited to have you here today. It is January 20. Only a few days from your birthday and my birthday, Alex. And we have a lot to celebrate. And a lot going on in both the world and with podcasts. Tell us what's going on with tech insiders and then also like, what's going on in the world today? Yeah, I mean, on the interview side of the podcast, we have a great interview coming up with Vadim Polikoff from Legends of learning, giant game based education platform, as well as with Laurel Taylor, who does candidly a student debt platform, which is obviously really relevant right now and talking about some of the changes in the US debt system is really interesting stuff. But what's happening in the news so much, I mean, what we're going to be covering today, it's going to include bans on chat GBT bans on Tik Tok schools kind of panicking over the new tech there. Reed Hastings checking in on the ed tech world and then stepping away from Netflix. There's so much going on in big tech witness some VR stories that are happening right now, including some some big funding rounds. And then we wanted to cover our, you know, friends of the pod transcend network, they put together some really amazing predictions for this year. So we wanted to work through those as well and make sure we were giving them you know, their props where they're due. Then why don't you kick off? Where should we start? I mean, I will just say also on top of that, we've got college closures. We've got five Jews doing in person, tons of motion in K 12. Around project unicorn and this unified orientation around interoperability. Biden administration is doing a bunch of community schools as well as the debt is in the student debt is still TBD, Florida banning AP African American Studies, it is just like, I don't know if we can do the weekend attack anymore. We're gonna have to do the day in edtech. But that first story, which is really AI chat, GBT also tick tock this kind of reactionary moment we have with education organizations from K 12 to higher ed banning the use of tools. First and foremost, there's an article in Forbes and it talks about chat, GBT and AI will fuel the new edtech boom. So there's a lot of optimism in the space. And we've shared that optimism with all of you listeners, I think in November, we were like geeking, out over chat GPT. And yet, at the same time, we're seeing Seattle, LA, New York, DC, Alabama, banning chat GPT, we also see quite a few higher ed organizations banning tick tock, along with us concerns around tick tock, I think they're somewhat different items, and somewhat the same, which is really how our education systems going to orient towards these new technologies. And of course, in our little bubble, we're hearing lots of, hey, this is the future schools and school systems should adapt. But outside of our bubble is very clear that school administrators and systems are saying this is not okay, this is not allowed. And you're hearing all of this play out? What's your take? And how do you think this is going to evolve in the next few months? It's so interesting to watch all these school systems and some higher ed systems just see this new technology coming. And rather than sort of look inward, start to really just panic. There was a really interesting article in The New York Times this week about how some universities are really starting to think about in in the face of chat GPT maybe they should teach differently. Maybe they shouldn't ask questions, like summarize this paper in three pages, because they know that kids are going to do it on chat GPT and that actually might be a very good thing. I mean, most of the learning designers I've connected with are like this is great for schooling, because it's going to make people get out of those lazy habits of asking people to do very low level thinking that really can be outsourced. It could already be kind of outsourced to Google or Wikipedia, and now it's going to be outsourced to chat JpT We have a great guest later in the podcast, Matteo Elvira from Elvira media, and we're gonna ask him about his take on chat GPT because he does marketing. And he thinks that, you know, AI and chat GPT are really valuable for all sorts of jobs, including marketing. I mean, I'm incredibly bullish on these tools, I don't think I think it's such a silly reaction for schools to see this come out. And within weeks of it coming out, literally just shut it down. It just shows they don't understand it, they don't want to deal with it, they don't feel like they have the speed at which to change or sort of pivot, and just see it as a pure risk to their current models, which is just I think it said, there's also, you know, an interesting story about a senior at Princeton University named Edward John, who has already built an app called GPT. Zero to detect whether text is written by Chet GPT. And it's obviously trying to get ahead of this plagiarism fear in in academia and also in K 12. I think this is so silly. I personally, I don't know. I mean, it reminds me of when cell phones first came out in schools and schools initial reaction was just okay, we are not going to let these kids bring them to school. We're gonna put them in a locker, we're gonna put them in a bag. We you know, if we catch a kid with a cell phone at school, we're gonna confiscate it till the end of the week. I am wondering, you know, when COVID hit, we thought, Ah, this is the leverage point where things will all change. And then, you know, last year, maybe to a smaller degree, it was like Metaverse, and you know, the web three, like teaching and learning is going to change. Clearly. It was a snap back to reality. And I would say Metaverse right now is like on a slow simmer, quits like, this is not going to be the kind of overnight catalytic change. And I think there's, you know, where, where I was in November, December with my chat GPT experience, it felt like one of those iPhone moments where you're like, well, this, I've known about AI. But the use case now is so clear and prevalent. And as Matteo will probably talk about, you know, marketing, like anything that has to do with communications is going to be much easier. Do you think that this is going to be this catalytic change where those schools and institutions that understand how to lean into transforming the learning experience will win and thrive? And those that don't want? Or is this actually the same story just yet again, possibility averted by our systems doing things the same old way they've always done? I think that's, you probably will know my response to that, which is I'm going to take the over on that which, you know, that famous quote from Bill Gates about, you know, you overestimate how fast things will change in the short term and underestimate how fast they'll change in the long term. I think that really applies here. I mean, these schools, let's put it this way, when schools and students start getting in technological wars, you always bet on the students always. And when the the schools that are trying to bedpan ban Chachi BTW, I mean, Seattle banded on all school devices, that means all devices in the Wi Fi at school, and probably any device that kids are bringing home that our school issued, but kids have their own devices, they're gonna go to Chad JpT to do their homework, they're gonna they're already doing it. It's a such a performative Act, to pretend that you know that you can actually stop kids who are totally digital native from using the coolest, most cutting edge technology. So I think schools will throw a big panicky fit and turn it in will introduce an AI tool, and there'll be all sorts of nonsense to try to shut this down. And then within three years, it'll be completely accepted as part of the education system and people will start to change now, will they really improve their learning design that much? Will they really completely rethink every assignment? No, they probably won't. But I think it'll be the beginning of a reevaluation of change, just the way that Google was, I mean, years ago, homework was would say, hey, find out this answer. This is your homework, find out the PDF and look it up or Yeah, like learning the codes in the library, the Library of Congress codes to figure out which subject that you know, I will say, this to me feels different compared to COVID, which was an externality and Metaverse, which is really like a container or construct. This is a capability. And AI is a capability unlocked has a couple of huge implications. One, in any kind of arms race on technology, the rate of change is just going up exponentially fast, and we don't need a lecture on it. Moore's Law to understand that, but we're, there's visceral experience in the education sector now of Moore's law, where just three months from now, a year from now should open AI decide to keep things open and spreading it, or should someone else we're going to see leaps forward in this the capabilities here. And just as there will be monitoring and policing software, there's going to be infinite amounts of workaround software's. I will also say, exactly, the big difference here is that the next, so on AI, there's hard tech, and they're soft tech, hard tech is building the AI systems, super expensive, heavy compute required. Gotta have a lot of technical expertise. And there's no doubt going to be a small number of big, big winners in that space. But on the soft tech side, your ability with a three person team or one person team or a five person team, to create an application, that is totally capability wise, game changing, you've just really brought down the barrier. And so we will unleash the like swarm, like the negative would be like, it's a swarm of bees, and you're going to be whacking in the air. But there's no way you're going to be able to stop swarm is basically I think, this rising tide that's going to lift all boats, my biggest concern is that these vans let and let's look at LA, New York, DC, who do these districts serve, they serve low income kids, they're the ones who are going to get the bands and not learn dynamically how to integrate these new tools and technologies into their capabilities. Notice that we're not talking about Exeter and Andover blocking Chet GPT, they're probably already having a Socratic seminar on, like, ethical use of AI in extending human life. And we have institutions that are dynamic, because they, they're responsive to the needs of learners and parents. And then we have institutions that are not dynamic, because they're responsive to political employment, and like, you know, civic dynamics that are not about empowering kids. And so I would just say, for those equity warriors out there who think chat, GBT is not an issue I care about it should be. Because if your kid as a fourth grade, or fifth grade, or sixth grader isn't learning how AI works, and how to activate it, how to leverage it to get your job, or career or do your creative video, or whatever it may be, you are creating a new technological divide. And we just got computers and internet connectivity to everyone. So like, why recreate the divide now, and so I'm just like, you know, facepalm moment, I totally agree. That was that was a really great analysis. And I love that tie between the aim and the sort of equity. I totally agree. Just one last point. And then we'll move to our next story, which is really interesting, which is about I just had the opportunity to interview Ken Catan Frisch, from work era. And he talked very eloquently about exactly the dynamic you just said, where you know, he's like, Chachi, PT is about to have API's. And then people can use it in any context, but they can limit it to use, they can constrain it, they can tailor it to whatever it's gotta be, and they'll be used for every different use case. And that mirrors what we've seen in AI for the last 15 years where these tools become, they go from being super specialized, you know, hard tech to soft tech, usually to API's, which then can be called by people who don't have that level of expertise. And then they can use, you know, Amazon's or Google's or, you know, incredibly high level AI in their particular context. And this is coming very fast. This year, we're gonna see hundreds of companies in education and elsewhere, doing exactly that. Both of those are on the train of this is a legit game changer. I will also say, you know, that I think a lot about the staffing shortages. It's a recurring topic. We need futurists, in our schools and universities as the educators, it's like Gone are the days where you have somebody who's never worked outside of the school building, and never understood industry, who is like fearful of technology or turning on the computer or any of that stuff, which by the way, like lots of love to Mrs. Kurtz and all the great teachers I had, who were like classic old school, there's so much value there. But we need to find that right blend between, like core pedagogy that works. And people in the building and it doesn't have to be all educators. It does. It could be one person it could be but we need a mix of people that are thinking about where things are going in the future because the pace of changes is so fast that even kids learning about this stuff knowing that in five years, it all be irrelevant anyways, it will create the kind of citizens of the future that can thrive in a dynamic environment. Speaking of dynamic environment, tell us about what's going on in big tech, and how it relates to our tech winter. It is really interesting. So, you know, we've noted on podcasts over the last few months, I guess, that Tech has been big tech and technology world in the US especially has been going through a massive shift. There's been over 150,000 layoffs in big tech in 2022. But a couple of the really, really big companies were not yet doing it, they were sort of holding out, they weren't following this sort of bandwagon and moving towards profitability, and bosses them as some some reporters call it this week, we saw a couple of big dominoes fall, we saw layoffs from Microsoft, in the 10s of that, you know, 10,000 plus. And we saw Google layoffs in multiple 1000s. And, you know, these are enormous companies. So both of their layoffs are not a huge percentage of the workforce. I was kind of hoping that some of the really, really big tech companies would not just follow this slimmed down approach, which I think is like a fad. Frankly, I don't think it's really like based on any logic, it's just fear of the future and recession, and people are just freaking out. But we see Google and Microsoft shutting things down. And as listening to the fog, no, Google, Microsoft, or two of the companies that are that are really have a lot of power in in education. And of course, the education, portions of their businesses are not their most money making portions, you're, you're not, you're gonna you're gonna let go of people on education rather than on Xbox or, you know, ad sales. So I think it's going to be a little bit of a break on what's already in a tech winter. That said, we may flip that around. And we'll talk later in the pot about how maybe these layoffs are actually going to create a whole generation of entrepreneurs with great tech experience that made me want to do something really good for the world like education. I always love your positive spin on the upside potential. Yeah. This I'm borrowing from our friend Alberto, I had not thought of layoffs as being a boon, but he had a good take. And I want to borrow his optimism. You know, the other big tech story this week is that Minerva University, and the Minerva Project received a $20 million donation, specifically from Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, who has been a champion of Minerva in the past, that's a big, you know, donation, and it's going to really help them sustain both the University and grow the project where they support other colleges in you know, in sort of innovating and moving to new models. So that's really a nice thing for edtech. At the same time, we saw Reed Hastings step down as the CEO of Netflix, which is huge news. In the tech world, He is the I believe the founder of Netflix has been there for ever, and has really been the sort of visionary driving force behind the company. So this is fresh off the presses, I have not read a whole lot of hot takes on it, but I think it's going to happen because that is a that's a big deal. And Netflix is, you know, a company that's redefined a lot of things in tech. So that's our sort of big tech Roundup, what do you think about these stories, Ben, a couple heartaches from me. And of course, you know, I think smarter people will weigh in on all of this. But, you know, Netflix is both a tech company and a media company. And we're basically seeing a tech winter and immediate winter. And I think the media winter is far worse, because advertising revenue is not, you know, going to replace subscription revenue. So you basically had these like large cable companies who had huge businesses with massive margins. And that was traded off for streaming, which was very high revenue growth from the subscription standpoint, but negative margins. And the idea was that eventually that can convert to profitability. And then the subscription bottom has fallen out. And now the ads business, they're coming back to it. And it's way, way lower, because Google and other online search have taken over. Meanwhile, you know, short form video creator video on tick tock, and you too, are eating everybody's lunch. So it's, it's a really dark time over on the media side. You know, anybody who's thinking about revenue is really worried. And anybody who's on the kind of high budget long form content side is worried about, you know, budgets going to cut on the big tech side. I have a little bit of a different take than you. I think that these big tech companies have had massive blow. I mean, just trying to get a meeting with Google. You got to talk to 15 people and it takes like six months. I know people have been hiring processes with Google for over a year. It's just, you know, the charm of, you know, we have cafeterias and we'll do your laundry here and look at us where the fun hats like, that doesn't get you very far today. And on top of it, they've tracted a bunch of people who have kind of gravitated towards the safety, security, high comp, you know, soft, you know, circumstances. And I have no doubt that there are just an I personally know, people who are really hardcore, who work hard and are delivering great value in companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Microsoft, and so on. But I also know that they often are aware of, you know, the 50 people they have to go through to get just a simple initiative passed. So I really hope, you know, Silicon Valley kind of does this, you know, HP was like the Darling, long ago, and whatever company it is, you know, Apple has been surprisingly enduring, but whatever company it is, they kind of have their moment, and then they kind of have a downfall as they get too big for their britches. And I would just say, I really am impressed with Microsoft, I would have bet on them being like an old technology that's, you know, old technology company, that's going to be out of things. But you know, when such as a CEO first arrived, he made a bunch of cuts, that was like a decade ago, he's making other cuts now. And they've made the big bet. And overnight AI, they're kind of emerging from this as a much stronger player. Okay. And then third take is, I've been screaming from the top of my lungs, Google is the biggest ad tech company in the world, like, look at these big tech companies coming into the learning space. And I've largely been an advocate for entrepreneurs who end up getting their businesses crushed by this free thing that never has to make money, because it's a user acquisition tool. It's not getting the kind of investment or intention from these big companies. And I think now we're going to, you know, we're starting to see who's getting laid off. And we're starting to see the companies are cutting their education, sides and investments. And that will have a lot of near term negative effect for students, for schools that are relying on these products and services. But it could also have an revitalizing effect for ad tech entrepreneur community, because we really care about this. And we're really investing in solutions that cater to the needs of users. And so having some of the big tech, and also generalists we VC capital out of our space might actually help us get reset and back on a good track. So it may be we kind of had a tech winter early, we were heading on the front end, because COVID kind of crashed down on us, like post COVID crashed down on its first. But maybe there's an opportunity that we kind of come out of winter to spring sooner than the big tech companies. So, you know, a little bit of optimism is actually as like a that there's a silver lining it was the afterwards. Yeah, I don't think these employees are going to all go to Ed Tech. Unfortunately, I think when you get laid off, you look for stability. And that's just not something that we tend to offer in the ed tech startup community or in school systems or in universities these days. Yes, but where are they gonna go? I mean, Stripe chime, like everybody did. laughs I mean, part of why I think there's a little bit of a fad nature to this is that the entire tech industry is doing it at exactly the same time. You know, it'd be one thing if Microsoft laid off 10,000 people, Google picked up 3000 of them, but that's not what's happening. They're all like, oh, we just got the they called permission structure, right? In politics. We just got the permission to laugh 10,000 people and not look like jerks. So they're doing it. That's how I feel. Yeah, I agree with that. And they probably shouldn't hired all the people that they hired in three years as well. Both can be true. So next up, we talk about big tech, we're excited about, you know, the opportunities in in AI. But VR has been a little bit of a divisive concept. Some people say VR is going to transform experiential learning. Others say it does harm to kids because it rewires their brain or it undermines the efficacy of real teaching and learning in exchange for gain base. I think we are on the verge of some really exciting VR developments in our space and two announcements this week. dreamscape learn, raise 20 million in funding from a host of folks including Deb Collazo joining the board. She's the kind of lead at GSB and then joyful math from prisms, we are going to the meta store. We announced previously that Andreessen Horowitz had invested in their latest round. So is this actually a moment where VR is on the rise? You've been following this pretty closely. Both VR and metaverse. What's your take? I think that these two announcements are interesting in tandem, because they actually have pretty different versions of VR. dreamscape learn is coming out of entertainment style VR, it's extremely high fidelity, story based narrative, immersive, they have this alien zoo product, and then they're making an educational version of it. It's really sort of going for the, the real wow factor. And then prisoners VR is going for the real school use factor. It's standards aligned, it's aligned to grades, you know, eight to 12. It's designed for both school and home use. It's trying to, you know, align itself to actually be usable in a school district, you know, capacity. Obviously, dreamscape learned wants that as well. But that's sort of the goal of the prisons. We are pushed right now the launch and the look of it is a little clunkier. I mean, just from what I've seen so far, it's it looks a little less polished than what you see from a dreamscape. And so it's two different versions of VR. And I find that interesting, because I think that that schism is sort of part of what has kept VR from sort of blowing up, you know, up till now, I think there's like, there's unpredictability of what you're going to get when you get into a VR experience, a lot of people have never done it at all. And the people who have sometimes it's mind blowing, and sometimes it's a little underwhelming, and I think it keeps the whole field from sort of being accepted as something that's like that, where there's a real there there. I'm, you know, mildly bullish on VR, but only if the sort of companies that are both these education companies, and the companies that make the headsets really get a little wiser about making sure that people know what to expect and know why they would go to VR because it's, it's not something you know, you have to invest in it on purpose. Unlike something like Chad GBT, where it's just gonna wash over everybody, you know, you have to decide to go into VR, and they just really need to make it clear what the upsides of that are and why it's worth the money. I think. I think both of these are trying to do it, but in different ways. One is saying, teach those math concepts, get people to actually be engaged, get them to, you know, prisons talks about a 10% increase in outcomes due to their product. That's really exciting, you know, for schools, and then dreamscape is like you're gonna blow these kids minds. And that can be that can be an upside to. So I'm bullish, but I think that the field is still very fragmented, it doesn't have a sort of a unified stance on what VR in education is. And I think that's actually holding Yeah, such a great and nuanced take. And I think your point around, you know, is highly produced content going to be winning? Or is like scrap your content with maybe more quantity or more like, you know, bite size components, is that going to win or could both. And by the way, we shot to clarify dreamscape is going after more, it looks more like higher ed. They're partnered with ASU Arizona State, whereas joyful math is really going for a middle and high school. So there also might be some market variances there. I think the themes, some takeaways and lessons learned. One is that for VR to work in the education context, there's got to be an in headset experience coupled with an out of headset experience. And what I liked about both these companies, I also demoed lighthouse, I've looked at a couple other VR experiences, as people are starting to realize that if you get a great experiential anchor in the headset for 1520 minutes, that then is supported by curriculum that uses the data that has kids do like off VR analysis, and often teamwork, group projects, things like that you actually are creating the container where the VR is but a vehicle for the learning. Second, I'd say we're learning that the kind of retention of experiences in VR headsets, it's just way higher than the retention through video or through reading. And so the outcomes show that that anchor experience creates learning retention over time. And so often in our like test score oriented world, we learn something we're tested on it, we forget. And what's great about these VR experiences is that people are creating longer retention and more building blocks. And then the third thing I'd say is like, I think the use cases in math and science are are proving to be stronger right now than the use cases in history and English and you know, Humanities areas. Not that good science doesn't incorporate great writing or those skill sets for math as well. But the idea in science that you would have a lab and you'd have an anchor experience and then you would do work based off of that pedagogically, it's just VR is very good fit there. And on the math side, what we understand is that kids learn math with different modalities. And so this as like an engaging interactive modality really appeals but you know, often go back to the old school Samer framework, if we're just doing substitution, we're not really aware, you know, I might write it on a piece of paper. And then I learned, you know, I just do typing on a computer that's not transformational. It's really when we reimagine the learning. And we're at the highest phases of Samer, where you know, kids who would never have access to a genetics module with flowers, or maybe to understand genetics would normally take you six months of experiments. And you can do it now. 15 minutes, that kind of transformational learning. I think that's where the impact is. And I'm excited to see both of these I had the opportunity to go down to Culver City and demo dreamscape and meet their team and, and I even took my kids in New Jersey, they have a site where they got to ride the how you train your dragons for items. I mean, it was great, and it was memorable for the kids. And with prison. I've also been able to do you know, it's like really hands on application of core math concepts like slope. And I do think there's, they're there for these folks. All right, we are on to our last topic. Alex is one of our hottest episodes ever was our predictions episode. And then we brought on guests to do predictions. And then there's like the meta predictions. I've seen a bunch of great LinkedIn where they're like, here's five or six prediction, like articles you should read, one that stood out was Luis Alberto, at transcend. Talk to us about that. So Alberto, Aaron, Aza and his partner, Michael, from transcend, keep a really sharp eye on the tech landscape, they have a great newsletter, and I've really watched it for a long time. And they came out with their newsletter about predictions a little bit after, you know, some of the others, but it was really good. It was a really thoughtful, you know, analysis of some of the trends that we're seeing in the landscape along with some, like, some boldness, some ideas of like, hey, maybe this will go in this direction, it could be really interesting. So I just wanted to give them that shout out and maybe just quickly run through their predictions, because I think they're really worth thinking about for everybody here. And of course, please go read the original article on the Transcend substack. But you know, so basically, they say, look, mergers and acquisitions are back startup, mergers and acquisitions are back in at Tech. We've talked about that a lot on the show, and they're actually a bunch of acquisitions even this week. But it's going to be bigger and bigger as companies run out of runway and others, you know, scoop them up sometimes as Aqua hires very strong prediction, I think they said we're gonna see 70 Plus US college closures this year. Really interesting. And there's, you know, there's a Hechinger Report article just this week about how colleges are getting really nervous about the enrollment situation, and some are really facing closure. And I think, you know, they're basically looking at the writing on the wall and saying, I don't see them pulling back in the short term. There's still a lot of headwinds, demographic ROI headwinds, a lot of things that are going to make some colleges shut down. They're saying that I love this phrase. 2023 is the year of boring ed tech. And by borrowing in tech, they mean, kind of old fashioned attacks, often selling to to school districts with long cycles, or, you know, infrastructure or LMSs, or, you know, big b2b partnerships and a little less of the sort of flashiness of the year we saw, you know, Duolingo go public and Udemy go public, and all these sort of consumer styles just pop up, I'll pass the rest of you bed. But fourth is they predict that Ed Tech funding will be the same in 2023 as 2022, which is an interesting prediction, because you know, the EdTech funding in 2021 was about $20 billion worldwide, and about 10 In the US, and in 2022 is 10 billion worldwide with about 5.5 or so I think 5.7 In the US, so it's half as much last year as the year before and they're saying it's going to study out there. And it's hard even to know if that's sort of a positive or negative prediction. But they're basically saying they don't see any events coming that are going to either shock the tech world again, like what we saw in China or blow it right back up, like we've seen with the pandemic for completion say you know, number five, they say we'll see a rise in AI copilot tools the per my comment earlier, this hard tech versus soft tech in AI. I think soft tech is incredibly exciting because people have figured out the hard tech AI. Now we're going to see a bunch of copilot tools. Number six layoffs will unlock a new wave of entrepreneurial talent. Alex, you're more bullish on that I'm a little bit more skeptical. I think the big tech layoffs, it's hard to see a tech, being able to attract the talent that are leaving, leaving big tech, I think that a lot of those folks are going back to big tech, healthcare, climate, you know, more established industries without the friction that we have right now in edtech. And number seven, the year we rethink exams, what I liked about the year, we think, exams is one, the ability to cheat on exams that we have now is just very high. Number two confidence in exams and the validity of their outcomes, especially through an equity lens has just had like a steady drumbeat of reduced confidence over time. And number three is we have a bunch of new tools that create the potential for instant assessment. So as we think about the layers of assessment, it's generally been student is assessed by teacher. But now we can have student is assessed by AI student is assessed by peer student is assessed by a teacher. And if we think of that as a pyramid, the teacher can be at the highest value point of that pyramid. Whereas you can push down to the lower and instant in the timeliness of the assessment on down that pyramid. For me, the one that I am most skeptical about is startup m&a is back, I do think we're going to see a lot of m&a. I also think that the companies that are eligible to acquire other companies also are struggling with capital. And so I'm seeing some private equity activity here and some VC fueled mergers and acquisitions. But if the fundamentals of a company are negative EBIT, da, I don't see that company getting acquired as easily. And if it is positive, EBIT, da, I would tell them don't sell now, your positive EBIT, da, like you control your future, wait two years. So I think it's going to be a little bit more of the freeze that we see in housing market. You know, those who are desperate to sell will have a hard time finding buyers, those that are in a good spot will say, I'm gonna wait this one out. The boring ed tech one is interesting to me. The sad part of boring and tech is when we talk about the need for transformational teaching and learning experiences. This is basically like don't get your hopes set on, you know, systems radically transforming. People are tired, they're burned out, and they need to retain their people. And I think that that's a bummer, but probably true. And then on the boring and tech side, I wander around boring tech, which could be like schedulers, or services or things like that, if this is the year of boring tech, which may very well be who does that benefit the best. And it's likely the private equity firms that we talked about, on the last call, who basically bought up all the boring tech products from, you know, infrastructure systems, learning management systems, so on. So is this like, Renaissance Learning finally, like, you know, getting to a place where their portfolios reaching peak value? What were the one or two that really stood out for you? I liked the Rethinking zams One, because I think that, you know, it speaks to the conversation we had earlier where, you know, in the face of technological change, do the systems adapt? Or do they locked down and sort of act, you know, small c conservative and try to keep their current try to just like sort of wall off external pieces. And I think that the type of exam software that they talk about in this prediction article is the type where that is trying to sort of step in to that exam moment and try to maintain some semblance of integrity via via various types of mechanisms. But without, you know, it being big brother ish, or, you know, hyper, hyper, mega proctored or, you know, locked down or biometric or things like that. I like that approach. And I think that there's, I hope that there's an actual deeper rethinking of exams, the thing that I always advocate for, I think you've heard it a lot of times your bet is, exams should be exactly like the thing you're trying to learn. They should be as authentic as possible, and we just don't do that very much. But if that doesn't come to pass, at least, maybe there can be some solutions that allow the Wikipedias and Google's and chat TPTs to start to, you know, to be usable, but not to totally compromise the integrity For a variety of different ways, and you know, I think it's it's on us as at Tech integrity is something I really can not often get my mind around. It's not my favorite topic, but there are a lot of people in tech who really thrive on it. And I think it's a really interesting moment to think about what an exam could and should look like. So I liked that one a lot. And I love the AI copilot tools. For all the reasons we've already said, I think, you know, the ability to take these complicated systems and then, through an API, create a really targeted solution that actually helps people in their day to day work or learning. Really, really exciting. Well, we will see how these play out. You know, one thing we should do, Alex is probably have Alberto Come on, as part of our reflections podcasts next year, and we can go back over this exact list, I think that would be really fun. I'm gonna pass the ball to you to do our rundown of both fundraisers and mergers and activities. We also want to see you out at one of our community events. On February 2, we have an edtech summit in the Bay Area, and February 15. We have an event in Boston. So if you're listening to this now, and you want to go to either of those events, please reach out to us on LinkedIn or message us directly. We'd love to have you there. All right, taking us off to m&a land, Alex, so for our funding and m&a this week, number of different interesting deals. So the biggest funding round we saw was for hack the box $55 million funding round all about cybersecurity professionals. That's a really specific but really important and fast growing area of ed tech. So $55 million for half hack the box. We saw Sana labs now is called sauna out of Stockholm raised $34 million. That's a LMS that uses generative AI and other interesting tools to really try to redefine what in house learning looks like. And they've been around for a while always focused on AI. So now they're moving into generative ai $34 million for Santa. As we mentioned earlier dreamscape learn, which is sort of a collaboration between ASU and dreamscape, which creates these amazing virtual reality experiences raise $20 million to really accelerate there. We saw work India raised 12 million out of Bangalore to look for what they're calling gray color talent, that sort of mid level talent call centers door to door sales is the ability to help companies find hires really quickly. It's borderline ed tech, but I think you can count there. It's sort of a work platform. And we saw a company called supermom raise $6 million out of Singapore. That's a community platform for parents. And basically, as you know, collects parent data, you know, voluntarily in exchange for all sorts of community access. And we saw equal chair, which is an assessment based company, it's about hiring assessment. So workforce space raise $2.7 million out of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. On the merger side, we saw a number of different mergers we saw noodle, acquire humble Studios, which is South Africa based media company. We saw seven mindsets, acquire base education. This is a mindsets based learning and wellbeing solution. That's what seven mindsets is buying a SEL and mental health platform. So you can see the sort of synergy there. It makes sense in the SEL and mental health space. We saw 95% Group, which is a tech portfolio company of Leeds Equity Partners via a reading achievement platform called Hill reading achievement platform. And finally, we saw the Swedish company Albert acquire French ad tech company, holy ally, which does language learning. For our deep dive guests today. We have Matteo Elvira. He's the founder and chief passion Officer of Elvira media, which does an edtech marketing specifically for the ad tech industry, including content and video marketing. Matteo, welcome to the pod. Nice. Thank you so much as a podcaster. Myself, it's always great to be on the other end of the mic. Appreciate you guys having me on the show. Yeah, it's really great to have you here. So you specialize in ed tech marketing. Tell us about how you got into that niche and how ad tech companies should sort of think about their marketing spin. Absolutely. Great question. I know it's super niche, right? Like, you don't really see that many people focusing on ad tech marketing. And I think that's kind of why I'm I'm diving into this niche specifically. So my background before building this agency, I was actually an SDR in ad tech. And what I started to realize that these principles, these superintendents, they get bombarded with outbound outreach. I mean, I've talked to principals specifically and they probably get 10 to 15 Outbound emails, a day solicitations. And at that point, like I really wanted to figure out a better way To, you know, engage with admins, educators, superintendents, and I started to fall into more of the digital marketing digital media stuff. And then through that kind of experience, I realized, hey, there's a huge gap here, you know, there's gotta be a better way to get in front of these, like mission driven educators with the right story with the right narrative with the right content. And so I spent the past three years trying to figure out these problems help ed tech startups grow and, and just build that brand awareness that's, like, so important to their, to their growth and success as a startup. And so I've been trying to solve that problem and help, you know, at tech startups come to the modern age, the digital age with content marketing. So that's really the goal. And then using video, of course, as like a big driver for that. So what you say totally resonates, I feel like we have reached saturation point on so many levels. I think, you know, 1020 years ago, a successful email campaign could get the kind of open rate and conversion that you needed, whether it was trying to convert a educator to a user or administrator to get to demo, and really set up your sales team with, you know, MQLs, marketing qualified leads. And we now are seeing a big, big shift of what's successful to more brand related marketing, as well as marketing that helps people drive referrals and virality. It's almost like no one will take the direct outreach seriously. But if it's someone down the hall or someone, you know, on social media that they trust that's going to, you know, the influencer is really going to have power. How do you see in terms of that shift? How do you see organizations in edtech that have been successful? What's the playbook? How do they think about that marketing arm working in concert with their sales team? I mean, if you look at ad tech, right, it's a community. It's not like a traditional b2b SaaS environment. You're trying to get this product in the hands of an educator or a student. And so there has to be a story. There has to be some emotion there. It has to convict something that isn't just purely transactional. And I think that's where the marketing and the storytelling comes into play. You look at startups like Scola out there. Scola is like an admission marketing tool for K 12. They are active on Tik Tok Instagram reels YouTube, they're visiting schools, they're making videos about it. They're building a community around their users. And they're turning their brand into a media company. And when most startups, especially at tech startups aren't even on social media period. There's just a huge competitive advantage to being active on those platforms. But doing it in a right way, where you're building a community, you're telling stories, you're not just pitching and advertising to take a demo. Again, you were selling to educators, these are mission driven people. They want to hear success stories, they want to hear those stories, they want to hear underrepresented populations, finding success, and marketing is that storytelling tool to convey those results to convey that ROI to convey that impact, more than any cold email could ever possibly do. What about Field Marketing and convention spaces? I mean, I was at SD and the ratio of booths and people manning the booths to the people actually going around on the convention floor is like one to one. And I was like, Oh my gosh, the spend on these booths versus the ROI in terms of converting, it's really hard to imagine at the same time, maybe there's some brand building where people just getting awareness, do you feel like, you know, the classic, go to a conference get a booth? Is that dead? Or is that still a vital tool for organizations and their marketing? Yeah, I mean, I think if I put on my sales hat right now, I think, you know, when you meet someone in person, and you build rapport with someone like that, that helps from a sale side. Now, if you're just going to sell it just go to these events and pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch pitch, there's only so much people will take from that right. And so I think I'm actually going to be dropping an article on LinkedIn. But I think you know, these in person events are also a great way to capture content that can be used far beyond the event, right? So if you're running a booth and a couple of your existing customers come up to your booth and you know, they're happy to see they have a lot of positive things to say, you know, what it hurt to have a videographer there that sort of capture that and capture their testimonials and to capture their energy and their excitement when they see that? That ad tech brand that they've been a loyal customer to so I look at it from like a content perspective, right? Like this is an area a place where we can all meet Get some really good content. But to your point, like they're also really expensive to attend. And so you really have to weigh out the cost benefit of like, we're spending this, what's the ROI from that? So I think if you add like a content piece to it, or you're capturing content, while you're out there, in addition to building these partnerships, that's kind of where the snowball effect takes place. But I mean, they're expensive, right? Like, how many ad tech startups could actually afford to go out and get a booth? I mean, that's 1000s and 1000s of dollars that you might be able to use elsewhere. Right. So yeah, and I think there's a degree to which, like, are you presenting at the conference? And, you know, being a thought leader in this space, then are you I love this idea that the booth is not the output, the booth is actually the funnel to get to drive input and content? I think that's a great point. Alex, what what questions are coming up for you? What it makes me think of, you know, you're mentioning tick tock Instagram reels, all of these really, you know, relatively new social media platforms as a as a model for edtech companies to reach their users. I think that's fascinating. And I'm curious if which types of users are reached through those I always think of tick tock is something that would maybe reach the students reach where young people, but are you seeing teachers or administrators or principals or, you know, higher ed professionals finding content through new media, like tick tock? Yeah, you know, that's one of the biggest misconceptions about tick tock is it's just Gen Z and millennials, when in fact, let me give you an example. My mom, she's a retired elementary school teacher for 30 years, she spends an ungodly amount of time on tick tock, and I could only imagine how many other retired teachers or principals are that older demographic that enjoys the content on there, because it is good content, right. And so I think a marketers and founders really need to wake up to see, hey, there's reach on here, there's eyeballs on here. And it's not just, you know, kids dancing or twerking, right? Like, there's a lot of edtech brands on there. There's just a lot of teachers on there, right? There's a lot of students on there. So if you think about how do I build a community? How can I get in front of, you know, teachers, students, it's a great place as a as an advertiser to be there's a lot of attention on there, even today in 2023. Yeah, so we're kind of dealing with this ed tech winter. And one of the kind of big refrains right now is product lead growth, and like cutting budgets, and one of the first places people tend to cut is marketing, which, you know, raises concerns about, you know, what's the revenue, stability or growth going to be if you're, you're cutting that, but there's a certain mentality that if if you have product lead growth, you don't need marketing? The product itself will help you grow virally. How do you when you're talking to somebody who's in that product, lead growth mindset of you talk about the value of marketing? How should they be thinking about? I think if you're focusing on plg, product, lead growth, I think marketing is actually your best friend, because typically plg companies, you can you can sign up for a free trial immediately, you could start using the tool immediately. So it's like, the barriers to entry are very low. Now, how do we drive more traffic? How do we get more teachers to sign up from it right? From a sales side? It's really easy to go to that administrator and say, hey, 1500 of your teachers signed up for a free trial, let's have a conversation about getting this in the whole district, right. And so if you have product lead growth, if there are low barriers of entry for teachers, to sign up to try the tool, right, marketing is only going to open the floodgates for that. There's a lot of teachers on social media and this to your point, there's a lot of competition, right? There's a lot of edtech tools within specific categories. So there's already a lot of literacy options. There's already a lot of tutoring options. So what are edtech brands going to do to differentiate themselves, but again, also just drive that traffic drive that awareness, if you again, are leaning on plg, where teachers can sign up immediately, right, so like those teachers Signups are valuable. They may not be decision makers. But if you can build a case for an administrator, that's going to lead to those big district deals that bring in the money for ad tech startups. So we're seeing this week, some districts and schools start to get a little panicky about some of these new technologies. We've seen a lot of universities banning Tiktok in the last few weeks, and now we're seeing K 12 districts banning chat GPT I know you are a chat GBT fan and stuff that you think about it a lot. And it's been sort of storytelling. I'm curious how you see the role of GPT and how that tech founders might use it to sharpen their stories or to improve their marketing. It's actually mind blowing, which at GPT is capable of I think I shared with you Alex like, just very quickly on a call. But it actually it's, I would say one of the most transformational tools or just changes in like marketing in the technical, logical world that we live in. Because now my ideas can go further than ever before, right? You can write blog posts, you can write social media copy, you can write email copy. And it's just a really good place to get your ideas out there. And then you have something to work with and run with. And so as a copywriter as a marketer, right? This is actually a valuable tool that is not only saving time for us, but it's allowing our ideas to go further than ever before. And, you know, are there challenges with forgery and all of the, you know, potential risks that students are making, like essays and turning it in? Absolutely. But we have to lean into technology, because kids are already using it, they probably are already using it for school, right? So it's like, how do we lean into this technology, and advance the human race advance what we're capable of doing? So that we don't have to spend our time doing just like menial tasks, right, like, now we can write a blog in two seconds, right? We don't need to hire a copywriter and pay them a full time salary. Right. So I think there's a lot of pros to what this tool is capable of. And we're really only at the beginning of what chat GPT and AI is capable of. So I'm really excited about that. Yeah, given where we are today, you know, we're in the middle of this sales cycle. So you know, January, February, March, April, this is Crunch Time for a lot of that tech companies, and chat GPT as a tool, you can kind of create your prompt and input. But I do think a lot of entrepreneurs are struggling with how to operationalize the unlock for AI assistive programs, you know, do you recommend that people look at something like Jasper AI, which is, you know, Jasper basically is built for marketers to Drive content generation, it's expensive, you know, on the order of like, I think 70 bucks a month or something like that. And then it integrates with your email, outbound and so on. Is that where they should be going or should still be more experimental? And as a leader at an ad tech firm, should you be really kind of driving everyone and saying, here's how we're going to use AI in our marketing and outreach? Or is it like, Hey, everyone, be creative? Let us know what's working a little bit more of a, you know, try as you go. What's your read on that? Yeah, I think a lot of people think chat GPT, or AI is like the end all be all. But I like to look at it as like it's a it's just a tool to just help you advance what you're doing or help you with what you're doing. It's not the end all be all, what I'm noticing is there's actually going to be a lot of AI tools flooding the market right now. And right now, chat GPT is free. And it's the most popular one. My best advice if you're trying to like get started or learn, just mess around with it, like ask it questions that you wouldn't think it would be able to populate a response for. And you'll be surprised as an example, my girlfriend right now she's in law school. And she was kind of skeptical about it. And I was just showing her Hey, like, look, you can ask it to summarize things for you, you can ask it to respond to emails, she was a little hesitant at first, I showed it to her, she was blown away what it was capable of. And I caught her a few times yesterday actually using it, you know, to save her some time or to, you know, summarize things right. So like, it's a helpful tool. And I think initially, if you don't really understand AI, you kind of have this like this barrier. This like this kind of Whoa, hesitation about it, but I'm telling you just try it out. Ask it a couple of questions, ask it to write a blog about spaghetti and meatballs and ad tech, and you'll like you'll be surprised like what it's able, what it's capable of. So I would say just like lean into it and just try and get your get your toes wet a little bit. And I think that alone will just kind of build that excitement and and the rest kind of sells itself. You know, I love that attitude. And it feels like that's a great through line to this conversation. You know, don't consider all these new media and tools, intimidating or scary. A lot of them are inexpensive, even free like chat TPT jump in, try them. You never know and you're going to reach people you know, more than you expect to reach through the TIC TOCs through the Instagrams through the you know, through the use of chat GPT and other unusual channels, material viral, really, really, really interesting conversation. I'm sure our listeners are writing things down left and right about their marketing ideas. Thanks so much for being here with us at ad tech insiders. Appreciate you guys having me on. Thank you so much. 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 tech community. For those who want on even more Ad Tech Insider subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack