ASU+GSV: Chuck Cohn, CEO and Anthony Salcito, CIO of Nerdy

Chuck Cohn is the Founder, Chairman & CEO of Nerdy (parent company of Varsity Tutors). Chuck founded the company in 2007 during his junior year of college after experiencing frustration finding the personalized help he needed for a calculus course. He spent his early career working in energy & power investment banking at Wells Fargo Securities (Wachovia) and healthcare private equity at Ascension Ventures, an $800M AUM private equity fund. Chuck bootstrapped Nerdy before leaving his private equity role to focus on growing Nerdy full-time at the end of 2011.

Anthony Salcito, Chief Institution Business Officer, leads Varsity Tutors for Schools and is responsible for Nerdy’s efforts to support institutions as they work to transform learning opportunities for students and educators across a range of offerings. Prior to joining Nerdy, Anthony served as Vice President of Worldwide Education at Microsoft. In this role, he was responsible for driving Microsoft’s education engagement and relationships globally, including long-term partnerships with schools, universities and other public sector customers. Throughout his Microsoft career, he helped launch many of the company’s cornerstone education programs and is recognized as a champion for teachers and a global education thought leader.

Transcript

Alexander Sarlin: 0:05

Welcome to Ed Tech insiders where we speak with founders, operators, investors and thought leaders in the education technology industry, and report on cutting edge news in this fast evolving field from around the globe. From AI to xr to K 12 to l&d, you'll find everything you need here on edtech insiders. And if you liked the podcast, please give us a rating and a review so others can find it more easily. We're her at ASU GSV with Chuck Cohn, and Anthony Salcito of nerdy maker of Varsity tutors, they have had a huge conference and all sorts of interesting things to talk about. Let's start. What are you excited about within 30? Right now? What are you guys thinking about as your new launches? Or products? Or what are you most excited about?

Chuck Cohn: 0:58

Thanks for having us on Alex, there's a couple big things that we've been working on for the last, you know, call it 12 months or so that really come together. And especially the first is we've taken all of our historically different products over each sold separately on our consumer business, tutoring classes, ect content, live streaming, computer adaptive testing, we brought them together to create what we call birding memberships. And it's an all access subscription that gives you the ability to be supported across academic calendar years and subjects and modalities of learning. And we also have taken our consumer platform, and we've kind of extended a lot of the capabilities to help K 12 school districts at scale. So we're delivering high quality live learning at scale, in a way that is personalized. And really only possible, thanks to, you know, the kind of the combination of the Internet data and AI in a way that we think is really special differentiated. So it's been a great conference. So far, there's a lot of excitement about generative AI, you know, we've been investing in it around machine learning and AI for a long time. And excited to talk to you a little bit about what we're up to.

Alexander Sarlin: 2:04

Anthony, you're the chief institution officer. So that business model, you know, expansion going to schools, as well as directly to customers. That is really a lot of what you're thinking about. Tell us about what that has looked like so far, tutoring has obviously been huge for the last few years pandemic fueled and learning loss fueled.

Anthony Salcito: 2:22

Yeah, I agree. I think that technology foundation that Chuck share is actually part of the work that we're doing with institutions. But if you think about the institution response to learning loss during COVID, and the pandemic, it was often sort of emergency relief, let's get resources, let's put tutoring in it wasn't necessarily thought through in terms of the infrastructure and how schools embedded into the workforce. What we're starting to see now is, as districts and schools are sort of moved past that certainly learned about how we can extend learning beyond the classroom with technology, as a vehicle for communication, collaboration connection, we're seeing a huge opportunity for individualized learning and individualized instruction that not only lifts learning beyond the classroom to every learner in a different way in a different resource, but really can empower the educator to be almost a central figure to extend more learning modalities, students. And so what we've tried to do is tune the work that we do and support all that richness. And we've been doing for more than 15 years for students, and bring that into knowing the school but also in the hands of an educator. And we're excited about one hour. And that's really exciting. So there'll be new tooling and AI field tooling on both sides, on the educator side, and on the student side. So with this sort of membership subscription type of model, I'm so curious about how you are thinking about all of these crazy new tools and technologies, because if you have learners who are aren't just there for one thing, they can learn anything, it's all connected all for one price, how are you thinking about this sort of cross disciplinary learning? Well, one of the things that AI and machine learning can do is really personalized experiences in ways that weren't possible previously. So our first kind of foray into AI was in 2017, when we started first, looking for patterns related to matching between tutors and nerves that could improve the match because when you get it right, it really enhances the relationship between the learner and a tutor and leads to much better learning outcomes. And you know, people just have more fun, therefore, they show up there for the care for therefore, ultimately, they get better results has better personalized. And we started kind of methodically testing two different MLL goes against one another for by more than 100 different variables to try to improve that match and enhance customer satisfaction and ultimately learning outcomes. And the leverage that we got out of that and then they cancelled so we're able to drive to that customer experience were so significant, that we started investing more and more and more and eventually started using it to inform computer adaptive testing for assessment that figuring out that account On some level what a student does or doesn't know. And then, you know, ultimately taking that data and feeding it back into the session so that the tutor themselves can actually have very specific knowledge that can then inform how they approach the actual teaching. The same thing is true now on the institutional side. And so kind of fast forward to today where you have this new concept of generative AI that allows for the creation of content very, very efficiently. And we're taking these new capabilities. And we're trying to generate content, and information that is very specific to the learner in near real time in a way that enhances the experience. So we've rolled out an AI tutor earlier this year, that provides a different way of interacting and can kind of feed in and recommend other information on the platform other resources. We also have what we call an AI lesson plan generator that can generate content in real time and specific to the students needs. But we're starting to bake these kind of superpowers into each different step of the customer journey, such that the overall experience is enhanced in ways that just weren't possible. That's really exciting. And this conference has been abuzz with a lot of big ideas about the future of edtech. Generative AI is certainly one of them. And the lesson plan creation use case is a really important one saving teachers time to personalizing learning. I'm curious, if you were to look three years in the future, where GSB, three years from now, what do you think we're going to be talking about in terms of that tutor relationship, and how it compares or contrasts with a sort of bot type relationship? It feels like that's one of the big questions of education right now. We can scale bots. But that hardcore tutoring relationship I was a tutor for many years is so magical, how could they come together and project into the future? And how might we do it? I'll share for an institution side, I don't think that there's going to be less need for humans and teachers in the classroom with this shift. What I see is happening is a lot of the constraints that we all accept that teachers teach to the middle and kids on the edge of life. And we do a few percentage of students get an IEP when everyone really should have been individualized in their future in terms of learning. Those have been done by constraints, those constraints have been lifted. And we can now Empower an educator to have more resources to cover more specific learning needs. And empower students to expect more from the ability to customize content that speaks to them to have books that recognize who they are as a learner, that aligned to their career ambitions that address, whether it's just the needs or interests that they may have, all of that can be done. So content will get more evolved, learners will have more flexibility, and educators will have more resources to support individualized instruction. So I think that the same and many, maybe more humans will be there, but support it with new resources that we can provide virtually with assistive AI etc. But I think that that shift is exciting in terms of the learner output and impact we can have on kids. Last question here. And then I want to find out what you like about the conference, because that's this is just such a crazy place to be. I want to just take it one more time, because this relationship stuff is so interesting, and it feels like tutoring, you know, that blooms two sigma problem, people have always considered one on one tutoring, the absolute core gold standard of what we all want for every kid and varsity tutors has really brought it to many, many millions of learners, and now it's bringing it to millions learners within schools. So the question is, when we have this kind of incredibly dense and broad set of individual relationships, how do you see the relationship between the teacher in the school and tutors who may tutor the kid in one or more subjects? Like what is the sort of you talked about IEP is and the students that IEP is often have like a team around that? Do you envision a future where this sort of a team of supports one of the concepts that is maybe foundational, how we operate is this concept that we call artificial intelligence for human interaction. And the idea being that, through advances in technology, particularly AI, it's now possible to give people capabilities that would not have otherwise existed that can make them far more effective, they can personalize the experience their needs, and ultimately enhance that interaction between people in ways that weren't possible previously. And so as I think about what we're effectively doing, we're providing these capabilities through AI and content generation and other tooling that didn't exist. And I think the same as possible as it relates to our institutions, business where we're trying to help teachers, you know, have capabilities be able to get leverage help students, they otherwise wouldn't have the time to help and help them be more effective. So I think we all generally understand that whether it's, you know, you learning something on your own or the public education system, you know, at any level in any country, there's an opportunity to be far, far better than we are today. And these new capabilities will allow for people to be better enhanced, and I big part of that is enhancing the interaction between different constituencies. That's something I'll pass the microphone to Anthony. But that's something I know he spent a lot of time thinking about in our cable business specific. It's actually something that I learned about this space when I joined mostly after decades working with schools around the United States and around the world, I felt that the voice of teachers wasn't being heard loud enough. And, in fact, when parents request a tutor, not only does the teacher have very little insight of what was happening on the parent relationship with the students, they often have insight that can inform the tutor to make them better. Based on their years of working with that student, they may see things that could make our tutors more effective. We launched something this year called teacher assigned tutor in which is an evolution of the services that we provide. And the conceit is very simple. It's building agency with teachers to let them to just in time recognize a student who needs help, and provide lesson plan materials to a tutor to say, Here go support a learner we just did a session on algebra fuel, my kids didn't quite get it. Do tutoring for these few kids. Tutor relationship with a teacher can share feedback on what happened. Can you recommend more sessions that are needed for those students can indicate to a teacher when the students achieve mastery, it really changed the dynamic because it may be the same high dosage tutoring engagement that we do all the time. But now with teachers at the center, not only we are not waiting for students to flag a failure they're doing just in time tutoring, but it provides teachers tremendous lift, because they now have resource to extend individualize instruction. They don't have to make that decision every day when they leave classrooms. They sacrifice time from their own family to add support for a child, or do they leave a child to fall behind. Now the teacher when they see an issue, they can bring tutor capacity to that student. And that's a huge win win. So districts are seeing this as not only an opportunity to help provide real support for learners when they need it. But also provide real support for teachers who are getting fatigued by the incredible strain that they deal with every day. That's fascinating. I know, there's been a lot of turnover and teacher shortages and teachers, I'm hoping that both these AI tools and the type of teacher assigned tutoring and this kind of innovation, relationship based innovation is going to make the teaching job much more fulfilling, much more autonomous and empowered. That's really, really interesting model, I envision a kid at the center at you know, a tutor or more than one tutor around them. And then a parent, you mentioned the parent relationships, you know, so that 24 hours a day, if a kid is struggling with things, there's a group of people who have shared data, who have shared interests who know the kid in the same way or not entirely, but most of the same way being able to split it's a really exciting vision, especially if it can go to students at scale and equitable access. Last question for you guys. What are you seeing at the conference? It doesn't have to be anything at a session. I'm just like Hallway Conversations, what is sort of get the buzz here for the people who don't have the privilege to attend? Yeah, so I love ASU GSB. I've been attending for many, many years, it's often a good point in time to see the trend that's changed in the year, when you have this annual events that it's a very different field, you're getting lots of industry providers getting the mix of districts, universities, investors and small, large companies here, you get a chance to see what the tone is, it's obviously clear the impact and thoughtfulness of how we use AI and AI is becoming real, a notion about what happens with regard to sustainable services posts, federal funding is becoming a certainly a greater greater concerns. What happens with every student succeeds act participating and what remains and what can we learn and how do we sustain I think that's going to be a big issue. And obviously, incredible need to support educators growing implications of what the role of educators looks like, increased role of technology and AI, but how do we sustain and grow our teaching passengers? Certainly, those are the things that I'm hearing most likely to talk about you. I've been coming here since I think 2013, maybe 2014. And you know, after 16 years in the industry, I've gotten to know a few people. So one of the things that's overwhelming about this event is I think there's 7000 people here, but it's also like, feels like more than 100% of the people I've ever met. At the same time, you know, you have your quasi competitors, you have potential partners, you have people in sections of the industry, you don't understand at all that are working on different opportunities worldwide, you know, many people are in from outside the United States. And I think one of the things that I always find energizing is how quickly you can be inspired by what lots of other people are doing and very quickly hone in on what they're most excited about. One of the things that I do think is a little bit different this year, given everything that's happened in a higher interest rate environment in the capital markets is that it's forcing a little bit more discipline and so even in conversations, I'm hearing people maybe rein in what they're talking about working on it. To be kind of more focused than it's been in the past. And I think that's informing, you know, a lot of the different discussions here. But you mentioned just before we started recording that Bill Gates just got off stage and was talking about, you know, the power of tutoring, and the Blum, two sigma study, which, of course, was one of the foundational studies related to demonstrating the incredible efficacy of tutoring. And I think that's something that we're continuing to see a lot of people consider weigh in on is the effectiveness of tutoring as the most effective way that people can learn. And the ability to do that at scale is something that we're pretty excited to be working on. And then certainly, I don't know if you had the opportunity last night to hear Sam Altman speak, but that was, you know, exciting to hear a thought leader in the generative AI space, really pushing the envelope of what's possible scribing what, you know, he kind of expects for society at large, and it's very thought provoking. So those are two of the big things that I've seen, but it's incredible who you're able to pop into here and all the knowledge you're able to pack into three days and 36. That's fantastic. So I'm hearing the exuberance may be slowing down. Yes, sir. Cliff is coming. But everybody's incredibly excited about what's next, especially with AI, and especially with the promise of being able to provide high quality instruction, especially tutoring to many, many more students around the globe around the US and the globe. That's my little wrap up. Thanks.

Alexander Sarlin: 16:26

Thank you guys so much. Chuck Cohn, CEO of nerdy and Anthony Salcito CIO, Chief institutional Officer of nerdy thanks so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ed Tech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more edtech insider subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.