Edtech Insiders

Week in Edtech 4/30/23: Microschooling, Skills-Based Hiring, & the Indian Edtech Haves and Have-Nots

May 05, 2023 Alex Sarlin Season 5 Episode 28
Edtech Insiders
Week in Edtech 4/30/23: Microschooling, Skills-Based Hiring, & the Indian Edtech Haves and Have-Nots
Show Notes Transcript

News Covered: 

MICROSCHOOLING:

  • New Research Reveals The Breadth And Impact Of The Microschooling Movement Forbes

INDIA: THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-NOTS

  • Unacademy To Be Profitable At Group Level In April: CEO Gaurav Munjal Upstart
  • Ed-tech Firm Simplilearn Plans Acquisitions, Expansion Amid Funding Winter : Business Standard
  • upGrad to expand Study Abroad programme in Africa, South-East Asia and Middle East The Hindu Business Line
  • Edtech Startup BrightChamps Makes Third Acquisition, Enters B2B Arena The Economic Times
  • Woes Of The Funding Winter Continue To Jitter Indian Edtechs; Are There Any Hopes Of Revival? INC42

EVIDENCE IN EDTECH AND LEARNING LOSS

  • EdTech Evidence Toolkit by the Office of Education Technology: Supporting Schools’ Use of Evidence to Guide EdTech Adoption | US Department of Education
  • COVID-19 Hit Schools Unequally, But Data Shows Learning Recovery Is Equally Slow Edsurge

SKILLS-BASED HIRING LEADS TO HIGHER ED EXPERIMENTATION

  • Students Want More Workplace Skills From Colleges. Will Higher Ed Adjust? | EdSurge
  • As ‘Skills-Based Hiring’ Becomes All The Rage, These Education Leaders Want To Overturn A 117-Year-Old Way Of Measuring Students’ Experiences- Forbes
  • Colleges Push 3-year Degrees As Enrollments Fall, Costs Rise The Washington Times
  • More Than 40 Million Americans Have Now Attended College Without Earning A Degree Forbes

This episode of edtech insiders is sponsored by magic edtech. Magic Ed Tech has helped the world's top educational publishers and ad tech companies build learning products and platforms that millions of learners and teachers use every day. Chances are that you're probably using a learning product that they've helped design or build. Companies like Pearson McGraw Hill, imagine learning and the American Museum of Natural History have used their help to design or build some of their learning products. Now magic wants to bring its pedagogical and engineering expertise to make your key learning products accessible, sticky and well adopted. Check them out at Magic Ed tech.com, which is Ma GIC. Edie Te ch.com and when you get in touch tell them Ed Tech Insider sent you. Welcome to 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. Hi, everybody, and welcome to This Week in ed tech. Happy May. We are fully recovered from our ASU GSB hangover, we are jumping back into the world of K 12, higher ed, international funding, you name it, we're covering it, it's going to be a great show today. Before we dive in, though, Alex, tell us what's going on with the pod newsletter events, everything at Tech Insider. So we just put out our rundown of the ASU GSB event. A lot of you have seen it, I think it's really been exciting to look at this amazing event and give our take and I think people have been really receptive to it. So that's been amazing on the podcast, we are releasing 10 Mini interviews that we did at the conference for are out so far with the likes of the Chief Content Officer of Coursera, the Chief Operating Officer of cambium, amazing, amazing people. And next week, we're coming out with two higher ed related episodes because we're here in college season one is with Nancy Sony of pathmatics, which is trying to make universities more skill oriented and lead to higher ability. And the other is with Perry calmness from a caller trying to take the top tier college admissions and give them to more and more and more people and try to close the gap that way really cool interview, so keep an eye out for both of those.

That's awesome, Alex, and if you want to sign up for our newsletter, or if you want to download any of the podcasts, you can find us on any of the major podcast services, you can search for us on substack. You can also check us out at Tech insiders.org. And we have an event coming up in the bay area may 18. from four to 6:

30pm. We will be at blacksmith bar one of our favorites. Last time we were there we had a DTF from instruments, leading a whiskey tasting, you just never know what you're going to get at this event. So we're down in Redwood City, come by if you're in town, May 18. We're gonna move on to the headlines. It was really back to business, you know, after ASU GSB after all the funding rounds, announcements of new products, everyone's diving back in and in K 12. It is the end of the sales season. We are in the final push. I know a lot of you who are dealing with onboarding closing contracts, it is hair on fire time for K 12. And some really interesting data coming out around micro school. So as you know, this is also the time of year where enrollment gets solidified for next fall. And so we saw a Forbes article that actually covered three different reports. The main report is the villa report. And just so you know a little bit about Villa villa has been around for several years, but they specifically fund micro schools and non traditional schools, particularly with a focus of serving low income or traditionally underserved populations. And the survey was really incredible. The data pretty consistent across all three that 93% of the students and families attending non traditional learning environments are low income or from historically underserved populations. And nearly 40% of the entrepreneurs leading these programs are intentionally serving these populations as part of their organizational mission. Very interesting because you know, in the early days of the micro school movement, and you and I both know all the oh geez, there was a reputation And it was really for more affluent families, or it was also kind of wrapped up in the homeschooling movement. But we've been reporting on the kind of move, especially for African American families, from families that are in rural environments, moving to micro schools during COVID. And it seems like that has really stuck. And so you know, that data also coincides with pretty shocking data around learning recovery, post COVID. And we're seeing basically, across the board, schools that especially serve low income students are really falling behind in reading, writing, and math. So what's your make of this? Is the new micro school movement and edtech equity play? Or is this really, actually, I'm just curious, what do you think this is? What's the headline here? Yeah, I mean, I was actually surprised at how few so the villa survey interviewed 400 Education entrepreneurs who received funding from Villa itself, and it said that, you know, 40%, are intentionally serving underserved populations, I actually would have thought that was higher, that's less than half. But even though less than half are aiming for that population, a huge majority of families entering this space are from underserved or low income populations. You look at the data that's just been coming up from ies about basically the, you know, it was always true in the US that, you know, schools with a higher percentage of minority students had more students behind grade level, we have a very unequal system and have for a long time. The problem is that there's a huge jump, basically, across the board in students who are behind grade level. And that jump has now made it so that schools that are you know, more than 75%, minority, you know, two out of three kids are behind grade level. And that did hardly went down at all between 2021 and 2022. school year. So this learning recovery thing, people are not catching back up. And it's, you know, two out of 360 4% we're looking at is really, really a high number. So I would say I mean, if you put the two stories together, it feels like people are kind of starting to vote with their feet and starting to say, wow, these schools is very clear. They're not serving us the way we need to be served if two out of three kids are behind grade level at some of these high minority schools. You know, I can't get in the minds of individual families when they make these decisions. But I will say that a few years ago, I think the go to solution or the go to idea that people were having for this group was charter schools, right? They were popping up everywhere. They were a lottery base, they were trying to be in, you know, high poverty neighborhoods. And now it feels like this micro schools movement might be sort of following on the heels of that kind of mission. But doing it in a very different way. I don't really know what these micro schools truly look like. I mean, at this moment, but I'm hoping that we start to see these numbers turn around and that the micro schools are showing, you know, if they can actually show that they can reduce learning loss, and they can get to recovery and start increasing these kids scores and their grades, you might see even more of a snowball effect as people sort of go word of mouth and say, my kids are doing much better in these micro schools than in the public schools. I don't know what Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's a great point about charter schools, and most blue states, there's a moratorium on charter schools. So this idea that charters could fill the gap or fill the need, that has been a struggle in many states. And then you also I mean, COVID, change many fundamental things about kids and their relationship to education. But the person whose role changed the most was actually the parent. Yeah. And so what you see are a lot of active and engaged parents making decisions based on their local environment and which schools serve their kids best and often the micro school innately gives more personalized, tailored attention. I think I'm more curious around which of these micro school models are working and which ones aren't? Or are their themes, this idea that there's 400 different ones, you know, availa has taken, let every flower bloom kind of approach. And I know that they have some rigor behind it. I also think it's very interesting that the Koch family is behind baileigh. And there's definitely some trends around I don't know if you saw in the New York Times, they were talking about Randi Weingarten, Atomy number one of the Republican Party, and then you have the Koch family funding baileigh. I think there's some political stuff playing out here around public education and institutions. And so it leads to a bunch of mixed feelings, I think, for everyone in education, because if you just look at our public schools, serving all kids and especially Those who are, you know, historically under served, they are not and it's not improving. And so what's apparent to do? Right, the last thing I will say, too, is, I think the funding models are quite interesting around the micro schools. One, you know, we know Joe Connor. And there's ways in which states have now freed up funding to disaggregate those funding streams so that if you do go to a micro school, you can access funds. But at the same time, I would say, I have not seen any mega funding rounds around micro schools, so many of them my read, and you know, I'm in the circles, I hear a lot about it. Everyone's building these to be as sustainable as possible as quickly as possible. And I think that that's probably the best shot for the micro school movement is finding ways in which you can have a school of 810 12 students, maybe it's 25 students that is sustainable from like, year two. And I think that that's a credit to the availa funding model, where they're kind of doing the startup funding the seed funding, but many of these organizations are, you know, five people, five adults, and they're making it to break even so we know Kelly, who's been doing this for a long time. And I think there's a bunch of entrepreneurs who've been building the micro school movement, but this is represents a new wave and it's enduring. Yeah, I think your point about the politics of it is super interesting. Because if you squint, you can sort of see these micro schools as almost like privatization. I mean, they're basically like these mini private schools, where a handful of adults can pick a model and find a space and then open up a school, it almost feels like daycare paradigm, it's just a really, really different way of looking at, you know, what school is than our traditional thinking about, you know, big public schools. And I guess the question is, what will the reputation of these be, you know, will they be seen, as, you know, coming in to save the day as public schools really continue to struggle and Randi Weingarten becomes, you know, public enemy number one for a bunch of people and in the middle of all these fights, or will they, you know, start to lose their luster as the variance is incredibly high, and some are totally ridiculous, and maybe even you know, have real problems. And they make headlines for being, you know, super problematic in all sorts of ways. And then suddenly, people go, I didn't hear about a microscope, but the first thing I heard about it was on the news when this microscope closed down, because it had this crazy thing. And like, I mean, I think the growth creates opportunity, but it also creates the potential for reputational damage, especially when you have all of these different models spinning up at the same time, all over the country, it could go great, it could go very badly. And that's sort of what happens when you allow things to be privatized and sort of, you know, handed to individual entrepreneurs, which in a lot of ways, these are. Yeah, I think this idea of disaggregating, the educational experience into micro schools, and the funding into micro schools, speaks to many of the trends we've seen in higher ed. And many of the kind of failure modes that we're seeing in K 12 are parallelized in the higher ed data that's come out this week. Tell us a little bit about it. Alex, I'm sorry. This is like not an upbeat topic for me, because I feel like we've got two trends where we're just seeing a lot of learners not being well served by institutions. Well, micro schools, I think that, you know, the jury is definitely still out. I don't know if it's a positive or negative yet. But in higher ed, I think it's becoming clearer and clearer. And we wrote about this in the rundown of the conference that skills are the new norm, people are really less and less interested in sort of the big black box degree, that's just the big stamp on your resume that is supposed to get you places, and they're much more and I say people, I mean, students and employers are both much more interested in figuring out what a student actually knows, and what more importantly, they can actually do. And so we saw this week, you know, the ETs and the Carnegie Foundation team up and they announced this at ASU GSV. Basically doing a partnership that's trying to move some of the measurements of what success looks like in school more towards students skills via project feedback from teachers feedback from Ai, how can we evaluate students actual skill level in a pretty specific way rather than relying on these old school things like test scores, or attendance or, you know, credit hours, the classic Carnegie unit, like it's starting to really go mainstream now. And, you know, we saw the number of students going to college go, you know, down a lot. We've seen almost a 4% increase about 1.4 million more students get some college and no credential and a new report from National Student Clearinghouse. So, you know, that's sort of the old Ultimate fail state TierPoint ven right. People who go to college, spend lots of money on a takeout loans, and then leave with no credential of any kind. So they get no verification of their education, maybe some skills and big debt. And that is just the worst of all worlds. And then the last thing I've reported on this a couple of times over the last year, and it's like this funny little trend that keeps bumping along, but I really recommend we keep our eye on it. 10 universities, in addition to Georgetown, the big name here, just got together again, and started to say, we really are going to try to go to three year degrees, we're going to offer a three year degree, it may be time for students to actually do this. And they're starting various pilot programs for three year degrees. And I mean, I think that is, you know, a pretty solid concrete acknowledgement that the classic degree is just getting less and less desirable, and less and less of an obvious next step for people than ever before I'm talking to Perry Kalmus. This week, he was saying that, for the first time you're seeing, even affluent families really balk at the price of college, it's just getting so high and getting so like sort of outrageous that people are just really starting to walk away or look for alternatives, like much more seriously than they have in the past. And a three year degree would certainly help with that. A skill based program that can get you all the skills that the employers are looking for, and actually prove it because you finish the assessments like these are going to become more and more appealing. I really suggest that higher ed take notice of this trend because it is coming fast. What do you think of all this skills stuff, Ben? Yeah, I mean, the quote of 40 million Americans that haven't attended college without a degree, that's like one in seven Americans. And if you understand how many kids are under college age, it's like one in five, one in five Americans have attended college in current debt and have received no credential. That's a national travesty, right there. Yeah. And, you know, I think the angle that I'm most interested in is the kind of rise in apprenticeships, and you know, this idea of dual enrollment with job skill based programs and school based skill programs. And, you know, just see that being a very successful model in Europe. And then you see a number of companies making that work. And, you know, I had a chance to talk with the folks at Cengage, you know, in our funding update, they've raised 500 million to boost their kind of career and skill based learning pathways. And there's ways in which this idea that hands on learning in a work environment can be connected to academic learning that takes you into a more intellectual line of understanding. And pairing those two, I think that's really interesting. And it's, we've often thought about one or the other, like, Oh, your career base, you're going this path? Oh, your college base, you're going that path? Yeah, the other thing, I think, is that families are realizing that lifelong learning is an expected investment. And that, whether it's the flu and families who are like, Well, my kids gonna go to undergrad here, but you know, which is cheaper, but they'll go to grad school there, something like that. I mean, I honestly think grad school and undergrad are primed for disruption here. But I see many, many ways in which a 18 year old consuming the highest cost learning experiences that are relatively divorced from practical reality, that is just a very low optimization of learning time. And I can really see, like maybe the total dollars are actually the same or even greater, but they're just shifting and spreading out over more programs and over a longer period of time in one's life. Totally. But really, just to wrap, I mean, I think that this trend has accelerated very, very quickly. Part of it has been that there's been a talent shortage. And so people have been willing to overlook the degrees. And then now they're realizing Wait, we can get a good deal on somebody who isn't trying to pay back the brand name on their resume. And now whereas we're in tighter economic times, I think value shopping is up among employers. So you have this kind of market condition that has really created a skills based workforce economy. Yeah. And just last point, I know you're gonna wrap your last last point on this. I mean, some of the numbers on here there was the EC MC survey a month ago. 81% of students want skills they'll use in the working world after college. That's what they're looking for from education and half of Gen Z are surveyed basically said they believe they can be successful. with alternative pathways to college, and you know, when you look at stats like that, I would just push it even further, you're saying, you know, employers and universities can work together that can be internships, apprenticeships, totally makes sense. But I actually think a lot of this can be done with students without that much structure. I mean, if you're giving a student a, if you're saying, okay, at the end of this month, you're going to need to prove that you have these three skills. And there'll be assessed through AI. And you'll have to do projects. And that's what you have to do. I bet a significant number of students can do that without any support, they'll use YouTube, they'll work with each other. Like, I'm not even sure that colleges or employers have an incredibly good track record of actually imbuing skills on learners. That's where I know that's the weirdest thing to say, but I think it's true. I don't think either of those organizations have focused on that. I think the students kind of want to just get the skills and I don't think they need that much teaching, which is like a really weird thing to say. But if you actually have good assessments that actually tell you what level of skill how good a coder you are, how good you know, Marketo you are things like that people will learn, I just think there's never been that kind of clarity. That's what I was about to say, I don't know that the incentives are there, for folks in the certification granting institutions to actually make the assessments side of it work. Because if they do, they're like, you know, the assessment is what sells the services. And if you make the assessment, too straightforward, there goes all your services revenue. And number two is, yeah, there's the intrinsic, like, learner wants to learn and get the assessment. And that credential is a meaningful, you know, point in their learning career. But also what you see in a, you know, maybe it's 5050, maybe it's majority, whenever there's an assessment that can be gamed learners game, the assessment, because they want the fastest path to an AI. AI is making that much harder, right? Because AI can generate infinite variations that is less of a problem than I think it's ever been before. I think it's more of a problem, because I think the student is armed with Gen. Like today AI and the assessor is always going to be armed with gen two years ago AI, maybe. And so I think today's AI always beats two years ago AI Yeah, it credentialed and stuff, you have to have some sort of bureaucratic approval, and that's going to limit what they're going to do. Look, it's going to be fascinating to watch, let's just say the arms race between assessors AI, and the learners AI, it's going to be freaking awesome. And you know what, like, if kids are learning about advanced AI to be assessments built by folks that have less advanced AI, we're all going to be in a better spot. Thinking too, it's like, well, if the AI can get you to have the skill really quickly, then you have the skill really quickly. I mean, is it I don't really understand, like, but I think what you're mistaking here, though, is have the skill versus being able to pretend like then or demonstrate a skill without fully understanding it. I've actually, the other article that we didn't include in a roundup was talking about how schools are talking about going to performative assessments where you have to either go into the study hall and write it down, but a rise in this idea of defensive learning, Allah, you know, a dissertation defense, I think that's incredible. Like, because let's be honest, that's what we've been missing in education for so long with the standardized test movement. Yeah. So you know, I think, how you instrument it, and is it equitable? And, you know, what are the games that people will play on both sides, but all of this to say, as AI is accelerating as our world is accelerating, this skill based movement is accelerating. Yeah, speaking of acceleration, let's go to India. I feel like every time we talk about India, so you know, we kind of do around the world in many of our podcasts, and we pick a different god to go deep in and today we're doing India. And I always feel like whenever I learn about India, it feels like six months ahead of here to a year ahead of here. And that's odd, because, you know, in many ways, the perception is USI tech market is the most mature, but in a way, the kind of funding winner hit India first. Then it hit us the kind of controversies around highly valued companies hit their first then have hit us and what we're seeing now is the ad tech winter is continuing very strongly in India is having a White disproportionate output in terms of the haves and the have nots. So we saw a report from inc 42, that ad tech funding in the first three months of 2023 was down a further 93% year on year down to $100 million. That's insane. That's basically from, you know, 10 billion to 100 million. And the number of deals has fallen 41% to 17 deals in the first quarter. So just the size of the deals, the number of the deals all down. And startups raised 2.4 billion across 95 deals in 2022. And that was a decline from 2021. So it's a year on year decline. I will say, My takeaway from the reading, though, was a little bit just back to the normal trend. If you look pre 2021, and kind of the Indian edtech market going up, it actually is a funding trend that is kind of continuing through and 21 and 22. And this first quarter, you know, we're basically an aberration, but this quarter is kind of back on track. But the most fascinating thing was really about the highly skewed funding in the tech sector, you know, by Jews had almost 50% of the total funding in the sector, followed by Arrow Ditas. And una Academy with 11 and 8.3%. We also saw news about guna Academy becoming profitable. By April, we saw simply learn planning acquisitions of grad expanding non geographically to Africa, Southeast Asia and Middle East. And we saw a bright chance making its third acquisition. So there's five, maybe a dozen Indian Ed techs, who kind of because of huge valuations and huge infusions of cash in 2021, and 22. They've become the kind of breakout leaders and they're growing non geographically or they're growing nonlinearly, outside of the Indian geography, they're rolling up other companies, they're getting closer and closer to breakeven, they've been doing the layoffs for six to 12 months, like I said ahead of us, it's really a preview of what we're likely to see in the rest of the world, which is the haves are going to get richer, and the have nots, or the early stage companies that haven't broken through yet, are going to struggle. That's my big take, as you see all this news. What stands out to you, Alex, I totally agree, I would just, you know, maybe focus on the acquisition piece specifically because, you know, we've we've talked for a while about how the biggest big dog in the world by Jews has done a lot of acquisitions over the last few years, but in a way that is sort of, I don't know, over time feeling less and less strategic. And I think the other the sort of second and third and fourth, big Indian Ed texts, including the UN academies and upgrades are Unitas are looking around and saying, okay, a lot of companies don't have a runway now we can acquire, we can roll up, we can consolidate, that's exciting. But how do we do it in a way that doesn't just scatter our focus and make us accidentally enter five different business models. And I'm hoping slash assuming that by just sort of being out front in this by so far, having so much money making so many acquisitions is getting the rest of the field, the physics wall is right, the people who are who are rising in that top 12, like you said, to say, Okay, we want to expand but we should expand strategically. And a few months ago, we saw a number of these Indian ed tech companies buying up or creating physical centers, because they were seeing that after the pandemic, there was this huge snapback to physical and they needed tutoring centers and you know, places for people to go. And that felt sensible that felt like a, you know, a response to market conditions. And when you look at, you know, bright champs making its third acquisition, simply learn planning acquisitions, I think the question will have to, you know, see, as that happens is, are these acquisitions additive? Are they really creating growth by acquisition? Or are they sort of feeling like it's just a fire sale, because so many companies got some funding during the pandemic, and now they're out of funding. And people are just like, you know, grabbing whatever they can, and it actually might not be that helpful. So I would, that's what I would keep an eye out for. And I know, you know, places like, like GSV are really, really bullish on India, they've been looking at that space for a long time. I'd be very surprised if they're not looking at exactly this kind of thing. They're saying, you know, what are the exits for the smaller medium ones? What are the, you know, the acquisition exits, what are the big companies going to acquire? And I think it probably will end up exactly what you're saying when these top 10 will come? tend to be the top 10. And they'll get bigger and bigger and bigger. They'll, you know, continue to grow through India and outside of India. And you'll just hear a lot less about the sort of hundreds of Indian ed tech companies that we have been talking about and sort of reporting on funding for the last 18 months. Yeah, how much do you think that it is? venture firms picking the right winners, versus the fact that venture firm picked you makes you the winner? I think there's a way in which like the valuations and cheque sizes that were pushed into India, were so huge, that in many cases, even if you made some big strategic errors, or you were burning too much cash, or you fail the m&a deal or couldn't expand, like, there was just like separation among the elite, Indian and tech companies. And if you got in that tranche, you know, that kind of made you it wasn't solely based on your individual traction in the market? I don't know, like, what's your read on that? And do you think that that's the case here in the US to awesome question, I don't know if I have a really good understanding of what would have happened with some of these companies, if they didn't receive these enormous accelerant checks from VCs, both in the region and from the US and Europe as well. I do think it's probably changed, what would have happened anyway, let's put it this way. Like, I don't think the same set of companies would necessarily be the top 10 If they hadn't gotten, you know, 100 million plus dollar rounds. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they cheated, either. You know, it could mean that you know that getting that funding is part of the strategy. And that's how they got there. So kind of a wishy washy answer, but I'm sure the capital has changed the market, but I'm not sure it's distorted it and sort of made companies that, you know, would have died three years ago into huge, massive successes. Yeah, totally. Let's keep moving our familiar top of the pod topic, AI and Ed Tech, the news keeps coming. Lots of things rolling out, I will say, post ASU GSV, it did feel like a lot of people save the powder for ASU GSB announcements, and it's been a little bit quieter. What are you paying attention to? And also, you know, thank you for sending out that list of top edtech AI tools is pretty cool. We are always looking from our listeners have other suggested tools we should be looking at. But what's popping for you this week and two headlines really caught my eye this week, as you said, you know, a lot of the edtech companies launched their, you know, their first foray into a chat GPT feature either during the conference or right before it. And in response to you know, chat GPT becoming adopted faster than any tool in the history of software. It has, you know, good went to 100 million users between November and April, but you know, in less than six months, or about about six months. And so, you know, everybody has to respond in some way. The two that jumped out to me one was a really cool article about replicate, replicate as a company, you know, I've always considered it sort of borderline ad tech. It's really a coding platform. But it's a coding platform that does sort of have its roots in coding education. And when it first started, it was, it seemed like it was quite ad techie. And then now it's sort of become a core coding tool. And it's growing like crazy. It now has over 22 million developers. And of course, it was one of the first, just like GitHub to start incorporating, you know, AI really good AI tools. Because AI is incredibly good at coding support, in a lot of different ways. So I think that's accelerating droplets growth even more. And it's funny, like, I don't know, it really feels like a little bit of like a platypus company here because it's hard to really know if it's, if it's a true ed tech company, but I think it's a company with a lot of potential. I think they're just close to a $97 million fundraising round valuing it at 1.2 billion funding came from Yuna Andreessen Horowitz and COSLA. It's really off to the races. And that's cool. It's fun to see something that that you know, is going to compete with GitHub. They have this AI tool called ghostwriter chat, which is all about software development. And it's just really interesting. The other one was class. So class technologies people may know it launched during the pandemic basically as a way to turn zoom into an actual online classroom add a lot of different features that teachers and professors and b2b trainers really wished zoom had, but zoom doesn't have because zoom as as great as an education tool as it is. It's not focused on that purely. I got to play with the class software at ASU GSB and I was really impressed I thought it was really classy, no pun intended, but they just announced their AI teaching assistant. And the reason why I think that actually, it matters, you know, that's, that's the kind of one that I think we should keep an eye on is that class is sort of the one of the poster child companies along with companies like engaged Li, or I think there's one called foundry that basically are saying, okay, in a world that's going to be hybrid in a world where online education online, live, synchronous education is just going to be part of our lives. How do we make it awesome? How do we really make it work? And AI is arguably a really big piece of that there's something that actually makes sense. Because if you're sitting in class, and at anytime you can get help behind the scenes about something you missed, or, you know, you can ask a question, or you can go deeper, you can sort of have an artificial, you know, study partner sitting next to you, like, that's a meaningful change to that type of learning. So I'm kind of excited about that. We also saw a Singapore based company called Higgs basically launched a GPT powered math app, and it's looking at funding for, you know, $100 million valuation, it has a app that sounds a little bit Photomath II lets users skin math problems and receive step by step solutions. But we're gonna see AI headlines all year, the thing that I'm really looking for is the ones that feel like, you know, step changes that are like, Oh, that is a big idea. You know, we've been collecting this, this list of AI tools, like you said, Ben, and it's probably like 150 tools long by now. And we're going to keep growing it through, you know, through the year, but you're seeing a lot of overlap. You know, you're seeing 15 Different companies that can make quizzes, you know, out of anything, you're seeing a several companies that can turn YouTube into notes, or turn YouTube videos into learning experience, you're seeing multiple companies that that where you can search, and it'll do this intelligent search and try to give you the best possible explanation. That doesn't mean they're not really useful. But you're seeing sort of the same ideas hit in different places. I'm really interested to see which of the use cases just like, really take off, like really make that difference in terms of motivation, engagement, learning outcomes, paid conversion, I mean, something's going to happen, where it just it becomes follow the leader. It's like, oh, that works. That really works. And I think we're all so looking for it. But rapid, I think is a good use case, this is something that is extremely helpful to the users of that system. Yeah, no, I'm super bullish on Restlet. And I do feel like also, people are somewhat wary of putting all their eggs in the Microsoft open AI GitHub basket. And so red blood has a real opportunity here to be the number two player, which could be phenomenal. But I think your bigger point is really interesting one, which is basically is red blood and ed tech company, or is it a coding company? And I actually think this is the question that's going to come up more and more and more, because with generative AI, the ability to add learning functionality, or crosswalk learning functionality into applications and tools, we're just going to be seeing so much more hybridization. And this is why I've always said, you know, learning is one of the prime use cases for generative AI. And that's what's so exciting about it. And so, you know, I think there's a real real opportunity for replimat here, but many others thinking about other parts of the space Harvey, a legal AI tool, just raise money. And when you look at what they do at the core, yes, they're generating AI documents, but they also have generative learning, where you're basically teaching the person generating the documents, about the different options, the different legal components. So there's just going to be so much more of that learning as part of these virtual assistants. The main thing, though, you know, as I go through your list, and as I've gone through some of the other lists, one thing that I think is worth saying is, as bullish as both you and I are on the future of AI, it's not all the way here yet. And so we've been using a bunch of these tools, and whether it is like take this, you know, spreadsheet and add all the LinkedIn, you know, links for all these, or whether it's like, I would like you to create a dataset or a chart that shows the number of subscribers to attack insiders. The tools aren't there yet. They can't really do those tasks in the way that your favorite intern can do. And, you know, I think the real question is, who's going to break out on some of these core tasks, kind of the one area that I'm really looking at is, you know, people were creating PowerPoint or Google Slides, templates, any of them it's just so formulaic, and the pictures that they pop in and the designs of the template and the words it's basically just an outline, turned into a slide deck. with some randomization on it, there's so much more that we have to go in the next 235 years. It does make me, you know, heed some of the caution that Sam Altman himself says, which is basically like, let's not over expect what generative AI can do. The other thing I'm seeing with AI, big trend, and kudos to Erin Connell from charter school Growth Fund for sharing this article, there's a article from a16z around wave one and wave two of the AI, wave one is generative, generating new content, wave two is synthesis. A part of me wonders, what's wave three? What's wave four? Are they really coming in waves? Or is it just a tsunami of all that at the same time, but I am seeing some of the most effective tools that are out there using AI. They're out there taking huge databases of insight, knowledge, articles, content, and really synthesizing them into bite sized chunks. So elicit e lizard is a website that I heard about it is UCSB, what they do is when you have a query about, you know, what is the kind of trend in K 12, around low income students and their performance on standardized tests, it actually goes and searches databases of academic research, gives you a summary of every major paper around that topic, as well as some of the core things that were hypotheses that were tested. So it's this ability to access, you know, research in a way that we all talk about, let's apply research to education. What's the gap here, often, it's the accessibility because the research is stuck in some PDF. And it's very hard to find, it's very hard to synthesize, it's very hard to make meaning of so I would just say, you know, one, we're not there yet, we've got a long way to go. And the winners have not been decided. And number two is this kind of theme of synthesis, I'd actually say, wave one was like, demonstrating the potential for tentative, wave two is actual practical applications using synthesis. And then wave three, or wave for wave five, might actually be successfully generating, you know, high value content. So lots going on in our space. And, you know, we'll keep coming back to this topic. Can I throw one metaphor out, as I hear you talk about this, I agree wholeheartedly with what you're saying, we've used the word Cambrian explosion of it, you know, AI tools that's been happening. But you know, a different metaphor that strikes me when I hear you're talking about this ban is cars. You know, when cars were first invented in the 1890s, there were 1900, car companies very quickly, all around the world, and mostly in the US, but 1900 companies, like within a few years, and they were trying every different variety of what to do, and trying, you know, whatever they could, and just trying to say, look, this is obviously this technology is going to change the world that everybody saw it, even if it was only a tiny number of people that had them. So everybody jumped in. And then you know, of course, that we know the story by 1950, you had GM, Ford and Chrysler making three quarters of the cars in the world. Now, if you look at the speed of object AI, compared to the speed of adoption of something like a car, it's gonna be a lot faster, but it's not gonna be 50 years. But I think the same thing is probably going to happen, I think you're gonna see some folks, and they might be the existing big tech companies, it might be Microsoft, right? But you're gonna see some folks actually realize that, yes, you can do this little thing. And that little thing and this little thing, and that little thing with Gen AI, you can pick off all these pieces, you can, like you're saying Harvey can do legal papers and illicit can do research. And I think they're going to start to come together and be the sort of like aI mega tools that add an additional layer, maybe they understand each other, right? Or maybe they talk to each other. They chained together. Nobody knows what it'll look like. But I think you're going to see a huge number of companies. And then them start to connect and buy each other and disappear. And a company starts and the big dawgs copy it within, you know, three weeks, so it can do the same thing. And it's going to consolidate, it's going to be really, really wacky to watch, hopefully, you know, doesn't consolidate in a way that crushes innovation, but it also like it will. And to your point, yes, a lot of the cars back then didn't work very well. The same way as a lot of these jet AI tools right now don't work that well. They don't do an amazing job. And they often do things that the other tools already do. But it's just the beginning. It's just the very beginning. We're in that 1900 company moment. Yeah. I will also say the other big trends that we talked about on the India one with the kind of big you know, the haves getting wealthier and the have nots, not there is a In which, and I don't know how this played out in the, you know, car manufacturing days. But this idea that it's going to be new startups that disrupt incumbents, I'm not so sure, given how aggressively the incumbents recognize the possibility and potential for this. So, you know, generative AI could actually have a market consolidation effect. Google invented the transformer technology. This is all based on and they just combined, the DeepMind team, the Google Brain team, like these folks are bringing together like bringing tanks to the fight. And you know, what's interesting, though, with Google is, I think Ed Tech is going to be the last place that they bring their AI engine, because they see it as so risky to do stuff with schools and with kids. So even though they're the largest edtech company in the world, as I often say, you know, they're gonna be holding back and that just it also, you know, makes that confounding. Great point. All right. Well, confounding is what I would probably say about the funding market. Let's run through some of the funding wins. How do you want to do this one, Alex? I think we can just run down the funding headlines real fast, shortened condensed, make it happen. Let me just go ahead and do that. So Cengage raised $500 million to pay down its debt and move to a sort of workforce footing in ova mat, raised $21 million to expand into the US market. LMS 365 raised a $20 million growth round to expand their LMS, sante Academy raised $12 million to try to win 100% market share in France, Deepak Chopra has new venture Chopra X BT its first investment of $30 million. In begin the EdTech conglomerate that is growing and they're raising their D round, tiny tap, secured eight and a half million dollars for staff expansion and product development. They do teacher led games and MFTs. Mind x raised $15 million out of Vietnam to create small Silicon Valley's through their coding boot camps, a critici raised $7 million to issue and verified digital documents using Ethereum, the blockchain technology. Mind print learning raised 2 million to productize a cognitive screener for use in K 12 schools on Mudal raised a million dollars to help adults upskill through courses with partner colleges, their important work, and one acquisition to name class technologies acquired COSO to expand into the enterprise space, we just talked about class and how they've been working in K 12. And universities and some b2b Looks like they're going bigger. So that's it for us. At Tech insiders. This has been a little bit of a long episode of weekend ed tech, but I hope that it was worth all of our time together, really looking forward to the next month. And, you know, basically to the summer in ed tech, because I think there's gonna be a lot of news, even though summers off in a quieter period. The AI world is just continuing to make news. We just learned this morning that Geoffrey Hinton, one of the biggest names in AI has just left Google to warn the world about the possibilities of where AI might be going, including super robots, and sort of even the concept of losing jobs and almost even singularity type worries. So we are in a very, very interesting time and I'm looking forward. You know, Ben and I are looking forward to reporting on all of it over the next few months. If it happened in edtech. You'll hear about it here on Ed Tech insiders. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ed Tech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the tech community. For those who want even more Ed Tech Insider subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack. This episode of Ed Tech insiders is sponsored by magic ed tech. 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