Edtech Insiders

Week in Edtech 01/24/2024: Chegg, Doulingo, Coursera Stocks Tumble, OpenAI Partners with ASU, Microsoft's Free AI Tutor and More! With Special Guests Brett Roer and Jacob Kantor of EDLIT

• Alex Sarlin and Ben Kornell

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Alexander Sarlin:

Welcome to Season Eight of Edtech Insiders where we speak to educators, founders, investors, thought leaders and the industry experts who are shaping the global education technology industry. Every week we bring you the week in edtech. important updates from the EdTech field, including news about core technologies and issues we know will influence the sector like artificial intelligence, extended reality, education, politics, and more. We also conduct in depth interviews with a wide variety of EdTech thought leaders, and bring you insights and conversations from edtech conferences all around the world. Remember to subscribe, follow and tell your ed tech friends about the podcast and to check out the EdTech insiders substack newsletter. Thanks for being part of the EdTech insiders community enjoy the show.

Ben Kornell:

Hello, everyone. We are wrapping up January with some amazing bangers of stories in ed tech. That is going on this week. We've got the common sense kid summit next week. Alex had his birthday I had my birthday. We are celebrating in every single possible way here at Tech insiders and more. So glad to have you with us. Alex, what's going on with the pod?

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, so we just put out a really cool episode with Lauren McCann, who is the Head of Education at Figma. Figma is sort of the leading design tool used professionally all around the world. She was also coming from Google Classroom from four years at Google Classroom. So really interesting insights about how the big tech companies and medium tech companies are thinking about education. Next week, we have old friend of the pod who's just a fascinating Ryan Craig. His book about apprenticeships in education just came out. It's amazing. It's really good. It's dense. There's a lot there. But it was really good. So we had a great conversation. So look out for that one next Monday.

Ben Kornell:

Great. And on the event side, we have the common sense summit on kids and America's families. And that is Monday and Tuesday next week. And then we've got on February 7, two bay area at Tech Summit. It'll be at 4pm at Cooley. And it's the event that we had with the world famous small group dinners. It's not quite Jeffersonian dinners, but it's a chance to go to a happy hour and then disperse into random teams of eight to 10 people and just getting to know your future funder, your co founder, you know, your head of product, they're all going to be there and it's going to be great. We also have happy hours coming at up at South by Southwest and ASU GSV. So we're very, very excited to sprint into 2024 with our Edtech Insiders community. So we're gonna go on to the headlines. What do we have up first, Alex?

Alexander Sarlin:

Well, first, let's talk a little bit about the stock market. There's some interesting stuff happening in the Ed Tech public stock market. This week, we saw a Goldman Sachs Analyst Eric Sheridan basically say that he thought that the emergence of AI of generative AI was a threat to the EdTech industry it major risks to providers of online courseware. And it caused a big dip in from a number of different big edtech companies including Duolingo, Chegg And Coursera. And we've actually seen all three stocks sort of bounced back since then, at least somewhat. So I don't think this is like, you know, an inflection point that sends everything spiraling. But it was really interesting to me to see that narrative which we saw, you know, last year with Chegg having this huge hit, after their release, where they talked about AI, I think the world is still trying to get their head around whether AI is good for ad tech or a threat to EdTech. And it was interesting to see it so in such a concentrated way this week. Yeah,

Ben Kornell:

it's interesting. You know, I know we're doing an article on kind of the EdTech skeptics out there. And it comes from mostly education corners that have been looking at, you know, 20 or 30 years retrospectively, of AI's impact, I think Eric Sheridan's take is that there's a convergence that basically, there is no difference between ed tech and tech tech, because all Tech Tech will end up becoming infused with AI learning capabilities. So one way to read that is men are these companies going to struggle versus Tech Tech. Another way to think about it is, wow, this could be a huge unlock for midsize and large companies that couldn't finally get gobbled up by one of these big Tech Tech players to kind of win in this like learning environment. So actually think there's this coin flip where AI for each company independently, it could be the greatest boon they've ever seen, or the greatest challenge. And this is, you know, just to know, our listeners also know, you know, when Chegg CEO, it was almost a year ago, I guess, eight months ago, was talking Now open AI and its threat. They also took a huge dive and then have worked their way back. So I do think there's this volatility in the market. One other article that we got that was similar was actually taking the other side of it. It was a TechCrunch article, where they basically were saying that early stage investments in at Tech might actually be a great investment. And so that was another interesting take. I just want to read a paragraph here, because it's probably the most underhanded compliment ever in ed tech. It says ed tech is nowhere near as popular as it was dot dot dot. Now we know Ed Tech News has almost vanished like water poured down a well, but that's not to say startups haven't been building in this category. And then it says, we found that with AI in the picture, ed tech startups have been as quietly busy as a subterranean network of moles in fall. Okay, come on, man. Okay, first like Anaheim from TechCrunch. Like, let's work on some more colorful analogies or language here. But you know, if you read the clickbait headline, it's like, invest in early stage ed tech. If you read the first two paragraphs, you're like, man, Ed Tech is screwed. And so I do think there's this general investor sentiment, that it's too hard to tell how it's going to play out. And so in general, there's a sidelines approach. So how does that affect our community, I think if you're working for one of these big companies, you've got to demonstrate real revenue, traction, real retention, and long term growth. If you're working for a midsize, or startup, on the mid size, you've got to show you're not plateauing. And on the startup side, you've got to actually demonstrate your defensibility. This is from an investor standpoint, when the market is down is the best time to invest. So in a way, investors should be happy. But I think overall, the mood is caution. Yes, overall, the mood is down rounds, all that stuff.

Alexander Sarlin:

I think everybody is just trying to figure out the relationship between generative AI and Ed Tech in this article is no exception. They talked to four investors, both tech and generalist investors, including Yun Lin materna, from eMERGE who, you know, was a headline speaker at our conference on a infall. And they talked about things like you know, how does that tech get the AI talent? Can they hire for it? Will people with AI talent work in edtech? Very important question, or we'll start ups that are Gen AI first, you know, compete or what does that mean, compared to places that are already skilled, like Duolingo, or Coursera, or, you know, Pearson, and they're putting a tech product into their into features into they're already very thoroughly mature product line. And one of the things that I found interesting about this as well, so Jeff Magan, calda, from Coursera, announced this week that, I mean, there's another sort of click Beatty line, but it makes sense that Coursera users sign up for an AI course, for every minute of 2023. So you can sort of do the math there, right? It's like the number of learners who signed up for some kind of AI course they do prompt engineering, they do AI for business, all sorts of stuff was for every minute of 2023. And everybody's basically trying to own the narrative, you know, they're basically trying to say, the EdTech community, including us feel like AI is going to be a boon for edtech, it's going to support it. Others in general in the generalist world might see it the way you just said that AI is going to change everything in tech. And it'll actually remove some of the advantages of edtech. Others might say something like, well, like you said, you know, if Google or open AI, or Microsoft, or Amazon or even, you know, wanted to get a head start in an AI training model for college, there's probably not a better idea than purchasing, you know, edX, or Coursera, or another place with 1000s and 1000s of courses that are all data that can be used to train a model. So like, there's just so many ways to look at it. And I just don't think anyone narrative has taken charge yet. Because we're so early. I mean, we'll talk and when we get to higher ed, we'll talk about how opening I just announced its first partnership with the University and unsurprisingly, it's ASU, the arguably the most technically innovative university in the country. We'll get into that, but that's yet another theory of change that, you know, ASU is embracing AI everywhere. And they feel like it's just intrinsic and what the future of education will look like. And it makes sense given you know, Michael Crowe's history. But nobody knows. It's kind of exciting for nobody to know. But I hope the narrative that AI is going to eat edtech doesn't continue to take hold, because that just doesn't, it doesn't resonate with me personally. No,

Ben Kornell:

and I was meeting with some investors on Monday, and they are a large international firm. They take big stakes in companies. And they were talking to me about how in isolation, the jury would be out and people would be like, maybe this is worth a bet. Maybe it's not worth it that but the combination of This plus what's going on with by Jews and the other quote unquote unicorns is a double whammy where they say for most investors, ad tech comes across as a boondoggle. And one of our other headlines is, you know, so last week we talked about a report that kind of revise from one IQ that revised the number of unicorns dramatically down. This week, we hear that by Jews is raising new money at a $2 billion valuation down from the nearly $32 billion valuation they had before 22 billion Yeah, 22 billion. Okay. Still,

Alexander Sarlin:

I mean, they made up numbers.

Ben Kornell:

90% Yeah, right. Yes. I mean, that pattern recognition that investors are always looking for, you know, you and I know that it's actually each company is quite different and has quite different dynamics. But from a sector standpoint, we're hitting some new lows, I think, in terms of investor perception, and on the big one, we don't know where rock bottom is, because there is no transparency. There's no way of digging down to actually find where everything is, because the complexity of their structures means that there's some cash over here, and there's some debt over there. And so, you know, I've got the popcorn I'm watching, but it seems more like a horror movie than a comedy anymore. Yeah.

Alexander Sarlin:

I mean, I'd like to think that ad tech is sort of following the hype cycle right now, and that it had this enormous, exaggerated perhaps boom, in the pandemic years, and now we're post pandemic and the Bloom is off the rose. And some of these valuations, these, you know, really kind of nutsy valuations, you know, are hitting the ground. And this is the low or we're close, hopefully, to the low of the EdTech. Winter. And my hope, and I think we've we share this, and we've talked about it a lot on this show is that there is still a lot of growth to get to more of a reasonable plateau, at least for what edtech can and should do. From a funding standpoint, from an impact standpoint, from a sort of investor excitement standpoint, I'm hoping that we're sort of near the the local minimum of this era, but you never know, and things like that, but we're bullish when you look at what's been going on. So Ben, we should talk about some of the things in K 12, because you look at some of the things that are starting to happen in K 12. And in higher ed, I think there's just so much room for innovation, I really feel like people are more open to trying bigger swings in education than they have been in a long time for a number of different reasons that really should benefit the EdTech sector.

Ben Kornell:

Yeah, and you know, on the K 12 side, the US government just laid out a national ed tech plan. And they're talking about AI, really an ad tech, in general, aligned to impact and equity. And so there's a way in which I think some of the focus in K 12 is shifting towards utilization of AI and ad tech, to meet the needs of learners who are kind of at an all time learning loss level and the learning loss. One is on an absolute basis. And then on a relative basis, African American, Latino students versus white students, and then relative to global learning levels. So there's actually an interesting way in K 12, this burning platform to use tech, and meanwhile, an inability to double down on human beings because of the teacher shortage. And you know, I'm bullish on this space, I think many investors have stayed away from K 12, for years, because customer acquisition cost is very, very high. But the new outline from the national ad tech plan, highlights digital access, first, digital design, second and digital use. So this idea is how do we make it available? How do we design it for learners who have learning differences or English language learners or come from low income backgrounds? And then how do we use digital tools incorporated into pedagogy? And this is going from replacement of you know, write your paper here and type it here to more? How are we going to leverage what only tech can do data analysis and dashboarding or video and audio? And so I think there's actually an interesting, you know, this was released on January 20 seconds. So it's very, very new. But I think there's an interesting role for the feds to help districts understand what edtech is for. And rather than focusing on the tech focus on, you know, the solution,

Alexander Sarlin:

right. The way this report is organized, I started digging into it, you know, it's 100 page report. There's a lot of detail in it. There's a lot of good examples, actually, of how schools and districts around the country have begun to break into these goals to close these divides, including the US Have a i Absolutely. They're sort of thinking about it. As you know, the digital design divide is really about teachers, How can teachers use digital tools effectively to design, the digital use divide is about students, and they go out of their way in the report to show the sort of passive use of technology where every student is on a separate laptop disconnected, you know, arguably, maybe doing something personalized, but you know, let's leave that behind. versus, you know, active use of technology, which is much more collaborative, it can be used for coding can be used for, you know, group projects can be used for all sorts of things that are more social and connected in the classroom, they sort of go out of their way to talk about that kind of use. And then the third is the digital access divide, which is really about content, and arguably, you know, internet, the classic digital divide of broadband. It's basically saying, you know, how do we give everybody in this country access to the best tools, the best content, the fastest speed internet? And it's interesting, because, you know, when I first saw this, I was like, Oh, my God, the digital divide, like, I've been hearing about the digital divide. Since I was in graduate school since before then, it's, you know, we've been talking about it absolutely forever. And there's been huge gains in broadband access, there's been huge gains in, you know, inexpensive technology, there's been huge gains, and students having cell phone access, like a lot of things have changed. But the fact that the, you know, administration here is thinking about, hey, let's sort of update this meme of the digital divide, and use it to actually try to get tools into the classroom, get Taunton into the classroom and get it to be used in ways that actually, you know, like you say, it's a burning platform, you know, that reverse some of these extremely negative trends that we've seen the last few years, it's which are really bad, both from inequality standpoint, and just purely, just you our scores are really bad. I mean, maybe they went PISA scores went way down. So it's a really interesting moment, I don't know how much this is going to influence, you know, live in a weird country, the national lead tech plan doesn't necessarily mean that any given state has to do this stuff. But there are some lots of ideas and incentives. And thinking in there, it's definitely worth reading. I gotta read the whole thing. But it's an interesting moment. I hope that, like I say this every week, but I really hope that, that people do actually feel that burning platform, and they recognize the things you just said, Ben, that even though we're in a teacher shortage, we're also seeing, you know, historic learning loss, and historic equity divides. And, you know, in as much as technology can and should, you know, remove those, we should be leaning into it like crazy.

Ben Kornell:

Yeah, and this is where the knife's edge is, is let's make sure we're not replacing teachers with tech, that would be a mistake. But how do we expand the capacity of teachers, improve the capability of teachers, and then bring tools around the student that allow the educator human in the loop? Motion to really function efficiently and effectively? I you know, I'm actually curious about what's going on in higher ed, we've been covering more of the politics of higher ed, but we've got some good ad tech stories like Ed and tech, like real tech, with higher ed, what's on the top of your list.

Alexander Sarlin:

So you know, I want to dive into the ASU news. But one quick headline before that, that I thought was interesting, because, you know, after interviewing Ryan Craig reading his book about apprenticeships, one of the things that is really doesn't exist very much in this country, is the idea of people doing work based learning or you know, and which actually transfers into college credit. That's a pathway that does exist in some other countries. It's it's a pathway that makes a lot of sense for a lot of people, but it doesn't usually exist. And we saw an interesting partnership this week, which is Northeastern University, very innovative university, very focused on cooperative learning, and work, work based learning, partnering with multiverse, which we've covered, you know, many times on this podcast in a variety of different ways. Basically, they are agreeing to do this, they're agreeing to grant transfer credit to apprentices who complete multiverses analytics apprenticeship programs. So if you go do the multiverse program, you can then leverage that experience into actual transfer college credit to Northeastern, and this is, you know, they call this sort of the work integrated degree program and clearly multiverse and others in this space, I mean, are really interested in figuring out how the classic four year college degree which comes with a lot of costs, and a lot of dropout rates could be sort of augmented or could use work based learning as part of that process, not just, you know, work study while you're at a university, but actually work as a way to gain credit. So I found that very interesting. I think it's worth keeping an eye on to me the big, big story this week is open AI, which, you know, arguably still, the leading company in AI announced its first official partnership with university it is ASU, led by Michael Crow who, you know has a long history in ad tech was the president of Columbia many years ago, and created fathom, which was basically a precursor to the all the MOOC platforms. He was. He's been at ASU for a while and had made ASU into a mega University, mostly through their use of online learning, as well as integration of many, many, many, many, many different technologies. They're sort of like the first to embrace almost any tech. So it's not a surprise that they're the first university doing this. But the details of some of this are kind of interesting. I mean, one of the core things with a piece of the partnership is the idea of unlimited chat GPT for that's the paid, you know, highest version of chats, UBT, access free for now approved University members and students, which means that people have to submit a proposal, at least for now. But I imagined that the thinking there is that will continue to expand. The SU also is planning to build a personalized AI tutor for their students. It's planning on allowing students to create AI avatars for steady help, they already have a prompt engineering course at ASU. And they're going to expand that. And I believe partially in conjunction with the partnership, they've been working on this partnership for quite a while sort of behind the scenes. And I think there's two things to glean from this. I mean, one is he is always sort of early adopter out front, just the fact that ASU is doing it does not necessarily mean that this is the beginning of all the universities adopting AI partnerships, let alone AI partnerships with open AI, like, you know, I mean, years ago as you did, or its partnership with Starbucks to do this really innovative thing with a college credit. But you know, people didn't follow suit. That's not that wasn't the first of 100 projects like that. So you never know there. But what I found interesting is actually seeing what open AI is thinking about this. So we have a quote in this press release from the chief operating officer of opening icing. Learning is core to why so many users love chat up at ASU continues to lead an innovation by integrating chat GBT into its educational programs. And we're keen to learn and work towards expanding Chechi BTS impact in higher ed. So they are clearly interested in getting into higher ed, which is a huge business. And it sort of makes sense. They're also, you know, claiming at least that education is really a core use case of this AI technology, which I personally agree with. But they they don't have to feel that way. And it's very interesting to see, I would say like the two trailblazers in their respective fields in terms of like technology, enhanced universities and generative AI, joining forces to try something and see where the overlap is. And see you know, how this is going to go and try to set a new standard for what for how universities should be thinking about AI. ASU has done all sorts of stuff with AI, they've created multiple programs in it and all sorts of things. So this isn't the first thing they've done. But this is arguably sort of the highest profile thing they've done because it's connected to to open AI. But I'm really curious about your thoughts on this. You had follow open AI very closely, are you really pay attention to how they have operated and how they've been thinking about education? What is this announcement mean to you?

Ben Kornell:

Well, I will say, so appreciated your thoughts, mainly, you know, thinking about this from an ed tech standpoint, I think about it from the open AI standpoint, they are basically getting countries throwing themselves at open AI saying let's partner, let's find ways to work together, I would guess like, probably like a dozen ministries of education have said, Open AI, we want to partner with you to transform our learning for our entire country. So one question is like, is opening I just gonna partner with everybody? Is this essentially a slew of announcements where open AI is going to be doing deals like these? Or is open AI going to be very selective in who they partner with? And will that give a distinct competitive advantage? Now, the only analog that we have for this is in K 12, with conmigo and Khan Academy, where, you know, we got to interview Christians and cerbo, a year ago, where we heard about, you know, a deep partnership with opening, I don't think it was lightly held on either side. And it was a transformational partnership that has impacted both organizations tremendously, but most, especially Khan Academy. So if this is going to be a kind of partnership that is monogamous, where, basically open AI is like you as you are, you are my partner, and we are going to distancing. So watch out. And my sense is actually also that in addition to working with partners like ASU, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Western Governors coming right behind, right. A couple other people because we know the who's who of innovative distributed companies are. But then I also would expect that open AI is going to launch their own sets of tools, their own sets of courses, much like we've seen with YouTube, doing a partnership with As you and then launching their own courses online, what's interesting about open AI is they don't have any advertising revenue to speak of. So unlike our big tech counterparts, who often have to balance this, like, do we want to partner with people? Or do we want to steal their lunch? Well, they're advertising a lot with us, we should partner with them. Open AI has like no incentive to go one way or the other. And in some ways, the more users that are active on their database, the better their LLM and algorithms will be. So I think, you know, this might be one of those short lived advantages for ASU. But I think if you're thinking about every university in America, that has an online learning component, or a digital component, they need to be partnering with an AI company or a set of AI companies around teaching AI as a, like a core competence to like leveraging their biggest cost structure, which is their staff, like finding extensions for their staff so that they can essentially take a professor, assistant professor, and scale them way more efficiently. And then third, focus on learning outcomes, because what we know is the funnel is not working, they're having incredible dropouts, they're having people coming in that need remediation, and AI has so many tools to solve those things. So kudos to Michael Crow, by the way for always being kind of first step ahead. But I think this is one of those where it's not a leap forward for them. I think they're one step ahead. And it's a race.

Alexander Sarlin:

Yeah, I agree completely. A couple of quick thoughts on that, and no aid to me this is going to be a monogamous, you know, one on one partnership. The reason I think that is I mean, that's my expectation. First off, you know, the quote, I just read is like, we look work towards expanding charging, which is impacting higher education. Like, I think that means, hey, you know, we're starting with the early adopter first mover. But one thing I think to think about there, you're right about the ad revenue. But But open AI, as you've mentioned, in past weeks, is making tons of money in their b2b revenue. And one of the reasons they can do that right now is they have clearly solved I don't know the details of this, but they must have solved behind the scenes a way to do I don't know if you'd call it private instances, but you know, some kind of privacy so that a company, if you're Coca Cola, you're using open AI, open AI is not training its model with, you know, the formula for Coca Cola when it's gets typed in there, right, because that's the biggest fear for companies is their IP. That's also true for universities, Arizona State professors do not want to start doing research searches on open AI only to find that there, you know, unpublished research is then findable on open AI. So I think that same innovation that allowed open AI to really turn on the sort of tap with b2b and make lots of Partnerships has also unlocked this. And by this, I mean, the fact that they can work with universities writ large. So I'd be pretty surprised even though you know, I started this by saying Arizona State, just because they're ahead doesn't mean everybody will follow them. But I think open AI, to your point about you know, ministries of education or businesses of all kinds knocking on their door. I'd be very surprised if when this announcement came out, which was, you know, January 18. A lot of other universities starting with, yes, the Southern New Hampshire's the Western Governors, the Northeast turns, you know, there's a number of early adopter schools. But I bet a lot of college presidents and college Provost took note and said, Okay, open AI has just gone into the higher ed sector. And we're going to keep a close eye on this and find out what that looks like. Because, and I think it's going to also create competition for the other AI companies. You may see Google going into this, you may see anthropic going into this, they're probably watching this and saying, is there with AI? In university? So it's going to be a really interesting moment. I hope this becomes a trend I want to be in universities, I think it makes a ton of sense. But yeah, I think your point is really good that you know, opening I has a lot of choices right now. And the choice to work with Khan Academy, the choice to work with ASU are very smart and conscious choices. They're going for the most innovative widest reach at education institutions in America. So that's powerful. Yeah,

Ben Kornell:

I mean, I will also say, this is a young company. Remember when we were following like, check GPT is acceleration, you know, in just 12 months, I think there's a way in which the strategy of how open AI becomes infused in day to day life. I think that that's rapidly evolving, and still not a fixed item. You know, what we should probably do is also flipped to Google, who is the largest edtech player in the world, as I often say, and really, this is a shot across the bow for Google, that open AI is going into the education space hardcore. And we had some really interesting news from Google this week in ed tech. I mean, man, what a banger of a week. What was their announcement? Can you walk our listeners through that?

Alexander Sarlin:

Oh, yeah, yeah. So I mean, couple of big tech announcements. So Google announced just right before we started our recording, they announced at bet a new set of ai powered features for Google Classroom, one of which is one that I think is very interesting, and that we've been keeping an eye on here. You know, we reported on a tech insiders a number of months ago that Google Classroom was testing something with a tech startup EdPuzzle, which basically allowing people to insert questions into videos on YouTube, so that you could actually, you know, turn a YouTube video into a assessment. And that's what EdPuzzle does, and Google was working closely with them. With this announcement. Google is saying that now, you can do that throughout your teachers can add questions to YouTube videos completely in their assignments, and it's going to be aI supported, where you can actually use I imagine the transcript of the YouTube video to auto generate, or suggest questions to be put in a YouTube video and find answers. That's a very powerful feature for teachers. So that's really interesting to me. And it shows me that something has been working well with that pilot that they were doing that sort of opt in pilot with EdPuzzle. I don't know what Ed puzzles role is in any of this. But whatever they were doing earlier in the year has worked well enough for them to launch it as a feature and then expand on it with AI. So that's exciting. There's other AI features here, that could be really interesting when there's ones about group assignments, I don't know if that means that AI will automatically suggest groups for students, but that would be very interesting. There's also the ability to get text from PDFs for screen readers. So that's an accessibility feature that uses AI basically probably uses optical character recognition. And they're exhibiting 15 new Chromebooks, which are is not necessarily an AI feature. But I imagined that Google's overall strategy is to continue to dominate the K 12 ad tech space in many ways, and also continue to inject AI where it's useful and where, you know, it's acceptable by teachers. So I thought that was interesting. It's also worth noting that Microsoft this week, announced that it's going to make its AI powered reading tutor available for free, and allow it to integrate into Canvas into instructors Canvas. So Microsoft doesn't want to be left behind in this conversation. They're obviously deeply partnered with open AI. But you are seeing big companies like Google and Microsoft, and open eyes, GPT store, people are doing things and they're starting to make it more and more accessible for teachers to use AI. It's a really interesting moment.

Ben Kornell:

Yeah, and one thing that I think we as listeners who've been following this arc of AI capabilities, and that revolution, we're starting to get to Assam total capabilities, where GPT, five and the next Google model, they're not going to be game changing, the better, they're going to be incrementally better. And that improvement cycle is going to continue on, continue on, continue on. But to the degree that one model versus another model will not be that distinguishable. So one area where these big tech companies will be fighting is for cost advantage, who can do it at a lower cost. And they can be the infrastructure that everyone builds on that the second I think is really, really important. It's real estate. You know, back in the old days of the internet, it was like, Where are you on the internet web page, real estate and Twitter are part of their genius was the Twitter button everywhere. And what we're seeing now is, Google has a hardware advantage in edtech, they are going to have real estate, physical real estate in person real estate in every classroom. So whatever their latest AI thing is, their AI button is going to be in front of learners and in front of educators and in front of people. And second, YouTube, which is the most important real estate in the world, that little frame or that little box, if they have a generative AI button there, that right there is going to crush anybody who has 20% Better capability, but lacks the convenience of that button right there. So I think that, you know, they're doubling Google rightfully is doubling down on what its true competitive advantages, which is distribution of the internet's real estate. It has the biggest search bar, you know, google.com. It's got YouTube. It's got physical Chromebooks. And this is where Yeah, at open AI needs to lean into the Microsoft partnership. The other news from Microsoft is that they're integrating open AI and AI features into teams as well. And teams is actually the most popular product for zoom meetings and virtual meetings for school districts, in part because they like the ability to kind of lock things down and have more control. I mean, sidenote, I hate Microsoft Teams when somebody wants to do a meeting with microcin have things like, let's just not meet let's do a phone call. But districts are going enterprise wise, they're buying the Microsoft suite. And they're buying Microsoft Teams. And so there is this enterprise sales battle going on in K 12. Education? Who is going to be the winning, you know, kind of infrastructure player? Is it going to be Google? Or is it going to be Microsoft? Or is it going to be both? And where's the AI territory? So I'm a startup in edtech. What I want to do most desperately is find a way to partner with either of those organizations and get some of that real estate. And I've talked to a number of entrepreneurs on like, we need to put a button of your company right here on YouTube. Well, YouTube speaking into it. So anyways, I know we could talk on and on about this. We need to move on to our guest, but one an action packed set of headlines this week.

Alexander Sarlin:

Amazing, amazing week for ad tech news. Yeah. So speaking of our guests, do you want to introduce them, Ben?

Ben Kornell:

Yeah, so we've got Brett Roer. And Jacob Kantor from EDLIT, joining us today. Jacob's, a longtime friend. He's an OG of SoCal. Basically, if you're playing the Kevin Bacon game, just to substitute Jacob Kantor in that, and you basically know everybody in education. And what I love about Brett, they've got this East Coast West Coast thing going. So Brett knows basically the other half of the country. And they're really doing a lot to unlock the customer acquisition cost challenge in edtech. And this kind of matchmaking, I am convinced that Jacob in the old world, your ancestors were matchmakers kind of finding village people and putting them together. But really helping schools and school districts find the tools that they so desperately need and helping edtech entrepreneurs and companies connect. So without further ado, welcome Jacob. And Brett,

Brett Roer:

thank you. Thank you so much for having us today. Ben and Alex.

Jacob Kantor:

Same.

Ben Kornell:

So tell us first a little bit about the genesis of EDLIT. Like, where did the idea come from? And what is it today?

Brett Roer:

Yeah, absolutely. So first, a brief background about myself, Brett Roer one of the cofounders of adlet 16 years in the New York City public school system starting as a teacher college advisor working my way up to a principal role in the Bronx. So the pandemic hits, it hits all of us that really opened up my eyes to the urgent need for innovative solutions in education, like so many others. But that experience kind of propelled me into the EdTech world where I found my calling is making sure the most groundbreaking solutions find their way to learning communities that are most desperate need for them. And then, as you already said, Jacobs superpower and mine are aligned in connecting education leaders with innovators. That's what propelled us to start adlet Just three months ago, after myself a number of years in the EdTech community and 16 years prior in public at gigabit I'd love for you to briefly share again how your superpowers had been unlocked. And then I'd love to make sure everyone knows what EDLIT is and does

Jacob Kantor:

Yeah, hey, good to be with you guys. I feel like we're all BFF because you guys are in my ears multiple times every single week. And also shout out I think the first 10 episodes as a guest spot so good to be with you guys again. So my name is Jacob cantor. I came to the US from Ukraine. I was in our USD kid and the public school system. been around the block and ad tech for about 16 years now names like LAUSD McGraw Hill, varsity tutors, stride AI, Edu, ref prep CT education, a number of others. But I think my superpower, like you mentioned was really figuring out who is doing great work in this space and truly in it because they wanted to move the needle for students and connecting them with the folks that could really get their solution in the hands of students to really move the needle. Yeah.

Brett Roer:

So in a nutshell, what is EDLIT? So EDLIT is an acronym for empowering districts through learning, innovation and technology, we're really trying to change the game and how edtech actually gets itself into the hands of education leaders and classroom teachers to support students. So our goal is we're going to directly link those edtech innovators with the exact education leader they need to find. So again, imagine you're an edtech. Leader, you need to connect specifically with assistant superintendents in Texas that are focused on solving social emotional learning challenges. For them. adlet is the way to unlock that we provide those targeted insights, we establish those thought partnerships with people on the ground right now seeking your solution. So we hold virtual learning sessions every week. That's what is the gateway to those connections. We make sure those Ed leaders provide you tailored feedback, and that you're beginning to foster those long term relationships. For us. There's two big outcomes that really matter. One is that every education leader who joins our sessions, we at Ed live make sure donations to fund student scholarships in their district are provided for their time and effort. So we're really trying to create this melting pot this ecosystem where tech ed, innovation, real world impact are all coming together. Not just serving education, innovators, but also really important, those students and the communities that we all should be getting behind.

Alexander Sarlin:

This is such a interesting idea. And I'm really excited about what you two are doing. As Ben mentioned, you're both super connectors, know, so many people in both the ad tech world and in the district and school world, I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about the nature of the problem that you're solving. Because I have seen this for many entrepreneurs, people who are trying to sell to K 12 schools and districts, often they come from the tech world, or they come through Y Combinator, or they come from, you know, somewhere other than the massive school system, and they don't even know where to start, they have no idea how to get in front of the right people. Can you tell us a little bit about how you have seen that problem manifest over the years? And what sort of led you to want to solve it?

Jacob Kantor:

Sure, sure. I think it stems to kind of this overall idea that Ben and I have been talking about, I feel like for months around, really the procurement system really being truly broken, right. So this idea of like, there's an innovative solution that can really move the needle for students, but how do they get in front of people to say, Hey, this is what we do. This is why we do it. This is who we're looking to impact. This is who we're already working with just all the kind of the basic things that education leaders want to know, right? The why the Hey, why did you get into this? Why did you start this? Like, why do I need to put my trust in you to say, yes, let's give this organization an actual contract and see what they can do. Right. And I think over COVID, as you guys saw, there was a lot of solutions that kind of got rolled out very quickly. And you know, at no fault of anyone's right, like, there were students at home, and there needed to be solutions in their hands. So there was a lot of things tried, and there was a lot of money, try it as well, right. But this way with the procurement system the way it is, right, we're really working with a tech solution provider to say, are you looking for feedback? Are you looking for a new solution that you're rolling out? And you need some strategic guidance on what the district actually needs? Or do you already have something that's working? And you just need more people to find out about it? Right, like, what is the true goal for these sessions? And what does success look like? And I think that's the one kind of superpower that Brett and I also unlock is, these sessions come with coaching, right? So we're really getting to the heart of, hey, this is a time to really be vulnerable, right? Like, we're looking to make an impact as a company, here are our big goals. But if we accomplish our goals, this is the impact we're going to have for the students that are out there.

Ben Kornell:

In terms of the matchmaking that you're doing, what are the biggest needs that you're hearing from schools and districts? And in terms of the trends on the companies? What are their biggest needs that you're trying to also meet?

Brett Roer:

Yeah, so that's an excellent question. And that's what's really important to us is when we meet with an edtech leader, we are really thoughtful about securing for them leaders who have already filled out what we call the leader membership registration, we provide them about two dozen buckets of areas that they are either looking for an immediate solution to finish out this school year, or definitely are looking forward to the next school year to have a better solution to solve their biggest challenge. So just to give an example, 70%, right, I'm able to do this reading for Anil 70% are looking for an AI power teaching tool. 60% are looking for college and career readiness tools. 75% are looking for leadership development, and professional development skills. The list goes on. But we know that these are the highest needs because we have market validation. So we're looking for those solutions first. But we also know there's niche things, I'm just giving an example. So we're looking for VR tools about 1/3 of our education leaders. So we know there's a diverse need, and that's what's most important, we will try to find that 1/3 of our respondents to match with you, right? First, it might be geography, it might be interest. And we also know there's education, at tech solutions that wants to meet leaders across the country, because they do want to find where to land and expand. And so sometimes having that diversity of we'll meet with any leader at the district level who's interested, because that way we can get authentic feedback. If this is a product fit for that state or to align with either funding initiatives or districts slash state priorities around that solution.

Alexander Sarlin:

I wanted to double click on what you just said about the sort of state priorities or initiatives I imagine in part of your sort of matchmaking, and you're building communities in this space, you have to keep an eye on what states are leaning into what education trends and, you know, if you're working with a certain kind of education leader who's doing social emotional learning, or VR, you know what states are excited about that? What states are excited about career and college readiness? And I'm sure that gives you a very good broad understanding of what's happening in the country. How do you stay on top of that this is such a complex country, there's district levels, there's, you know, state level initiatives, what kind of things do you do to make sure you know, where the minds of the district leaders are? Are you mentioned a survey? I'm curious about other research as well? Yeah.

Jacob Kantor:

So I think the interesting thing is, you know, I feel like we're all of us here, really education nerds, right. So I don't know what our daily digest looks like of add policy slash the latest headlines slash the companies that are doing good work. So myself being in Los Angeles, right, like, up and down the state from, you know, extended warning dollars that are in the state to prop $28, it's really kind of making sure that we're in the know, you know, just this week, some ad policy got released on like, you know, the state of ed tech. So it's really making sure we're kind of in the know, on everything that's going on. But I mean, kudos out to both of you guys. Because a lot of the stuff that I find out in the education space is credit to you guys. And what you guys do here, right? So a lot of it is truly like the amount of folks that are in my phone that get your podcast shared with them. Like, there's a tremendous amount. So kudos to you guys.

Brett Roer:

Yeah, I would say also, what kind of was the genesis again, you asked us before about adlet was the past few years in edtech. While I was a leader in the largest public school district, that's also the biggest silo, I wasn't learning about what's happening, right things I had to get to me in the Bronx in order for me to provide it to my students. So again, learning how that kind of ecosystem trickles down to a school leader like myself at the time, was really eye opening. So now flip that model, Jacob, myself, you both think of those people that when you find a solution, we're like, wow, could this be adopted and then scaled? Who are the X number of people that you're going to reach out to? And like, ask them to kick the tires? So what I found was, I was doing that constantly, with no incentive other than I think this is great. Like, what do you in your current role as a district leader or building leader, what I found was most frustrating about that was, you're now chasing a very busy person to provide their time, their insights, their bandwidth. That's was the genesis for Ed lit. Well, we heard from a lot of Ed leaders is, hey, if you like, tell me in a few months that you can put me in a room with an innovative solution, I'll be there, I can block out an hour, especially if there's an incentive to reward my students through a scholarship or other funding initiatives, what I can't do is just pick up the phone constantly behave, meet with this person, even though it is timely and it is important, I just can't constantly be doing that. And that's not scalable. So that is what we found. And then just to finally, you know, share, like one of our other unlocks is just like they're super connectors in edtech. They're super connectors in education, there are people who are volunteering their time to build affinity based groups to build coalitions at the statewide and national level around certain problems. So what we also find is find those champions, and be like, What can we do to help scale the work you're doing? So in this case, like, can we partner with you can you bring five like minded meeting leaders from your state that also are seeking the solution of let's make sure that that donation goes to your national organization or regional chapter of that organization. But now I know that you are invested, and you are the person I would have asked anyway for this advice. But now you're bringing it together, and being part of a different type of solution. On top of all the other amazing work you lead.

Ben Kornell:

I love your model. And I also just love the way you're leaning into solutions. And not leaning hard on the challenges after talking to so many schools and districts and so many education organizations and companies, you know, what's giving you the most of optimism right now in terms of the state of play. And we all know the negative headlines and the headwinds, but what's making you excited about the future of K 12? Education?

Jacob Kantor:

Yeah, I'll tell you one thing that I'm very, very excited about. And, you know, quick brag on what we'll do here by the end of February. So with the scholarships that we're donating back to districts that join by the end of next month, we will actually be on pace to donate $10,000 Back to school districts for different initiatives. So you know, nothing brings me more joy. And I speak for Brett as well, like, we're public school kids, right? Like, people are giving us their most precious commodity, which is their time to really learn about solutions. And it brings us a lot of joy truly, to be able to say, hey, you know, what are you working on at the district level, and like, put this into a scholarship for students that are graduating or put this into your fund for your senior? So that really gives us a lot of true joy. But I think, you know, going back to your question, just the level of organizations chatting with us and really being vulnerable. I think that's the true unlock for me is I'm getting kind of under the hood with a lot of organizations that are saying, hey, yes, of course, I would love more sales. But you know what, like, I need to figure out if this solution that I'm thinking about is even something that a district is struggling with, before I pour in a ton of resources into this project. Like let me get some version of a focus group together and find out if this is a true need, as both of you guys know, right, like we talk with a lot of solution providers that on the surface seem like the solution is really You need, but they've also never been in the space of an educator and like, Will this really solve the pain point? Will this really move the needle for students? So I'm truly excited to not only see under the hood with some companies and see what their strategic plans are, but also attempt to help them with their plans.

Brett Roer:

Yeah, I just want to echo besides obviously giving back to students and educational leaders, you know, my background, especially around leadership, development and coaching. One thing I'm so optimistic about is the right type of Ed, tech innovator and leader who we can help them tell their story and narrative in a more concise, concrete way, teaching them how to ask questions that not only probe education leaders to provide their expertise, but also are building transformative relationships. So one thing I've taken away from this is, virtual spaces can build transformative relationships, if done with purpose and correctly. And so for me, I love now seeing these things now live, you know, virtually, but we know that these are the type people are going to connect potentially at an upcoming conference. And now they built something around vulnerability, trusting one another, that we're all in this together for the right reasons. And I'm not saying that that is 100% accurate in all ed tech organizations. But that's something we try very hard to sniff out in those early meetings, to say if you're here for the right reasons, we'll put you with our closest connections and people that trust us to find solutions. But we really do a, I think, a pretty good job of making sure there's that mission alignment in the beginning. And then let's make sure you're telling the best story because we believe in your solution. And that's part of the process.

Alexander Sarlin:

It's really exciting to see, as you say, building relationships, building connections between two aspects of the education and edtech world that often are just not connected as often as they should be, or could be. And it can be done in a design research context. It can be done in a solution sharing context. But it feels like a very pointed problem in the K-12 space, especially for ad tech companies in the K-12 space. But I think for both sides, so it's really exciting to hear about what you're doing. This is Ed lit, Jacob Cantor and Brett Roer, EdTech insiders, friends of the pod, doing something really innovative and really interesting. In the ed tech world. Thanks so much for being here with us today.

Jacob Kantor:

Thank you both so much, really an honor and a pleasure. Appreciate you.

Brett Roer:

Keep doing the great work you're doing.

Ben Kornell:

All right. Thanks, everyone for joining us incredible headlines this week. Of course if it happens in ed tech, you'll hear about it in ed tech insiders. We'll see you next week.

Alexander Sarlin:

Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more edtech insider subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.

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Alex Sarlin

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