Discovery Education CEO Brian Shaw on Educating 45 Million Students Across 100 Countries

Brian Shaw is the CEO of Discovery Education, a global leader in educational technology that reaches over 45 million students and 4.5 million educators across 100+ countries. With a background in finance and corporate strategy from his roles at Red Ventures and Time Warner Cable, Brian has extensive experience in M&A and business integration. At Discovery Education, he drives innovation through acquisitions and partnerships, delivering impactful digital learning solutions.

💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How Discovery Education builds lasting school partnerships
• AI-powered tools transforming assessments for teachers
• Career Connect bridging classrooms and real-world careers
• The role of acquisitions in driving innovation and growth
• Adapting to budget shifts and consolidation in EdTech

✨ Episode Highlights:

[00:01:13] Brian Shaw explains Discovery’s mission to drive learning outcomes
[00:03:47] Discussion on interoperability with school systems
[00:05:25] EdTech consolidation and how Discovery stays ahead
[00:08:59] AI assessment generator making custom assessments easy
[00:11:25] Career Connect helping students explore careers early
[00:15:01] Identifying the right companies to acquire
[00:19:35] The importance of communication after acquisitions
[00:23:02] Advice for startups building relationships with Discovery

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] Brian Shaw: With the design of making sure that we are setting the teachers up with confidence for a successful use of our products in their class that meet their needs. And that is something that is a largely human element. We talk about tech and we always tend to spend most of our time talking about software, but the people side of it is really, really important.

And we have just an amazing team that has been built over the years that are actually able to get out into the districts and have the relationships and make the connections and help drive that development. And Which leads to the success that we've had.

[00:00:34] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry. From funding rounds, to impact, to AI developments across early childhood, K 12, higher ed, and work. You'll find it all 

[00:00:47] Ben Kornell: here at EdTech Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar.

And to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus, where you can get premium content, access to our what's new. Early access to events, back channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoyed today's pod.

[00:01:13] Alex Sarlin: As CEO of discovery education, Brian Shaw oversees the creation and implementation of the company's award winning state of the art digital solutions, serving approximately 4. 5 million educators and 45 million students in more than a hundred countries. Prior to his current role, Brian was Discovery Education's chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

In those capacities, Brian led the organization's global accounting and finance teams and oversaw Discovery Education's IT, operations, and corporate strategy functions with a focus on M& A activities. Brian joined Discovery Education from Red Ventures, a Charlotte, North Carolina based technology enabled portfolio of digital companies.

At Red Ventures, Brian created the Corporate Development, Investments, and Investor Relations units from scratch and led numerous strategic finance projects. Brian also led Red Ventures M& A transactions. Brian also held leadership roles in the financial planning and analysis and accounting functions at Time Warner Cable and in the assurance practice at Ernst Young.

A native of Wisconsin, Brian earned both his bachelor's and master's degree from Wake Forest University, and along with his wife, daughter, and son, makes his home in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. Brian Shaw, welcome to EdTech Insiders. Great to be here, Alex. I am very excited to speak to you today.

What you have been doing at Discovery Education for years is incredibly transformative. And you've reached millions, what is it, 45 million students in over a hundred countries. It's pretty epic. I want to start with just an overview. Tell us a little bit about how Discovery Education works. It sort of has a lot of different arms and how you perceive your role in the EdTech landscape.

Great. 

[00:03:01] Brian Shaw: Yeah, it's a great question, Alex. And you're right that discovery education does have a number of arms. But at our core, our mission is to really drive learning outcomes. And the teachers and students are first and foremost in everything that we do. And as we think about that, we address different markets in different countries in different ways.

But thinking about the U. S. K 12 market as being our kind of core market, we find ourselves with a great suite of award winning products that we've built or acquired over the years. All of which are easy to use, they're engaging, they're effective, they're essential to daily instruction, and they're also interoperable with the overall district ecosystem.

We operate in a complex market, and for us to really drive maximum impact, it's important that all of our products check all of those boxes that I just listed. 

[00:03:47] Alex Sarlin: Tell us a little bit more about the interoperability in districts. This is something that A lot of the smaller ed tech startups really wrestle with they trying to figure out when can we or should we become really interoperable and sort of match the system discovery?

It's obviously a big part of the strategy, and I'm sure it's had a lot of impact. 

[00:04:04] Brian Shaw: Yes, and it's something that goes on behind the scenes, but it's a tremendous amount of work and something we take a great amount of pride in as we think about interoperability for us, it is. Really, you're kind of working through the needs of a district and the systems and tools that they're using, whether that's a single sign on provider like a clever or an LMS like canvas and being able to make sure that our products are accessible and integrated in all of the right ways to match the workflow of each district and districts have very, very different workflows.

And so being able to be that flexible partner that says yes, is something that's really, really important to us. Yeah, I can imagine 

[00:04:37] Alex Sarlin: districts are very excited to that you match their LMSs and their student information systems and that you can speak to their systems. You know, we're in a funny moment in the ed tech world, you know, districts had a lot of Essar funding.

They were spending a lot during the sort of pandemic and directly post pandemic ages. Now they're starting to, you know, quote unquote, rationalize their spending. They're trying to streamline to the things that are really used, that are really impactful and consolidate. Discovery has been in the market for a long time and I imagine that you are probably one of the last people that they're going to change their relationship with compared to all of these newcomers and new ideas and AI products.

Tell us about what it looks like from your perspective as districts sort of change their philosophy on edtech. 

[00:05:25] Brian Shaw: Yeah, you really framed the question. Well, Alex, we're truly in an interesting era of rationalization and consolidation and, and to your point, schools are really evaluating ROI on their tech spend, and it's really challenging us as ed tech providers to really step up our game.

And ultimately, I think that's actually a really good thing for the industry. We're being pushed to bring additional value and drive innovation. And from our perspective at discovery education, In this competitive market, the businesses that are going to thrive are the ones that are partners to schools and district leaders and not just point solution vendors.

They're companies that have a broad footprint, high quality products, proven track records of really supporting academic achievement. And fortunately for us, we feel those are all traits that have been core to discovery education success for years. Yeah. So like we're in a position that is, you know, well situated for this moment in time, because frankly, we've been executing against those priorities and really prioritizing partnership and academic achievement.

For years that go literally decades pre pandemic. So, you know, our, our perspective is that the market is in this interesting moment, but in many regards, our strategy itself is continuing on the path that we've been on for years. 

[00:06:29] Alex Sarlin: Let's double click on this partnership idea, because I think that it's clearly core to your strategy.

And I think it's something that a lot of edtech providers really Wrestle with. They want to be partners. They certainly want to be perceived as good partners to their customers and to the districts. But sometimes they're trying to meet the needs of many different people at the same time. And there's just a lot of different demands on an ed tech company.

Tell us a little bit about when you talk about really being a partner with districts. What does that mean? And how have you gotten to that kind of state over time with discovery 

[00:06:59] Brian Shaw: education? Yeah, it's something that has taken years. And so getting to that state is not a small task. But as we think about it, we think about it with the lens of not only technology and again, going back to interoperability and the ability to say yes, when a district says here are the tools that we work with, and we want you to be able to push your content or your assessment data or take your pick of whatever other piece of learning object through this ecosystem in this particular way.

Being able to say yes is important, but it's also far more than just technology. It is the relationships and the people. So we pride ourselves on having world class professional development, and that professional development is tied to the successful execution and implementation of our products in the classroom with the design of making sure that we are setting the teachers up with confidence for a successful use of our products in their class that meet their needs.

And that is something that is a largely human element. We talk about tech and we always tend to spend most of our time talking about software, but the people side of it is. really, really important. And we have just an amazing team that has been built over the years that are actually able to get out into the districts and have the relationships and make the connections and help drive that development, which leads to the success that we've had.

[00:08:09] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. It makes sense that really building a long term human relationship between the people on both sides of the equation, as well as Really thinking about professional development, which as everybody in EdTech knows is often the absolute key to actually implementing successfully. You know, it's one thing for a district to buy a technology.

It's a very different thing for the teachers to buy in, to care about it, to really learn and, To be able to deliver it or use it in a way that complements their practice. So it's obviously something you focus on a lot. So let's talk about, you know, this year, let's talk about 2024. Where is discovery right now?

What recent initiatives have you been thinking about in this particular moment of ed tech complexity? We post Essar, you know, mid AI, all these things that are happening. How is discovery thinking about this moment? And what have you launched? 

[00:08:59] Brian Shaw: Yeah, so it's a great question. And there are multiple things that we've done.

And again, with the scope and breadth of our business, I can go down a couple of different examples, but maybe I'll pick three and talk quickly about them. The first is our assessment generator. A. I. You mentioned A. I. And it's Hard to have a conversation in the EdTech world these days without at least mentioning something around AI.

And what we launched recently is an AI powered capability that enables educators to really leverage the rich library of trusted content that we bring and efficiently generate customized assessments tailored to meet the learning objectives and state standards and even reading levels of their students.

So this tool is really designed to save educators time and in this world. Of just teacher shortages and the fact that there's so many different pressures being placed on our educators, saving time, especially if someone's getting up a learning curve, if they're a new teacher, or they're dropping into help makes all the difference.

And we try to make solutions like our assessment generator easy, and I think that's an important piece of our ethos that you don't need to be an expert in prompt engineering to use this tool. Educators can create high quality assessments literally in seconds, and they're tailored to, as I said, reading level, Bloom's taxonomy.

You can take your pick on multiple question formats all with a click of a button. And I think that is incredibly powerful and something that we just rolled out for back to school. Another one just from a new product perspective is a product that we're really excited about called mystery writing.

Mystery writing engages students in grades K through five with what we call wow content. That's it's engaging. It builds confidence in writing. And just like our award winning mystery science product, writing features, no prep. Open and go lessons that help multi subject elementary educators to really quickly and easily provide students with differentiated lessons that teach the writing process and again, in a world of all of the different pressures that are facing teachers and a K through 5 educator that may be teaching all subjects, the ability to have that open and go lesson.

That they know is going to engage the students and drive confidence is so, so important and ultimately, you know, mystery writing for us, the innovative approach is just high interest content. Think of things like, you know, showing a video to drive inspiration that is either an interesting animal or something that's cool at an amusement park and then providing step by step written visual auditory directions.

It helps get a student's creative mind going and. It gets you past that fear of the blank page, which so many people, like even myself here, much further on in my lifelong learning journey, we'll find ourselves with that blank page, just hard to get started. And really, we want to inspire and drive that through curiosity and through our content.

What's ultimately a very, very powerful ability to kind of teach those key skills and maybe for a third. And I could go on and on, but we'll certainly keep this brief. But we recently launched a product called Career Connect and research today shows that most learners, I believe, is north of 80%. Can't connect the skills that they're learning in school to future employment and our thesis for career connect is that we want to build a new model in education where career awareness and exposure starts early and with this product, teachers can just kind of give you a brief overview on how it works.

They can request a virtual classroom visit from an industry professional based on a job type, an industry, a language preference, a location and. You get this view into the career landscape of being able to identify to a person that is on the other end of a virtual visit, how they got to where they did in their career journey, the skills that they learned, how it translates back to the day to day of what's going on in the classroom.

And so WeView Career Connect is a pretty unique combination of very early workforce development, but also employee engagement. The career connections with these professionals are highly rewarding with just an amazing positive feedback to. You know, the satisfaction that comes with being able to share and bring joy to a classroom by using your own story in your own journey.

And we think it's something that's really powerful. 

[00:13:01] Alex Sarlin: A hundred percent. You know, listening to your answers there, it just touches on so many of the themes that we've talked about, you know, frequently on the podcast. You mentioned obviously right at the end that the career, you know, skills based learning or you CTE and bridging the gap between school and careers, which people have been wrestling with for a long time.

And I think that's a really interesting approach to actually bring. People from both sides as a way to engage both employees and students. It makes a lot of sense that personalized learning. I prefer to call that precision learning, but the ability to tailor content to, you know, you mentioned language, reading level interests, all sorts of different things just in time in real time to be able to get students engaged and excited.

And then the idea of AI for assessment. We talk about that a lot on this podcast because assessment is something that has just been. It's such a bugaboo in education. It's such a complex subject. And it's something that, yeah, it burns teachers out, it burns students out. It can be very difficult to do, especially formative assessments really well.

And AI suddenly takes a huge catalog, like where you have a discovery education and is able to instantly create meaningful assessments. I'm sure that's something that teachers will really appreciate as well as something that really leverages AI. In a way that compliments what you already offer at discovery.

And then of course, writing is such an important skill right now. People are really wrestling with that, but engagement, personalization, career transitions, it's a lot of different areas. You know, one of the things that's really interesting about discovery is that you do acquisitions. You sort of mentioned this in passing, you know, some of the, your products are built internally and others are built through acquisition.

This, you know, recently Discovery acquired Dreambox Learning, very huge deal, you know, math program in the EdTech space, Pivot Interactives, Doodle Learning and others over the last few years. Tell us a little bit about how you think about acquisitions when you're evaluating the landscape. You know, what kind of factors did Discovery prioritize when they're thinking about what might complement your current suite of products?

[00:15:01] Brian Shaw: It's a great question, Alex. And you know, it's, it's one of these things that I actually have a lot of energy around acquisitions in general. I've been doing M and a for 20 years in my career. And you know, at discovery education, we look for companies that meet a few criteria. I think it really first starts with the product.

We ask ourselves a very simple question and it may sound silly, but I think it's actually fairly profound. We ask, Do we wish that we had built that product? Like we see it out in the market and say, wow, that is an amazing product. We have a lot of respect for it. We, man, we wish you could go back in time and build it ourselves.

And you know, that's been true of those acquisitions that you mentioned, the dream boxes and the mystery sciences of the world, and that's a key starting point for us, you know, the next thing is really around people and finding great teams that share our passion for improving teaching and learning is essential, look from an acquisition perspective, culture, and.

People integration is one of the most challenging elements and making sure there is a shared alignment in vision and passion helps march down that path in the best way possible. And then third, we're looking for companies that have a track record of really driving positive learning outcomes. And so we want to see that success in that history.

To really give us confidence in making sure that when we bring a new company into the discovery education portfolio, we know exactly what we're bringing in from a capability perspective, and it helps really as a catalyst to drive growth of a combined company in a way that that you couldn't do as either company would have pre in acquisition.

So We focus on those tenets and they may sound pretty simple, but that's a lot of the right light work to make sure that we're at least aligned from a framework perspective on what should ultimately be a successful combination. 

[00:16:47] Alex Sarlin: They don't sound that simple to me. I mean, the questions themselves might use simple language, but the ability to actually Go through the idea maze, as you say, of being like, if we could go in a time machine to 10 years ago and invent any product that's out there right now, what would we make?

What would we make given what we know now? I think that's a great thought experiment to start to understand, you know what you really care about, what you really Feel like is complimentary. And then, um, yeah, and people shared vision is, is key. One of the things that's also interesting about discoveries, I mean, a strategy, you know, mergers and acquisitions don't always work.

You've done, you've done this for 20 years. You know, sometimes acquisitions seem like a great idea, but the company cultures don't match or the product gets subsumed by other priorities. That has not happened for the most part of discovery. I mean, you've mentioned mystery science on its own. It's been a huge success within the discovery library as well.

The discovery suite of products. So tell us about how you integrate these new companies and technologies post acquisition into the overall discovery 

[00:17:47] Brian Shaw: product line. It's a really complex topic. And one that I think we'd probably have as much energy on as the pre acquisition side of doing the diligence and making sure the alignments there.

Because. Integrations, even, you know, in the most compatible organizations are among the more challenging things that we do in operating a business. And, you know, certainly one of the key foundational best practices from my perspective is having a really robust communication strategy. I know that's probably fairly obvious, but the tempo and the clarity of messaging, the positioning of the integration, both internally and externally, Is really, really important.

And from my perspective, you know, prior to beginning any integration, all internal parties really need to have clarity on what the integration activities are, what the schedule is, what the desired end state looks like. And so that communication and alignment is really, really important. And then externally, of course.

Customers need to be kept in the loop about integration activities as well. They may find themselves feeling uninformed. And, you know, actually, one of the things that we do with all of our integrations is, you know, is a bit more of a combined value prop of having multiple companies coming together. And we want to share that good news in the right ways as well.

So. You know, it really starts with that communication, both internal and external, and, you know, the messages need to be repeated. It's not a communicate and drive alignment once and you're done. You have to have that alignment and repeat it in some cases again and again, and again, across as many channels as possible.

People, you know, absorb information differently. Sometimes it is internally it's live town halls or it is company wide email communications or Slack messages or something else. Multiple channels, multiple times again with an overarching framework that is consistent and clear and keeps everyone up to date.

I think that is really, really important. 

[00:19:35] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I hear sort of over communicate both internally and externally with your customer bases. And I imagine that type of communication also highlights the sort of shared vision of discovery and the companies that are being acquired because that is obviously one of your.

core tenets about why you choose them in the first place. You share a vision and you share a dedication to outcome. So you can actually talk about that in your communications as well. I imagine. Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that's very interesting about this moment in ed tech for me, you have all of these new ed tech startups.

There are a lot, especially in the era because it's much faster to make a company now with all the A. I. Efficiencies that you can, you can include even making content is much faster than it used to be. But what these small companies do not have is something you mentioned, you know, in depth before these deep relationships with districts, these long term trust building, you know, relationships, big teams that can actually go on the ground and do professional development.

I mean, some of this is just much more labor intensive and time intensive, and the startups, you know, don't have anything like that. So it feels like there's some really interesting. Potential for merging of, you know, the discovery educations of the world that have these huge, really powerful, very well defined, you know, channels to reach all of these districts and all these students, you know, 45 million students and some of these really fast moving technologies or types of content or types of, you know, engagement tools that are coming up, but don't have anything like that and absolutely can't get, you know, nearly as much attention.

market traction as, as a discovery, even if they had years, how do you think about the year? You've done a lot of mergers and acquisitions from, you know, the standpoint of discovery and, and other companies that have a lot more of a track record here. How do you think these two types of companies might merge to create sort of an all new, really 

[00:21:28] Brian Shaw: exciting ed tech space?

Yeah, I do think those types of combinations are happening and will continue to happen. And I mentioned our assessment generator, our new AI tool earlier, that was actually an acquisition. So it was exactly the question you're asking kind of put into practice where we had identified this great AI based technology.

And It did a really complex thing that we didn't have, you know, the internal bandwidth and skillset and time to create, but they didn't have that deep relationship. They didn't have decades of track record and the scope of having employees throughout the world. And it was a very logical combination for us.

It was, it checked all those boxes in terms of being a product that we wish we had built ourselves. But the combination, Super important because that journey from zero to scale in EdTech is hard. This is still a very relationship driven partnership ecosystem. And certainly there are businesses that have built success with more of a direct consumer digital e commerce model in EdTech.

But at the end of the day, there's a limit to that. And, you know, from our perspective, bringing those great capabilities in house and then leveraging the things that we have built from a scale and distribution perspective over the years. It's a great combination. We expect to continue to do that. I expect others of our size would probably say the same.

And I do think that will be a powerful way to continue to bring acceleration of innovation into all the schools across the country and the world by really having the innovators partner up with folks that have the ability to gain scale and drive growth in a much faster way. 

[00:23:02] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

I think that's a great answer. And so if you were advising, let's say you had, you know, three, Early stage ed tech startup founders all around you saying, Hey, we would love, it would be our dream to be acquired by discovery and be able to reach so many students in so many, you know, contexts and countries you've mentioned, you know, dedication to learning outcomes, a culture that could, you know, match and compliment the culture of discovery and obviously a complimentary, you know, product suite, something that actually fills a gap that, as you say, or you wish you had invented yourself.

Yeah. What else might you tell them? You know, how would they build a relationship with a company like discovery? How do they make themselves visible to a company like discovery if they have something really exciting that they want to share with the world? 

[00:23:49] Brian Shaw: Yeah. And there are a lot of companies that have done the hard thing, which is identify a problem in education and found an innovative solution that really meets the needs of the schools, the teachers and the students.

And yeah, I think the logical next step is to explore conversations like that in many cases. And there are a number of different ways to do it. I mean, we are as a business fairly visible across the industry and we'll attend conferences and always encourage, you know, kind of the, the conversations that we have a chance.

You know, using asu GSV as an example of one that every year is a great incubator for those kind of connections and relationships. And those types of interactions live, I think, are great when possible. But we've also met a number of companies over the years that meet the kind of description that you've described here just through, you know, first, an initial introduction, Sometimes it can be a simple as a cold call email either to myself or to someone on our corporate development team to just kind of introduce us and orient us to a team and a product.

And those conversations can take a lot of different directions. And sometimes it's a future acquisition, sometimes it's a partnership, sometimes it's a technical integration of sorts. And. But we, we view our job as kind of the operators of discovery education to really be focused on continuing to innovate and be open minded to what forms that can take.

So we tend to have a pretty wide aperture from a top of the funnel, trying to meet people and understand who the great innovators are in that tech. And, and we welcome those conversations. And again, I expect while speaking on behalf of discovery education, I'm probably not alone in that, in that mindset is I, is I think about some of the larger players that are in our space.

[00:25:25] Alex Sarlin: It's very helpful context and I'm sure, you know, I can hear the scribbling of notes from all these edtech founders about, you know, we gotta make, you know, go live and send emails and make sure that people know all the things we're doing because it just feels like it's a moment when funding is scarce and that, you know, companies even doing amazing things are having trouble having, you know, reaching the students they want.

And I think it's a, it's just an exciting moment for that kind of, as you say, partnership. Sure. Tactical integration, or even perhaps acquisition. This has been a fantastic conversation. Discovery education is that it's a huge player in the ed tech space. And one that's been very reliable and very consistent and very trusted for a long time.

So it's really an honor to speak to you today. This is Brian Shaw, CEO of discovery education. Thanks so much for being here with us. On ed tech insiders. Thanks Alex. Really appreciate the conversation. 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 ed tech community.

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