This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Let's head out to San Francisco. Now check in with Sue Decker. She's the founder, chief executive officer of rafter. It works in the higher ed technology space. You'll know Sue's name, I'm sure from her tenure at Yahoo, as well as a number of other very prominent boards and whatnot that she sits on. She worked on Wall Street back in the day. We're gonna talk about all of it, but we got to talk
about colleges to start. First of all. Sue, thank you so much for being with Carol myself. Yes, I can. It's it's nice to be here. Thank you. Great, um, great to hear your voice. So tell us what's going on in the world of higher ed. You've got a window like a few others, because you guys are providing uh technology to colleges and universities at a time when
they are very reliant on technology no school. Yes, it's it's in a really challenging time in many ways for many people all over the world right now, and I think universities and students in particular are facing a reality that no one really anticipated. You have to commend the universities for how quickly they were able to get people and students home and faculty transition to online learning UH
in such a short amount of time. But I think it's been a lot of triage and weekly, daily emergency meetings trying to figure out how to make that work. Most of them are, that I speak with, our focused the first time getting through the spring semester, spring quarter, depending on how they organize themselves. And then the next focus is how they handled the summer and UM and will be finding out in May how many people are enrolling and sending checks in. That's going to be important.
And then for the next phase will be during the fall, do they do they need a plan B that is starting school online again, UM and many of them are talking about that right now. We're going to continue this conversation. So many industries are being impacted. We just want to mention a headline crossing the Bloomberg terminal pork in airlines to get four point one billion dollars in direct support
from the government. It includes it looks like UM or maybe in addition a one point seven billion dollar alone. This is again that a chord that we just reported on that the Treasury reach with the airline industry shares of American are up about five point six percent. Here in the after hours um Our conversation with Sue Decker,
That's who we're talking with, founder and CEO at Rafter. So, Sue, you know, tell us a little bit about what what are some of the specific programs that or or some of the outreach that you've done with universities as a result or colleges as a result of the virus. What
kinds of things are going on? Sure, well, we we announced in mid March that we would offer our platform and our our solutions for free for the rest of this academic You're recognizing that these schools are having to handle things that they've never planned on handling before and so having once you move online, it's more difficult to create a sense of community, to have a platform where people can find events, can connect with one another, can keep up the groups that they had in physical form
on campus in an electronic form. So since that time, we had a lot of incoming and we've been hosting a webinar once a week with UM roughly twenty universities on it. Last week, we had two different ones, UM, primarily focused on how they're going to handle orientation coming up. Sometimes sometimes many of them in the summer are having to figure out an online way to orient parents and students. Uh. And as well if the faculty faculty has three needs.
When they have to broadcast their lectures, which Zoom and Zoom equivalence can do, they also have to have a learning management system of electronically students can submit assignments and grades and there are systems like Canvas and blackboard that do that. And they also the third part is what rafter does, which is a communication um and an event hub so that one tap access to students can find their Zoom links to get into their classes, or they
can find their lecture notes for tomorrow. Then the professor can set up a group or rafts so they can easy access to the students for online office hours things like that. So, UM, those are the kinds of things we've been offering to support the community. You know, it's funny, Sue, in part UH just serendipitously, I was connected earlier today with the dean of a of a journalism school, UH, and I was saying to her, you know it feels like university higher ed is going to be radically changed
by this. And her response was interesting, and she said she said yes and no. She said yes obviously based on a lot of the technology that that you and
your folks are are working on. But she said, on the other side, you know, we also have to appreciate that higher education is about convening students and sort of taking them through in a very personal way a really critical stage of their life, and so much of that happens in person, and so much of the community has to be, or at least traditionally has been in person. How do you sort of sent the size and rectify
all of that as we look at this very uncertain future. Yeah, well, I would just say that makes total sense to me. I think when we when I started rafter, it was based on the experience I saw my daughter having when she started university. She's now graduated, but um, it was it was because of how I saw the communication happening on campuses that I felt there could be a much more authenticated network where like a Slack but for universities
or next door. For universities, it's private, it's curated, everybody on it is at your school, you can discover things that it makes students feel like they belong and it's a more welcoming experience. So our product was designed as an online adjunct for an offline experience, and I think the offline experience is fantastic. UM. It's hard to know
how long this will go. Some people I talked to think this is accelerating a trend toward online learning where only three percent of online learning three percent of curriculum was delivered online in the past, and some people think it'll move much more quickly to that UM than it otherwise would have. But I don't, I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball on that front. I think
our our products sort of work to support physical communities. UM, but I think it becomes even harder to connect and stay feeling like a part of that membership if you're if you're away from your physical community. Our guest right now is Sue Deck, our founder and chief executive officer at Rafter, on the phone from San Francisco. And before the break, we were talking you know about you know, what are some of the lasting impact of online learning. You know, once we get on the other side of
the virus, do I do wonder. You know, we've had some conversations Jason myself with guests about how times a crisis lead to a lot of collaboration, co ordination between kind of enemies in the corporate world UM and often lead to innovation. And I do wonder when we get on the other side of this, what do you think will be some of the biggest changes, our biggest impact as a result of the virus on our world. You know,
it's it's so hard to say. I think the I'm a believer that the crisis will in some ways it exaggerate trends that we're already in place. So at least as far as online learning goes, I think that's been an ongoing trend that more and more universities are offering online courses, both to extend their reach to students that are in a place where they can't afford to necessarily be on campus and don't have the UM to pay for the whole infrastructure, but can take classes one by one.
So I think that that trend has been underway for a while, and I think this probably accelerates it. But I also think it's it's easy to assume that everything is going to change, and I don't think that. I think over time, you know, humans are largely social animals, and once we get UH the testing in place and the ability to trace people, over time, things will slowly
come back to more social oriented culture. UM. It may take a while, but I think I think, UM the universities will continue to exist as they are and also offer a lot of online opportunities. I think they'll probably
have to become a little bit more technology savvy. Most people don't go into administration of universities because they want to be on the forefront of tech and UM, and I think that many of the systems they have today are antiquated and integrated, and they have for rules about student privacy of GDPR rules as well, and so it's just it's made change slow on that front. But I do think that the universities may move a little quicker
on the technology front going forward. Although, and I was listening to your Zoom your zoom comment that it's so funny, I think what I hear from from a lot of students is just because we can zoom doesn't mean we have to we have to do a video every single time. It's a cool technology. And although why can't we just chat or something where I don't have to be on the on this camera the whole time I had a
number of dealing. Somebody text me today and say like when are we going to have a you know, like when are we going to get together on zoom? And I was like, wherever I could just call you? Like I'm to call you? Like that sounds great to me right now? So so I gotta ask you, you you know what I mean, It's like, you start your career on Wall Street. You you know, had a career at at Yahoo.
You serve on the boards of Berkshire, Hathaway and and cost Go as well, I mean, as well as a number of other boards, including a survey Monkey and Veil Resorts. I mean, if there is one person who is sort of seeing the world very holistically right now and seeing all sorts of consumer behavior changing, it's you. What jumps out at you as you sort of go through your day and I can only imagine the emails and conversations
that that you're having. What's surprising you right now? Well, I think it's uh surprising in some ways that we've all gotten used to this new normal. I think about three weeks ago most people I talked to felt like their world was upside down, like there was almost this um feeling of dizziness from one headline after another being so consequential and changing everything that we know in our world,
like sports stopping and school stopping, people going home. And I think now, you know, I think people are like, yeah, I can do this. I don't really want to do it forever, but I could, you know, I could. I could live like this. And I think as part of that, back to the prior conversation of accelerating changes that were already underway, I think the idea of um home delivery
of groceries. For example, you know, I'm on the board of Costco and we have a two day delivery that we do internally in an instant delivery that instant art helps with. And uh, you know, I think all over people are I think we'll have a little more sensitivity to doing things like shaking hands in the future, and they have a greater demand for things being delivered UM
just a higher level of dermophobia for a while. So I think there's certain trends that may not have been underway for that reason, but I think that they're likely to accelerate, and I think you can see that in the numbers of everything that you look at. I mean, I'm on the board of Costco, of course, which has been indispensable for people during this period. And then as well Veiled Resorts, which I just shut down a month early,
um in a in a business that's already season. Also, you know, there's an extreme Different companies are obviously being hit in different ways, but does everybody Does every company now have to have the virus playbook? Like is this just part of our society now in terms of fighting viruses as a you know, I don't know, is that
part of it? I think I think having an online playbook is critical for your employees um and also for your customers in certain circumstances where your customers can be online. They can't really do that for availed resorts, but certainly for the employees. Is there needs to be an online playbook? And I think our government, I mean, this was this is an unprecedented situation, and no one was really ready.
Everybody's pointing fingers and looking backward about whether we could have been or should have been, but the fact is we weren't. And I think it's very unlikely in the next ten years that we won't be very ready with testing and the ability to UM handle tracing contact tracing in a very different way. A friend of mine from Singapore, she sends me the daily reports and it's like unbelievable
how they run that place. It just daily reports, emails the entire city and knowing exactly where each case came from. You know, we're nowhere near that, so UM and you know it has to work within our freedoms and our in our government, which is obviously very different from Singapore. But I think all governments around the world of major UM nations will be much more prepared and take it seriously.
And Bill, Bill Gates, many people had said that this was going to come, and uh, it's nothing like having it happened to to really change the way preparedness will be looked at going forward. I mean, look, we haven't at nine and eleven, all the all the airport security that happens to stay and that stayed with us, and I think I think this is this virus will have elements to stay with us too. All Right, We're gonna leave it there. What a treat for us to talk
to you. Thank you so much. We'll definitely keep in touch. We'd love to have you back. Sue Decker, founder, chief executive user of rafter h Jonius on the phone from San Francisco. Man, she's in the middle of a lot