Welcome to season two of EdTech Insiders, where we talk to the most interesting thought leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, educators, and investors driving the future of education technology. I'm your host, Alex Starland, an ed tech veteran with over 10 years of experience at top ed tech companies. In this episode of.
EdTech insiders. We have a very special lineup. The South by Southwest EDU conference is coming soon and there's a really cool launch competition that is part of the event where seven finalists of startups around the world. To pitch to a panel of amazing judges. The judges this year include the CEO and co-founder of Zern, the Shay Sharma, the new school's Venture Fund, CEO, Francis Masano, and the new teacher project, CEO, tequila Brownie.
The mc is Divya Gona with the co-founder of Baiju. So you have an amazing set of judges, but you also have an amazing set of. Presenters of candidates of competitors, and there are seven of them. And in this episode we're gonna talk to four of the seven, all about their experience applying, getting in, and preparing for this major south by Southwest EDU launch competition.
We have in alphabetical order by company, sorry, from Key to Science, we have Varun and Christie from Koala, we have Nick from Pro Tech. We're gonna have Kabi from Tilly outta Sri Lanka. It is an amazing lineup. I hope you enjoy the episode we have. Sorry, from Kita Science out of Finland. Ready to pitch in the launch competition at so by Southwest EDU.
Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. Lovely to be here. Yeah, it's great to see you again. We had a great conversation on the floor of New York EdTech week earlier this year, and you are doing incredible things with Key to science. Give our listeners who may not have heard that conversation, a little overview of what key to science is and what you've been doing to get into this amazing competition.
Yeah, so a lot of things has happened since September in a startup. Always many things happened fast, so we were one of the winners of the EdTech week, and especially the thing, what is about kid science is early childhood education. So we first warn the early childhood education track, and that's our focus.
So three to 8-year-old children. But how we impact the children is actually that we impact the teachers first. So we have platforms for teachers with professional development training resources, plus hundreds of hundreds of lesson plans that are ready to use to make them amazing, engaging and playful inquiry lessons with young learners in a classroom.
So no screen time for the children. Phenomenal. And you know, you're in a thousand preschools, a hundred thousand students starting out of Finland, which is really well known for its incredible education system, but now in 30 countries, what has that growth been like? I always say it's mostly about luck, that some people just somehow find us and that is actually, it's a joke, but it's also a.
Bit of truth that quite many companies and countries like preschools, kindergartens, and afterschool activities have approached us from different parts of the world, that they want something from Finland and they find us and they're like, oh my God, this is something we could really use. Yep. So in many countries, actually people are using us in English, like the teachers are going through our resources.
Singing English, but then they might teach it in Thai or Vietnamese or in other languages in their classroom with children. But then now our focus is the US market. And also there we have seen the biggest growth with more than 20,000 teachers now registered from the US to our platform. So the 100,000 children is not true anymore.
We should update the site, but we have been also super happy to see how well this resonates both in the public and private sector in the us. So we have now started with New York City District two preschools, then also now in New Jersey, and coming soon also in Florida with Orange County Public Schools.
So I also feel like the pandemic is over now that people are actually now looking into new solutions to make. How do you say learning and education? Engaging and effective again. Yeah, engaging and effective feel like sort of the hallmark terms for key to science. It's got this incredibly fun feel and look, everything is colorful and exciting and it's just a really like engaging setup.
It has lots of characters, you know, for the kids and the teachers. I think it's, you know, we're at a period in the US where a lot of teachers are questioning their profession and really trying to get reengaged with the teaching profession and the kind of PD. And inquiry-based lesson plans that you're providing them, I think are a really exciting way for them to get re-energized about teaching.
Have you heard that from some of the educators who you work with? Yeah, and I think the recently what we also found out is like whenever the kids are excited about something, then also the teachers get excited because they notice that something actually works and they get the kids excited. So it's kind of this chicken egg thingy, like if you get the kids excited, then also the teachers are super happy and they want to do it again.
Unless if you actually try something out and it doesn't work, why do it again in a way? That was also why we partnered with Dreamworks Animation, that we made the lesson plans for Gabby Dollhouse. It's also something that that age group of kids, they're super excited about Gabby and the Cats, and then they can actually watch the episode from the big screen and then they can do a lesson plan related to that.
So that could be the starting point for the teachers as well, that they are like, okay, the kids are excited about this. Maybe we should do a lesson plan that is effective and engaging, and then they can do whatever topics they find from our platform. After that. It makes sense. It, it's a really interesting mix of onscreen and offscreen, you know, work, as you've said, because the lesson plans are screen free learning.
They're hands-on, they're very physical. They're about constructing things in many cases, or you know, really working without any kind of technology. But then of course, Gabby's Dollhouse is a Netflix show and it is pure screen. So you sort of get that interesting combination of setting things up with a media property and then getting hands on and not.
Actually having to learn with immuno learning without technology when you're actually learning. It's a, it's a really interesting model. Yeah. And I think that's something that, for example, I just talked this today that maybe you know, the company called Ubon go from Africa, not sure which country, but they have a TV show that teaches the children about the world, about everything.
And quite often then these resources are lacking kind of. Okay. What after that? Is it only something that kind of, also the TV shows and Gabby Dollhouse, it's like, okay, the kids watch the show, but what did they learn? They might learn something and they might be questioning and wondering, but we try to then do like, you actually would then try to solve the problem around that topic hands-on, because we feel like you cannot teach science through screen or something as you actually have to have it as a tangible thing.
Because the science is all around us and it's everywhere. So you really need to experience that hands-on, and that then also helps the engagement and even with the A DHD children to really keep focused. It's active learning, not just. Sitting and listening. Active learning. Absolutely. I, I wanna ask you two quick questions about two other Scandinavian ed tech companies, and I just get your take on it.
One, we were talking before the call about Kahoot, which was also in this very same competition a few years back. Tell us that story. Yeah. So this is something I heard. So now this is like, not that I'm actually a hundred percent sure. Was it like the first competition? But I heard that Kahoot was in, I think, first launch competition south by Southwest EDU.
Not sure that they won it, but at least they were as a finalist, and after that they skyrocketed. So of course waiting that to happen after this. Yeah, that's what I heard. I think it's true. Yeah, it's true enough for, for the, for the inspiration, I think. And actually something about cohort I love is that they gave the solution for the teachers and then the teachers kind of spread the word of mouth.
And that's what we have seen also in our, like we created the freemium exactly for that, even though there's a decision maker, but they can then give our solution for teachers if they like it, then they can buy it or use it more. So we have to give the power for the teachers that they use, only the tools they.
Feel it's necessary and valuable. A hundred percent. And that sort of bottoms up approach, especially in early childhood, where you're giving teachers tools, they try them out with the kids and as you say, when the kids love them and say, oh, we wanna keep doing this, gets the teacher excited, and then they're gonna, you know, sort of lean in and do more.
And then they can, you know, pull it up to more teachers or spread it among their peers or within the school and, you know, so it's really, it's about the teachers and making sure they're empowered. But at the end of the day, it's also about making sure the learning is really exciting for kids. What was the other company?
The other company is Lego. So I wanted to ask about, you know, the Lego group recently acquired BrainPOP, which is a really interesting ed tech property that also has some, you know, has its proprietary characters and does sort of some games and and videos. It's much more sort of front tech heavy than, than what you're doing at Key to Science.
But I'm curious what you made of that acquisition. I actually then, well, well, I knew Brain Bob only about the apps for kids. Like I think my kids have also used some of their apps at home or something, and we try to get away from that, but I only seen that they have quite lovely lesson plans as well. So I think they are also trying to support teachers more and not just.
With the apps for children haven't used them or know more about it to say, are they good quality or anything like that. I'm sure if Lego actually acquired them and thought about it, but yeah, still I see that they don't use, for example, the stories and play in a way we do and that we have seen quite many times.
There's amazing science education company or a company that makes a lot of content. But then they don't do it in a way that we do, that we always start the problem solving from the imagination world where everything is possible. They might use stories, but usually it's a story of a actual world that something happens in real life, and then they explore the phenomena after that.
For example, there is a story about ice cream melting, and then they would do something about that, but we are starting from. Really weird world that's also in the Gabby's world. They might have a racetrack on top of a noodle or whatever. Crazy thing. So we try to get the engagement and starting point from the imaginary play situation.
It sounds really fun and yeah, I'd love to sit in on a classroom and sort of see how that goes. It sounds like just a really joyous experience, which I know is sort of core to the finished approach to education. So my last question here is about the competition. How are you thinking about the launch competition?
We're talking to a few different launch competitors, you know, in this episode. What is your, you know, biggest hope and maybe biggest concern or what are you worried about and what are you most excited about as you go to Austin and and pitch? Yeah, I think quite many times companies go for Pete's competition to think about that.
Then they can have a introduction for investors and somebody might give them money and for a fundraise. But I think for us, especially because it's in the US and we are now doing this for the first time, I have never been in so by Southwest EU before. So for us it's more like the visibility that there is a company from tiny, tiny Finland.
That has population less than any of the smallest cities in the us. So for us, the biggest target is just that people even know we exist. And I hope there is also teachers and district leaders and people who are looking into. More innovations for early childhood education. And also I think more and more I now saw there's an early childhood education, uh, keynote talk and almost like on track that the early childhood education and pre-K also as part of the whole K 12 system is more and more important, but then teachers struggle how to do it.
Also with the younger ones, they have to do things a bit differently there. So I hope it gives the boost for the whole early childhood education. That makes a lot of sense. Get visible, connect with all of these, so by southwest edu is a real hotspot for EdTech. People come from all over and I think you'll meet all sorts of people in that early childhood track.
I'm rooting for you as I'm written for all the companies in in the launch competition, but you guys have fantastic. Sorry, from key to science. Good luck. Thank you. Hi. Welcome to the podcast. We have Kristi Chu and Varun gti, the CEOs and co-founders of Koala, which makes AI generated stories for kids. It's amazing.
Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having us. We're excited to be here. Thanks so much, Alex. Absolutely. So, so you're one of the winners of the competition to pitch at South by Southwest edu. In the small group of finalists pitching in the launch competition, what are you most excited about as you get prepared for that?
You know, I'm excited to have fun on stage. It's wonderful to like share our own excitement for what we're building. We love this problem a lot. We love the direction we're moving in and making reading and writing more engaging and I'm excited to share that with the world. You know, I'm excited to like have more people in the loop.
Trying it out, giving us feedback on it, and that's where a lot of our energy and, and focus is right now. Absolutely. Koala is such an interesting product, and I feel like your timing is amazing because it is, it literally uses generative AI at a moment when generative AI is in every headline. Everybody's talking about it.
Give us a little overview of how Koala works and what you do with ai. Yeah, so Koala is on a mission to make reading and writing far more engaging for kids. And so the core problem over here is that we we're in a, like a reading engagement crisis right now, and that is very related to the two decade literacy loads we're experiencing.
And the stats are like only 17% of kids read for fun. Something that honestly, like Christie and I both independently have had personal experiences with as a child, as kids, you know? So what we've built so far is we've made an illustrated story generator for younger audiences. So this is where kids can think about elements of a story and watch a story come to life in front of their eyes.
They can share that story with other kids as well. So yeah, that's what we built so far. That's amazing. So Christie, let's double down on what exactly we mean by. Kids can choose the elements. What are some of the choices that kids make that will alter and change and personalize the outcome of these stories?
Yeah, so right now we are allowing kids to choose the different characters. So there are a series of characters that they can choose from, such as Monster, or donut or guitar. They can also choose the setting, so where the character and story will take place. We have a plethora of choices like under the sea or in the sky, or you know, the forest.
They can also choose the character's name, and right now we're limiting the amount of choices that kids can choose. We wanna make sure that safety parameters are in place, but we want to be able to open those creative elements in the future, such as maybe even changing parts of the plot. We're even exploring possible writing elements to incorporate in story creation.
So. It's exciting. It really is exciting. So if I'm hearing you, basically you are offering a few different important choices right now, but there are a little bit of like combinations, like pick one from column A, one from column B and names and things, and it'll put together a totally unique new story.
But you're trying to be very careful because you know, as we know, artificial intelligence is a little bit unpredictable. You don't always know if what comes out is gonna be completely safe. So you're being careful and cautious and rolling out more and more customizations in alignment with your insurance that can be safe for kids.
That's exactly right, and we know that historically, I know as a former educator that choice and autonomy are really important and really, you know, help support engagement in student learning. When you go to the Koala site right now, you actually have a working beta. You can try this out and go through some of these choices and see a story get generated right in front of you.
That's a really exciting new feature. Tell us about how you decided to open the beta and where you're sort of going next with Koala. Yeah, I'm happy to share more about that. So we initially started testing this with a few dozen kids and families in our closed alpha. We had a lot more. How do I say this?
Like openness and what kids could create? Mm-hmm. So we had one kid, for example, who created a story about a kitten, who wore a fishbowl helmet. And it's a really fun story, very, like the pictures were so entertaining and we got a lot of confirmation, a few different things. One is that kids really enjoyed that their story, their thing that they imagined came to life.
And we kept hearing the same thing from parents that, Hey, my kid was way more engaged in this. Then of many of the other books that they're given to read, which is the essential premise that we wanted to test. And then we also heard from kids as well, like, I wanna make another story, which was a cool thing to hear.
And so that gives the confidence of like, Hey, like we should release this. Obviously as Chrisy Chrisy mentioned, we wanna make sure that our safety elements are, are more develop before we allow more creative capacity. But what we have is something that we wanna begin sharing with the world, which is letting kids create and imagine stories on their own.
And you know, one of the core goals of Koala, as you mentioned, is reading, engagement and sort of reading education. Yeah. It's a way to get it super engaged. Tell us about the sort of reading education aspirations for the platform. Totally, yeah. Our attention now is on the classroom, so we're working with a few teachers and initially they're using this as an individual reading time tool, so think like Epic, but far more personalized.
But we know that there's a lot more that you can do with this technology. And so for example, one thing we're interested in is around personalization and differentiation, where the teacher has some say in it as well. You know, a teacher could be teaching about volcano. That could be an amazing thing for kids to develop their own stories about, or for younger audiences, a teacher could be working on practicing certain phone names.
That again, is another thing that like given the autonomy and agency that kids already have on Koala, coupled with some more control that a teacher may want around an instructional objective, we can put those two things together. So yeah. That is an exciting vision. It makes a lot of sense. So it's sort of a creativity within educational constraints or you know, you know that there's a certain, uh, learning objective that you're going for, but then kids can personalize it and put any kind of character or go really crazy and make it as fun and interesting as they want, but it's still gonna be about volcanoes or still gonna use a lot of long or things like that.
I think that's really interesting. You know, I'm not gonna let you guys get outta here without talking a little bit about the craze right now, about, uh, chat GBT and this whole suite of generative AI tools. Christie, I I wanna ask you, because, you know, you started this company before everybody was talking about the, the generative AI explosion, and now there's so much.
Excitement about it and this sort of a belief that it's just gonna continually get better and better and better very quickly. You've already seen multiple versions of some of these engines come out in just a few months. How do you see the evolution of this generative ai, you know, movement affecting your future in Koala?
What is gonna enable for you guys? Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, I think the possibilities are endless. We are just right now seeing. What generative AI can do, and I mean, honestly, it's hard to imagine all of the possibilities, but I do think that it has the ability to personalize and engage students in a way that's really never been done before.
And that's what we're most excited about. We've been playing with Mid Journey, my wife and I for the last couple of months and it just keeps blowing our mind. It can go, you can in so many different directions and it just keeps getting better and I wish I had a tool like this when I was growing up. The idea to be able, you know, to to take anything you can think of and just.
Realize it in any style quickly. It's totally mind bending. And uh, the idea of doing it in an educational context in a classroom is really, really exciting. So, last question for you guys. As you're making your way to Austin to pitch, what is your goal in your whole, so by Southwest EDU experience, even outside of the pitch contest, what would make it a successful conference for the two of you?
Of barbecue.
I'm so excited to talk to other educators and meet folks who are at this point, like this technology that we've around LLMs generate ai. It's something that has become more mainstream. And we've seen a lot of very great nuance around this and fair concerns as well. But I'm also really excited about sharing with more people the power of giving kids the creative capacity to generate and develop their own stories and text and writing and and pictures.
That's the real vision behind this. Kids are the most creative people in the world, and if we can, a great conference for us would be getting other people to like talk to us about that and for us to learn from other people as well. About what they wanna see from like technologies like this. Christie, what would you say?
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think I'm honestly just so excited to meet other educators, meet other founders, see what other people are building and be able to learn from them. It's really incredible to just see what people are building and how people are solving education's most, you know, important problems.
And. I'm excited to see all that and take it in. And for anyone that is looking up Koala and is interested in what we're building, you can find us at K-O-A-L-L-U h.com. That's koala.com. Check us out. Great answer. I'm really excited for you guys. I would expect that a lot of people are gonna come up to you asking about how they should be using generative AI in their companies because you're ahead of the game on it.
But I'm sure you'll have a lot to learn from everyone else as well. It sounds like it'll be a lot of fun and barbecue that's it's can't swing a cat without hitting a barbecue food truck in Austin. So that should be easy. Great to chat with both of you and good luck with the pitch competition. Likewise.
Thanks for having us, Alex. Thanks so much. We're here with Nick Sein of Promeo Tech, which is a really interesting company. Does bootcamps in high demand technical areas partnering with universities and especially community colleges? They have over 40 college partners already. Nick, really great to meet you and happy to have you here on AED Tech Insiders.
Hey Alex. Thanks for having me here. I'm excited for this conversation. Absolutely. So first off, give our listeners a little bit of an overview of Pro Tech. So pro tech, like you said, perfectly, we partner with colleges and universities to help them offer boot camps in high demand tech fields. So we've got software development, data engineering, digital marketing, and, and more, uh, on the roadmap coming out.
We're a mission-driven organization focused on increasing accessibility to life-changing tech education. So that's kind of where we shine. And that accessibility seems to be part of your strategy to focus primarily on community colleges. Tell us a little bit about what that looks like, how those partnerships work.
Yeah, of course. I think many people see community colleges as some of the most accessible institutions in America, so that's a huge part of, you know, of why we partner with them. So our partnerships with community colleges work coding bootcamps have been around since about 2011, but until very recently, community colleges have not participated in that industry.
And in talking with a lot of 'em, we found that this wasn't for a lack of trying, but rather a model that fit in line with their mission and their price point didn't exist yet. And what we do, kind of like under the hood, the secret sauce of what we do is called education delivery optimization. That's where you, you take a look at how education's being delivered and we do things like a flipped classroom and other things in order to cut down the overhead and make it more affordable and therefore more accessible.
So that's where our optimized model fit in line with community colleges. And so we were able to start, you know, running bootcamps for them. That's fascinating. I love that. Education, delivery optimization. I feel like there's, it's a phrase that you could apply to a lot of different amazing online, you know, models and or models that are trying to decrease cost.
So how are the students that take these programs reacting? I would imagine that they, going to community college, they probably weren't expecting, you know, bootcamps to be part of the equation. I would imagine it's pretty exciting because this is sort of a fast track to some very high demand careers. It is.
So the students are excited about these opportunities now while some of the students are at community college and then they take a bootcamp. The cool thing about these programs is you don't have to be registered at the college. It's all through the non-credit side. So more students are coming back to the colleges to take these programs.
That makes total sense. So are you seeing, you know, alumni from the colleges and maybe some current students, but also I'm sure many students who are not enrolled in the community college are just taking the bootcamps? Is that sort of the makeup of the classes? That's exactly correct. Got it. So you're based out of Phoenix, Arizona and have a pretty wide array of different community colleges in different states.
I'm curious if there's sort of any geographical differences. Obviously community colleges are really tried to tailor their experiences to the students in the region. Have you seen any differences in the way that the community colleges advertise or the types of learners that they're looking to attract for this kind of bootcamp?
Yeah. You know, each college does it a little differently, but there is a nucleus that's the same across all of them, I'd say. When we help them with, you know, digital marketing and we help them reach students who are looking to transition their careers, I. But then you'll have some colleges that do the traditional catalogs that they mail out and they'll, they'll put information there.
For the most part though, like I said, that Core Nucleus, that's the same across all, I would say, makes up for a majority of their, their advertising efforts. Mm-hmm. We have colleges that focus. Somewhat on students coming right out of high school, but the majority still across all colleges are those, you know, 25 to 40-year-old.
They're transitioning a career. They already have some career experience. Makes sense. One of the things that coding bootcamps or bootcamps of various types have had to figure out sort of in their own context over the years is how to track outcomes, how to follow the students that. Go through the bootcamp and see where they get jobs.
Do they get jobs in the field? Do they get advancements in their current jobs? There's all sorts of different complexities there. I'd love to hear how you think about it at Pro Tech. How do you measure the return for these students, the outcomes after they finish their bootcamps? That's an excellent question and it is.
It becomes increasingly difficult as you work with multiple college partners as well, because we don't have the insight into each college and all their students on the tracking side of things. We're working on some things where we hope to be able to track more of that data soon, and I'll be excited when we're able to share that.
But for now, what I can say is we see students come back to us frequently and share that they've landed a job and it's pretty constant. So there's a lot of excitement and when we can see that those lives are changed, that's. Getting to tracking that for every student is high on the priority list. But what I'll say is some of the ways we track currently, and this goes back into kind of our mission to make this education more affordable.
We started with just the education. We didn't start with a lot of career services. It's how can we shave off anything that's excess so that people who want to learn how to build software can learn without paying for everything else. They might not. Need to or want to pay for. We've grown past that and we've rolled out more and more career services and we're hoping to continue to expand, like I said, into into tracking.
That really doesn't exist in the industry yet today. I. But some of the ways we measure success for students right now is just through your traditional feedback, your surveys, right? So we're tracking them every three weeks in these 18 week programs, and the vast majority of students are rating our programs as you know, life changing.
I. Hmm. That's really amazing. So you mentioned that you've done all of this optimization to sort of be able to deliver your bootcamps at a lower cost and therefore save money for the students. How much do the bootcamps cost for these students? That's a great question. So our average bootcamp costs $3,800.
Uh, compare that to the industry average of $13,500. That is a significant reduction. Absolutely. An 18 week bootcamp serve, that's a serious length of time and for $3,800, that's really exciting. I'm sure that feels very exciting and achievable for so many students who might think that you know, that other bootcamps and other education experiences are far out of reach.
Exactly. And that's. That's the thing and it's, you know, when you optimize education this way, and like you said earlier, it seems like education delivery optimization could be something carried across multiple different industries and I very much believe it can. I don't know why I. Everyone's not doing it because there's a lot we can do to make education more affordable and accessible and some of it's common sense, but you know, it, it's a hard industry to change because every small change has so much impact on so many students.
So I understand why the industry as a whole moves, you know, in a cautious manner. But it's also exactly why we need innovators and disruptors and people who come in who don't wanna just replicate the sort of sins of the past and, and keep the cost and the price high and out of reach for so many learners.
So you are on your way to Austin to pitch Pro Tech to In the Launch Competition at South by Southwest edu. Are you excited? Tell us about what you expect in that experience. You know what I, I'm very excited about this opportunity go to, to Austin and, and pitch us South by Southwest at the Launch Competition.
It's. I applied, someone said we should apply, and I didn't know what to expect. So when we were selected as one of the seven startups in the education space to go pitch there, that was, that was very exciting. As for what to expect, you know, I, I, I learned that it's a four minute pitch, so I expect to shave down that pitch by a little bit.
I'm excited. I'm looking forward to a good time, and I feel like. There will be opportunity to meet some pretty amazing people there. I'm excited to meet the other six who are pitching that I've looked at what they, you know, what their products are, what their companies are, and it's just, it's really cool to be among innovators that are working to change the world and change education.
It's a fantastic group. That's pitching this year, and it's pretty much a fantastic group every year because education entrepreneurs tend to be pretty amazing people. I, I get to speak to a lot of them on this show. I, it sounds like you're gonna have to do some, uh, pitch delivery optimization to get down to four minutes.
That'll be, that'll be fun. I like that. Yeah. So last question, I just wanna, you know, we've asked this of each of the different launch competitors that we've been talking to, and you mentioned some of this already, but what are you most excited about at South by Southwest, EDU, even outside of the pitch competition?
What is sort of your goal as a founder and entrepreneur going to this amazing conference overall? You know, I'd say that that my goal. Is what we've done. We've, we've pretty much created a sub-industry in the coding bootcamp world, right? The community college coding bootcamps, and we've done it very quietly, right?
We've been pretty quiet about what we've done. We're, you know, the number one provider to community colleges now, and my goal is what Nicks right. We've created this optimized program that is changing the lives of, you know, thousands of students. But it's unfair to keep it to just those thousands. So I'm excited to make a little noise.
I'm excited to let people know about our mission and what we're doing and do everything we can to get these opportunities in the hands of, of students who are trying to change their careers and enter the, the tech industry. So that, that's what I'm excited about. I mean, there's lots of things I could probably go down a list, but it's great to have a stage to share our passion and what we're doing and just push that mission forward.
I love that. Make a little noise, get noticed and, and connect with so many of the different movers and shakers in the ed tech industry. Yeah. I admit I didn't know about Pro Tech before hearing about it in this context, and I it is really exciting. I had no idea you were the, the top provider of bootcamps to community colleges, 40 colleges and I'm sure growing Fast nsu.
And it, it's been a blast to get to meet you and talk to you. Good luck in the pitch competition and I hope we get to cross paths again in the future. You're doing really interesting work. I appreciate you on here. We're here with Ka Theone. She's the CEO and co-founder of Tilly, which does social emotional learning in both the US and in Sri Lanka.
Welcome Kavi to the show. Thank you, Alex, for having me. It's good to chat again. It is, it is. So we actually overlapped and worked together a few years ago in the same company, and we got to know each other a little bit there. And then you started this fascinating company. Tilly, give our listeners an overview of what Tilly is and what your journey has been like.
Yeah, I think it's been a while since we overlapped work and kind of thinking back to, you know, how our journeys have changed over time. But yeah, so Tilly is, we're a play-based social emotional learning tool and we're designed for elementary school. So we are looking at the ages of five to 10. And for us, the core is bringing together.
The learning experience for kids, but also a parenting tool for caregivers. Because for us, the thesis is, it goes hand in hand. Kids need to be supported and parents need to be guided through this process. So we are trying to do this through sort of play narrative and game-based learning, and we have a strong focus on sort of data science to sort of help make the learning experience outcomes based.
So that's what we do in a gist. Yeah, so social emotional learning is a field, and it's a type of education that has grown enormously in popularity and need over the last few years, especially as the entire world sort of shut down for a pandemic, and we're, at least in the US, having a pretty serious mental health crisis at all levels of schooling.
I think the recognition that school has to do more than just teach, you know. Yeah, algebra and geometry has really taken off. How have your conversations gone when you're talking to different caregivers and parents or schools about social emotional learning? Yeah, I think it's really interesting to sort of have your foot in sort of two ends of the world.
We obviously came out of a graduate research project at Stanford, hence we have a base here in San Francisco, but also my home is in Sri Lanka, and I would always say that Tilly has its island home. So we also do a lot of work back in Sri Lanka and in the South Asian. And it's so interesting to compare the differences or also the similarities between these two sort of communities.
I think here in the US obviously the research space is very mature. Universities are talking about it, schools are talking about it. Schools are adapting some sort of SEL inter curriculums, but there's also a political conversation around it, which has been very interesting to, as somebody who's not from here, I'm.
In South Asia, Srilanka is COVID really accelerated the conversation that yes, we had this revolution in South Asia. And now it's time for what? I would love it to be a cell revolution. Mm-hmm. And you are seeing, not yet with parents and caregivers, but more or less institutions, schools a large I, NGOs, and even government authorities talking about early childhood, but with a focus in cell.
So it's been interesting to see these different spaces or stages of the journey that these two regions are in. Definitely the best time to be in cell is now. Yeah, it makes sense. Hopefully the political conversation in the US around this is, is gonna die down. It feels fingers crossed. Yeah. But I can imagine it must be really interesting to be Yeah.
To see it from different. Country's perspectives. So you are launching apps for Tilly, you have learning kits, you have all sorts of research. As you mentioned, it sort of was incubated out of the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Tell us a little bit about the sort of underlying research that goes into Tilly and how you're hoping to sort of distribute the the product.
Where are people gonna find it? Yeah. So as of now, I'll first talk about what the product looks like now and the experience, and kind of talk a little bit about the research that informed it. So as of now, if people use Android, we're on play store now, and for iOS, we have a web app, so you don't really need to download.
So that's the digital footprint of it. But we also have a physical learning kit, so it's sort of like a foundational social, emotional learning program in a kit. So that's essentially very play-based. It's modular and it's designed for either a home or a school. So you can kind of figure out how to do it.
And for example, if I have a child who's a 7-year-old has still in the classroom, I. They get to, you know, go through a module, they come back home and they could go through the corresponding gamified experience for that module with the parent. So it's essentially meant to be either used separately or as a two complimentary tools.
So that's kind of where it is right now. From an experience perspective, I think the research to really condense it, I think for us. It's three things. One is play. I think play is something that's so powerful and magical, and especially with social emotional learning. There's so much that play can bring.
And I think from a learning sciences perspective, I think we really look at behavioral change. How can learning turn into a habit? And then the third is data science. I think there's so much, we use data for everything, like our morning playlist, like how to get to the grocery store, how to make the perfect cocktail.
But we don't use it for parenting. Hmm. Like the hardest job. So I think that's like a big pain point we are trying to tackle of how can we use the power of data to help parents make the right choices and the right interventions. So I think those are the three things. Play behavioral science and data. We bringing these three things together.
It's really interesting and it's so beautiful. I'm looking at the Tilly kits on the site and a couple things jump out that I think are really unique to what you're doing. One is you have them in English and tamo, and it's like amazing. I'm probably pronouncing that completely wrong. No, you, you nailed it.
Which rarely do. So kudos to you, Alex. Wow. Yeah, and they're, they're just, they're beautiful. Uh, you know, just look so engaging and character based and playful. And then you also have a way to sort of donate kits to people in need right on the site, which I think is just fantastic, especially for a company.
At your early stage, you're already thinking about that sort of giving back. How did you get to that idea for donating these kits? Yeah, I think I started off in grassroots education. That's where I began. I was a teacher at the age of 15. I worked in a community in Sri Lanka where a lot of the drug cuts in Sri Lanka come out of.
So I was 15 when I would get off a bus and take my little bag and go through this, you know, these streets and go to the learning center I taught at and everything about today. I learned from those kids, you know, kids who are teenage mothers, kids who had to drop outta school and. I think that's our North Star.
And for me, the reason why we are a for-profit is so that we can get Tilly to the kids. That inspired me to build Tilly and we first tested Tilly in the village where I was born and raised. So the initial concept actually was used by kids, you know, who have no internet access, uh, from a very strong agricultural community.
And it was designed for them first. And I think that's where we began. And I think I would always stay loyal to those communities that inspired Titi and the Buy one, give one program is something that's really core to what we do. ID one. So it's such a beautiful vision and you know, I just think it's so, it's exciting to see social emotional learning.
Sort of taking center stage and it becoming accessible to people who I'm sure really had very little access to that type of research based interventions and thinking in the past, it's like it gives me faith in the power of ed tech and of, you know, the modern world of distribution. It's really exciting.
I wanna ask you about South by Southwest. You are one of seven finalists in the South by Southwest EDU Launch competition, which is coming up in March. Tell us about your journey there. Why did you apply for the competition? How did you feel when you realized you were chosen and, and whatcha gonna pitch?
No, it was so exciting when we heard back because I think for people who have sort of a design background, like South by Southwest is like the place to go to or the place to be. And we didn't apply the year before 'cause we were like, oh, we're too early, we're too young for this. So obviously the team was really excited.
We were thrilled that we made it through. And I think for us, the big pitch would be. Sort of social emotional learning as a tool for sort of transforming generations because it's, it's a generational shift you are creating by tackling kids. Before the age of 10. And I think this big vision for us to use data for parenting, and I think that's a big idea, that we want to keep pushing, that parenting can be done differently, life can be made easier for parents.
So I think those are two things that we really wanted to sort of share during the pitch as well. But really thrilled and I think it was so exciting to see that it was Sri Lanka. 'cause I think we love, we're a small island with so much talent and it's so exciting to see kind of Sri Lanka being kind of showcased, which is always nice.
Very, very much so. I absolutely agree. And maybe this is a silly question, but you're obviously located in the Bay Area. I know you have a office location in Sri Lanka as well. Do you see a future where you'll also enter the Indian market that's right across the pond from Sri Lanka and has enormous number of students who need this type of tool?
I think obviously, you know, India has taken center stage in the EdTech space and I think that brings us so much pride as being from the region itself. Because what happened previously was a lot of companies in the Silicon Valley would come and, you know, sort of dump is a, is a strong word, but kind of put in their products into our regions and it really didn't make sense most of the time.
And what we love is building. Learning tools and content buy us for us. And there's so much power to that. And I think with your question about the Indian market, our team is kind of 50% from India. My co-founder was also, she's an Indian American, so we have strong roots in India and we have ongoing conversations with sort of large school groups in India and different founders.
But I also know that. India has some great social emotional learning programs and I think for us, for me, something I really believe in is how do we compliment existing local interventions and programs? How does things become a tool and not necessarily a competitor of sorts, but how can we value add to what's already happening in India?
I think that's some that would be our strategy in terms of these conversations that we're having in India. So, but definitely an exciting market to go to. Yeah, and that's, it's a very thoughtful answer, trying to not just crash into a complex ecosystem with lots of players, you know, thinking about where to enter and what to do and how to partner.
I think that sounds very reasonable. I just have one last question. You know, you've mentioned. Data, you know, empowering parents and teachers with social emotional learning data a few times in this conversation, and I think it's such an exciting vision. Give us a little, like double click on that. What type of data is being collected, for lack of a better word, through either the, you know, the kits in the classroom or through the app that can then be used by parents and teachers to support children.
I love this question 'cause I feel like when we talk about data, we don't really look at, okay, what is it exactly? There's so much like, oh, data for this. But we don't really get into the granular, I'll give you a very like very quick example. So one thing we do is, for example, with each module we look at.
What are the learning outcomes? What should a child be able to think, do or say after they complete this particular module? And then we look at, at different stages in this gamified experience, how are we gathering inputs from the learner, either as clicks or voice inputs or answers, et cetera, or habits that we track that help us figure out are they missing those learning outcomes?
So for example, we, our first module is on feelings and emotions and. We capture the emotion of the child in a given day. We also capture a voice input where they articulate why they're feeling that way, and we recommend a strategy for them, you know, through cognitive behavioral therapy. And we try to see whether the strategy help the child feel calmer.
What we try to do is we then communicate with the parents something like, oh, we notice car was feeling a little anxious. Over Fridays or Saturdays. Mm. And we can see this pattern, something to observe is why is this happening? And we also notice that breathing activities make coy feel calmer. So we recommend doing a breathing activity Friday morning, something very actionable for parents, rather than, you know, statistics like, here's what's happening with your child, here's what we think, here's what we recommend you do.
That's a fantastic example, and I imagine that the educators and parents who are listening to this would love to have actionable advice about how their children are feeling and what they might do to get ahead of emotional stress. Especially, you know, right now as the pandemic weens off and, you know, isolation starts to hopefully go away.
I love that example. I think that's super interesting and it's, that's definitely not the type of data you can get through other standard education systems. Exactly. And I think for us, the big thing was how do we make it actionable and very simple. For example, a parent in a, in a community like mine from Sri Lanka can understand and that was our benchmark and.
Obviously we're still testing this out, but that's where we want the product to be December this year. It's a very exciting vision and I like wish you the absolute best of luck in this pitch competition as well as in the future. I want Tilly to be everywhere. I. People should go to tilly kids.com. Find out more about Tilly.
It is a social, emotional skills, boxes and app platform to help kids thrive. Focusing on five to 10 year olds, making them happy, safe and healthy with social emotional learning. Kabi, this has been a blast and. I hope to see you in Austin. Thank you so much, Alex. Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders.
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