Welcome to Ed Tech insiders. In this podcast, we talk to educators and educational technology investors, thought leaders, founders and operators about the most interesting and exciting trends in the field. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an educational technology veteran with over a decade of work at leading edtech companies.
Hello, everyone, this is this week in ed tech for the week of February 11. Happy Black History Month to all of you. We have some great stories coming up today, including headlines and our guest, Alberto our Inasa. From transcend network, we're going to go ahead and jump in with our headlines. To start us off Alex with the higher ed, government beats. Yeah,
a couple of really interesting issues in government, higher ed policy, especially federal government, higher ed policy this week, the first one was, the House of Representatives in the US passed what they call the college Transparency Act, which is an
act part of a larger bill. And that act is actually basically forcing colleges to share a lot more data publicly than they had been sort of forced to do in the past data about completion rates and outcomes and a lot of pieces of data that could be used in the future to guide a government decisions. So that is passed the
house it is not yet law. But it is something we should all keep an eye on because it will have a hopefully a really positive effect on edtech in terms of giving us all more data to work with.
And this raises the question of where does edtech and policy collide. And this Transparency Act has the potential one to create new requirements for edtech companies in terms of demonstrating efficacy, impact and outcomes, but also could create massive amounts of data for us to analyze on what's
really working in the space. The other big story in this bucket on higher ed is around the free community college movement champion really by Bernie Sanders, you know, in the prior election cycle, Jill Biden, the First Lady has really been the figurehead for this one. And basically, on Monday, she gave a speech and said, it's not
happening. So the dream in the US of two year colleges, post high school being free for everyone is a dream deferred, the criticism was mainly around, you know, mixed results in terms of completion rates and efficacy. You know, you have to think that with some of the new, higher Ed, Ed Tech powered models out there, that might be able to show higher efficacy, there might be an opportunity to
come back for this one. But the overall price tag would have been $45 billion for two years of free community college over the next five years. So that one has gotten a big pass. Alex, as you, you know, connect the dots between both the transparency and the lack of, you know, community college support. What are your main takeaways and implications for the space?
It's a great question what putting together the two headlines, I think what I would say is that if you are a ed tech founder, or working at an ad tech company that works in the higher education space, especially if you work in persistence, or nudging, or trying to do behavioral change, these two headlines really go together, because the free community college system is not going to happen at this moment, community colleges are still and would be even more so if there
was free. But community colleges have the highest attrition rates, they have the hardest time keeping working learners in
school. So I would say that the combination of having a lot of additional data around persistence and completion, there not being this sort of sea change in community college, I would really look at how to help first generation learners or those at risk of dropping out in any context, I would bake that into my strategy, because you're going to have the data to actually be able to backup your claims and test.
You know, we've talked a little bit about higher ed having some first mover advantages and some more winner take all dynamics. And you know, it's easy to get distracted with the small number of elite colleges that have pretty big controversies around admissions and trust. But I think for the community college space, this lack of funding and the increased focus on outcomes, is is going to accelerate
consolidation. And, you know, I was talking with Mike Berlin from Guild the other day and you talked about this not playing out as a nationwide ecosystem or map. It's really state by state and so I think we're going to end up seeing some REITs that do double down on their community college systems, others that really step away and embrace fully alternative models, and others that you know, really don't do much and there will be a vacuum. So it's definitely a
space to watch. That actually leads us to earlier in the pipeline a space that you and I know really well, Alex, personalized learning, it used to be a buzzword than it was a bad word. Well, let's back again, personalized learning is now getting a makeover with social emotional learning being at the forefront. There's a number of companies out there article recently highlighted wave founder and empower early, that are really trying to bring personalized learning and dashboards to the social
emotional space. And the concept is not really the original concept of personalized learning, which originally it was based on a student's academic proficiency, they would be served up differentiated learning programs or models, the kind of new frame for personalized learning, which I think is probably an iterative improvement, is really understanding who the learner is from multiple angles, and then providing differentiated learning experiences that allow them to engage and connect with
the learning, even if it's not necessarily about accelerating the sprint to some sort of test score as the kind of personalized learning version one was, you know, I know you have some unique perspective on this having worked on this yourself as well.
Yeah, absolutely. And the personalized learning has always been a little bit of a fuzzy concept. It stood for a lot of different worthwhile movements in education. And in edtech, sometimes it stood for sort of mastery learning and the personalization was about the pace, you can do personalized pace where students can go at their different speeds based on how they master content. And that's one version of
personalized learning. Another is adaptive learning where just as Ben, you just said, people get different content or different modalities of content based on their prior proficiency, or basically, you know, and then a third, which I think is was not really always included in the personalization, the idea of personalized learning in the past, is the idea of personalizing learning to the the social emotional needs and, and even the neurodiversity of students. We've had, you know, special ed
for many years. And there's lots of amazing research in it and incredible practitioners, but I don't think the personalized learning and the the neuro diverse movements have always gone side by side, there's also been personalization in terms of interests, by the way, companies like no reading, where you get, you know, you get questions based on what baseball team you follow, or what celebrity you like. So personalization has been this sort of umbrella
concept. I think this is a very positive move to sort of rebrand personalization as around social emotional learning, and neurodiversity. And, you know, CCI, which was one of the, you know, really had personalized learning at the core of its education philosophy, has just released this along, which is a standalone product designed for
teacher student mentoring. And that's in and of itself is really a leaning into this idea that, that building strong relationships with students, no matter where their their heads are at, is really the key to what personalized learning should mean.
What do you think, Ben? Yeah, you know, my hot take on this one is, when I hear the buzzwords coming back again, I greet it with the kind of proverbial iral. And I'm sure a lot of listeners out there are like, Oh, great. So we just talked about a topic with probably 15 Different buzzwords in the same in the same, like
monologue. As I peel the onion a little bit, I think about the so what, and the sowhat here is really around, okay, are we going to be delivering different education models to students? How much will this really change what's going on in the classroom? And ultimately, I think the lesson learned from the first personalized learning movement was, it's really hard to change systems. It's hard to
scale. It's hard to sell. It's hard to get adoption, and so as great as Wayfinder and powerless, and some of these learn fully, and some of these other platforms are with their adverbial names. You know, getting it in the field is
really, really hard. Speaking of really, really hard, I'm going to move on to headline number three, Wall Street Journal sounding the alarm for everyone in the tech community writ large around an article this week around repricing of funding rounds and Tiger global who, if you haven't been following Tiger global, just Google it. They've basically been a huge driver of soaring valuation. Chin's in the latest rounds, and some of that has been fueled by low interest rates, and by a very, very
bullish stock market. But as the market has really tanked here in the last couple of weeks, and particularly impacted ed tech stocks, some of these investors are pulling back. And so we're watching really closely around whether that's going to hit or reprice rounds. In the article itself, it talks more around B and C growth rounds, being repriced. And that's when you're usually looking for a five to 10x return on your investment. And the kind of time horizon of IPO is more in the four or five
year time horizon. So the odds are, it'll have a greater impact on those middle rounds, and less of an impact on a and seed rounds. But you know, ultimately, this entire system, you know, rationally would be connected. And you would see all kinds of rounds reprice. And when we have a period of time where thing where values are
getting pushed down. The common investor advice to founders is conserve cash, and like play for the long run, because they don't want to have their next round raised at a lower valuation or a down round, or a cram down. So it is going to be a really tricky environment now for our ed tech. Brothers and sisters out there navigating funding rounds, because the hot stove is cooling down a little bit. Yes, it's going
to be interesting to watch how that plays out in the future. I think, you know, we've just seen 2021 be this enormous banner year for ad tech IPOs. There have been a lot of IPOs this year compared to any previous year and in the last decade or more. And I think now the the world is looking at some of these ad tech IPOs, the number of public companies has really has basically doubled or more in that are education technology
specific. So I think what happens in this next few months, if there is some kind of repricing, or if there are if people lower their estimates about where the stocks are going. It could be that the that the whole sector sort of suffers from any kind of repricing within any single company, because people see these companies all sort of locked together moving in the same direction. So the whole sector may see some kind of a damage done.
Yeah. And you know, another important point is, as stock market returns decrease, some of the budgets that go towards education spending are hit because those stock returns tend to accrue to the highest
earners. And you know, from a marginal tax rate, those tend to be pretty high contributors to, you know, state level funding, if not federal, so like in a state like California, you know, where we've had banner surplus here, something like 50 billion surplus, projected for next year based on the 2020 tax returns. 2021 is a harder year for the stock market. It could also hit a tech founders on the revenue side. So speaking of revenue, and the markets, how are things going on the m&a be Alex?
So actually a lot of acquisitions announced this week. Let's we'll go through them real quickly. Not too much analysis, but we'll jump back in and talk about a few of them. So the Cengage group acquired InfoSec, which is a cybersecurity education company for almost $200 million. That is interesting study tube, it acquired a course catalog platform in Europe that I think is b2b focused, as well as closing a series B. Go student, which is the only edtech unicorn in Europe, acquired Seneca
learning and tous Media Group. I may be mispronouncing that after they just got a very large funding round in India. Bright champs, which is a global platform acquired a company called education 10x, which does financial literacy for children.
That's an interesting move. And you know, speaking of community colleges have viso retention, which is a Ohio based ad tech company was just acquired by a larger company called watermark that is a company specifically in exactly the space we named, which is keeping students from dropping out of community colleges, which is a serious problem for those schools. And then lastly, modern campus, which is a higher ed platform company acquired two companies. One is a text messaging platform
called signal vine. The other is argue soft a management system for workforce development. So you're starting to see more about the higher ed and workforce world starting to combine seeing, you know, Cengage, which is a dead tech publisher. By a cybersecurity education company. They're obviously trying to move into the skills gap. You're seeing some crossover kind of moves. What What do you think? When did anything stand out for you?
Yeah, I mean, a couple trends that we always talk about is the consolidation of the industry. And also these blending of genres. I really enjoyed the visa retention article because it was a tech founder who bootstrapped for 10 years. And it's often the headlines will go to the folks who raised a big round or had a big exit. But when you're bootstrapping, it can feel like a long, long road. And for a decade of user retention was bootstrapped in Columbus, Ohio,
and gets that exit. And I think for founders out there, from an economic standpoint, doing things on your own can be really intimidating. But when you do exit, and you get the lion's share, if not, you know, 100% of the proceeds, it can often be a better return, then if you've been diluted from raising multiple rounds, so really enjoyed that, that update. I also really appreciate it out.
She's sharing this with me, and hopefully we can put it in the show notes, deal room, a new ed tech dashboard, kind of co founded by Brian, I, you know, we had Ries last week talking to us. And you know, it's kind of Eurocentric in terms of a deal database. But it really is like a similar product to one IQ, terms of analysis and details. And so when we get to our game later, I pulled some insights
from there. But you know, another great way to stay abreast of what's going on on the m&a and fundraising side
100%. And he didn't mention the best part of this ad tech Dash was is that it is completely free. Unlike many of the other information platforms out there it is open source and free. And founders can actually apply to add their companies to it. But it is trying to be a big free open catalog of what's happening in edtech. It's definitely a great resource for for all of us who follow the field, and we will definitely put the link in the show notes. Then talk to us about book bands.
Yeah, so headline number five, wrapping up our headlines of the week. Alex, I'm on the school board. And we get a lot of controversial things coming across in the board meetings. But man has January and early February been a shocker, the kind of rise in booked bands across the US, then both tragic and disappointing, with state legislators weighing in on what schools and school libraries can have, as well as what can the public library have. And it is part of a broader theme of activism at the
school board level. And gosh, I wish there was activism at the school board level around teaching and learning. In this case, we're getting a lot of activism around, you know, national politics. And you know, it does tie into Black History Month in that Toni Morrison, a treasurer of our country had her book beloved banned in many schools. And so a group called voters of tomorrow, a youth led nonprofit is giving out hundreds and hundreds of copies of that in Austin, and Fairfax,
Virginia. And let's just let's be real here, like intellectual freedom starts in our public schools. And we need to have, we need to take a stand, that our educators are entrusted with supporting the learning journeys of our students. And this overreach from a policy standpoint from our state legislators is really concerning, and like politically, likely to backfire in in some areas. In other areas. This is just a continuation of the mask bands.
This is a continuation of gender identity politics, that ultimately weighs on a public system that is already straining with COVID and so on, you know, what are some of the trends that you're seeing here? And how does this connect to the bigger picture?
It's really interesting to see, and I think, you know, my, my take on this is that there has been a sort of real loss of faith in institutions in the US for quite a while and people have different theories about why that is, but the sort of the approval rates of Congress, the approval rates of even the military, a lot of very serious American institutions have gotten really have become polarizing have been have become places of political conflict.
And I think during the COVID era, we've seen elementary and high schools, really at the forefront of that there's fights about mask mandates, there are fights about all sorts of things that critical race theory, there's a lot of political, hot buttons that are happening in schools and I think that this book banning is an extension of that I think you are having populist uprising against the idea of public schooling in some ways, and the idea of teachers and curriculum creators, being
the arbiters of what should be taught in schools and you're seeing these sort of populist movements against it. I don't know where it's headed, I have a feeling it will, hopefully begin to cool down and not be at least as he did over the next years as as COVID starts to fade away. But I think it's a really interesting sort of mega trend in the US that it's it goes beyond schooling, I think it's really about, you know, people versus government. And school is just one of the hotspots.
Yeah, and the EdTech take on this, too, is like, how do edtech companies and products navigate this landscape with all of these political minds? Just waiting. And I do think this raises questions about user generated content, how much does an edtech company have a responsibility in regulating that user generated content when it's shared on its platform? And what kind of risk are schools and school districts willing to take? Or universities? And what kinds of
accountability will there be? So I think it really is a big shift from post George Floyd, where we had a lot of movement in terms of inclusive curriculum, and bringing multiple perspectives and voices, this backlash is really, I think, you know, in dialogue with with that movement, you know, hopefully we can land in a place that is both good for kids and also inclusive for our communities.
100% I mean, user generated content, and also curriculum. I mean, a lot of edtech companies are delivering curricula into schools in
various ways. And if curricula is a hot button issue right now, as it is with people thinking that mouse is inappropriate for schools, because of the nudity in it, you know, if people are looking with that fine tooth comb at what their children are exposed to, and trying to fight back against curricular decisions, any ad tech company that's putting curriculum into schools has to take note of these and, and basically take a stance, they have to either go and dine and say, you know,
we're not going to do anything controversial at all, we'll take everything out. Or they might or they'll, they'll have to take, appear political and say, No, we believe that, beloved is an important work of American literature. And we're going to keep it in our curriculum. And it's going to be it's going to be interesting times.
Well, I'm excited to hear from our listeners, how you're navigating that dilemma, make sure you comment on any of our LinkedIn posts, or send in messages to Tech Insider. Coming off of those five headlines, it's time for us to play our fun game. And then we'll follow up with our interview. On the game. We're playing two truths and a lie. Alex has been creaming me basically in all of our games thus far. So this one will be a great challenge for Alex, I'm going to give two truths and a
lie. And Alex, you tell me which one is the lie. I'm going to start with Ben's personal journey. And I'm also going to do you know one which is related to the tech industry. Are you ready, Alex? I'm ready. All right. Okay. So Ben personal journey. All right, three different facts. Tell me which one is the lie. First one, my third grade teacher quit in the middle of class, and I stepped
in to deliver the lesson. Number two, I was banned from using laptops in my classroom as an educator, even though I had an entire classroom set. And three, my first interview with an edtech company was on a yacht in the Caribbean.
Wow. Okay, so it's about taking over from the third grade teacher is one banned from using laptops, even though they're available, or interviewing on a yacht in the Caribbean. I'm gonna go with the yacht in the Caribbean is true, that just feels too strange to make up. And I'm also gonna go with that the laptops are true, just because I know how committed you are to EdTech. And I wonder if that's one of your origin stories about seeing technology misused in a
classroom. I think the lie is the third grade teacher.
Well, finally, I have a victory here it is the Caribbean. As much as our listeners like to think that Ed Tech is super glamorous. No, usually my first day tech interview was in the basement of a dilapidated building in Oakland. So you know, if you're going for the glamorous life on the yacht in the Caribbean, probably a good time to pick a
different profession. But yeah, my third grade teacher did quit in the middle of class, I stepped in to deliver a short lesson and immediately declared recess time before the teacher reclaimed her spot and recommitted to the class and stepped back in. But that's my teacher origin moment, like, Oh, how did you know you wanted to be an educator. And then kudos for you on the, on the laptops.
In my classroom, I got a gift of a laptop cart from Seagate technology, when I was in San Jose teaching, and because of the Union bylaws, whenever you get a gift, it has to be equally distributed among all educators. And so instead of using the single laptop card for my classroom, every teacher had a single laptop to sit in the corner of their classroom and not get used all year. All right now to the bigger ed tech
picture. Okay, this you better warm up here, Alex, because these are tough ones coming from hold on IQ. They announced that the global ed tech market is growing at an annual rate of 516%. And will surpass 50%, of revenue of total education industry by 2025. So that means for every dollar spent on education by 2025, over half of it will go towards edtech of some sort. The second true truth in lie is from dealroom, the resource that we just talked
about in dealroom. It says that Carnegie Mellon is the number three university in the US, for the most alumni, edtech founders, so Carnegie Mellon popping out ad tech founders. And the third to truth and Ally is from learning platform of the top 10 tools or apps used in K 12 classrooms. Eight of them are Google products. What is the lie? All right,
so So the first one was about a 500% annual growth of global edtech. And it's surpassing 50% In the next three years. The second is about Carnegie Mellon, being number three in the US for alumni at tech founders. And the third is about Google being eight of the top 10 tools and apps using classroom. So first off, I do believe that eight of the top 10 tools and apps used in K 12 classrooms are Google
properties. I think Google Classroom, Google Drive, Google Sheets, they have become ubiquitous in K 12 classrooms. They are free. They, you know, in most cases, they are very comfortable for teachers to use. They're all interconnected and integrated. That makes sense to me. I think that's true.
I think you need other two in the top 10. Kahoot. Yeah. And oh, boy.
I don't know, tell me, zoom. That makes sense. And then as for the others, I think they're almost true. I think one of them is probably off by a little bit of a number. And I'm going to I know a tech is very hot, and it's growing enormously. But an annual rate of 500% Feels a little much to me. I know, we've seen things triple, which already is a lot. So I'm gonna go and I know that Carnegie Mellon is an amazing school, their metals, and Master's program is one of the best teaching and learning
programs in the country. And they have lots of learning scientists and a lots of products coming out of them, including famously Carnegie learning. So it makes sense to me that Carnegie Mellon would be at least number three, maybe it's number one, but it could be released. Number three, I'm going to say that the lie is the 500% growth that feels a little inflated to me.
You are right. And it's more than a little it's 16% instead of 500% growth. And I will only be 5%, of revenue of the total education industry by 2025. And I think it's important for the listeners, you know, in terms of like market size, Amazon in two quarters, earns as much money as the entire ad tech industry in a year. So just one company, we are still peanuts in the relatively large $7 trillion education tool industry. We're
about 5% of that. And Carnegie Mellon, I just think you know everything you said they are on a fast track to becoming the number one school in the US, for ed tech founders, the kind of quality coming out of there. And this is sorted in deal room by also by people who've raised $10 million or more. So this is not just like I created a website. These are legit companies coming out of Carnegie Mellon. And if you're not hiring, they're not
talking to people there. You're barking up the wrong tree Stanford and Harvard holding number one in Number two spots respectively. All right, well, thank you for playing our game, you are one of to pretty respectable and great call on Kahoot in the top 10. I'll give you a bonus point on that. We are now shifting gears to our deep dive. And our guest, Alberto renessa. From transcend network, Alberto and I met I don't know, six or 12 months ago, and he's doing amazing things in the education
landscape. You know, Alex, you invited him today. So maybe you can give a little bit of background, and we're excited to dive in.
Yeah, so Berto has been a one man army. In the ed tech world. He runs a transcend network, which is a accelerator program for tech founders all over the world. It's hyper global. And it focuses on often young, young entrepreneurs. He himself is a graduate of Minerva University, which is alternative global university that is a edtech company itself. And he is just a fount of knowledge of all things, Ed Tech, so happy to have you here, Alberto.
Thank you, Alex. Thank you, man. I'm super excited to be here. Terrific. So
So you know, we first wanted to start with sort of broad, you have a very global perspective. So we want to start with a broad question, you know, pre COVID, during COVID, and post COVID, what has been your overall take on sort of the growth of edtech? Globally, and maybe, especially in Europe, where you've been based throughout much of the pandemic?
Yeah, great. This is a question I love. Just to give a little bit of context as to what part of the market I'm most exposed to, I work with really early stage founders. So these are founders that have just started working on idea, they just come full time. And we help them finding product market fit. So I'm exposed to the earliest, earliest side of the of this space, there's definitely been a shift after the pandemic, so we got started in 2019. We run all of our
programs online. And something we we saw was a lot of the founders we talked to, who were interested in joining our fellowship, they weren't kind of, they would ask themselves, like, oh, I don't know, if I want to do this program. It's fully online, like, I kind of want to go somewhere. So there's
been a huge change there. And basically, all the funders that we talked to, they're really interested in how to make online learning a little bit more engaging, how to bring it to classrooms, how to bring it to, to companies where they might be
doing online training. So I think there's been a huge shift in terms of what used to be programs that will be run in schools, and maybe weren't not necessarily technology startups, speaking to that number that you have that that chart you were mentioning, where 95% of education spending is not technology, a lot of that has actually been turned into ad tech. So very small platforms are just starting up and trying to cater to this new new demands. I think a lot of this stuff that we saw during the
during COVID. Is is remaining. So a lot of the push for online training, a lot of companies, a lot of universities, a lot of schools are deciding to stick with some of the some of these online learning tools, I would say k 12, probably a little bit less. But I think all these trends are here to stay in terms of what's happening in a global
market. Dimension. We've definitely seen a tech grow massively, I think Ben already shared that the numbers but we've basically seen funding for edtech startups triple in the in the last two years. So since we're actually since 2019. In in, there's just a lot more funds that are specialized specifically in education, like it like in our own project. There's a lot of generalist funds that are investing in education, when before they can have that crossed from the sectors that they were actually
interested in investing in. So there's been a massive change. And I think, to zoom into Europe, I think Europe has actually been the region where ad tech investing has grown the most. So again, I want to give another shout out to bright eyed and dealroom they have a great new tool that you can play around with to see some of this
data. But what has happened mainly in Europe is it's caught up from being I think it was something like 10% of all funding into tech to over 20 25% I believe it's basically seen funding grow from 700 million in 2020 to 2.5 billion 2021. So even during the pandemic, it grew a lot in the in the last in the last year. And what we've seen is mostly bigger rounds. So the actual number of deals
hasn't changed too much. But we've seen companies like multiverse like go student companies like 360 learning and friends that have gotten massive rounds from a lot of these generalist investors that would
never touch a tech before. So yeah, I guess the last thing I'll say about Europe is I think there's one Very interesting difference with other markets, which is that the main the main two markets for a tech, which are the UK and France, there is actually a role for government that's actually crucial in
enabling at tech innovation. So when you look at some of the largest rounds in the UK in edtech, multiverse comes up in multiverses, enabled by this thing called the apprenticeship Levy, which allows employers to offer apprenticeships with some incentives, economic incentives from from the government, you have a relatively similar program in France, which has enabled open classrooms to grow
a lot. There's a an actual budget that all consumers, all citizens can spend on edtech platforms in France, which is leading to just massive growth of ad tech startups. So I actually wanted to point out the the role that government is playing in innovation in ad tech in Europe, and I think a lot of governments around the world are looking at it, and trying to copy the model. So I'll end my my rant here.
super fascinating. And, you know, the change in the funding and innovation landscape is also coupled with a change in user mindsets and learner mindsets. You know, it's really interesting, your background and your journey, maybe you can tell our listeners a little bit about your experience as, as one of the first Minerva graduates in the world, and how that shaped your view of, you know, the
future of education. And where does that connect with this next generation of learners who are coming through and and really rejecting the more traditional brick and mortar school systems?
Totally. So I was studying at a university, it was 500 years old. At the time, I was finishing up my first year, and I was bored out of my mind, I found out about Minerva, when it was starting, they were graduating, they were looking for the first the first
graduating class. And so I enrolled, I packed up my bags, went to San Francisco, and basically had four wonderful years where I was learning from a very, very diverse student body, which is, to me one of the biggest things that I saw in the in those years, and something that I think is going to be very impactful. And as we think about the future, it's a model that's very focused on into
interdisciplinary thinking. So the first year, everybody that studies the same, but not only is it focused on this concepts, but it's also applied, its focus on applying them as well. So it basically gets you into a new city, every single semester, different city of the world. And it gets you to apply all these things that you're learning in your classroom to the real world. So there's a lot of valuable lessons, a lot of
growing up moments as well. And when you show up in India, and you have to go get coffee, and it's it's difficult, and you can speak the language and in South Korea or in Argentina, these are really, really valuable lessons. And what enables it is this online learning experience that reduces the cost to a fraction of what at any EU US university
would, would be. So that's actually a key thing that I wanted to highlight, which is that ad tech plays a role in taking something that would be extremely expensive if it was done offline, and allows anybody like, like me, just coming from Madrid to be able to join this program. So Minerva was a really interesting experience. For me, I think I got four years of being an early employee at a startup, basically, because we were really involved with administration, with with
everybody with professors. I just, I just knew that I wanted to be in this space, I wanted to help more, at least each founders build new projects. And so that's how we ended up CO founding. Transcend. I think one interesting thing we were jamming on before before the show is how much of a how much of a change we're perceiving in college students interest in young people's interest in in edtech. I think generally, there's a push towards more
meaningful work. And so I think that that's a really favorable trend for a tech so people are looking for work that is meaningful, they don't just want to be clicking buttons so that a company can be a little bit of 1.1% more efficient with these ads, they actually want to do work that matters. And whether it's climate change or education or mental health, I think a lot of young people are looking
towards that. I think ad tech is still pretty early on in terms of being able to to be a leader in terms of recruiting from universities, I probably don't have a very generalizable example. But I had a really hard time finding any opportunities in tech, I will say it's been, it's been a lot easier for me to find a company to do all the things we've done with transcend than it was to actually get a job in a tech. So I think there's still some room for
growth. I think this will also change as companies reach a higher size. So I think education technology has been a very fragmented market generally with relatively small companies. And I think that's made it difficult for have been nice to build a really strong presence, very strong global presence, which is important. And to recruit from from university. So I think this is changing. I think we need a lot more courses, a lot more apprenticeships, a lot more programs that help students on
board. Get started in the, in the ad tech industry, because I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff happening in this space. And I think we need a lot more people a lot more diverse experiences and perspectives.
It's it's really makes a lot of sense. And it's it's amazing how Minerva, you know, everybody I've met who has in Minerva grad, really seems to be a full global citizen. And they sort of think about the world in a very familiar way. It doesn't, it feels like very natural to travel and explore and work internationally. And that is where Ed Tech has been going. So it feels like a natural fit to me. You know, I wanted to double click on something you said before about apprenticeships in
the European market. You know, one thing that has always struck me as very interesting about Europe, and when it comes to education is that you have all of these different countries often have centralized education systems. But there's also a sort of Europe wide, thinking about certain types of education, there's a lot of transferable credits, they I know, the Nordic countries, students can go to schools at any of the Nordic
countries. So if you're from Sweden, you can go to school in Finland, and it's treated, you're treated as a local, there's a lot of really interesting cross border collaborations, as well as a long history of really effective apprenticeship programs, often sponsored by enormous manufacturing and industrial companies, as well as as well as other large companies in Europe. So Europe has been a little bit more in my mind experimental in putting together the the pipeline from college to work.
And I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about how that has affected the European ed tech scene.
Totally. So I think there's there's super interesting case studies to look at in Europe. In a way, I think there is a shared culture around education in Europe, a really strong push for high quality public education, which is truly incredible. I think there's, there are some programs such as the Erasmus program that are
very, very widespread. So you can basically as a third year student, in most universities in Europe, you can apply for this program and get placed at a different European University. So a lot of students leave home for the first time, it's a really amazing experience. So there are some positives, but I would say for the most part, countries tend to be very
isolated. So even from an edtech growth perspective, it's really hard for let's say, a boot camp, a company that's even selling like a SAS tool to grow from, let's say, Spain, into France or Italy, because a lot of the public systems are centralizing the decision making, it's, it's really difficult to to expand from a kind of attack, go to market perspective. And I would say there are relatively different models in different
countries. So I think when you talk about apprenticeships, I think Germany has been the global leader, and what they've built in terms of the infrastructure for local Chambers of Commerce to be the meeting point for universities and employers. That is not something you can find in Spain and Italy and UK, they're very different. So like the apprenticeships, for example, in the UK, which they're making a comeback now. They're a lot more decentralized, in a way I think multiverse acts as a as a
marketplace. And then the government comes in and adds a digital wallet, that matches matches that the funding that the company is providing. In France, it's a totally different models. So I think Europe is always an interesting space for us to think about what is
working at a local level. And when we think about new edtech tools that might be able to reach learners directly, that might allow for a learning community to learn in groups and allow for a peer learning, one of the things that we can learn from all these different case studies. But But yeah, I think we're looking at higher ed specifically. There's just a ton of different regulations. And it's actually very diverse, which is I think, is a really interesting advantage.
You know, we've talked a lot about Europe, a number of startups in your portfolio or from developing countries actually talked with the Throup. DIA, Friday, last week, one of your portfolios, companies in transcend, they're based out of Bogota, Colombia. How are you seeing ad tech innovation scaling in, in developing markets and what's similar, what's different? And, you know, for our audience, like, how should they be thinking about some of these regions like Latin?
Yeah. So I think that There's a one main distinction that we have to make when we talk about global education. There, there are two ways to slice this bike. The first one is that locally, there are companies that are able to grow within their own market. And they can do it at a scale that was previously impossible.
So these are companies like Baidu started in India, like go student in Austria, these are companies that are growing within their, their markets, and they've been able to grow much, much faster than than they did before. And then secondly, the second wave almost of global education is products that are global by design, and that any user can access from anywhere in the world. And this is where precisely companies like Baidu us are trying to get to or, or
even go student. So I think the first one is a lot more grounded today. Like we can basically, we've seen that pretty much every region in the world, especially Europe, in India, there's a lot more funding, there's there's a lot more international money flows. So a lot of the investment that you're seeing in Europe, it's coming from from US funds, it's coming from Softbank, we're seeing the same dynamic in India. And I think generally,
that's good. It's allowing for new models to scale faster for larger rounds to be erased, which is kind of what I mentioned, when we were seeing with the data in Europe, I think that the part that's really difficult is the global learning products. And I tried to think about it as through the lens of learning communities. To me, Global Learning Communities are basically what what happens when institutions no longer run the world of education, when you have people that are coming
together organically to learn. I think that that's a really exciting vision, one that I think is particularly well positioned for this global context. And I think there will be few universities that are able to crack it. So I think it's going to be individuals that start coming together, start learning from one another, in new rules for the system start to emerge. I think one really interesting example is if anybody here uses tick tock, I don't use it as much, but I have
younger cousins that use it. I'm not that old, but I just don't use my phone very much. But if I told you to see who maybe your kids or somebody appear, I challenge you to look and see who they're following and where they come from. It's really interesting to see sort of how these different cultures are forming in different cities of
the world. And you might see somebody that has a certain aesthetic, or a certain subculture that are there all over the world, but they're finding their own identity online, there was this really interesting consumer trends research report that found that for Gen z's, I think it was something like 60% of of Gen Z, respondents felt more comfortable with their online identity than they felt with
their offline persona. And I think there's something there, I think, the way that people are coming together on Twitter to learn from each other, the way that people are coming together in, in Dallas, for example, in the web three world, people are coming together in discourse and and learning from each other in really interesting ways. And I think that's the next wave, I think that's going to take a while, I think a lot of the really interesting companies will not be venture bankable.
And that's fine. And then lastly, I want to say I think India is really at the forefront of this. We see founders that applied to the fellowship, who are working full time at a company. And on the side on the weekends and nights, they run discords with 1000s of engineers, who are all learning from each other, and who are getting placed in companies. And this is a scale that is really ridiculous. I think it's really, really exciting. So that's how we see the sort of the next wave
of global education. Yeah, it's
such an interesting take. And, you know, it feels like there's a sort of move towards disaggregation maybe even disintermediation of traditional schools, if practitioners and learners and working learners can reach each other directly through discord and Slack channels, or through zoom chats or through various kinds of online tools and communities, then, you know, and if what they can learn from each other, or social media platforms like Tiktok, and Twitter, if what they can learn from each
other is solving their educational needs, then schools and universities really have to think very hard about, about why that is and what they can do to to compete with that. Because it can't just be about the certification that will, at some point, certification will not be the pure signal of for for an educated person. And when that happens, if the community is not within the, you know, within the online world of a university or school, it could be a massive
sea change. I think you're onto something very interesting there.
Yeah, I think I think this is a very long term trend. I don't think we're going to see it next year. earned two years. But I think as we as we think about the new skills that will be required for, let's say, a software engineer, there is no reason why you should be learning those, those skills in your local University, and why you should be employed at your local company. And I think that's a very high level change that's going to unfold over the next two decades. And I'm really
excited to see. So I write a newsletter called The transit newsletter. And it's at transcend that substack.com. We talk about trends in the future of learning the future of work. If you've enjoyed what I've been saying, for the last 20 minutes, you'll probably enjoy this newsletter. And this newsletter is the result of our work with transcend network. So as Alex was sharing, we work with early stage founders, we run a founder fellowship, so we help them find
product market fit. And we're currently building a fund to be able to invest in these companies. So we'll be writing about this fund in the coming weeks and our newsletter. So if anybody finds it interesting, I'm most active on Twitter. So you can find me at Alberto
and we'll put that that link as well as the link to the to the newsletter in the show notes for this week. You can always find that there. So Ben, do you want to take us out?
Yes. Thank you for a great interview. Alberto. Always insightful to talk to you. Also, thank you to our listeners for navigating yet another week. If it happens in ed tech. You'll hear about it on This Week in it. Thanks for listening