This Week in Edtech with Ben Kornell, 2/5/22

administrators in K 12. As well as higher ed, the Ed Tech takeaway from a lot of these are, it's hard to sell to Ed Tech consumers because they're so overwhelmed. And the systems and structures that normally have been quite hard to change. And you know, positively you might call them resilient, are crumbling down. So lots in the news, checkout EdSurge, by the way, they have three or four really good kind of first person

articles. But one article that caught both Alex and I's eye is an interesting LinkedIn post, which actually talks about the flip side of the COVID reality and teaching from home. And the poster, you can check it out on our LinkedIn talked about how teaching from home made a lot of educators realize that bathroom breaks were a thing, and that you can have like work life balance, the author is Taylor cricket. And she does account

management. But her insights were really eye opening in terms of an alternative take to why the teacher shortage, why the labor disruption, working from home actually could be a different and potentially better way to work for educators. In the comment section, too. It's a great dialogue around well, what is best for the learners and

what is best for kids. And it all connects to this idea of reimagining the role of educator what is absolutely needed and what can be provided by technology, what can be provided by caregivers, etc, etc. So grappling with endemic COVID. I think that this is a new moment, Alex,

light. And you know that we will post a link to this LinkedIn post in the show notes just because it synopsize is the thinking in a really interesting way that you know, when you step out, and you know, step out of the classroom environment where you take so many sort of difficult work situations for granted, it becomes hard to go back, it becomes sort of not as appealing to go back to an environment that doesn't always offer even basic supports for some of its employees. So it's a

really interesting moment. And, you know, shifting to the higher ed landscape. Really interesting reports this week from University of North Carolina, which is they are putting almost $100 million into a plan. It's almost $100,000,000.90 7 million in pandemic recovery funding. And what they're doing with this is actually starting a nonprofit, ad tech startup designed to get adults the best online learning. So it's a state college system, putting serious money into adult learners.

They're hoping to make 120 new online programs net over 24,000 new students. And one of the things that's particularly interesting about this model this is covered in Inside Higher Ed this week is that they're doing this particularly to try to be able to create their own online programs without necessarily being overly reliant on online program management

companies or OPM. A UNC has used OPM in the past extensively, but they are basically building a nonprofit at TechStars up, but they hope can be a sort of substitute for a lot of the OPM capabilities. That is a really interesting development in a few different ways. What do you think about this, Ben?

I also think that this focus on adult learning is quite unique and interesting. It's serving the upskilling needs of a state like North Carolina, which is growing and evolving. And I know some of the folks who've been in the Research Triangle, they're actually out here in California, now helping Stanford in some of these universities, develop online learning programs. So it's not a big surprise. 100 million is a great start, as we know, the two use of the world, you know, these are multi

billion dollar companies. But I would follow this one really closely for everyone out there that's interested in higher ed and upskilling.

pathways. We're also getting information from Fortune magazine from high schoolers, that over half of them would prefer not to go to a traditional four year college 45% prefer programs they can complete in two years or less, a significant shift from pre pandemic levels, and nearly 70% want on the job training, like apprenticeships and internships,

and 86% of those. So, you know, they want to go to alternative pathways, but Mom and Dad 86% of those surveyed say they feel pressure from parents, teachers and society at large to pursue the more traditional pathways, even if it's not the right choice for them. I think this data is both not surprising, and represents a game changer moment. You know, basically, we have a two or three year COVID cohort of learners that have fully experienced school as part

time and online. And they're saying, I think I can do this for college. And this idea of programs completed in two years or less. I think that that atomizing of the education learning experience, is a theme we see in almost every other aspect of life. I think this, you know, normally it's not fortune, that's breaking ed tech news. But this survey seems like a really big stake in the sand.

And for higher ed, they should be listening to this and understanding how they can chunk their programs in a way that provide the kind of learning acceleration and opportunity that candidates are looking for

was sort of their goal. And then you started to see that the students who are entering college were more and more saying, Well, yes, I do want to go to college, I am going but I'm going because I think it can train me I'm going because I think it can get me a better life a better career more money, they started to get a little more tactical and, and less, you know, sort of Starry Eyed about

the idea of college. And now with this last survey, I think you're going sort of all the way out and saying students are starting to not have any of that sort of pretense about, you know, I want to go to college

big to meet people. I want to go to college because it's the grassy quads and the teams and I mean, obviously that's still in some students minds, but so many high schoolers were talking about almost half of high schoolers in the survey, want programs that are two years or less or they want to get job experience out of the gate. or they want to do a lot of stuff online, I think there's just a real shift in the understanding of what college even is. And

that's fascinating. And I think you know what it also made me and for the tech industry, as you, we might see a lot more online, bachelor's, that are appealing to this type of learner, we've seen a huge spike in the number of online master's degrees, in all, you know, especially from OPM providers. But there are only a handful of really online bachelor's from sort of selective universities.

And I think that most university presidents or people in online learning, you know, departments and universities would look at these numbers and say, Wow, we would do really well with a two year program and get somebody something really useful or a bachelor's that can be done in collaboration with a company or all sorts of new models are possible to fill this gap.

decentralized bespoke ways. They are, you know, supply chain, and so that there is not the single factory that's going into end. And so our cognitive space has freed up to understand, you know, maybe getting a higher education degree is more like finding the Lego pieces out there and fitting them together for us, rather than going to a single source that has them lined up with instructions ready. So really interesting time. Zooming out from this

higher ed news. Can you tell us what's going on in the markets for Ed Tech in the latest funding rounds?

million. This week, and we are going to be speaking to Jonathan Finkelstein, the CEO and founder of cradley. And the Verona adventures, one of the leading ed tech VC firms put out a really fascinating report. We will put the link to it in our show notes as always, and we have the head of research and the lead author on the report to speak to all of us about some of the headlines.

For our deep dive today, we are going to talk about a really fascinating acquisition that happened this week and was announced credibly, which is a credentialing leader used all over the world by many many different institutions was acquired by Pierre syn ed tech giant, and to speak about this acquisition and go into a little bit of a deep dive on it, we actually have the CEO and founder of cradley Jonathan Finkelstein, Welcome to EdTech. Insiders. Jonathan.

you. So yes, a little bit about the sort of the origin of cradley, you know, credibly was founded in 2012, in many ways, was the natural evolution of work that I had been involved in it two prior companies in the learning and workforce related space. But I think, you know, from the start our vision was very much about how do you help people achieve their full potential on the basis of their

verified skills. And the way we approach that mission over the successive years has been to say, if we can help organizations make better people decisions, better decisions about human capital, we will be achieving that vision for individuals. And so that has been our goal. How do we arm organizations with real time trusted data about what people actually know and can do, so that people can access the right next opportunities in their

lives. And so that's really been the guiding set of principles for everything up until this moment, and it remains the guiding principles even after this week's announcement that will be joining the Pearson family.

the growth in some new way. I think it just accelerated what was going on, I would say maybe two ways in particular to highlight. One would be, we've certainly seen a much greater appreciation and adoption for skill based approaches to hiring and in turn to learning. And in some ways, it might seem silly to say that because skills have always been important to

learning. But I think until relatively recently, we haven't had the tools to track and record skills in a consistent and transparent way across different kinds of contexts. credentials are a great way of doing that, and allowing the communication and the data behind it to be consistent. I think the second thing that's been driving the growth is a realization among employers, that people are not just looking for a great place to work, they're looking for a great

place to learn. And one of the areas of our business that has been growing most quickly, r&d businesses that are using credentials to recognize employees to create pathways towards achievement and upward mobility, while aligning the upskilling efforts with the most important strategic initiatives for a company. So I would say those two things in particular have really stood out in the last 18 to 24 months, incredibly

categories. You've got groups that are training and education providers who tend to exist for the very purpose of doing upskilling whether it's community college or state university systems, or training providers that train people in corporate settings and everything in between, you've got the association's which set the standard for their industry sector, they tend to be the ones that issue the industry certifications, very large number and each tends to be specialized in their particular

realm. And then you've got businesses enterprises, and these are a very big portion of our customers. And I would say they fall into two primary use cases. These are businesses that are either issuing credentials to external audiences. These could be people who are being certified in their products, who are resellers or licensed distributors. Or maybe they're doing talent pipeline development initiatives through partnerships with college

systems or other providers. And then the flip side of that are businesses that use credibly to verify the skills of their incumbent workforce, their current workers. And their what you see is a very strategic connection between all of the upskilling or digital transformation efforts, it tends to come from the objectives of those credentialing programs tend to come from the C suite, here's where we want our company to be in three years or five years, here's where we need our

employees to be skill wise. And here's what we want to attract when it comes to building our new talent base. And so that's the internal use case, if you will. So illustratively really quickly. And in each of these categories, are just a few

highlights. So in the nonprofit or association sector, you've got organizations like Sherm right, which is the leading organization for HR professionals, as well as HR CI, both of which, together I think comprise virtually everyone who gets certified in the human resource space, or project management institute, which issues the PMP. Among other certifications, this is the number two most requested credential and a job description today that the PMP all of those are distributed on our network

by PMI. And then when you switch over to the business sector, a few examples would be groups like AWS, and Microsoft, or groups like Adobe, or Cisco. So certainly technology providers, but you'll also see groups like Bank of Montreal and PVH of Philips been using the owners of Calvin Klein and other retail chains, using this as a way to create scaffolding for skills across all different kinds of use cases. And then large state systems, big groups like RMIT.

In Australia, the SUNY school system, many of the schools out in California University of South Florida, are really focused on how do we help people take the skills that we helped assessor develop and get them into the right next step, whether it's a promotion, a new career, or a new job, or the right next learning opportunity.

And that's where cradley is really focused right now, and has been for some time, which is building out the number of ways in which the credentials you earn can actually be used in the world, you'll see partnerships with companies like zip recruiter which have integrated credibly into the profile, so all of your credentials can be brought into your job applications, you'll see the ability on the cradley platform to choose to be noticed by a hiring manager who's looking for

someone with your skills, or a new Talent Match products, as well as the ability for companies using our credibly workforce platform to be able to find talent within the company, even those who were certified two minutes ago, in a particular skill area to put them immediately onto a project that will not only engage them but create value for the company.

an m&a or exit? How did you think about acquisition versus other exit or financial fundraising options? Or did you pursue multiple paths? What's the framework you use to make that decision that led you ultimately to the Pearson acquisition?

about growth strategies. And even before we took our very first outside capital to help grow the company, we set a few key internal goals for ourselves to have achieved one was to actually have a product that had evidence of having some utility in the world so that you could not only sell it to customers, but if you're going to bring on outside investors, I like to be able to feel confident that the vision has evidence of traction and having a need in the market. So one is some evidence of so

called product market fit. Two is knowing that you could run the business sustainably without raising capital. And that was a goal that we set in the early days. And so when we founded the company in 2012, we we ran it that way until 2016, when we brought on our first outside capital. And I would say the third thing that was sort of a threshold for us was to not just raise capital, but to find great

partners. And that was something we went all the way from our founding till 2016 to really figure out who were going to be the right people to help us get to the next stage. And so when we raised capital first in 2000 16, all three of those conditions were already met. And we put a syndicate together of a real diverse set of of interests, all of them, I should say, had a common interest, which was the success of what cradley His mission and vision

were. But all came at it from different places, including social impact capital, nonprofits, making their very first investments in for profit companies, as well as strategic investors. So if you fast forward from that first decision to kind of think about growth, through partnership, that theme followed us through all the way until this week, when we announced the expansion really of our partnership with Pearson, which had been a strategic investor for almost four years.

And we were indeed, we have a growth plan that we are operating against, we were considering the right next move to execute on that growth plan, and spoke to a lot of potential partners and some amazing people. And at the end of the day, you know, sometimes when you're looking for the right partner, you're thinking, Okay, well, we want people who have the capital to support the growth plan. But even more importantly, you want to know that they're aligned on the

mission. And what we found in Pearson, was an organization that essentially said to us, we believe in you, and your mission is perfectly aligned with what Pearson is doing in the world right now, and where we intend to go. And it made the decision very, very easy.

acquisition. And, you know, when you're thinking about someone more as a partner, rather than a transaction, you know, that trust that you build, and the track record that you have together, really creates the conviction to move forward in a deeper partnership really fascinating.

to you. And make sure that things that are most important to the partner are aligned, you may have some things that don't actually need to be on the checklist. I feel really grateful that for us in this milestone, we actually found somebody were mutually I think we checked all the boxes with each other. And sometimes that group is sitting across your board table.

much broader sense. And, you know, Ryan Craig, one of the investors at university ventures and achieved partners, who is an investor incredibly, has been writing for years about, you know, how the degree is a black box, and there's really, you know, no good way to ensure that learning that happens in life can actually help somebody move forward in their career. And I think credibly was founded on

that 10 years ago. And now Pearson, having moved away from K 12, and moving much more deeply into higher ed and workforce learning, it really has gotten that memo in a big way. So I'd love to hear a little bit about, you know, what are some of the plans, what you can share what you know, so far for the future of credibly and that sort of concept of skills based hiring as it goes under the Pearson umbrella? Sure.

career? How do you work through and with employers to enable not only the upscaling that's required, but the analytics and the understanding of what your company needs and how the people who make up or comprise your company are able to help you get there so we're going to be joining that workforce skills.

We are now part of that workforce skills division at Pearson Just a few months back, Pearson acquired a Sydney based company called fathom, which is a workforce analytics business and that is designed to help large businesses you Even governments and regional authorities understand where the skills needs are trending within their particular enterprise, or,

or region. And you can imagine how having that understanding of a workforce and how external factors as well as internal factors are impacting the needed skills together with a provider for better signals around the skills people have in the form of credentials could make a powerful combination. Pearson also has other amazing assets that they brought into workforce

skills. And, of course, the company has a really vibrant, and the largest business around credentialing and assessments for people in all different careers through things like Pearson, vue, and also other great signals like the GED,

which is part of Pearson. So when you think about all the different ways that people can both connect to the right learning, as well as have the right signals to indicate that they would be a good fit for a particular job, and how that lends to talent, mobility and greater equity within the workforce, I think that should give you a sense as to where and how credibly will fit in and, and I would also just add one more piece, which is cred Lee's

ethos from the beginning. And Alex, you were there at the beginning, and can remember this was always about how do we help individuals connect to the right next step? And when I first met you, Alex, one of our very first activities was to try to understand how could you use credentials to help people who were in transfer schools, these were under accredited, over aged young adults, if you will, because peers may have already completed high school, but life

had intervened. And they did not yet have that high school diploma, how could we use credentials to acknowledge life skills, and then use those as bridging points to jobs to community college, to college, and so forth. And that's been a carry through for credibly, ever since. But it means providing opportunities for autonomy and empowerment to the individual person. And when you look at what Pearson is doing in the world, you can start to see that

through line as well. How do you reach individual people at all points of their life, and help them take the right next step. And it's a very personalized, very unique opportunity.

customer acquisition cost. And so this ability to aggregate channels and bring people into your learning ecosystem, and support them, creates a really powerful lifetime value from a business standpoint, and like reduces that friction. And the optimistic view is a lot of what you shared around all the potential in terms of expanding impact and growth. There's also the devil on the other shoulder, the positive devil says, this is going to be great, and on the

other shoulder. And I've been there myself with m&a, you know, how can our little company whatever size it is, but relatively small to the acquire? How can we keep our momentum, our innovation, our impact, as we essentially join with this larger corporate ecosystem? How have you navigated that I'm sure people on your team are asking

those questions. And even like from a guardrails perspective, like how do you think about making sure this first, you know, year is a real success in this deeper partnership?

How do we keep that innovative spirit and move quickly? So first of all cradley is going to is remain incredibly ink. We are still a business haven't seen your business now that is owned by Pearson, but we will continue to operate with independence, you know, both cultural and operational independence even while we benefit from having the financial stability and the incredible workforce skills and other Pearson assets to support us and help us grow. And so the team at Pearson has been very

clear. Well, there are lots of amazing things and ways in which Pearson can help us grow. This isn't about how does cradley get absorbed into the mothership of Pearson, but how do we actually help credibly achieve the goals that we were already out pursuing, including when we were you know outracing capital recently So that's that. And I think at every decision in terms of both how this transaction has been structured, and in terms of how we've been welcomed to the Pearson team have aligned with

that. So our goal is to keep innovating quickly for customers listening to them, bringing much greater resources to bear on solving problems that both businesses and issuing organizations have and that the owners have. So yeah, I think we're off to a great start. And we have great partners in Pearson.

people you work with. And as part of that, I would love to understand, you know, when you look back at this period of credit history, it's already been 10 years since currently was founded. What is the title of the chapter of this book? Like? What is the title of this chapter of the credit history book? You know, what does this acquisition mean in the overall narrative?

It is about honoring people skills and achievements, even when they are developed or assessed in settings that have been traditionally given credit for it. And so those themes I think, are fairly evergreen, and are only increasing in importance. That being said, you know, maybe one title for it could be the badge gets Bar

Mitzvah, I don't know. Because I do think this is the this is evidence that we've moved past the early adolescent stage or the infant stage, this is very much about bringing trusted real time information about skills directly into places where decisions about people's lives

get made. And so yeah, I think this certainly moves the story to the real outcomes, part of all this, which is where credibly has been headed, how do we make sure that these aren't trees falling in the proverbial forest, but when you complete something of value, when you have a resume worthy achievement, that the world has an easy way of understanding what you did, and that opportunities get delivered to you that are relevant, that honor, who you are and what you

can do? I think that's really, you know, just to put it in very simple terms, I think that's what this moment is about. It's really completing that full lifecycle of understanding where you might have opportunities to grow or want to grow, understanding what gaps if any, there are, and then having really strong signals that others in the world can rely on to offer you the right next step. Well, it's

decade of this journey. And I think, you know, for those who are thinking about founding a company, who have the aspirations to make the kind of impact you've made, it's both inspiring, and also just a really good benchmark to say, hey, you know, what can you accomplish on a 10 year timeline, you can go from a world where this whole concept of credentialing was foreign to now you know, this is mainstream, and it's inevitable, and it's happening, and you're doing it in a big way. So thank you.

this report. We will put a link to it in the show notes but for our guest today we have Reese Spence, the lead author of the report to tell us a little bit about some of the headlines and we can dive deep into it Reese, welcome to the podcast.

the right direction. And of course, it's really pleasing to see the numbers increasing across the board in terms of the sort of macro figures, as you mentioned, the average figures and of course, the diversity of markets that are receiving funding to firstly, it's probably worth saying that growth in the US in terms of edtech, VC investment also tripled between 2020 and 2021. So it's not exclusively a

European trend. But there are two interesting areas that sort of correlated that better situation, or sort of contextual factors. And they're also fundamentally sort of improving products, as there are in other tech sectors, of course, but there's sort of two really interesting factors that we've observed. So on the situational side of things, you can't pretend that the pandemic hasn't made a massive difference to attitudes towards the actual and perceived effectiveness of

Digital Education Solutions. But in our view, it's simply accelerated something that was totally inevitable, which is why you know, brighto, was set up in 2017. And not suddenly, in 2020, as I'm sure you've covered in several previous podcasts, you know, the first few months of the pandemic is very much a mass global trial, certainly in the richer corners of the world. So what can be achieved in education learning when tech is

utilized properly. And during a time when we can just wait for things to open up, we had to find a way to make that work. And it's quite significant, then with that lens on, we saw substantial learning gaps in K 12, and higher education opening up between children with access to tech, a solid internet connection and a suitable place to work and study. And that is the last one on one of those three pillars. That's what we call them of remote learning.

And so Tech really became the gateway to continuing that education. So governments, both regional and national, across Europe, they've really been investing a lot of time and money into improving access to devices and broadband, and therefore, you know, making it totally unavoidable for for teachers, students, and parents to be engaging with technology right across the board and raising a whole new wave of digital natives, which is incredibly positive for the

sector. And then, of course, the quality of what's happening, the tech sector is improving, too. It's improving the way that people are learning by making it more affordable, more effective, more efficient. And that's

hugely, hugely significant. And particularly in workplaces and consumer learning, we're seeing increasing realization that we're now seeing a fundamental democratization of almost all areas of education, learning, looking at individual coaching digital communities of like minded people, improved recognition of accreditations from new organizations, they seem to hold some real relevance and authority, even though they're from, you know, relatively new organizations.

And I think one of the things that we're interested in predict, actually is that the number of people applying to universities, for example, will start to decrease in time because there are more relevant, cheaper alternatives available.

And of course, those two sort of factors that contextual factors and fundamental improvements are leading to more interest from generalist investors in the sector, as you highlighted in the introduction, and there's a lot more room to run in your we hope are given that VC in Europe in edtech is 27% of investment 27% of the investment that's received in the US by US companies, where the biggest deal still happen and more unicorns were minted in the US than there ever has been in

Europe last year alone. So a really, really interesting time. And hopefully, we see lots more exciting activity in the years ahead.

takeaway. You know, having led an ad tech company before we have thought many times about launching in Europe and whether it's GDPR, or the fragmentation of different countries and regulatory policies, or, you know, the role of government and private industry in the education space. It's always been a very intimidating market. So two questions that I have related to that. One is, are

there pockets in Europe? You know, rather than thinking at it as a block, are there particular countries or markets that are taking off and then also have companies navigated the Uh, you know, fragmented multicountry highly regulated market to find success does this, you know, I'm wondering is like, is this some big unlock? Or are they creating a competitive moat because they know how to navigate those systems? So I'd be curious your answer on both of those questions.

previous year. So in previous years, only the UK and France would receive more than 100 million in net SEC VC investment and, and now the broader categories include Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, and Austria, of course, because of NGO students, and it's interesting to like go student within that, because if you look at the portion of the investment that went to Austria, where she went to go student was actually 91% of edtech, VC investment that went to Austria, and it's

the case in other markets as well, if you look at Denmark, 115 million of 244 million was received by two companies. And so in the report, we actually like in the European landscape as a thriving Lake. But at the same time, you know, you've got these pockets or Wells of very deep wells, individual markets, but all of that funding is allocated or being received by one company. So it's a very positive thing for those markets, ecosystems, I think in

the longer term. But in the short term, I think that, you know, there's a lot of room to run in terms of allowing in terms of what that funding is able to unlock within those localized ecosystems, in terms of addressing sort of the fact that the European market is considered quite fragmented, we totally understand that

perspective. And that's one of the reasons that the bright side spent a lot of time and effort improving the insights and guidance it provides to portfolio companies looking to expand to other European markets. And to be honest, though, the differences in regulations are rarely, in our view, anyway, a significant obstruction that says more significant obstruction, if you're a company looking to enter Europe, as opposed to one that was founded in and created

in Europe. And you know, as you've probably already covered in previous podcasts as well, the barriers are barred systematic, you're looking to work with government led organizations, which is one of the reasons that their growth growth through acquisition is increasingly popular as a means of expanding through Europe. And similarly, selling to government led organizations, including schools and universities, depending on where you're looking is difficult even if you're based in the market that

you're trying to sell to. I also think it's worth highlighting that the markets themselves as groups of consumers are less variable than then many would expect, that we markets in Europe more similar, I guess, then more similar to one another than some states in the US, for example, the German and Austrian markets can be served by teams

in either market. That's not to say there aren't hurdles but highlight that there are important similarities between the markets and that the main differences are rarely differences in legislation or fundamentally different problems being solved. It's usually simply a language barrier, that sort of overcorrect by sort of the amount of work that's necessary to make that translation. And a good example of that, again, just to refer back to a student is how quickly it's expanding through Europe

and beyond. And companies like iron app that continue to open new offices and in person as well as digital bootcamp offers. So yeah, it's a very interesting topic. And as I say, it's, it's really a very genuine interest to us. And the other final point that's probably worth highlighting about international expansion is that many markets in Europe is considered gateway

markets to other markets. So for example, if you're looking to expand to the UK, then you a logical place to go before that is the Netherlands because of the portion of people there that are, you know, have exceptionally good English and there are similar in other gateway markets, such as moving to Spain before you go to work in Latin. So as I say, the main variable probably I would say, from what we've seen in in the research we've done is how quickly those language translations can be made.

pandemic. We've seen changes in employment, we've seen changes in schooling, we've certainly seen changes in university enrollment. So how has that manifested in this report?

builds our confidence. I think that basically these these huge monster successful, impactful companies can be spot on right across the sector, regardless of where they either start or where they choose to focus their energies in all three areas of

those you mentioned. So in K 12, higher ed and workforce, we'd like to think about it in terms of things that are sort of within the system, so effectively VTG, with some b2b selling to governments and schools, and things that are outside the system, so selling

to consumers, and businesses. In case well, things that are outside the system could arguably have higher growth potential, partially because you have more and more flexible decision makers, so parents and children well, inside the system, we have this incredible number of schools in higher ed ecosystems, all seeking a solution for missions for teacher resources for learning management, for home engagement, etc, then the contracts in this part of the market are far harder to secure and more

competitive costs, they can be incredibly valuable. And higher education generally tends to be a fairly similar story. In terms of where we expect the next wave of unicorns to be. We're really looking at the workforce and consumer space, solving traditionally analog problems with digital solutions. So on a car, a French company that's helping consumers to cast their their driving solutions doing really well, driving tests are

doing really well. And expanding its offering and then also a company called marmalade that's helping to digitize construction and training and certification. So really, I think that's where we're concentrating, we're still concentrating not on things that are fundamentally changing the way people learn. But rather, I think we're still in this phase of the huge companies being those that are digitizing things that were previously analog.

Media and Learning Tools. And country by country. They're rolling up Media and Learning outlets that are specific to those cultural languages and and Heritage's. And they're, I believe their stock has doubled in the last year, of course, ups and downs. And so it's just really a fascinating combination of skills that you need to navigate the European context. And one of my takeaways is that it's really hard to come from outside of Europe, UK, and

really make a go of it. So finding partners or finding a way to base yourself out of Europe seems like a really important thing. One topic that we struggle with in the us quite a bit is the diversity of our founders and making sure that we have founder cohorts and communities that represent the learners we want to serve. And one of the most striking stats from your report was the small proportion of female only leadership teams getting funding. Can you expand a little

bit on that? What are the trends you're seeing around the founder demographics? And how are thought leaders thinking about that?

Stark. And we for the first time this year, for context, we were working with dealroom and Durham's, a great European company that basically is expanding the landscape of data that's available to founders, and it's used by investors, policymakers, etc. And we have been involved as a partner in the creation of the EdTech sector map, and one of the things we're really keen to included was some information on founder profiles and found that demographic, so we're really

pleased to be able to highlight this data. And clearly you know, that it certainly needs highlighting because, as you've said, it's incredibly Stark. For the benefit of your listeners, the rounded figures were 78% of edtech. VC investment in 2021, was secured by male founders in Europe, 3% by female founding teams, and 20% by mixed teams, it's actually marginally better in Europe than in the US, and then the global average. But of course, they're pretty similar.

And so the message is pretty clear that more needs to be done to improve support for female founding teams. And one thing to highlight in our data is that the figures don't include Angel rounds, accelerator rounds and

others. So we hope that the ecosystem is perhaps more equal than the funding totals in our reports suggest and we believe that might be the case because We see higher portions of female founding teams in the earlier rounds and in the later rounds, suggesting that we might hopefully see a huge set of female founding teams raising great larger rounds in the near future from the best funds. And improving the visibility of successful female founders and teams is incredibly important.

And that's one of the reasons why it's a focus for us, the single gender founding teams are also likely to reduce we think in time as we observe a shift towards mixed teams rather than female or male only, this seems to be really positive and and a good approach in terms of securing capital in the highest rounds, as well as of course, the fact that it broadens the

founder team. So it's really positive that there is that relationship that we're able to draw out, and that's in the more mature markets, as well as in the slightly less mature markets. And we, we divided it by, you know, the more mature markets and less mature markets

within the report. One of the reasons that this is the case, and it's probably something you've considered before, but we can't be ignorant of the fact that the vast majority of VCs remained male, and not a particularly diverse group, that you've probably seen the findings as well, from diversity VC that found that 66% of surveyed UK investors had no women on their decision making teams, it's difficult to comment on the impact that has on investments that are prioritized, but it's important

to be aware of. And I think it would also be true that there's limited diversity in VCs, by other demographics and backgrounds as well. And so it's important to improve the quality of education around how VC works. And that's one of the reasons that we're, we're trying to engage with earlier and earliest stage founders so that we can help them build towards their growth and associated

investment ambitions. And so examples of our work include our work with the Orem, as I just mentioned, to democratize access to high quality landscape data and investor info. Of course, we've created on how VC works, the five day email course, and something that we launched yesterday, which is called the European edtech Garriage, which is designed to be a hub for founders at all stages, kind of acting like a tourist information service for tech

founders. So as you can hopefully tell is something that's really sort of interesting for us, of course, for the reason that it's the sort of analysis itself is interesting, but of course, primarily because it's incredibly interested in important area. And so we're looking to learn a lot more on it in the year ahead.

investments. And so there's an interesting way in which VCs are charged with funding the most innovative cutting edge companies. But often, it takes a decade to change the makeup of a venture capital firm because of the incentives around who's vested and who's not. And so hopefully, all of this new money coming into the tech space of this new money coming for VCs is a catalyst for them to expand and be more inclusive in their

ranks. And for ad tech founders that are listening to this podcast, find a spot at the garage or Garriage and connect with the bright eyed team because it sounds like as a venture capital firm yourself, you're taking the first steps to really open it up and support new founders.