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. Welcome to This Week in ed tech for the week of March 30 2022. ASU GSV is right around the
corner. We'll be talking this week about the conference about the future of standardized testing, crumbling school infrastructure, and the unusual combination of Ed Tech and sports sponsorship. Van Cornell is on vacation this week. So we have a terrific guest host. I'd like to welcome Matt tower of workshop venture studios, another keen observer of Ed Tech Trends.
Thanks, Alex. I'm delighted to be here. I very excited pinch hitter for Ben, just for a little context on me. I've been around the tech industry for a while with some startups, some big companies and now as an investor at workshop. I'm almost as big in ed tech Womack as Alex and Ben, I write a newsletter every Sunday, and I've been delighted to listen
to the pod. Matt is being modest. He writes incredible content about edtech every week and is the penis observer of mergers and acquisitions in the space that we we have ever found. So he will be leading that section this week. So let's kick off with our headlines. Number one is going to be about the ASU GSB conference. This is a major a tech conference that has been held virtually over the last couple of years. But it is coming back in person it is sold out in San Diego this coming
week. Matt is a veteran ASU GSB attendee, and I imagine several or many of our listeners are as well. But it is my first time going to the rodeo. And I'm excited to be hosting a couple of panels one is about cohort based course creators with less cow of Maven and Candace factor of disco among other terrific leaders. And another is around higher ed disruptors with Minerva Project, fourth rev and rise Academy. So the conference
unfortunately is sold out. But I want to name that virtual registration is available for many of the sessions. So if this is something that you wanted to dive into, as an Ad Tech Insider, please do that. That gives me a little bit of an insider view of ASU GSB. And tell me the real dirt. What is it? Is it sort of the room where it happens? Is it where deals get made? Is it a sort of Silicon Valley Tech bucket now or a little both?
Yeah, I'll say the most important thing you can do to prepare for GST is get a lot of sleep beforehand, because you will not be doing much during the event. I think the JSP team has done a really good job balancing interesting content and bringing in speakers not just from the education world, but pretty far afield and tying it into some of the core concepts of education. Like last year, I think they had Mindy Kaling as one of their keynote
speakers. I think trying to strike that balance is really hard. And then, of course, you have the other side of it, where it's one of the very few conferences in the industry that pretty much everyone goes to, there's a running joke that the margarita restaurant next door is a great place to hang out for the afternoon, you can you can see pretty much any investor you
want. So it's both it's great content and things to learn from the things to think about both as for aspiring entrepreneurs, players in the space, and a great place to meet with investors and other types of ad tech folks.
That is very helpful. So I want to ask you one more question about the theme for ASU GSV. This year is Ed on the edge imagining a new era in which people have equal access to the future. And according to Deborah cazzo and Michael Moza sort of head leads in a GSB. This is really meant to be a response to the enormous societal disruption we've seen over the last couple of years.
We're seeing a major war in Europe for the first time in 50 years, we're seeing a you know, global pandemic, and new poverty, more inequality, rising housing prices, but combined with this real optimism within the EdTech world where ad tech is growing and reaching more people than ever before. And there's more tech opportunities, but especially for those who can afford them. So, you know, Ed Tech is seeing huge growth, but there's also really a sort of feeling of how do we address any
quality? How do we ensure equal access to the future so both very excited about this? I think I'm an optimist about about ad tech as as listeners will know. Also, like I have a little bit of reminiscence of a non urine data. This is a great book winners take all about sort of the elite charade of changing the world, like, as a tech investors, can we really help Ukrainian refugees? Can we really help people in who don't have access to education around the world? I tend to be
positive. But I have a little suspicion. What do you think that? Do you sort of buy this idea that AI tech can really change the world in this way? Or is it a little bit of a PR?
Yeah, I think that on the edge is a really kind of apt description of the industry, where we'll talk about the funding for this week, but one of the companies in their press release talks about how their AI might influence people's outcomes and career trajectories. And, you know, might have been like a Freudian slip from the writer. But I think it's a really good description of where we're at.
There's a lot of really exciting promise from the companies both big and small in the space, and there's a lot of fluff, we're not quite sure whether the the efficacy is there. But in fairness, I think there are a lot of people working really hard to make it so. So I think on the edge is where we're at, I have to be an optimist, given my day job. So I'm excited. But we have we have a lot, a lot of ways to go.
I tend to be an optimist in edtech, too. But you always want to keep your skepticism radar up if things get to savior, Savior worry. But I appreciate that. So my what is our second headline?
So we're going to talk about the future of standardized testing, and specifically, Educational Testing Service ETS is new CEO, just to give a quick overview. The ETS, their old CEO stepped down and they have a new leader. His name is Ahmed say back. And I think it's a really interesting, cool, I hate saying the word interesting, because it doesn't really say much, but I don't know what to do with it as how to assess their strategy.
You know, ETS is this big. Some could call it lumbering, but I think has been reinvigorated by the challenges to the standardized testing system over the past, you know, 510 years, particularly with COVID. And I think, um, it is a higher directly combating that where he worked internationally for most of his career. He was a leader and laureates for profit education world, he brings a really kind of startup the business he focus to, you know,
a large nonprofit. So I'm kind of fascinated to see where he takes it, what direction they take with it. We've seen some Inklings that they might be headed in this direction. They set up a venture team a year or two ago, and they've been investing prolifically. So, you know, it was a little bit surprising to see him named CEO, but but I'm excited. Do you have any thoughts?
Yeah, no, I mean, I just looking at some of the, you know, the context of this moment for ETS, ETS was one sort of absolutely de rigueur part of all college admissions, and everybody in the country was always expected to take the PSAT or a CT exams. And you know, just at this moment, it last year, almost looks like more than half of the bachelor's degree granting schools have have actually opted out and not required students to submit scores in in applying to the
college degree data. Another headline this week was that MIT, which was one of the schools that had opted out and not required, PSAT actually reinstated that requirement that was actually trending on LinkedIn somehow, it seems like something that people are really trying to figure out or look into.
But just quickly, it was it was also trending on Twitter. You know, if you think hard enough about it, what happened to this year's MIT class that they needed to reintroduce the SATs?
We taught me that I know this. I shouldn't know that.
Well, I mean, it implies that they were not a great class.
Right? So they feel like they need a better signal to make sure make their decisions that yeah, that makes sense.
I think it shows the world the educational world at least wrestling with what is a standardized test, what signal does it create? What noise does it create? And how does it impact the construction of our not just our education ecosystem, but the jobs that the students who go through our education ecosystem get, if you go to an elite institution like MIT, it tends to lead to strong
job outcomes. So we really have to think early in the funnel, the student funnel about the impact we're having and make sure that it is accessible to all whether that's through a test or not, I don't feel qualified to say at this point, I My hands are up and
I think it's a really interesting observation that there that the new leader is coming really not from the nonprofit angle but more from a sort of VC startup Product Market Fit Trying to really think I'm sure they will be trying to figure out sort of the role plays like ETS in the modern ad tech and education
ecosystem. And I would not be surprised if we start seeing some headlines over the next year or two about ETs doing some really different things than they've done in the past to try to sort of accelerate maybe even leapfrog it back into, you know, hyper relevance in this world that that would be my guess.
Yeah, I totally agree. So for our third headline, it was a terrific article by the great education reporter on your comments this week, we actually just ended last week about the crumbling infrastructure of many schools and how schools are being really affected by by climate change, literally physically affected, and in some schools are getting so the buildings are in so much trouble, they can't even really
operate at schools anymore. And if that continues, there really may be an interesting future where there is a serious, serious need for expensive school infrastructure spending the same way we've been talking about, you know, bridges, and roads and infrastructure spending on other government
funded assets. And I guess my question for you, Matt, and for our audience to think about, as you know, if that happens, and schools really need a sort of influx of money, will federal and state governments want to spend more money to build back brick and mortar schools versus funding alternative models of schooling like online schooling and micro Potts, micro schools, hybrid schooling that may not take place in a traditional school building? What do you think?
Yeah, and this is, I feel like I have the coolest seat in the world to see this play out, where, you know, I see all these new models are emerging and really brilliant entrepreneurs trying to take on this challenge from the private market side. And I see the growth and the traction, and the excitement from both the parents and the employees that these entrepreneurs are, are recruiting. And that has me really excited. But then it makes me wonder, like, what, how do we make this work with the
public school system? What is that interaction? What does it look like? And I don't think we have a very good model for it. You know, I think previously, we built school buildings for 50 or 100 years. And, you know, we did that 50 or 100 years ago, and now they're crumbling. So is there like a visionary leader who comes in and says, This is what we're doing? Is it gonna be a decentralized, we've got, you know, a dozen leaders in this state and a dozen in this state.
And we're all trying stuff out, and we fail a lot. And we have some ugly stories until we get to the right model. There's so many unknowns here that have me both excited and a little bit frightened.
That makes sense. And I have maybe another frightening scenario to throw out into the world, which is, you know, I think back to the Carnegie or Carnegie libraries that were all built on major philanthropic donations from Andrew Carnegie at that, I think it was the 30s I'm not sure what
it was. Exactly. And I wonder if you know, we're gonna get to a point where we see Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, some of the the titans of philanthropy, you know, Omidyar start to build schools, public schools that are, you know, wired, that are designed for sort of modern schooling as a as a gift to the US. I don't know if that would even be a good or a bad thing. But I wonder if that one alternative,
Jeff Bezos talks about how his Montessori education influenced his entire life we saw with old school, which was funded by the Zuckerberg chan foundation, it's like we've seen that. And you know, if you look historically, a lot of those the robber barons created the elite institutions of today. So what I'll say is, I think it's good for new models
to emerge. I think we just have to be careful about making sure that we keep an eye towards equity and accessibility, and it doesn't become, you know, just a funnel to, you know, finding an elite place in life, it has to be an opportunity for anybody to rise in both education and economic systems.
Absolutely. No, I definitely agree, I hope but 100% agree, I would not want the schools to become elite in any way or to be closed. I think there's just there may be a really interesting moment where we truly have to rethink what public schools should be through some combination of post pandemic life, crumbling infrastructure, new models, funding changes, and I agree, I don't think there is a great model right now, I'm not sure that I know what I've heard
anybody pitch it directly. So it's going to be a space to watch for K 12 schools. Matt, tell us about the World Cup.
So this was one The more entertaining headlines I read in the past week by Jews the is it Dodeca corn is that 2020 plus billion I don't know the right term for I know there's just like unicorn then DECA corn, and maybe it's Dodeca corn by Jews headquartered in India has focused on getting largely kind of tutoring and other services to students in India, they bought a US company epic last year have, I think they bought like six or seven companies last year, actually, they have super big ambitions
for the world. And I guess our have decided to use the World Cup as a place to declare set ambitions. The reason it was kind of entertaining to me is, when I think of the World Cup, I think of state sponsored companies and energy companies, and, you know, car companies, but I don't think of education
companies. So maybe that's me, maybe that's a sign that the education industry has made it and next next World Cup, it'll be Coursera and Duolingo, alongside by Jews, but it really stuck out to me for some reason.
Yeah, it does feel like a little bit of a flag in the flag on the moon kind of thinking for an edtech company. And you know, looking into a little bit of background of this. So bad news has been sponsoring cricket. In India for a little while and renewing its contract there, its logos on the National Indian cricket team's
jerseys. And I think that it sounds like it's a combination, I think you would agree with this mat of having so much investment money that you can actually afford to do this kind of thing, which most tech companies can only dream of, but also, really having the kind of global ambition of believing that 5g is is legitimately going to become the ad tech company of the world, you know, the number one ad tech company that anybody thinks of globally as the defining company, which is a big
ambition, but I think by juice has done more than most to get close to it. And there was an article sort of trying to think about why they might be doing this and and saying, Well, it would be, you know, the World Cup is viewed all over the world, of course. And it would actually be interesting for views to be noticed by countries like Brazil, or Mexico or other developing markets that may not have heard about the, you know, the Indian ad tech giant halfway
across the world. And, you know, we'll see if it pays off for them. But do you think it's a case of just having money to spend or having a really, really clear strategy?
I'm not sure. Candidly, I think there is the path to like a truly global ad tech company is, I don't think fairly well trodden. You know, I think, edX and Coursera had this like, brilliant brand that just took off like fire because the classes were free. And so they didn't, they kind of had to work backwards into how do we support a global company, by Jesus being somewhat more intentional, right? Like they're, they're super well known in their
market. And now they're saying, how do we transcend both geographic and cultural borders? And how do we find that student in Brazil? How do we find that student in, you know, Norway and teach them about by Jews? So I don't know, it feels a little bit odd to me to sponsor the World Cup. But then again, maybe that's just because no one's
done it before. And it'll prove off brilliantly, I think about um, coin bases ad in the Superbowl, where they just had the barcode bouncing around and by all accounts, is that ad killed it? They did really well. So the optimist says, I hope it works out for buy juice.
And maybe for the tech industry sort of makes people aware of it as an industry, which I think a lot of the world may not even be there yet.
Yes, definitely. Should we jump to some funding?
Let's do it. So I definitely want to pass the funding to you. You are the m&a Master, please run through some of the big funding rounds.
Cool. And I should preface by saying this probably isn't comprehensive. But these are some of the ones that that caught my eye. I'll say just a little bit about each and maybe you can circle back with any that are kind of were particularly interesting to you. That way, we don't go on too long. So the first is also VR, they are a VR company that helps train surgeons. So their big value proposition was it's really expensive to have a human train on a cadaver, but you need
that training. It's you need reps as a surgeon you're interacting with a human body, it's it's really critical that you get training. So also is trying to kind of take the middle path and say they're not selling themselves as perfectly comparable to a cadaver but they're saying you can target your cadaver time more effectively by using ASO to fill
gaps. So you spend they say that they cut time in the LR by 50% and improved performance by two Under 30%, you know, maybe that means, you know, three hours in VR for every hour with a cadaver. I don't know that for sure. But that's the general premise. Second, we have work ramp, which is an LMS focused on the corporate world. Importantly, this is a bet by
Salesforce and slack. They have strong integrations with both and also received investment from the venture funds of like Salesforce and slack of the same company. Now, I always forget that, you know, it's definitely a bet by those major companies that there is room for
innovation in the LMS world. I would love to hear the Blackboard and Canvas response to this, we'll see if they have some major announcement for GSV that that kind of pulls the curtain over work ramps raised this week that we have learned in raising $10 million. This is a company that helps design what I'm going to call personalized training programs for individual employees. They do things that are similar to ad tech, unicorn, guilt, and others. And then in
the tuition benefit space. My former employee, employer, Sei also has a tuition benefits play. But they seem to be targeting a broader cross section of employees that tuition benefits space is usually targeted at entry level workers. The executive Ed is obviously you know, executives, learn and seems to be looking at what can we do for the middle set of employees in a fairly personalized way. And then finally, we have stehlik and
stehlik. More power to them is taking on one of the toughest technical challenges in the education industry. They are integrating with SI SS, which are some of the oldest and stickiest platforms in the world that do great work, but are notorious for how messy their data structures are. Because it's often bubblegum and Band Aid over decades of time. And Stelmach takes all that gobbledygook and turns it into a simple clean user interface for students. So that is a remarkable technical challenge.
And it seems like it's working $11 million, it's nothing to sneeze at. And it sounds like the founder has a really good head on his shoulders focused on the students path, and wanting the best to come out of students that started when he was a student at Carnegie Mellon and was like, This is ridiculous. I need something that makes more sense for me.
That makes sense. It's a very interesting rundown, all interesting companies. I guess my my only response to these is that, you know, the VR for surgeons is a very interesting use case for VR training and VR learning. It is very expensive training. Obviously, it's very hard to get the materials for if we're talking about human cadavers. So I think that's a pretty clever
use of VR. And you know, I've heard in the past from other people who've worked on on VR, that one of the sort of killer needs for VR system is that it has to replace something, or supplement, in this case, something that is very expensive to train otherwise, because otherwise, it's just the combination of the material and the development. It just is still cheaper to train in, in person or in the real thing. But this seems like a very, very good use case for VR. So I love
that. And the other thing I just say is that corporate LMS that integrates with Salesforce, and slack is a pretty compelling proposition. The reason I say that is that Salesforce training is incredibly large desert many, many, many people training to become Salesforce admins in a variety of ways. And Salesforce has an enormous Education Department. So there's this interesting overlap there. And then slack is becoming, you know, sending ubiquitous in business, especially modern
businesses. So the idea of being able to sort of share learning materials in a really slick way through slack is, that's a channel that could really be meaningful. So I would definitely want to keep an eye on a company that that is designed sort of Salesforce and slack first, but we'll see where they all go. It's an interesting group of companies. So Matt, I think it's time to play our game. Are you ready? Oh, man,
I will do my best. All right. So
for our game, today, we're going to play two truths and a lie and I am going to throw some education facts, quote, unquote, at Matt and see if he can determine which of them is the lie. All right, number one. We've reported in previous weeks that the House of Representatives had voted to raise Pell grants by $400, but that that didn't even cover the average cost of a single college
credit in the US. But this week, Biden's new higher ed proposal for 2023 actually proposed to raise Pell grants by more than $2,000 which would be a 33% increase. That's the first truth or a lie. The second is according to a new report by Common Sense Media. Teenagers screen use time totals almost four hours a day. And for twins, it's about two and a half hours a day. And all of this rose by 10% during the last two years of the pandemic, that's our second
two truths and a lie. And our third is that adjuncts are unionizing at a very rapid rate. And earlier this month, the council's of the two unions representing American university professors, that's the Association of American university professors. And the American Federation of Teachers agreed to a formal affiliation that will unite both unions and cover 300,000 or more academic employees. So the question for you is which of those three are is the lie?
Oh, man? Well, I'll walk you through my thinking. There's been a ton of news about Pell Grants, to the point where I'm starting to just not believe whatever they're saying, because it seems like it's just a political football, and it's used to win points or other or other kind of legislative higher priorities, which is super frustrating for somebody who cares about Pell grants and wants them to be wants college to be more affordable. So I totally believe that there was
news about it. I'm a little bit skeptical that anything will happen other than we'll have more news about it in a week that contradicts this week's news. Let's see. Common Sense Media. The fact that screentime only rose by 10 person during COVID Feels a little sketchy to me. I would have guessed way higher, I think. And then adjuncts are unionizing. Man, I hope it happens, because I think adjuncts get a really raw deal.
And I wish that we prioritize teaching, especially among the non non selective universities to a greater degree. Shoot, this is really hard. I'm gonna go with adjuncts or uni as a unionizing is the why.
So close. Your thinking was right on, but then you didn't trust yourself. It the lie was about the Common Sense Media, because it was twice as big. As I just said, teenagers time totals eight hours a day. That's the screen use time, tweens is five hours a day, that rose by 17%. During the pandemic, you were right on it. Actually, the news about the unions did happen this week. And it was a little bit under the
radar. But very interesting to see the professor's union starting to act and move a little bit more like the powerful, you know, teachers unions. Oh, you are so close.
Do I still get Carl's voice on my answering machine?
There's no prizes in this game, and not even a little. So. Matt, why don't you introduce our guests for the week?
I'd love to. So I guess I should start by saying he just raised a bunch of money. We are talking to Michael lardo, who is the co founder of subject form formerly known as M elearning. They offer highly produced courses, targeted high schools, and have really impressive ambitions for the impact that they can bring to the high school world. I'm super excited to talk to him and learn more about you know, what are they going to do with the $29 million they just raised?
As our guest today we have the incredible Michael Vallarta, CEO of subject and we've talked a little bit about how subject just had raised a large round to tackle post pandemic Education. Welcome to the podcast, Michael,
thank you for having me really excited, really a big fan of the show and appreciative of the opportunity to speak to you and all the tech listeners out there. Thank you so much again.
Oh, thank you for being here. So I'll kick off with the first question. And then we'll go back and forth with our guest, Matt, today, our guest hosts. First off, why the name change. I'm so curious to you how you were Emil learning, and you just changed the name to subject. I'm curious, some of the thinking behind that. I know it was a large internal change. Yeah, I
think a big thing for us was we want to really be thought of as the leader in digital education one day, and we want to be able to partner and empower with schools and districts all throughout the US and eventually international as
well. And we thought as we raise this capital, this is a huge opportunity where the brand equity hadn't been built up too much at that we could really go through the proper thought exercise to build a brand and a name that could be long living in long fledged and we love the meal. We loved our chapter as that name. There was a lot of common mispronunciations and a lot of folks did not understand the time to the origin of the name Emile on education from
Rousseau. We wanted to be able to build some that was absolutely undebatable that it was about education that was about providing a great opportunity for learners and admins throughout the world and that we could get the URL as well so subject was born we have subject.com are really excited about the rebrand are so pumped to build great product together.
That's awesome. And I won't ask how much the URL cost I know that can be quite expensive, depending on who owned it beforehand, but congrats and I really appreciate you giving the context on all the different kind of goals and aspirations you have for what subject can become. And, you know, I come from the publishing world, I worked at Cengage for a long time. I'm curious, do you think of yourself as like a NEO publisher? Is it something more
something different? Like, how do you think about subject in relation to, you know, the large incumbent publishers?
Yeah, absolutely. Um, we are a huge fan of the publishers, we do not view ourselves as a publisher, we view ourselves as a full tech stack solution that will be able to partner and empower with schools and districts to double or triple their course offerings, we view ourselves as a great product for both credit recovery, and course expansion. And so we see ourselves as a perfect partner to brick and
mortar schools. So our full tech stack solution includes content, engagement, assignments, exams, quizzes, discussion boards, something that can be really fully accredited and provide a great opportunity for students to be able to engage with the content and earn actual high school credit through our platform.
Wow, that's quite a vision, I hadn't realized that the subject was looking to do that sort of full, full scope. I had been thinking of it as a content provider, but your naming assignments and accreditation, that's really exciting. I have to ask you about COVID. So you know, we talk on this show a lot about how COVID was a huge accelerator
for Ed Tech. And it brought a huge base of customers and new learners into the ecosystem and teachers who suddenly needed high quality online content, and including, of course, in high schools where subject works, creating really high quality high school content online. So now that COVID is pinning, you know, sort of winding down, how do you see the future of high school? Is it going to stay online, be hybrid start to snap back to in person? How do you plan for that future?
Yeah, absolutely. And COVID really tough for a lot of folks. And we are so empathetic to all the loss that has taken place during COVID. I myself, lost three of my four grandparents that COVID It was
very difficult time. And I appreciate the condolences and where I the infectious positivity and blind optimism comes into play as the you know, turn every negative into a positive and there's absolutely a lot of COVID tailwinds that we feel will spur a lot of great innovation and equity across a lot of domains and education is
for sure at the forefront. And so while COVID definitely helped us build product and be able to spread the head on all of our you know, content creation, and being a sort of opportunity to provide supplemental access to students that couldn't access brick and mortar schools, we very much feel our product is built much better for five and 10 years down the road when all students will be digital natives. They've all grown up with Netflix, Instagram, now they're Tiktok. So they love
digital product. And we can more effectively partner with schools and districts because we want to be able to make teachers and admins as efficient as possible. And so if they can offer a cryptocurrency class like we can, they could be able to give those students subject memberships so that way they can access courses that they never
would have access to before. And especially with the great resignation, where all domains are being affected by when you look specifically at a course such as a subject and you look at schools and districts with the teacher resignation taking place. So commonly these days, it's becoming even more difficult to fill normal courses like biology, chemistry,
calculus. And rather than having those students being restricted to their zip code or socio economic status on what their parents could afford in terms of privatized education, we could be able to partner with schools and districts with a lot of those public tax dollars to spend them on subject memberships. So that way, the students have access to all their courses at the brick and
mortar school. They're so engaging with extracurriculars, sports, music, theater, all the great aspects of being in person and being able to have that human connection with great instructors, while having access to an additional at this time. 65. But you know, in the near future 100 plus other subjects that may not be available at their school, I'd love to
talk a little bit more about the brass tacks of partnership. I saw in the press release, y'all already have 70 schools or 70 Plus schools on your roster. First of all, congratulations. That's incredibly difficult to do. And you've only been around for 18 months. But I was wondering, can you talk a little bit about how you built that channel? COVID obviously has a impact. But what do you think allowed you to be successful? Getting that many partnerships? Absolutely.
I think it's just being able to be really empathetic and listen to what school leaders need during this time, which we feel is really about support and building product that can layer on top of that they exist in their brick and mortar schools. So number one, that's courses that they don't offer. And that's why we've really been aggressive at getting a content library built up as quickly as possible. We were just accredited last May. Now it's March and we're already at 65
courses. We want to continue to push on that content playbook and that's a big benefit of being in LA and leaning into LA branding. We can be able to get courses out out as quickly as possible for our school partners to be able to offer courses where they may not have a teacher anymore, or a subject matter such as the cryptocurrency and NMT courses that have become really hot and exciting over the last six to 10
months in the media. And it's really hard for a school with limited resources to be able to spin up a class that quickly so we're really excited about that opportunity with terms of partnership. And then this has obviously been a space for a long time where there's been a lot of great players in the space who have worked in this aspect of being a digital provider for credit solution.
And we feel really confident that our product is much more Gen Z centric with the videography being a really premium short form video, so none of our videos are longer than eight minutes in length. This allows for students up today those digital natives really engage and enjoy the products our partners have really appreciated that
absolutely, you know, some of our listeners when they think of of subject may think of a couple of other sort of corollary companies businesses like a masterclass, which also does very high quality courses for adults and especially outlier which does high quality very well produced courses for college students that are accredited as well. I will ventures led your funding round this last week, which is fantastic. GSV tend to lead the
funding round for outlier. I'm curious how you see, do you see a future collision course with you and outlier? Or are you in parallel? Or are you something completely different?
We see those as great leaders in the industry that we can learn so much from and we really look up to the leadership teams at those companies and feel we can continue to build product that can effectively serve the high school space, which we're focused on at this point. We're really excited because yo masterclass does a great job of any age learners and then outlier for credit college solution. We're very much a four credit High School solution right now. We're
excited. Yeah, there's definitely other ways that we can expand over time. But we're laser focused on execution in the high school space premium videography for credit courses, and being able to improve our product as we know there's so many things we could do a better job of. So we're really excited for that early feedback from users, learners admins, and be able to build a better product with a masterclass and all I have done a fantastic job in
this space. And we definitely understand we can learn a lot from some of the pieces they executed so well on. Awesome.
I know you have to run Michael, I'll start by saying thanks. And I'm sure Alex would love to jump into.
Yeah, thank you so much for your time today. I know you're busy right now with this enormous it's very exciting new funding round to spread subject to even more schools. Thanks you for your time today. We're happy to talk to you.
Thank you so much for having me, everybody. I really appreciate it and really big fan of the pods.
Well, that's it for this week's show. Thanks so much to Michael blato from subject. And a special thanks to Matt tower for workshop venture studio for filling in so adeptly for Ben Cornell.
Thank you for having me, Alex. It's so hard to keep up with this industry. And I really appreciate all the work that you and Ben are putting in to help this whole crowd stay on top of it.
Thanks so much for being here, Matt. And thanks for all the listeners. We'll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the EdTech insiders podcast. If you liked the episode, remember to subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're listening on Apple, please leave a rating and review so others can find the podcast. For more ed tech insiders content subscribe to the Ed Tech insiders newsletter at edtech insiders.substack.com