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.
Hi, everyone, it's been Cornell and Alex Sarlin. Back with weakened ed tech from Ed Tech insiders. It's great to be back home. Thank you to my colleague Matt tower for stepping in for me while I was at Disneyland, yes, it was a magical place. But I was pretty tired coming out of ASU GSB and then Disney Land. I also want to appreciate guild for offering up their space for us to do our recordings during is UDS v. So shout out to Matt and killed
this week. We've got a lot of great headlines coming up. Before we do that, what else do we have coming out on the podcast Alex?
So on the pot today we're going to talk about online tutoring. We're going to talk about Andreessen Horowitz making some news and talk about the rise of the three year degree, which is really exciting. And we'll do a little bit of a deep dive now that we've had a couple of weeks to think about ASU GSB Ben and I will talk a little bit about some of the trends we saw there. We're also going to talk to Omer Kumar, the CEO and founder of chi pod.
It's really exciting show. And for those of you who missed us at ASU, GSB. Be sure to check out our postcards. We have two episodes that have a series of short form interviews we did with different folks, it hopefully gives you a small taste of what it was like. So heading to our headlines, our first headline Alex online tutoring.
So online tutoring has made a lot of news this week, we have the ESA relief funding going disproportionately to tutoring initiatives all over the country. And there was some really good news this week, in some studies that came out showing that online tutoring
really can be effective. There was a couple of studies out of Europe, showing that online tutoring is leading to significant increases in end of your math grades, the more likelihood to pass math and other subjects and a little bit of a wellbeing results as well. Students who are getting regular online tutoring are feeling like they want to study more, they're doing more time on task and seeing more satisfaction in a
couple of different studies. So that's really important news for the ed tech world because tutoring is sort of the solution of the day, in this strange pandemic time. And a lot of things are being bandied about the tutoring world, there's billions and billions of dollars
going into it. Companies like paper that we've covered on the podcast before are growing like crazy companies like varsity tutors are growing, because there's just a need to bring additional efforts and resources to schools and kids at this moment. Ben, what do you think about all these headlines about tutoring? Are we excited? Do we feel bullish on the future of online tutoring? Where are you on this? Yeah, I mean, I think
what's new here today is the reports talking about well being. We've all known that test prep in some shape or form boosts scores. And so there's a certain level of skepticism around math test score improvements that accompany any of these types of reports. But when you start seeing that kids are more likely to continue studying after the compulsory test, and also an increase in satisfaction that starts getting to some of the more COVID specific concerns that people have around
engagement. It's also coming at an important time where funding is becoming a hot issue. There's $122 billion of Rescue Aid going to schools, much of it has not been spent. And there's talk of a cliff. So basically, in the next three years, all of this money has to go out the door or you lose it. And this has two kind of core impacts on our space. The first impact is
schools are in a rush. And so they're creating really fast RFP processes that may or may not effectively acquire the right program quality for their kids to it's also kind of putting in the distance it big funding cut, where this 120 $2 billion is going to go away. So how are tutoring companies going to build models that are scalable, but also affordable. Once the extra tutoring pulse goes away.
And so I do think diving deeper in The data the questions are, how much of this is one to one tutoring versus one to many tutoring? Is this a credential teacher? Or is it near peer tutoring? How much of this is synchronous versus async. And so far all the data points to synchronous, highly trained, professional tutors get great results. That unfortunately does not translate to, you know, in 2025 26, a world where you've got, you know, $15 an hour cost of tutoring. So there's still a
journey here. But the good news is we are helping kids. And the good news is that the impulse to add on tutoring is actually showing some efficacy both academically and socially, emotionally. Yeah,
just my last thought about tutoring is the number of students who will be affected by this S or clef is really enormous. So you know, there were surveys in 2021, basically said that, you know, almost every district leader in the country said that tutoring was already being offered to about a third of their current students, and that's in the early days of 2021, before some of this money is starting to be
spent. So that's, you know, 17 million students already, that has almost certainly risen by now, especially because schools, as you say, Ben are looking for how to help students and which students need the help. So when that happens when tutoring does sort of the funding does dry up a little bit? It could be you know, as many as half of the students in the country who are suddenly have tutoring, you know, either withdrawn or maybe
the quality might change. So I think it's going to be a real challenge and an opportunity, obviously, but also a challenge for the EdTech industry, to scale to that many students and maintain the quality
and just add color onto that. No, yeah, just add color onto that California alone has 12 billion in unspent tutoring dollars that need to go out the door by that 2025 school year. So there are opportunities for companies to build huge businesses nationally. But also, if you just focus on one specific region, I'm from Indiana, originally, I was looking at the Bloomberg article 2.5 billion just for Indiana, there's real opportunity for local players to get some scale.
And I think this is a question for PTAC. How much of this will end up being a bespoke localized purchasing pattern, versus how much of this will go to large last point on tutoring companies to we were talking to several of them at ASU GSB. And generally people lead with, we think this model XYZ is most effective, it's one to one synchronous, others would say it's one to many with async. But what we're finding is that all of them have plans over the next three years to evolve into a multimode
tutoring platform. almost imagine it like your intervention tiers, where you might have lighter, lower cost intervention tiers, with a one to many or async strategy that then scaffold up to deeper. And so I think you're going to actually find some m&a in the space as some people figure out
some of the support layers. It could also look very similar to the call center industry, where you see like differing levels of support with differing levels of technology and skill level of your customer service professionals. So really exciting to watch this space. But the new news is like it's not just the academic gains, it's also creating social emotional benefit and engagement. All right, I'm excited to go with headline number two, Andreessen Horowitz, and the $1 million for American
dynamism. Andreessen Horowitz unveiled a program they're calling the START Program. And, you know, a16z, that's as they're known from their website is all around, it's time to build. That's kind of their catchphrase. And they created this startup program, where it's a million dollars per startup. And overall, it's a $400 million seed fund, which is bonkers. They're basically saying, how could we do Y Combinator on
steroids. But what was most interesting is that their first category is called American dynamism. Meaning how can we invest in infrastructure tools and industries that continue to create an advantage for the US worldwide and education is solidly in that program. I think there's so many interesting potential takeaways from this. One is that our VC friends continue to up the game with more dollars and bigger bets.
But it's also showing that VCs are trying to create Vertical integration, and end with the idea that we can do seed all the way to post IPO. And I really do expect other firms to follow Andreessen lead, just as they have in past practices. Andreessen also has registered as an SEC approved investor. So they're able to after somebody IPOs they're actually able to buy and sell shares. So they're kind of playing at both ends. And I'm excited for some of the edtech companies to get in
there. What about you? What's your reaction to this news from Andreessen? Yeah, it's
really interesting. I mean, it brings up two things for me. One is, we've seen some of the EdTech specific VCs grow quite quickly over the last few years as Ad Tech has become a sort of hotter property, and more people are willing to donate to those funds, our ventures doing a billion dollar fund. And I think you're seeing some of the same dynamics start to happen there.
So one thing that caught my eye last week was that our ventures invested in a company called thankful, which I had never heard of before and thankful is actually a company that does no code mobile app development. And if you're asking, How does no code mobile app development relate to Ed Tech, I think that's a pretty decent question.
And it makes me think that what's starting to happen here in VCs across the board, Andreessen is sort of a world leader that everybody looks at as his Y Combinator in a different space, is, there's a feeling of why do we have to stay exactly in our lanes, if we're seeing exciting opportunities, whether they're earlier than we usually invest, whether they're outside of our traditional theses, or portfolios, I think there's a feeling of we have enough money, no, we have enough interest and
enough trust after you know, the number of wins, to be able to sort of place a lot of different, pretty meaningful bets, not have to be quite as
rigid about where they go. And when you're seeing, you know, Y Combinator and Andreessen start to actually put meaningful amounts of money into companies that are very, very early, there's a real optimism but also sort of a almost like overflowing coffers problem, where they have, they want to spread out their bets so widely, because for those 400 companies that get a million dollars from Andreessen, you know, as always, they only need a few of them to become enormous to then recoup.
It's a really interesting and strange moment, but potentially very exciting.
Yeah, and I would also say that most of the venture firms are complaining about the value they're getting on their investment, for BNC rounds, and even a rounds, you know, for a company you're getting, you know, if you look at revenue multiples, you're getting, you know, 100x revenue multiples, on some companies in series A or they're even pre
revenue. And so this idea of going to seed stage and capturing more value there, is it really possible, you know, it does make me wonder, and it's not clear what the fine point terms are here, in this million dollars. For places like Y Combinator, it has been historically, you know, 125k, for 7% of your company. If you followed that same math, that million dollars could be a huge
share of a founders company. So I think that's another interesting thing for us in the ad tech entrepreneur community, how much equity Do you want to give out right out of the door. I also do think a theme, and we'll talk about this a little bit later when we talk about ASU GSB is that founders are flocking to communities as ways of one creating like collective communal support, but to also de risking their business strategy when you're in with a bunch of other people. And you find out
who does the great law firm? Or what's the best CRM or what are the different tools you need for things, you can be specialized in what really makes you unique, but you can leverage all the tools that fellow entrepreneurs are using. And because of COVID, these communities have become global. So we'll talk a little bit about that with ASU GSB. But I do think Andreessen Horowitz is tapping into this early stage, optimism for seeds with VCs, but also this idea of creating communities of practice
to support. And that's something we know about in education. We know that community practices know their power, you know
more about the investment world than I do, Ben. But I think that when you say it that way, it almost feels like the Shark Tank is ation of Ed Tech a little bit that, you know, the idea of finding somebody you know, very early at their sort of moment of need and taking a big share, you know, in exchange for the money to really get it off the ground. And we really haven't seen that at this scale in education.
All right. Well, let's move on to Topic number three. The rise of the three year degree I know you're excited, Alex, tell us more.
I am really excited. So you know, my colleague, Steven Syverud. And I have been thinking for many years about, you know, what could happen to actually finally, disrupt the spiraling costs of college. And one of the ideas that has been bandied about is the idea of a three year degree, Europe uses a three year degree. And the idea that, you know, you need four full years to get educated is actually a very antiquated and interesting idea without a lot
of historical merit. So I am very excited to see that a few different folks are starting to jump in and really, truly try to offer a three year degree there is a new nonprofit called new you, that was in the news this week, trying to build a three year degree, there's also been some work out of Penn and some sort of consortia of schools to work together on a three year degree. And you know, this is coming at a time when the student loan issue is still is
so enormous. And you know, Biden administration canceled $7 billion in student loans this week. But that hardly made a drop of news, because 7 billion in student loans is a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of all the student loans. So we just have this enormously complex, and really, really overpriced system of higher ed in the US. So this idea of the three year degree and what new you and others are doing is very, very exciting to
me. And, you know, we know from user research, students want faster ways to get through their undergraduate experience, they want less expensive ways they want to be able to transfer more credit and this type of offering could really take a lot of boxes. So I'm wishing them the best, I really think that a three year degree is that idea that his time has is coming. What do you think about the three year degree? Ben?
Well, first, I think it's funny that we think that it's a four year degree because many people are doing five year degrees for their undergrad, because of how many credits they need, and how hard it can sometimes be to get those credits. So the idea of shortening it down to three
years makes a lot of sense. From an equity and impact standpoint, too, it does create the opportunity for people to not have to push out their income, earning years further out or try to co work, you can go deeper, I just think that this is one of the flavors of what will be a buffet of post secondary choices that people will be able to
consume. And that ranges from micro courses where it's single skill to boot camps where it might ladder up to community college, two year associate degree type things to like a condensed degree all the way through to Country Club full on for a year, and then up to, you know, graduate and PhD and so on. And this idea that people are mixing and matching does give an incentive for some schools to condense down on the landscape side, I think that is
exciting. on the user side, I think it is going to be very challenging for 18 year olds and their families to make sense of quality and understand what's the best path for them, especially if it's a multi step path. And so my first thought is we need a whole new generation
of guidance counseling here. For people and a guidance counselor, that's not just a one stop, like it's your junior year, what are you wanting to do, but people who are helping guide learners from like, you know, eighth grade or early high school all the way through to like 2425 26 years old? Because that's the dynamism of their educational options. And that's also the challenge with this innovation is there's just not a lot of transparency about what is best.
Absolutely. And you know, I'm hoping that one potential byproduct of a shorter bachelor's degree is the people then retain money to go back to school and get additional, you know, degrees or programs or certificate programs. And I think this sort of mix and match. Putting pathways together is going to be such a fascinating set of opportunities. And I love that point about guidance. counselor's one more point about new you just I think is worth
mentioning here. You know, it's a new nonprofit university. That's a $16,000 a year university which is already far below the national average. And it's designed with interchangeable requirements so that if students switch majors, they stay on track. So you can see they're doing a few things differently, specifically to make the core goal for the learners as achievable as pa School. And you've seen great success in this with WVU in
Southern New Hampshire. And now, you know, a Delphi and other colleges are starting to offer three year bachelor's as well, Indiana University of Pennsylvania University of North Texas, I think this is a really positive move. And I think it will lead to exactly, you know, it could lead to exactly what you're saying, then a world where people can make choices that are much less cookie cutter
for a year. And then you're sort of done with school, it's much more, a couple of years here, a couple of years here, a couple of years here, every 510 years, you go back to school for a year to make sure you can stay up to date. And I think that's a good world. I'm looking forward to that.
I do go back to the liberal arts version of, you know, we read an article from the president of Johns Hopkins talking about the purpose of higher ed, and the kind of liberal arts vision of an informed citizenry and human
connection, and so on. And I do wonder, as we condense down these different learning options, and the ROI for career becomes the primary focus, whether we're losing something here, so I'm excited to understand how new you creates the kind of community and culture that a four year university might invest in. But it's always exciting for me to see you excited about a higher ed option. Yeah,
I mean, I tell you, I think there's so much correcting to do, I've read several books, and a whole lot of hot takes about the liberal arts ideal, and at the risk of losing some of our listeners, agreement and respect, I really think it's far overblown. That
was a terrific article. But I think the you know, part of that article was also about how, you know, monasteries, lost the faith of the people around them and started being out of touch and sort of lost relevance as an institution and how universities
are potentially at risk. I mean, if you're Amherst and you want to give a an incredible liberal arts degree, more power to you, but if you're gonna charge 150 $200,000, for that, I think there's something mismatch, because if your goal is university is to create a educated citizenry with a global understanding and critical thinking, that shouldn't cost as much as a house, it feels a
little strange. So I don't know, I think colleges have a lot to answer for before they start pulling out that liberal arts card. But that's just me. Yep, totally. Let's talk ASU GSV. I had a great time there as my first time there have been give me some of your takeaways.
Well, we wanted to send out those postcards of ASU GSB S, or listeners had a chance to get a bite sized experience. But it was also a really important convening for the entire industry. And so we thought that for some a chance for reflection. And I know a lot of people in the week since is huge GSB have been watching the videos online will include some of those links in the show notes. And I think I had three
major takeaways. The first major takeaway is that there's not as much optimism in the space as there was even like 12 or 24 months ago, around COVID, being this game changing moment for systems, a lot of the sessions were about how much there's been a snap back to the way things were. And that's predominantly an American centric view. But even people in India or in Europe, were talking a little bit about how things have kind of snapped back to a certain
degree of the old normal. The second related to India is that at the conference, you know, in years past, we would have a huge contingent from China. And they would be featured in a lot of the sessions, but also hosting a lot of the happy hours, very present on the exhibition floor. And they were entirely absent. And instead, we had a bunch of Indian Ed Tech organizations
filling that space. And of course by Jews is kind of the litmus test with a lot of, you know, sigh chatter around, are they going up and you know, through the roof, or are there signs that things are starting to wobble a little bit, same thing with basically every ed tech unicorn, but you know, India really dominated. And then I'd say the third thing is, many of the sessions were continuing similar themes two times in the past, definitely a more of a focus on early learning. That
was really refreshing. But a lot of the sessions around workforce higher ed, and K 12 felt really similar to pre pandemic sessions. So you know, an interesting time, you know, we felt like a year ago, it's like, this is our inflection point moment. And now with markets cooling and funding kind of tightening up, there's almost a depressing realism around, okay, it's the same systems, they've weathered the storms, we need to keep continue to grind away and push the boulder up the hill.
Oh, last thing I would say. And you, you know, Alex, feel free to talk about this too. We saw this new generation of entrepreneurs coming. And that was the most vibrant part, you know, groups like transcend, which is an international group run by our friend, Alberto. They had a huge presence at the word
shows. But also these like communities coming together on deck had a bunch of events, there was the sense of the next generation has shown up, they collaborate, they're in community, and they are optimistic, and they're going to take the world by storm. So made me really reflect on you know, it felt like I was an old geezer at the conference. And it's exciting to see so many of these new companies coming into play.
Yeah, I can't compare to previous conferences, because this is my first one. But I definitely felt that energy of these sort of edtech collectives, people who are supporting each other a lot of solo or pairs of entrepreneurs who are doing this for the first time, but are really excited, and are really sort of seeing traction in various industries, or various niches of Ed Tech sort of showing up and getting a lot of attention in a really
good way. And you see some of the sort of companies that were founded in 2010 2011 2012 2013, like the Udemy is of the world that seeming like the old dogs, that people who have been around forever, it's really, really interesting to see. It's literally a sort of a new generation, 10 years since that the first sort of year of the MOOC world where you had that first influx of money into edtech. And you can really feel the generational shift. And I
think it's fun. I mean, we, we spoke to a lot of entrepreneurs, they're in a lot of different
capacities. And there was so much energy, there was so much excitement, I think, you know, it felt like people were really raring to go, but at the same time, I agree with the feeling that there was a little bit of a wow, you know, this is a moment when $122 billion have just been given to schools to do anything it takes to combat learning loss, and the people in that building or the best position to come up with solutions to that it didn't feel quite as sort of through the roof optimistic, as
you'd expect for an industry that, you know, in which funding tripled in Europe last year, and doubled in the US, I think you'd like it does feel like for all of the on paper momentum of the ad tech industry, it wasn't exactly a party, you know, of a conference, it wasn't, you know, it felt a little more like, okay, the responsibility is on us to figure out how to really make this work in this changed world. And the systems are very
resilient. You know, schools are crumbling, there's all sorts of things happening, that don't make it as easy as you might think, to take advantage of this amazing moment, and shift some of the assumptions, it was an interesting combination of optimistic and a little bit of caution, like cautiously optimistic, I think would be what I'd see through it. I also talked to a lot of European and Israeli entrepreneurs, which is
really terrific. And it felt like a, you know, a really nice global audience, we also have to give a shout out, of course, to Opay bucola, our friend of the podcast who's Kibo school, one, the GSV Cup, which is a very competitive startup prize at the conference, one of the most competitive and renumerated in all event tech. So congratulations to her and her amazing team.
Yeah, and I would just also say that one of the vibes that's always been true at ASU GSB is that, you know, the capital and the momentum sometimes feels really concentrated in a few companies. And then everybody else is like trying to grind it out. And I think that, despite all of the money coming into the sector, there's still that sense of like, a few organizations getting that boost, and then the large rest of the conference trying to figure out okay, how are we going to break through.
In our final headline today, let's walk through some of the funding rounds and m&a that happened this week throughout the ad tech industry. Galena raised $17 million this week. That's a Brazil based sales bootcamp that focuses on 18 to 24 year old nun degree holders. So you've seen a lot of movement in the sales
bootcamp space. We care raised $12 million to provide child care benefits to businesses and employees while neighbor schools raised $5 million dollars to provide a network of approved childcare providers to individuals to customers, to consumers. So that's a pair of childcare providing marketplaces and it's in a time when people are really looking for good quality childcare in a very
strange moment in history. In m&a, we see handshake expanding to career fairs handshake is a leader in the college job space. And they just bought a company called Talent space that builds, recruiting experiences and career fairs. For companies. We see NGO, one, which is the one Australian unicorn, building a presence in Europe by acquiring Corp Academy, a library of professional development content. Go one is starting to
move out of Australia. And really, it's already been out of Australia, but it's starting to really make a bigger footprint and other markets, skill storm acquired talent path. These are two companies that both offer vocation oriented training programs for employers and governments. And talent path is a company that was started and is owned by achieve partners and achieve Partners is a really interesting VC fund that really is focused on shifting the burden of debt off of the
students. So part of the point of these types of programs is that employers pay for programs for learners and they pay the learners to take the programs and they can then move directly into a job if they pass it and there are sort of already there. So it's a way to create basically almost like an apprenticeship program where the student does not have to pay it's very exciting idea. There were a couple of smaller
acquisitions. I neuron and Indian technology company that focuses on affordability bought a YouTube influencers channel, youtube influencer, Hitesh Chatter is learn code online, which has over 700,000 Education subscribers, and he's going to come on as the Chief Technology Officer of AI neuron, this is an interesting acquisition, I wonder if we're going to see more people looking to YouTube and to these sort of self made educators and their content libraries as acquisition
targets. And so it's an interesting idea Jenzabar, a higher ed student information system bought spark for 51, which is a full service marketing and technology firm.
And this is a basically a marketing firm that provides enrollment strategies for higher ed. So you're seeing a student information system by enrollment strategy company, and I think it speaks to the fact that colleges and universities are really trying to find meaningful enrollment strategies in an age of demographic decline, COVID base decline, international student declined and lots of
other challenges. And lastly, we saw two companies that do virtual yearbooks as well as you know, tech enabled inexpensive yearbooks, the company called the entourage and a company called peekaboo yearbooks entourage bought peekaboo this week, and that puts two, nine year old companies that are both big in the space under the same umbrella. So these are companies that have delivered more than a million yearbooks, both virtual and non virtual throughout the EdTech. Industry and throughout
the schools. Great. So for
our deep dive today we are welcoming Omer Kumar, who lives in Boston, Massachusetts, he is the CEO and founder of chi pod learning. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Omer is really leading a revolution of pods in the post pandemic world. And maybe you could start a little bit with telling us about the evolution of the pod movement from COVID days to where we are now,
happy to. So for pods for people who may not know, this is a support system for your child. So you could be in a homeschooling program or an online schooling program. And a pod is a physical space where the physical Learning Coach set of peers that are surrounding your child as they go through that online curriculum, or
homeschool curriculum. And what happened during the pandemic, if we can call that pods 1.0 is family said, I've got to find a solution for childcare, I've got to find other kids, for my kids to be around, and another adult who watches my kids during the day. So they're learning they're having the social interactions that the need, and I can do work and pursue my professional needs. That was during a pandemic. So most of 2020, even
part of 2021. Now that we're coming out of that phase, you're seeing pods 2.0, where parents are not just solving the childcare problem. They're actually saying pods are an incredible way for my child to have a much more personalized learning experience for them to have very positive and enriching social experiences. So I actually am going to choose this experience, because it's the right thing, not because I'm fleeing germs in a school
building. And so that's a really exciting segment to be a part of because now we're solving the right problem. We're solving a long term problem and Korea Gaining a market for parents who want these non traditional learning paths for their kids.
One of the topics we've talked a lot about on the show recently AMR is the mental health crises in schools. And we sort of have a pet theory or at least I'd say I do that this generation that's going through certain transitional phases during the pandemic are going to be a microgeneration with sort of different characteristics than people
around them. I'm curious what you've seen from the families you've worked with, when students are learning in this pod structure versus either isolation, or this altered school environment,
the mental health crisis is absolutely upon us. And the pandemic made it much worse, pre pandemic, many of the families who have opted into online schools did so because their child has some sort of social or emotional challenge in their original school. And online school was a safe place for them to be. But those families struggled with not having the socialization or not having access to extra support
that they needed as parents. And I think the reason online schools are seeing three to 5x growth sustained from pre pandemic levels, a higher resting heart rate, the reason they're seeing that is because these families are saying, wow, like my kid is happier, they're joyful. At the end of the day, they're not coming back and
crying about an incident. So what we now want to do is make those online schools even better, and make those families decisions even more logical for them to say, Now, I don't have to sacrifice all socialization for my kid, they can still build the social skills, they will need the emotional skills, they'll need the coping skills and the conflict resolution skills they'll need, they can do that as part of a small groups under the support of a learning
coach. And then if they're ready to go back into a large school, again, they can choose to do that. But maybe this is the model I want for my kid for the future. So we're excited that it's not just an academic solution, it actually is a really important social and emotional problem to be solved.
And with that, you know, you're a product leader, you've had to embrace services as a core part of your model. Can you talk a little bit about how you thought about what's core and and how you wrap services around it? Or if services are core how you wrap product around it? Yeah, I guess this is the dirty
little secret in edtech, that it's not just about the software, or the curriculum, even though that's where a lot of the investment goes. The real need that students and families have is the hand holding the in person support from a caring educator. And I think a lot of the noise around teachers versus technology comes about because we ignore the human service side of education. So I was the chief product officer for the second largest online school business
in the world. And so I built the curriculum, the technology, I remember super steeped in all of that. But eventually, the conclusion I came to was that that wasn't enough for most kids. And most kids need an educator, a physical space, a group of peers, enrichment activities, all of which are hard to build hard to scale, but more important than another curriculum, in my opinion. So that's why we're building and focusing on the hardest part of
education. Because this is where we think we're gonna have the most impact on kids. So
you mentioned the scalability issue that goes I love this idea of the dirty little secret of edtech is the service layer. I think that there's really something to that, you know, some online products, or some edtech products are really all about fast growth goes far and wide as you can international from day one, with something like iPod where it's highly high touch, it's very human need really
qualified staff. I'm curious, what are some of the challenges and opportunities that you've seen in sort of bringing up to speed all of these learning coaches and getting basically a full service staff that's really trained and growing as quickly as the movement is?
Yeah, this is what we're learning, right? We are one year old. And I describe our evolution as three phases. Phase one is we've got to get the model right in six to 10 locations. And we want to experiment, each of those locations should feel a little different. We're trying a lot of experiments every single day. Phase two is we scale the right approaches ourselves. So we want to open 100 centers ourselves.
And then phase three is we want to support other people to open centers, right, if my hypothesis about the future of online learning homeschooling alternative models, if my hypothesis about the growth of that is right, there is going to be demand for millions of kids. There's no way me or even 10 other competitors could meet that Man. So what I want to do is enable entrepreneurs educators across the country to be able to open their own
centers. And so we can say, here's what we've learned opening 100 different centers, here's how you can now open your own serve kids in your community in the way you feel is right. And that way, we'll be actually building a growing investable business for
the future. You know, that connects with a larger question around educational equity. And often we have entrepreneurs on this podcast that are trying to make trade offs between, you know, the ability to pay of customers and the vision and mission of the organization, you found like a pretty unique path in terms of blending publicly funded programs with chi pod. Can you tell us a little bit about how
that works? And what do you see as the potential long term for public programs to pair with entrepreneurial, privately funded programs to serve all learners?
That's right, one of the initial core founding principles of the company was it should be an Affordable Learning offering. So having to create our own curriculum slash platform plus our own services was never going to be affordable for anyone. And so what we said is we want to partner with public online schools, charter schools, who are basically in the system, families are opting because they high quality
learning experiences. And we wanted to just focus on adding the in person components so that it is more affordable for families, we're not building our own curriculum departments and special ed departments like those already exist. So already with that decision, we've started down a path of more affordable solutions that feel more customized for families. But eventually, the strategy is that we then open locations in partnership with these schools.
So they belong to the school, they're already part of the public funding. They even could be part of school districts, right? Imagine a school district that has a virtual pathway for kids. And now they can not only have kids go down this virtual pathway, but they can also add a pod to it. So that those families who want extra in person support can do that
within the school district. And if you look at the per pupil funding that we have today, all of it is possible within that envelope without any new funding. It's just a matter of reallocating it for this group of kids. So we're excited about the potential. But that is a big lift for a lot of school districts, and they want to see a track record. So right now we're focusing on building our track record.
I have one last question for you. It's such an interesting model. How did you get into this world of pod based learning, it feels like it's new to so many people. But you are obviously ahead of the curve on it. What drove you into this idea in the first place?
It's one of those things when I was working for the online school provider, we would speak to families and survey them survey kids. And the feedback was always the same. We love the academic experience, but we feel bored or lonely. Parents are overwhelmed and really struggling. Kids want to be around other kids. And all the levers I had at my disposal were to use technology to solve all of that. And again, back to that point of Ed Tech is not just curriculum and technology,
there's a service component. I think the light bulb went off that we need a hybrid model. And then the pandemic, everyone was talking about pods. So I think those two insights came together to say what if you could merge high quality online learning, not zoom school, right? High quality online learning with super high quality in person experiences? Could you actually take the best of both worlds, and deliver something that feels like a private school experience, for a third of the
cost a fourth of the cost? Okay, last
question. You decided to do the Y Combinator program. You're a seasoned entrepreneur, product leader. You know, just even in early days, when I saw the original pitch for chi pod, you had a lot of the core concepts together. What made you decide to go the accelerator route and what was the Y Combinator experience, like,
the Y Combinator experience was life changing? For me, this is my first startup. It's my first time building a company from scratch. And what I didn't know was what I didn't know. And I think YC was a wonderful way for me to figure out where I had real gaps. I learned a lot from my batchmates from the partners. They made incredible introductions to investors. And I think just going forward, it's an incredible signal that there is some important insight in this company that's worth
looking at. And so it helps us a lot for attracting talent for raising funds. But ultimately, the company stands on its own merit, right. Ultimately, we have to convince parents and kids and they don't care about YC right. So it doesn't actually get us to the final thing that we really care about, which is serving kids really well. But for me starting off After my first few months, it was an incredible, incredible experience.
It's really amazing. Mr. Kumar. It's been an incredible interview. I'm really excited to see what the future of chi pod holds. And thank you for being here with us on edtech insiders, we can add tech,
thank you so much for having me.
That's it for this week in edtech, week of April 20 2022. I hope you had a great one. It was really fun being at ASU GSB and we want to thank our guest Omer Kumar of chi pod. See 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.
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