This Week in Edtech with Ben Kornell, 6/19/22

Alexander Sarlin  0:04  
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.

Ben Kornell  0:28  
Hello, everyone, it is Wednesday, June 15 2022. We have wrapped up the school year hopefully all of you are sitting by the pool, drinking some summer cocktail while the kids swim unharmed by the Global Warming threat and heat wave ravaging our country, and your kids know how to swim despite the lack of lifeguards. It is summer and we're excited to wrap up the school year with some of our big headlines. We also have a great guest today with Charlie from emeritus joining us who's got an action packed lineup today, Alex, anything that our listeners should be aware of before we dive in?

Alexander Sarlin  1:08  
No, it's an interesting week, I think we're gonna get into a little bit of the sort of sci fi futuristic version of Ed Tech today, which is always fun to talk about. And Charles Schilling, who's the president of enterprise at emeritus is a really great guest, so we'll hear him at the end of the episode.

Ben Kornell  1:24  
All right to kick us off, we're ending the school year and K 12. Teachers are burned out. We're seeing the teacher shortage continue on we have EdSource in US News and World Report really coming with some startling numbers around teachers burning out but also teachers picking other professions based on kind of workload and PE. Cardona warned that basically next fall, we should expect a huge gap in our staffing, we'll probably be looking at 10% teacher shortages with 55% of educators indicating that they are ready to leave the profession. It's an uncertain summer, you know, school administrators and educators are wondering what the fall will bring. And this feels distinct from the pandemic. Alex, this feels almost like a entire sector shift. What's your read? Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin  2:24  
I would say it's maybe catalyzed by the pandemic, but it's now definitely threatening to outlast the pandemic. But as part of these reporting, we're hearing that 55% of educators are indicating they're ready to leave the teaching profession. According to the National Education Association. You're seeing teachers union sounding the alarm, the education secretary is starting to say we need to revamp the teaching profession, increased salaries provide incentives. And you know, these are incentives for difficult to staff positions like special education that we've talked about on the show. You know, we've talked about this all here. But it's so interesting, there's been these these different reports about whether this is really happening or whether it's overblown, or and now that the year is over. I think there's universal acknowledgement coming all the way up from the secretary of education that it is not overblown, it is absolutely happening. And teachers are just tired of doing all of this incredibly hard and meaningful work in unbelievably difficult circumstances, and still not getting the credit or the salaries they deserve. And they're just they're looking for the door. And I think it's very scary for the education community to see that and nobody knows how to deal with it. I think they've lost the pandemic. But hopefully the policies that are being sort of tried out or talked about in these articles about raising salary, incentivizing physicians really trying to professionalize. They've talked about this stuff for years and haven't done very much about it. Maybe it's time to actually do it, because the teachers are voting with their feet.

Ben Kornell  3:55  
Yeah, I think this is also the biggest question right now for K 12. edtech is, how can we help. And the reaction to EdTech has been mixed from educators. Just this week, an article came out about all of the ad tech solutions that do the same thing, and how confusing that is for educators on medium. So is there a way that edtech can fill some of these shortages, fill these gaps without inundating educators with yet another tool that does, you know, short form curriculum or does data tracking or something like that? What do you think the EdTech opportunity is? And what's the EdTech caution? If we're looking at prolonged teacher shortages?

Alexander Sarlin  4:43  
I think the opportunity is streamlining and interoperability because yeah, I mean, we saw the report come out recently from learn platform that you know, teachers use 186 different ad tech tools. I mean, just saying that number makes me tired candy even imagine trying to manage that many different types of software in the classroom where you also have many, many students. I think that what it really highlights as well as that post you mentioned, which I thought was really well written, we'll put that in our show notes as well, about how ad tech can be redundant at times. I think what it really highlights is the solutions. It's not just about adding more solutions, more tools, more curriculum, more opportunities, it's about actually trying to make teachers lives actually easier not, in theory and hypotheses are actually easier. How can you make fewer tools, fewer data reports, fewer clicks, and logins and passwords and still have the impact, you need more support in the ways that teachers need and less, you know, just tools for them to learn and have to implement. And everybody wants that. But it's I don't think that tech companies have really fulfilled that promise. And maybe it's time to really step it up.

Ben Kornell  5:55  
Yeah, really good point on the interoperability. And folks like clever, have done wonders to make data interoperability happen. But also functional interoperability is the next level. The other thing at the ed tech entrepreneur level is How could your solution actually provide access to scarce teaching and learning resources or even educators themselves, and it makes me more bullish on virtual learning for AP, for example, if I can't find a physics AP teacher, I can have students for a period go online and take that course. So I think that there will be long term opportunities for those folks at the sector level, you know, bigger picture, this could be a really great moment for m&a and roll ups. And we are super fragmented as a space. And we have a lot of nice to have products and fewer painkiller products out there. And so if the private equity firms are listening to our podcasts, which I know they are, and we know you're out there, this is such a good moment for consolidation, because you can provide a one stop shop set of solutions for a school district, a school and then ultimately, the educator whose fragmentation is an outcome of the fact that our user and our buyer are so far apart. But there is a real window here to actually line up the interests of the user and the buyer, maybe with a little bit of a higher cost on a per app basis, but on aggregate, a lower cost, and then more efficiency. So it remains to be seen. I'm very skeptical about these pipeline strategies to build the teacher workforce. We've been around, like you said, for 2030 years. And the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, it not working and then just doubling down on that again, and I think it's, you know, we've been saying this for a while it's time for that big rethink of how we are going to deliver education in a way that still authentically values, the unique and important and impactful role of the educator

Alexander Sarlin  8:07  
100%. I know we have other headlines to cover, but I think this is, you know, interesting news for companies like subject, like out school, those that are trying to sort of leverage teacher printers and content that can, you know, fill the gaps. But I think, you know, if the Secretary of Education wanted to really lean in to solving this, I think it goes beyond I mean, yes, they should raise salaries, period, always, we don't pay teachers enough in this country, especially in certain states. But I think they should start to think about how to make the teaching profession actually a really interesting profession that is not as repetitive that is not as locked into an individual school where teachers have more autonomy about what they teach and who they teach it to, you know, there could be some really, really interesting pivots and changes to what it means to be a teacher. And they should look at some of the most cutting edge teachers, the ones who are doing really, really interesting things that go beyond what you'd expect a regular teacher to do, because I think they probably make up the future of what the profession should look like. So speaking of changes to the teaching profession, one really interesting partnership was announced this week. And it brings us to our next headline, which is really about work based learning. So Google announced a partnership with figma as sort of a beta partnership to start bringing design tools like figma, and fig gem to students Chromebooks, I am very excited about this partnership. figma is one of the small set of absolute must have cutting edge design tools used by designers all over the world right now. There's like maybe three or four tools that own the entire market fit was one of the big ones. And basically the idea here is, hey, why shouldn't students be able to practice access learn cutting edge work level design program? Adams while in school it Google and figma work together, it'll be free of charge to schools. And it'll be about making both software engineering but also design and UX design more accessible to younger students, I just say, big thumbs up to both of these, I'm really, really, I mean to this headline, it just really excites me the idea of bringing real authentic work tools into the classrooms free of charge. And I think this is exactly the kind of partnership that Google should be pursuing, because it passes on enormous value to schools at no cost, and gives students of you know, any means access to high quality tools, not only high quality tools, but tools that are being used massively in the workforce. And you know, on the flip side, there was a really interesting report this week from Georgetown's center workforce and education, which is one of the leading user of workforce research institutions in the country, about the path to a good job, which they defined for you, which they define as a job that pays at least $35,000 a year. And 57,000, at the median for young workers nationwide with cost of living so they're basically trying to set up you know, what constitutes a quote unquote, good job, and what do young adults need to do it and need to do to get it. And they highlighted that look, between the rising cost of college and post secondary education, limited access to work based learning, and the absence of sort of career navigation services, it's become really hard for young adults to find their way into these good jobs. And this is exacerbated for different races. So they actually break it down by gender and race and less than half of non white women and have Hispanic or black men, or have access to these good jobs. So it's really a sort of call to arms. And Georgetown has a series of reports on this to say, look, we are not doing a good job as a nation in preparing our young people for access to baseline good jobs. And that's even more true, depending on your background. And so, you know, just to me, the idea of bringing better tools into the classrooms is one step in the direction of that. But it was really, really interesting. And they recommend all sorts of things about investing in, you know, programs that include employer involvement, or having a single system from early childhood to jobs. So thinking really K to career rather than K 12, or even k 16. And it's a great report. And I think it's a really important thing to think about at this moment. So I don't know if you got a chance to look through that report, Ben, but what do you think about this workplace learning movement?

Ben Kornell  12:39  
Yeah, I think it's a little bit of problem solution here that we have in our headline, you know, problem is lack of access to real work based learning and skills and tools. And then Google doing a partnership with figma, that could literally overnight, give 170 million daily active users access to these tools. And you know, if Google was an edtech company, which by the way, they are the largest edtech company in the world, but if they saw themselves as an ad tech company, they would be doing partnerships like this all day long, because they are an incredible channel to reach young learners. And from a business standpoint, for figma. They're getting locked in, in a way with early users that, you know, is going to grease the wheels for them to convert users in the future. Whereas canvas or other design tools, kind of wait for them to reach adulthood. It does raise some big questions. One is there truism that if it's free, then you are the product. And so if figma is actually being used by students, how do we societally feel about someone doing essentially marketing to our kids to acquire users? And will they also have the same kind of data bar and standards that we hold edtech providers to number two is, when we provide these tools? Do we have the right educator capabilities to actually implement well, and this is where I've always been a fan of career switchers, coming to the classroom, because they bring a lot of practical knowledge around what it's like to work in the workforce into the teaching and learning environment. And, you know, I came straight out of college into the classroom. And I had real gaps of how I was preparing kids for the world of work without having really fully participated myself. And then the third thing that I would say is, this is part of a movement of micro skilling, that I think is quite fascinating. So rather than, you know, Google launching a design course, they're actually just giving access to a tool that you could use just to make your Facebook profile or whatever it is like you could use it one But in that micro way, you're getting exposure to a work based tool. I've also seen some companies that are doing gig work for high school students, where you can do a two week internship, not a whole summer internship, where you're just getting a taste of that work experience. So the Georgetown data provides the real why, why do we have to do this? And why should we kind of overcome our concerns about commercialization of kids in this way through Google as a channel, but I would just say, given the on balance, given the pros and cons, I applaud Google's move here. I feel like John Solomon, and the Chromebook team is more innovative than the Google Classroom team. And it seems like a really important thing that they could replicate and overnight, give kids access to great tools,

Alexander Sarlin  15:51  
all great points. And I think the moral hazard zero rays are real. But I also very much agree that, you know, we could wring our hands about what it means to give kids access to design tools, and whether you're locking in customers or favoring a certain company. But while you're getting in your hands, you're going to have another generation of kids grow up without having ever accessed authentic work tool. So I applaud a decision like this. Then tell us about what's going on in the metaverse this week.

Ben Kornell  16:19  
Well, I actually had a great webinar this morning, where members of the meta team were talking about Metaverse and learning. And we also saw some articles from Michael Horn as well as Harvard Graduate School of Education. Really thinking about what the metaverse looks like. And I think it's a continuation of our conversation from the last two podcasts. Michael Horn really lays out kind of two components one, the definition of what the metaverse is, it's always present and has no ending, it can be experienced synchronously by multiple people, and ultimately, is fully interoperable. So digital tools and assets from one app can be used in others, it's essentially has to be one unified world. And then he talks about how we could get there, which kind of echoes some of our conversation, which is multiple meta versus probably pop up and then eventually merge into one. So I think Alex, you know, Michael horns on your side, and that eventually there will be one metaverse. But he also posits that this is really more than web three. It's almost like the evolution of the Internet with this idea that virtual learning is really the kind of angle here and that virtual interaction engagement commerce activities will involve all aspects of our society. When you look at this, both the vision of the future and then the how we get there, what comes up for you and what resonates, but also what seems a little bit off.

Alexander Sarlin  17:57  
Yeah, I mean, I think, as you mentioned, we've been discussing this for a couple of weeks, and it is absolutely fascinating. Subject. I feel like we could talk about it forever. But it is. I think the question of the metaverse, as you mentioned, Michael Hart says, you know, the metaverse is defined as a singular institution, that sort of the actual vision, again, similar to like the internet. But if you think about the internet right now, and you think about sort of where we've come as a society in the last 25 years, since we've really been an internet connected world, there is pretty much one real internet, but there are these funny offshoots. There's the sort of Chinese censor internet, there's the European internet that has all its privacy regulations on top of it. There's the dark web, where you know, it sort of people find their own access to it. And it's sort of, you know, subterranean behind the regular internet. And I think that probably, this is a good metaphor for where things may go with the idea of the metaverse, you probably if the metaverse does come into existence, there will be one sort of main Metaverse, but there'll be different offshoots of it or versions of it or sort of continents within it. Maybe we could say, which I think is hard to get one's mind around. I think the big danger as we mentioned last week, is that unlike the internet, which was created by a governmental open service program, the DARPA initiative, the companies that are fighting to make the metaverse are all private companies. So that's what I think is the real scary version of this is that the idea of having one Metaverse that everything folds into, but that's completely owned by Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk that feels a little strange, maybe more than a little strange. That I think is what's really not and you know, as we were talking about this sort of vision of the metaverse is the thing that kept coming up for me and I know this is sort of a weird metaphor is when the subway system started in New York, you actually had multiple systems. You had the IRT on the west side of Manhattan and the BMT To the Brooklyn Manhattan subway, and they were different systems, they had different, you have to buy onto them separately, they didn't connect with one another. They were competitive at the time. And over time, of course, they became part of one system. And now the New York subway system is enormous system where everything is connected. But I can see a similar trajectory. It's similar to what Michael Hart is saying, happening here, where you maybe have different types of metal verses, but then they realize they have to all be interoperable, to really get the most benefit. And then they have to go through this whole process of figuring out how do they become interoperable? How do they have the same currencies in the same language and the same, you know, data structures? And the same way of doing a profile? Or how do you make you know, everything that happens on one transfer to the other? That could be very messy, but it also is probably, I think, it's definitely a possible way that it would go so I don't know. I'm excited to see where this all goes. Part of it scares me. I have visions of Ready Player One and other sort of you know, Metaverse, dystopia is no crash, you know, in my head whenever we talk about this, but I do think it's exciting that the education space is sort of one of the leading aspects of how we think about the metaverse that it's not being led entirely by commerce or being led entirely by travel or I don't even know something else that people are really thinking about. How can the metaverse be used for education? I'm happy to be part of that discussion, because I hope it's going to be a big part of what the future of tech looks like.

Ben Kornell  21:28  
Well, and the reason for that is because online 2d learning is clearly inferior to in person 3d learning. And so the question is, is immersive learning, which is really kind of the phrase that people have coined around Metaverse learning? Is immersive VR learning at the same level, or better or worse, or when is it better? And when is it worse than in person learning? That's the promise and potential for Metaverse in our space. Other industries like you know, Amazon shopping, there's really not a huge value add, although, you know, you might be able to try on clothes or experience things immersively. But I think that those, the delta between experience is not as great as the Delta, between 2d versus immersive learning could be, you know, one thing that I think is important in this discussion is to understand that you know, your subway car analogy is helpful. Some subway systems win based on speed and efficiency, other transportation systems win on safety, and others on you know how good the experience is. And, you know, if you think about the infrastructure that the different meta versus are building, for it to be a safe place for learners, but especially kids, they would really need to invest in early days, and security infrastructure that makes it a safe place, and a kind of building infrastructure that allows for nimble agile development rather than kind of, you know, 20 year construction projects stretching the analogy probably too hard. And so I think it is possible that the learning the optimal Metaverse for learning may not win the battle, if there is a singular Metaverse because a battle might be won or lost on other things like speed and efficiency. So I think that it's important for education folks, even if you're not involved now to be advocates of what creates a great learning space, and then ultimately hope that each platform can adopt that and respect that. On the metaverse topic. As Alex said, we could go on and on and on. But we will switch to our next big headline, which is around AI. And the announcement in the New York Times and then the Contra announcement and CNN around Google developing sentient AI. The kind of sub story here is a individual at Google, I believe his name is Blake Lemoyne, announced that in the kind of language AI system at Google, he had identified an AI bot that was aware of its own existence, and essentially sentient able to kind of direct its own learning. And he flagged that as a red flag. And immediately the rebuttals came from Google from major media outlets. And so there is this question of, is it true that they're sentient AI, but second, like the fact that somebody in 2022 could be raising the red flag that they're sentient AI raises the really high likelihood possibility that by 2030, there is some form of sentient AI and how that can ultimately affect all of us. but also education learning. I mean, once AI can teach itself to learn, what does that do for us for edtech? And for a world? I'm going to cede some time for you, Alex, as you heard this news, what was going through your mind?

Alexander Sarlin  25:16  
Yeah, so this news escaped my notice for most of this week, but you've noticed it and brought it up. And it is, I don't even know how to begin talking about it. I mean, for those who have, I'm a dilettante, here. But for those who have sort of paid attention to the history of AI, there's always been this concept of the singularity and serve at the moment when an artificial intelligence becomes basically gets on a trajectory to surpass human intelligence, and to replicate itself and sort of takes over basically, as the most intelligent species life on the planet. And there was a theory by the scientists are speculative scientists, Ray Kurtzweil, I think in the 80s, as well, quite a while ago. But when you hear something like, oh, somebody just said, they're sensing AI at Google, it makes me feel like almost like somebody's mentioning that, you know, hey, somebody in NASA just said, We found extraterrestrial intelligence, and they're just trying to figure out if it's real or not, it's like, oh, that's kind of big news. I don't know what it means. I don't know if it's real or not. Some of the experts they're quoting, here are some of the, you know, top top top people in machine learning. And they say that, hey, that's not really possible yet. But just the specter of of sentient AI goes way beyond education, it would basically be a change in the history of humanity of everything. So it's a big deal. I don't know what to make of it, I'm definitely going to read more about this subject as it keeps happening, it would be a an enormous deal for learning and pretty much everything else.

Ben Kornell  26:51  
Part of why we added it to the show is I think the headlines are dominated by like Kryptos downfall and interest rates rising. And this feels like a really important story that got buried in that avalanche of news. And the implications on education have been clear for some time, which is, if you're teaching kids to do things that AI can do, it will be irrelevant in the future, because the AI will be doing it. And I do feel like in education, the vast majority of our educators have been pretty disappointed with the benefits of AI to our learning space, they often don't see or we often don't see how AI is changing our worlds changing careers and so on. But the sentient AI story is really, I think, like a potential watershed announcement that changes the future of learning and work. Because the moment that the AI goes from rote tasks, to being able to untangle complex tasks, and essentially drive its own learning, then we as human beings need to kind of define our territory of what did humans do when they I can do lots of other things. It also is a good call out around how big tech has really reached into education as a sphere. And the applications of AI from big tech are already hitting some of our schools and school systems and universities and so on. And you know, if we think that the government is going to regulate it, or that people don't have the resources to really invest in AI, the fact that this was kind of a whistleblower, and then so swiftly, kind of crunched down, you know, makes you really wonder, you know, this is the fire drill, what does the real fire look like? It's funny to see how we serve as this one on like, Tuesday, and even now in all kinds of major news outlets, whether it's Washington Post New York Times, etc. No one's really following up on it. So you're going to put this one on a simmer. But for those of you who are listening in, let us know if you're seeing anything interesting or weird

Alexander Sarlin  29:10  
about this. And there's been a history of these whistleblowing tech employees tending to be right, even if they're getting silent. So I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist. But there's something very, very interesting here, by the way, quick correction here. So the Kurtzweil theory came out in 2005. And currently, his prediction is that the singularity will occur by 2045. So that's the official guess for when machine learning will take the helm on much, much, much more banal news than that our last headline is really about colleges and, you know, higher ed beat and what's going on with student loans as well as sort of the enrollment crisis. We've been following this for a few weeks. And we'll keep this pretty short. Basically, there's been a raft of articles this week about the ongoing sort of back and forth between the administration's potential plans to cancel some amount of student loan debt at someone even more debt canceled? And then others saying no, it's a political problem to even consider it because it would be considered forgiving, you know, middle class debt or there'd be resentment politics, if people who already had to pay off their debt saw that others were getting it paid off. So there's just been a huge back and forth here. My personal take is I think any forgiveness is good. Just that I don't care about the I don't know, I think that people are overthinking the political ramifications way too much. I think they should just do it. But I think maybe the more interesting part of that story is just that the fact that Biden is not seeing student loan forgiveness as the sort of slam dunk that you might think it would be, especially when he was running a couple of years ago, sort of belie the underlying the change in the perception that four year colleges and college debt is sort of like the best path for the middle class. And it's too expensive. And it should be brought down I think sort of the common wisdom on that has now been muddied by some sort of side issues about like, you know, who gets forgiven and whatnot. I think that the more important story, I think you'll agree with us, Ben is that like, just the narrative on college being like, oh, it's super, super important, and everybody should go, or most everybody should go. But it's gotten too expensive. So the government can bail some of us out and sort of give back some of the money that's gone into that somehow that story doesn't seem to be as sort of mainstream as you might expect. And instead, I think people are just sort of not even knowing where to put their minds or their chips when it comes to college. Is college the best idea for everybody? Is it a sham? Is it the best path to the middle class? Is it too expensive? Should it be rethought? So I feel like there's a sort of mass confusion about the role of higher ed, what do you think about the student loan debate, then?

Ben Kornell  31:55  
I totally agree with you, the kind of mainstream thought that college is the surest path to the middle class is being fundamentally question in a way that it has not since you know, World War, one to kind of era. And part of that has to do with cost to value. So it's viewed as really high cost. And this is where the loans come in. But also things like relevance, things like, you know, the four year chunk versus smaller chunks. And I think we've gotten to a place where from both a fluent families and low income families, if your 18 year old comes to you and says, I am going to choose an alternative path that includes XY and Z, that parents and families who are also voters are willing to listen to those paths in a way that they haven't meaningfully been willing to listen to. So then the policy implication is by continuing to forgive ones do we actually create perception or incentives to perpetuate a system that now we're questioning the value of what is also foundationally interesting is Democrats versus Republicans are starting to unite on this question of the value of higher ed Republicans, often from a cultural war standpoint, where the university represents the elites, and liberal thinking and kind of a canceled culture. And so they're kind of right wing attacks have really taken a big hit on for your colleges and their institutional standing in our society. And then on the left wing, it's really around looking at race access, and debt and class issues. So both race and class issues, and things like the admission scandals where you're seeing elites buying an access, those types of things that really hurt universities on the progressive front. So I think university presidents right now are looking for who are my political allies, and they're losing allies left and right. And meanwhile, our tech colleagues are stepping in to fill the gap. And there's meaningful questions about the quality and round churn and so on. So it's just a sign that the Biden administration doesn't view this as a slam dunk. It's money in the pockets of many of their voters, the fact that they would slow play that signals like a long term change in political strategy that we've got to take into account. So I know we've covered some pretty deep topics this week. We've got our game coming up. We've got our interview, but let's move to m&a and funding headlines. What do you have for us, Alex?

Alexander Sarlin  34:38  
Yeah, we'll just do some rapid fire here for funding. So you know, last week we saw sort of Banner week with seven rounds of $50 million or more in the ad tech space. And this week, we are seeing much smaller rounds, much more in line with, you know where we had been, but some really interesting rounds nonetheless. So the two biggest that we saw coming through this The core care Academy raised $20 million. Care Academy is a really interesting company that basically is about training finding and placing caregivers in home health roles. And you know, home health aides is basically the fastest growing job in the US and has been for a while are one of the very, very top growing jobs. So this is a round of funding that's going to go across the product and impact a million caregivers by the end of next year. That's sort of tangentially edtech. But there is a training program that comes with this. This is really about getting people into this incredibly high demand job that there are not enough people to fill. So really interesting and the founder of that company is a really interesting founder as well. So hopefully we will have her on in future weeks. We also saw paper cup raise $20 million. paper cup is a company that uses artificial intelligence to automatically dub videos in two different languages, which is anybody who works in international and knows or even us Ed knows how valuable that is to be able to shoot a video once and have it be translated into all the languages of learners is a potential game changer for education and paper cup does have an E Learning Division. A lot of its use case is about translating educational video, we also saw a company called kin side raised $12 million. That's a marketplace for parents of young children to find qualified caregivers as overlap with care Academy as well as other rounds we've seen recently around the care space cloverleaf, which is a coaching and mentoring platform that uses well known personality frameworks to send individualized content to employees in a b2b model, raised $9 million. That's cloverleaf go. My code is a Tunisian based boot camp provider in 12 different African countries, they raised $8 million for a less expensive version of boot camps. And so that's a nice boost for the African edtech space. Indian ed tech startup experto raised 50 million rupees in seed funding from AngelList and others to basically expand their mentoring platform, metal crafters.io, raised almost $5,000,000.04 point 5 million for web three development, education. They have grants from Solana, avalanche flow and polygon those are all different big web three players, and elearning Virtual Reality startup genius x raised almost $2 billion for a unique interactive, immersive learning experiences that's a VR based company. So some really interesting rounds there. The only m&a that came across our radar was that I XL learning which is a learning leader out of California that does K 12 content for the most part acquired language learning software developer curiosity media, ostensibly to expand their product offering into language as well as other things they do. Curiosity media is all about communicating in Spanish and English. So that makes sense for I excels portfolio. Next step will talk to Charles Schilling, the president of enterprise at edtech company giant emeritus.

Ben Kornell  38:15  
So we're on to our interview, and today we have Charlie Schilling of Emeritus. Welcome, Charlie.

Charlie Schilling  38:22  
Hey, Ben, thanks so much for having me on. Hey, Alex. Thanks. So,

Ben Kornell  38:25  
Charlie, you've helped consumer education companies build enterprise arms. And we've seen a lot of this b2b, you know, model coming out of b2c companies? Are we seeing a convergence here? Or is there a certain sequencing? And how do you think about like being an entrepreneur in a company building out that b2b arm? Yeah,

Charlie Schilling  38:48  
for sure. And I'd say it definitely is a theme. I've seen it personally in two instances, that I'm the first being General Assembly, where I help lead their enterprise business. And then obviously, more recently, my current job at emeritus where my team is tasked with building our enterprise practice in the US, UK and Europe. I have a colleague who does that in India, the Middle East, and Asia and other colleagues in Latin America, another colleague in China. So it's a much more global platform at emeritus but yeah, look, I think, absolutely, it's a theme. And I think it's a theme for two reasons. One is on the mission front, if you believe that the job is to help upskill more people so that they can do better by their families, communities, etc, etc. A great place to find them, is it within companies, literally, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of people across the planet who by the way, if we can change the pay or dynamic and have companies actually foot the bill, a much bigger audience with more willingness to pay then individuals with discretionary income who confront education or at least from US context of FICO score high enough to you know, have a credit card to pay for this stuff. So when we think there's a mission part of this but then also and you know, for this crowd, who are many of whom are business practitioners themselves, the businesses in general tend to be stronger business models than b2c businesses, because they are more likely to repeat. So there's absolutely a financial reason for companies to want to do this as

Ben Kornell  40:09  
well. Yeah, I often tell venture capitalists who love the growth curve of b2c businesses that actually in education, it's all about retention. And the lifetime value of b2b businesses is just far superior. And also, you know, you have higher average customer value. So the idea that you can really provide services on top of your product, when it's in an enterprise context is profound.

Charlie Schilling  40:37  
Yeah, absolutely. And it really actually was, as I was exploring, so I joined emeritus in COVID. I started my job in December of 2020. And so as I was learning about it, one of the things that I found most compelling and what ultimately led me to join the company is that if you look at just our short courses, 41% of those participants get their tuition reimbursed, at least in some way by their companies, same thing among participants in our senior executive programs. So take, for example, we've got a Wharton Chr. O program, which is an 18 month long, high price point program. 50% of participants in that program, or in all of those programs as group get their tuition reimbursed, at least in part companies. And so in a way, you know, Emeritus is best known for a big global b2c business, but more or less of a to c to b anyway, so I found that very compelling.

Alexander Sarlin  41:28  
So Charles, you're the president of the enterprise business out of North America and your focus. And as you mentioned, we've seen a shift in the entire edtech landscape recently about who pays for education with more employers being looked to, to sort of foot the bill for education and training, in order to really get a really amazing talent pool and sort of build retention. I'm curious about how you as the enterprise leave, sort of think about your work within the larger emeritus organization, and how do you function as an intrapreneur within a larger organization that as you say, also has a very large b2c arm? Yeah,

Charlie Schilling  42:05  
with well, padded elbows? Is my answer to that question, which is, and I say that somewhat in jest, because this is like, it's a strategic imperative for us back to the reasons we talked about earlier, it is the way that we can extend our mission to make the world's best education more accessible and affordable. So everyone understands why we need to do it. But it's not necessarily something that comes naturally, meaning if I take department by department, or CMO for a long time, or CP O for a long time, have been geared themselves, but also geared their operations around what's going to provide the most utility for individuals out there in the world who pay for this stuff themselves. And so we've really as a group, and I sit on our executive team, so we as a group have had to rethink how we do all the things that we do really to appeal to both audiences, you know, those in the b2c channel and those in the b2b channel, but what we realize is, at the end of the day, you know, we serve professionals. So these are all the same types of learners at the end, they may be on different sides of the market, right? Companies have skill gaps that they need to fill, but so to individuals. And so the question is, how can we develop really meaningful, impactful content that are going to help people do their jobs better, or help them get new jobs, but that absolutely causes some rethinking and a mindset shift about how and what we do? Yeah, I

Ben Kornell  43:25  
have lots of scars from like product roadmap battles, where it's like, okay, here are the 15 things that our users need. But our b2b buyers also need these administrative tools. You know, how do you think about the payer being separate from the user? And how does emeritus provide value to the enterprise? And not just at the individual user level?

Charlie Schilling  43:49  
Yeah. And then you hit on them? Sure, we've seen many of the same challenges, right? In general, a consumer that may not be happy with whatever LSP, a given company in the ad tech space happens to use, you know, be a canvas or something else. But if they like the content, they're going to take it, companies obviously have the power dynamic is different, right? If you can't figure out a way to integrate into their LSP, or LMS, you're not going to be able to play ball and function in that environment. And so, of course, the challenges that can be if you serve companies, A and B, those can be two radically different software platforms. And that, again, whole another set of considerations. But I think we have a new CTO, who just joined us, Bucha and ADA from Intuit, who's fantastic. And we've got real expertise in how these things can be done in a way that I think causes less tech lift than maybe it did five years ago or so. So we are very aware that we want to do this. And you could also speak and look, we're obviously not the only player in the space, but it speaks to the value of platforms who can provide companies choice in this way and prevent your individual companies to have to go to every single provider of education out there in the world and gathered these course elements on their own,

Alexander Sarlin  45:02  
we wanted to ask about the effect of the pandemic on Emeritus, we noticed on the podcast last month that it was a historic shift where the number of online MBAs outnumber the number of full time in person MBAs. And that was for the first time in history in 2022. And I'm really curious about how you've seen the sort of COVID euro for emeritus and whether you've seen a shift in consumer and behavior on the individual or enterprise side, and a more of an acceptance of online learning in the business domain.

Charlie Schilling  45:38  
Yeah, absolutely. So I think clearly, the online education space in general was a beneficiary of COVID, in that people had either more time on their hands, were going to offices less driven in part by the great resignation, or looking for new things want new skills. So all of those things I think are true. But the underlying elements, I think, were just as true pre COVID, meaning, like the need for individuals to upskill themselves and companies to think more progressively about how they can take a proactive role in the skills that they want to build themselves. But then also, even pre COVID, there was more acceptance of online as a medium, even within particular geographies. I mean, I remember when I was at General Assembly, we served a major professional services firm that has a big presence in the Washington DC metro area, online ended up being a great solution for them. And this is circa 2016. Because if your client is in Northern Virginia, but your home office is in Silver Spring, like you don't want to commute, you know, for two hours to get to your evening course, even though it's super cool that your employer is offering you that course. So anyway, my point is pre COVID, those two elements existed, I think what COVID did is smack them together in a way that the companies realized they had bigger problems to solve, individuals realize they could do something about it. And everyone was unzoom. Anyway, so they realized that they could remove a lot of the friction by accessing this program online for us specifically at emeritus. And there, we did a lot of work on this just internally with our own colleagues, some of our colleagues in Mumbai, just as an example, we're spending two and a half hours a day, commuting each way. So five hours of time, which for some employees super important on some days, but for all employees not important all of the time. And so that is five hours of your life, you know, obviously for your family, whatever the things are, that you do outside of the office, but also to do things like learn it. Right and be quite purposeful about, you know, what I now an hour or an hour and a half have found time every week, I'm going to devote it to upskilling myself and trying to do better in my own career. And I think that'll last.

Ben Kornell  47:54  
Yeah, totally. I think that that's really a helpful insight. And, you know, we talked a little bit about how COVID has accelerated some trends that have been long lasting, as you look five to 10 years out, you're talking to so many employers, this theme of employers getting in on education, upskilling, or education as a benefit, etc. How do you see that evolving? And for us, but also for our kids? Like, what do you think their relationship will be with employers and their learning going forward?

Charlie Schilling  48:25  
Well, I absolutely believe that the big shift is, so I ran, shockingly, because I shocked myself at this now middle aged, but I remember that the you know, the idea was you went to high school, you went to college, maybe you went to graduate school, and you accrue all these skills, but then more or less you deplete them over time, right? Like you gain the skills, and then you give them to your employer. Now, I think there's a mindset shift, which is people really do want to continue to learn throughout their professional lives, and you know, hopefully, life in general, but that they need to because the world changes so fast, right? I mean, I'm not one myself, but software engineering friends of mine. And I really remember this from my GA experience, the coding languages will change, like what they were five or 10 years ago is totally different than they are today and will be five years down the road. So the key is teaching or re teaching, in some cases, adults how to learn. And I think that's something that is driving a big shift here. But that also that the best employers on Earth want to be known as places where people can continue to learn, right after business school, I was at Boston Consulting Group, which even then and this is like, circa 2008, was spending $20,000 per year per employee on continuing education. And they do that because they know it's a competitive differentiator for them in the market. And so I think more and more companies are recognizing that understanding that they can do better by their own businesses, but also retain people for longer in happier ways, and that there are really great models out there about how to do that, including in ways that broaden the aperture are on who ought to be employed from a DI perspective, which is not limited to people that can pay from college themselves or take on debt to do it.

Alexander Sarlin  50:07  
That's a really interesting perspective. And I love your metaphor of sort of in the past, people would learn then give what they had learned to their employer, as it sort of depletes for them as the skills get obsolete over time. But that's really not the model anymore. I think that sums up what we've seen a lot in the space, I want to ask you one question that may be a little bit orthogonal to what you're doing at Americas but it's very interesting. So America has recently made its first foray into the K 12. Industry acquired Ivy Tech, which is a technical camps and courses that are designed for students, and a long term fan of id Tech actually have set kids up tutored there many years, my nephew is going this summer. I'm curious about that acquisition. And if it has any bearing on the enterprise side of the house, do you see education for children as a possible benefit for employers to give to employees?

Charlie Schilling  51:02  
1,000%? And to all the listeners, I promise, I did not plant that question. But, yes, absolutely. So look, the rationale behind that. That combination is really twofold. Number one, if you think about it, from a university partner standpoint, we serve the same partners, right? I mean, one of the first things I detected was run a week long or other summer camp experiences on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto. So you know, we're in the same pool, they're on the university partners side, how can we emeritus as an enemy provide more value to our university partners in id Tech is, was certainly a part of that theme. But to your point, Alex, on the benefit front, 1,000%, I mean, I'm sure we've all worked for large and maybe even medium or small companies that have, you know, perks and benefits, like, I don't know, money off the dry cleaner, or access to a gym membership, which, as you can obviously imagine, or maybe experienced some very, very few people use, what an incredible benefit, if you could log on to your corporate intranet, and find out that you could send your seven year old to, you know, Roblox coding course for a week, and that that, you know, call it $350 benefit was paid for entirely by your company. And it kind of goes back to the same end, which is, so 90% of id Tech participants go into four year college, if we can do a better job working with employers to put more people at the front end of that funnel, including, by the way, those who are traditionally left out of higher ed in the workforce, for that matter, all the better. And so we think that, again, companies have a big role to play in pushing that, and that it's actually the kind of thing that a given employee ought to demand of their employer, in the same way that most of us, at least in a US context, would be loath to work for an employer that doesn't provide health care benefits. These types of education benefits should become standard. Well,

Ben Kornell  52:55  
Charlie, this wraps up our time, it's been so informative to hear from you. There's so many intrapreneurs out there trying to build, you know, that b2b or b2c parallel business. And it's incredible to see how successful you've been in such a short period of time. And also just great to hear about how you see the space evolving with employers really driving, learning and value for their employees. Thanks so much for joining us. And thank you to our listeners. If you have any more questions for Charlie, please put them in the comments on our LinkedIn posts, and we'll be sure to get those questions over to Charlie. Thanks, Ben.

Alexander Sarlin  53:33  
Thanks, Alex. That's it for this week in Ed Tech. Thanks to our guest Charles Schilling from emeritus. See you next week. And remember if it happens in ed tech, you'll hear about it here on this week in tech. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Ed Tech 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