[00:00:00] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, where we speak with founders, operators, investors, and thought leaders in the education technology industry, and report on cutting edge news in its fast evolving field from around the globe. From AI to XR to K 12 to l and d, you'll find everything you need. Here on EdTech Insiders, and if you like the podcast, please give us a rating and a review so others can find it more easily.
Welcome to EdTech Insiders, where we speak with founders, operators, investors, and thought leaders in the education technology industry, and report on cutting edge news in this fast evolving field from around the globe. From AI to XR to K 12 to l and d, you'll find everything you need here on EdTech Insiders.
And if you like the podcast, please give us a rating and a review so others can find it more easily.
[00:01:05] Ben Kornell: Hello everybody. It is the odds of May. We are about to hit June. And we are so excited to have you head into the sprint of the finish of the school year. It is Ben Cornell. Alex Starlin, EdTech Insiders.
Thanks for joining us today. Before we get started, we always start with what's going on in EdTech Insiders Land with the pod, the newsletter, the events, some events coming up. We've got London EdTech Week on June 20th. We're doing an event from three to 6:00 PM at the headquarters of Cooley in London. It will be our first international EdTech event, and it will include networking as we always do, but also some state of the union on EdTech investing and.
AI and education with a very strong European perspective. So really excited to have y'all out for that. And then the following week at isti, we'll be doing a happy hour. Details about that you can find on our website. What about the pod? What do we have going on in the pod? Alex?
[00:02:10] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, so we just put out an episode with Al Kingsley who's sort of like an ed tech legend.
He's written a a couple of big ed tech books and has been in the ed tech and sort of infrastructure space for a long time, but understands every aspect of it. So that was a really big and cool conversation. We also talked to Katie Kirsch, who's a Harvard Business School grad, starting this incredibly interesting mentoring program called 20.
That's basically all. Getting people in their twenties off the ground, both in work and in life and sort of providing mentorship for that, that key transitional period. That was a really interesting conversation as well. And we finally got our ad, Adrian Ridner interview up, that's the CEO of study.com. We interviewed him at the ASU GSV conference, which is a few weeks ago now, but finally got that fully edited, so that's a nice short, you know, under 20 minute episode.
He had a lot of interesting things to say.
[00:03:03] Ben Kornell: It's incredible and you know, also. Note that we recently published our newsletter around the LLMs. We'll have another one coming out here in June, but we will be taking a bit of a hiatus in July. So enjoy these last few episodes of the year and we will be finishing strong with the school year.
What's going on in EdTech space? I will say it does normally things slow down at the end of the year, you kind of have the big push. In the spring and everyone's head down through the summer for fall launch, but a lot of news popping up, especially in m and a. Let's go to the first headline. Alex, what do you have for us?
[00:03:44] Alex Sarlin: Well, so the acquisition I'm really excited about is that Multiverse acquired EDU Flow, and these are both companies we've interviewed on the pod. They're both really innovative and very smart ed tech companies. Multiverse, of course, does these apprenticeships, almost like in lieu of college. It's basically alternatives to university where people go directly into companies and learn on the job.
Super interesting fast growth company out of England, and then EDU Flow is a Scandinavian. Founded LMS by a, a really fascinating machine learning professor named David Kofu Wind, who basically made this service to do peer grading in his own class, and it was so darn good. He turned it into a company and then expanded it to this fantastic LMS multiverse acquired them.
I'm not actually entirely sure what the plan is there. Whether multiverse is planning on using EDU flow inside their own apprenticeships. That would be my first guess, because it's a great platform for online learning and peer feedback. Or if there may be a hope, uh, you know, planning to offer it white labeled or offer it to other folks, which is what EDU flow has been doing.
EDU flow already put out a notice for current customers that they were gonna sort of sunset the public version by the end of this year, which is a tragedy 'cause it's really one of the better LMSs out there. But it's really nice to see these two companies come together. They're both really, really innovative and fast moving, uh, European ed tech stars.
So that was exciting to see. Ben, we gotta go jump into our AI beat. What is happening in the AI beat before
[00:05:16] Ben Kornell: we go too far? Ai. Just the multiverse acquisition here is a sign of things to come where those who raised large rounds, I believe multiverse raised 200 plus million. So they raised 220 million at a $1.7 billion valuation in June of 2022.
So basically a year ago. The folks that really did a good job of capitalizing themselves. Are going to have good m and a opportunities. This one feels like actually a partnership of up and coming companies where they can provide mutual acceleration. You know, other m and a deals we might see a little bit more of taking the scraps of whatever's left of a company.
This one definitely does not feel in that zone. But I do expect m and a activity to heat up over the summer and into the fall as runways get shorter. Speaking of short runways, AI and the impact on education has been a very big topic for us on the pod. We've talked about Chegg and the reaction to their earnings call and the subsequent drop by almost 50% of their stock.
And a new Financial Times article is really detailing the kind of pressure. EdTech companies are under, especially publicly traded EdTech companies around demonstrating their viability and differentiation versus generalized AI like chat GPT. The article outlines the way in which teenagers in their living room are creating personalized learning tutors.
On top of the platform, sharing the code out to GitHub and then having multiplicative effect. I think the other thing that we're seeing in the AI race is that also costs continue to rise, and so this idea that EdTech companies can provide free in perpetuity AI enablement, you know, to compete with open ai.
We're also seeing that that's starting to hit a wall, and there's two reasons why that's hitting a wall. One is around the capacity of compute. The GPU capabilities. OpenAI themselves are doing some rate limiting and you know, reducing the number of queries. But also it is the amount of times you send a query and the cost of that query, you know, ratchets up the cost.
So. We're seeing both competition from generalized AI as well as pressure on the freemium models because of the economic viability of that with AI ed tech tools. Is this gonna end up being just like everything else in ed tech where. We're going to have to deal with the consumer product and try to adapt it for use cases in education, or do you still feel like the kind of EdTech AI differentiation is going to be enough of a competitive moat to hold at bay the generalized AI solutions?
What do you think Alex?
[00:08:19] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I mean, one quote that stood out to me in this Financial Times article that I think makes an interesting case for this was actually from Andy Byrd, the CEO of Pearson, and what they said is that, you know, Pearson's stock got hit at the same time as Chegg. It's come back up a little bit, but it says, quote unquote, we are the owners of some very rich, pure data sets.
When you start to input them into generative AI models, you get better outputs told. That could mean two things. It could mean that you can, you know, train a Pearson tutor starting with open AI and going into the Pearson Library and the gazillions of textbooks and various things they have and digital textbooks.
I. I read that a little differently. I don't think what they would do is start with the open ai. I think they would look, given the business model pressures you're just mentioning, if they wanted to create an AI tutor or an AI tool within some of the Pearson products, it, it would be called so many times, it makes no sense for them to build it on something like open ai, given that they already have a lot of data they can train it on combined with reliable internet data.
So. I think that we are going to see a continued evolution of what models Ed tech companies use, and I don't think they're gonna be completely reliant on this first generation of, you know, open ais. I think you know what you've written in the past about the open source LLMs, I think that's gonna come true, but I also think there's going to be you.
Some version of an education specific LLM trained on things like the Pearson catalog. That will be incredibly powerful and that will change the cost structure as well as the reliability of the model. Yeah, that I still begging on it. Yeah. I mean,
[00:10:02] Ben Kornell: as I talk to people who are AI experts, so you know, really not knowing very much about education.
Their view, you know, I've talked to several folks is that there's actually somewhat of an asymptote in terms of the capability of generative ai. At a certain point whether your language model is. You know, a gazillion versus a tetro, rill, you know, whatever the biggest numbers are, right? Like the difference to like human use cases are very minimal.
And so there's a feeling that once we get, you know, we're on this cycle where basically every year to two years. Models are going to be released that are meaningful step changes better, but the step change will get smaller and smaller, such that in, you know, eight to 10 years we'll kind of reach that, you know, like optimal generative AI model.
That can basically do everything conversationally, that can have, you know, minimized risk and errors and so on. So at that point, it becomes all about the data set. Who has the most valuable data sets and how can they use that to train and leverage it in a product container that is most valuable to people?
So he has the data. Then has to figure out what is the use case or user experience that really makes this pop. Because essentially there's zero switching costs from one LLM to the next LLM to the next lm, to the next lm. And that, you know, you're basically going to see that top out. So I get excited about the bigger ed tech providers in the space because they have so much data.
What I worry about is upstart ed tech. Companies are they going to be able to generate the kind of data flows that will create like a competitive moat over time? And so, um, in this case, it might pay to be one of the big boys.
[00:12:05] Alex Sarlin: Oh yeah. Just like Amazon did AWS, you can imagine a Pearson, you know, a PGS Pearson Generative AI Service, or a Coursera generative ai, or a Quizlet.
You know, some of these EdTech companies have incredible amounts of proprietary data inside their walls, some of which is hyper vetted, or, you know, comes from very, very, very reliable sources. So. A couple of interesting reports came out this week, and we're gonna skim over these a little bit because I have not read them nearly as much as we should have, but we will report on them in the future weeks.
Basically, there was a really fascinating AI report coming outta the Office of Educational Technology at the White House, um, in collaboration with Digital Promise, a terrific nonprofit. They put out a. Big report about a AI and education policy, recommendations, all sorts of stuff. Once we make our own sense of it, we'll report on it here.
The other is Reach Capital, put out their higher ed impact report, which is lots of fun. Reach Cap. You know, we've talked about Impact Reports coming from the ed tech VCs. They're really trying to quantify the impact that their investment in their portfolio companies are having. And you know, the thesis for Reach are like.
Career readiness is really important for higher ed instructional improvement, student support. So they're, they go through all of, you know, their higher ed investments, things like handshake and springboard and ripen and they don't do class, but classes there and grade scope and talk about the impact.
Very interesting and once we dive into it a little more and rept, we'll be able to report on it here. I'm looking forward to that.
[00:13:36] Ben Kornell: Yeah. One thing on the White House AI report is really, you know, the question around is. Is regulation coming and how will the US regulatory regime look different from European ones?
And my main takeaway from this is that the White House currently is taking more of a guidelines approach and a partnering with industry approach rather than a more punitive one, which is, you know, I think a better fit for the American context. It also, you know, I've heard a number of AI companies basically saying, you know, if the European Union regulatory infrastructure around, you know, IP and using, you know, protected data to train your model, if it has like the kind of high standards around data privacy and the ability to retrain the model based on user input, if those restrictions remain.
You know, in effect it will basically mean that like ai, you know, Europe will be a backwater for AI for a period of time while US Asia latam, um, mena, um, Africa will be, you know, markets where the lack of regulation will cause AI to thrive. I am also curious because in the White House report and some of the other reporting we've done on this.
They're creating different like hubs or institutes of ai and it seems like learning is actually across three or four of them. So, you know, how are we making sure that the data privacy people are talking to the people who are thinking about like personalized learning tutors and things like that. So it is early, early days, but definitely a report and headlines worth paying attention to.
All right,
[00:15:30] Alex Sarlin: so the AI report addresses this specifically asking about the timeline for the necessary guidelines and guardrails and sort of, I agree with you, it's recommendation based, but everybody is waiting for something to happen and it's gonna be interesting, including the AI leaders, Microsoft calling for it too.
[00:15:46] Ben Kornell: Yeah. And so. Speaking of regulation, we will go to our headline number four. It has been a long time since Edmoto was in the headlines. You know, a decade ago, they were one of the hottest ed tech companies on the planet, and I believe at their peak they had over 110 million users. But the FTC announced a settlement and a violation around Edmodo, basically violating children privacy rights.
Ultimately the violation came where they were doing targeted advertising for kids based on kids data. And my understanding is that basically Edmodo had advertising partners, uh. Kids would create a profile and that profile data wasn't used to target, but then as kids injured preferences around, I'm interested in sports, or I'm interested in pizza, or whatever it would be, that preference data was used to target ads, and in particular, this idea of mixing ed tech and advertising became problematic when it was really.
Outside of the kind of quote unquote educational purpose, the data was really just collected to target ads. Those of you who've been following the space know that it was basically like two and a half years ago, two years ago, that Edmoto shut down operations in the US and also said that they were deleting all user data.
Which for some of us following the space was actually a red flag that something was up. Um, there's actually a blog post we can send linking that, but back in August of 2022, bill Fitzgerald posited, Hey, there's a potential dumpster fire here today. Where is Edmoto? They're really doing country specific work.
The company that owns them also owns Promethean Smart Boards. So I think my understanding is that they've pivoted more to enable smart board work, primarily working with governments in developing countries. But it is kind of the last breath of what was once one of the most promising EdTech companies that we had on the landscape.
Definitely up there with Coursera, et cetera. So R imo. Are there any words you want to say, Alex, to memorialize? Edmoto.
[00:18:16] Alex Sarlin: Edmoto is an interesting company. There was a moment in, I believe it was like 2015 or so, maybe a little bit earlier, where Schoology came out and basically did this really interesting, you know, this new version of an LMS that felt much more like social media.
Edmodo came out, this enormous freemium model got so many users through that and there was sort of this sudden. Acceptance. I would say at that moment that the tropes and the UI and the sort of affordances of social media were coming into everybody's lives, especially teenagers and people were like, this should be happening in in schools.
And I feel like, you know, there's still TikTok for education. There's still some of this, but it's. I feel like the end of Edmodo, and you know, the Schoology was bought by PowerSchool and still quite thriving, but it feels like the end of a little bit of an era of EdTech where they were kind of trying to take some pages from the social media playbook, including I.
This page gathering lots of personal data and selling it to advertisers. So probably a good thing that it is closing the quote from the FTC person here, mixing ed tech and advertising can lead to serious legal consequences. Definitely. And this is one of the things that makes the ed tech world so complicated compared to some of the.
Social media models, which are usually advertising based to their core. So it's probably a good thing. Edmoto is also bought by a Chinese company, which makes the data data thing even more complicated. So I was surprised to see a headline with Edmoto This. Long after Edmodo shut down. But at the same time, it makes a ton of sense and I think others should take note that if anybody's planning on, you know, selling student data to advertisers or even getting close to that without parental consent and all of that, uh, you know, this is a big shot across the bow from the ftc.
Yeah,
[00:20:08] Ben Kornell: I mean, one thing that I will say is. You know, targeted advertising is just not very viable for the under 18 audience. Where I think most people that still use advertising are playing is they pair the advertising with content so that it's not really targeted at the student, but the ad is, you know, connected in some way to the Met data on the content itself.
That's really the only viable way I've seen advertising work. And even then it's like really challenging for advertisers to get excited about, you know, content-based advertising for kids under 18 because the kind of cultural like paradigm. And also the buying power of kits 18 and under. So very interesting.
And just another lesson learned in the EdTech business model journey. Alright, well we are going to head to our interview. Please stick with us. We've got a great interview with Bridget Leslie from IEP and me. And we hope to see you at one of our events coming up, listening to our pod, subscribing to our newsletter.
Thanks for joining us today. If it happens in EdTech, you'll hear about it here on EdTech Insiders. Alright, it is time for our interview. So excited today to have Bridget Leslie, the CEO of IEP, and me Bridget. You know we got to meet at one of the EdTech Inside Insider events, one of the happy hours. It's been amazing to see your trajectory since then.
Welcome to the pot.
[00:21:46] Bridgette Leslie: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me here.
[00:21:49] Ben Kornell: First let's start big picture with the mission. What really inspired you to create IEP and me and how are people really rethinking support for learners with differences now that we're in this AI era, in this like 22nd century learning era?
Um, tell us a little bit about that journey.
[00:22:11] Bridgette Leslie: Yeah, so I started IEP and me, because I was a special education teacher in the classroom for 10 years. I also had some experience as a special education assistant before I did an alternative credentialing program to get into the classroom, and I was just really frustrated that there was like so much amazing tech, not only in the world, but also that general educators were getting to use for the classroom.
And there was. Lots of innovation happening, but it wasn't happening in the way that supported me and the problems that I was experiencing. So I had this idea for, you know, a way to support our kids back in like 2015 or 16. And I was like, oh, IEP and me like, rolls off the tongue. That's cute. And bought the domain back in like 2016 and just like, you know, thought I was gonna be a career educator, but kept paying the $20 a month or $20 a year to keep the domain and then.
Transitioned into this kind of, during the pandemic, I was still teaching, I was doing distance learning and it gave me some time actually to figure out how to build a company and you know, navigate that journey of pitch decks and fundraising and all of the things. And I think the pandemic. You know, there was actually a lot of students who had IEPs that did pretty well that, you know, there's, there's some students that did really not so well.
But then I had some students who, you know, had autism or A DHD or different disability categories that they qualified for that thrived in distance learning and thrived not being within the constraints of a classroom. And I think a lot of parents saw their kids at home more often and saw their kids learning and trying to learn, and they were like.
Okay, my kid might need more support. And just this understanding for IEPs and being able to, at like the social aspect of having your kid, you know, diagnosed is something that is starting to get diminished. So you have more and more. Parents and teachers being open to qualifying and evaluating kids for IEPs.
And in this process so many more parents are realizing that like the process is so long, it's so arduous and it's confusing. Like you could be a Harvard grad, I. And be the best engineer in the world. But navigating the IEP world in our K 12 schools is really hard. There's lots of nuances around acronyms and the language and the speak, you know, and states do it differently, and so it gets confusing when you move and we just need it to be simple.
I. Simplified and more accessible. So that's what IE, P, and ME is all about. We're making it so that IEPs can be read, that you can access them online. The content is forward rather than the legal conversations or the legal jargon, and bringing the whole team on the same page so that they can collaborate together.
It's kind of a long response, a long journey there. But I think that now is really a really fantastic time for special education. Not only like shifting in our schools, but also shifting in the way that we work with kids and we kind of view our kids in this world.
[00:25:20] Alex Sarlin: So how do you use AI in IEP and me?
[00:25:24] Bridgette Leslie: So there's actually a couple ways.
One, we have, so we're free for parents and between how we get an IEP from parents, they upload the PDF and share it with us, or a school sharing the IEPs with us so that we can get it onto our platform. One way that we use it is we have, Google Vision has this AI driven PDF scraper essentially. So we use that, we've trained it and are have that, and then we have like a manual check behind it.
We also have it in our future in, in terms of using AI to support IEP writing. 'cause teachers, especially new teachers, they'll take like three to four hours to write one IEP and the, the shortest I've ever gotten it down is like I. An hour to write one IEP, and sometimes you have like 35 kids every year.
So building out some supports and really shortening that time period of how long it takes to write an IEP, but still having the teacher manually finish it to make sure that it's personalized enough for them.
[00:26:26] Alex Sarlin: That's awesome. You are mentioning that you know IEPs and for those who are not in the special ed world, that's individualized education plans, which every special needs student has are overly complex and the collaboration is really hard to do.
And these are two things that I, e, p and me really, uh, is seeking to solve. Tell us a little bit about the experience in the platform and how it. Makes these complex IEPs simpler and makes sure that everybody's on the same page and has shared goals.
[00:26:59] Bridgette Leslie: Yeah, I mean, even our name, right? It gets into how the acronyms are, are really, really big in this space.
Individual education plan. When parents or or teachers see it, they're like, oh, I know exactly what this is. But it's hard when you don't have that experience. So what we do is, the way that it's worked really since like 1975 ish when the law started is parents would get the stack of papers. And the stack of papers is the IEP outlines how the student is doing, where their gaps are, what their goals are, and how the schools are gonna support.
And it's really a legal contract. And in the past, you know, 50 years, there's been more and more details as people have sued the schools because this is a federal and state. They can sue the schools for not meeting the needs of their kids. And so right now the IEPs are still only given in PDFs or in emails or in a stack of paper at an annual meeting, and they are legal forward the legal contract.
So. What we do is we take the substance out of it. What are the accommodations? What are the goals? What are the services? And we put it in this simple format. Online. We redo the hierarchy of information, so like accommodations are the supports in the classrooms. Those are at the top. Then the goals are the next most important.
That's what shows up next on our platform. And then, you know, just giving that touch access and allowing parents and students to comment and provide feedback on how their kids are doing on those goals anytime they want to. Gives them a way to interact and make this actually a living document. Like teachers talk about it being, rather than, you know, this PDF or stack of papers that ends up in the garbage or recycling at some point.
[00:28:45] Ben Kornell: So this idea of transitioning from paper to digital has actually been around for a long time, you know, and technology in so many ways and so many other sectors has solved these types of problems. But I think it's this, this engagement and interactivity with parents and bringing parents into the process that I find most compelling.
Obviously what you're talking about is really game changing for schools and districts. Let's talk about the entrepreneurial side of this. What's been the journey like with schools and districts that are, you know, often overwhelmed, uh, understaffed, who are trying to like understand what your product can do and the change, how is that going over and what are the biggest barriers or challenges to making that change?
[00:29:34] Bridgette Leslie: Yeah, so I think one of the things that really helps is my co-founder and myself both have direct experience, both in the classroom and in the leadership space of district or charter schools. So. That makes our entrepreneurial process a little bit easier in that we have access to a swath of, like a wide network of educators and education leaders that know us personally from our work in the classroom.
So we have some credibility when we go into those conversations initially. That doesn't mean that the sales process has been that much easier. You know, we go into the conversations. They know. We know what they're talking about. We can engage in the conversations, we can empathize. Both of us had been in the classroom or schools during the pandemic and right after the pandemic as well, which also continues to give us credibility when we are talking to them.
So the trust building aspect of the sales process with schools is easier for us. However, the decision making process of signing a contract and getting a new platform in the school or when you know within the district is still very difficult because the shortage of every single role in a school means that they don't have much time to not only give us a meeting and have a conversation.
But to also spend thinking about how is this like the change management that comes along with including a new platform for their school. Then we also kind of run into the problem of there's wide teams of people that not only make the decision, but are affected by the IE. So then managing all of those calendars and getting all of those people in one space is, is difficult.
And then finally, there's always this mentality of like, is this gonna be another tool? And we can navigate that question fairly easily because we know exactly what we're replacing. Right now, IEP and me replaces the spreadsheets, the papers that people, that the teachers are using, but the change management of being like, well, this has worked, or, you know, it's worked well enough.
That is a piece that we're kind of navigating and it's hard to get sometimes. It's hard to get people to shift, and there's, uh, this like terrifying experience for the decision makers, the district leaders, the school leaders, that they are going to make a change, that then their teachers, the ones that are using IEP and me are gonna be, you know, resentful for or not want to use or just like.
You know, have them feel some sort of way about it. Um, so it's definitely been difficult, but there is a big opportunity. And then the last thing that's difficult is that there are these compliance systems, right? The tech that. Teachers are using to write the legal documents that right now we don't replace.
And so they sometimes misconstrue us as either trying to replace them right now or being like that add-on experience for the tech that exists but is not interoperable with us, um, and doesn't wanna be interoperable with us, makes it difficult.
[00:32:50] Alex Sarlin: Look, it's such an important and incredibly complex part of the school ecosystem, both because as you say, there's legal and compliance issues and because of the personalities involved.
And one of the things I wanted to ask you, you know, we've been covering on the podcast, uh, that over the last couple of years there's starting to be become a lot of tension often between families and teachers, especially in certain environments where. Come to school board meetings or you know, complain or really, you know, review students' curriculum very carefully.
You are going in an exact opposite direction. Bringing parents and special educators and general educators all together around helping the kids, which is really how it should be. I'm curious if you sort of experienced in working with schools any concern about parents, like how do they see the parent teacher relationship right now?
[00:33:39] Bridgette Leslie: It really depends on the school. It, it depends on the area, it depends on the personality and uh, on the personality of the school leader or the district leader. There is definitely a lot of people that are a little terrified of giving parents more access and more understanding to the IEP because. With that, that might open the doors that if they know exactly what's on the IEP, they start to make connections if things aren't happening.
However, at the end of the day, sort of how we kind of manage those conversations with schools is like. Their parents. Parents have access to this either way, and the parents that are getting frustrated are going to advocates and going to lawyers, and those advocates and lawyers generally are motivated by money, right?
They're getting, that's their job. They're getting paid to do that. The more meetings they have and the more changes they make, the more difficult the process is, the more money they get. So if you can start to build this relationship out before an advocate or before a lawyer comes into play, then we're gonna save you a lot of money.
And that gets some positive response. But I think also at the end of the day, there is a lot that schools are trying to be like, alright, well if there's gonna be some complaints, if parents who wanna make more noise. Let's increase our family engagement efforts. And so there's entire roles that are around family engagement.
And so we are a huge family engagement tool for the students in the school that have tended to be the most forgotten, most underserved, most marginalized. So lots of family engagement directors or coordinators are very intrigued by what we're doing as well. But that's not to say like it definitely is. A very sensitive topic, especially if schools or districts have recently, or in the process of, you know, going through what they call due process or the legal process for special education
[00:35:44] Alex Sarlin: makes a lot of sense.
Really interesting.
[00:35:46] Ben Kornell: I. So last question here. You know, we are often talking about this period of time being the ed tech winter and it's really hard to fundraise. How have you been able to like break through that and what are the lessons learned or advice or encouragement you have to other founders, especially for folks trying to work with technology?
That can be game changing for impact for kids, but it's probably not like top of the average investor's radar.
[00:36:16] Bridgette Leslie: Yeah, so we, I mean, we are actually going through a seed round right now, and I'm not gonna say it's easy. We definitely know that the, the investors that are gonna be most interested in us are ed tech, disability focused, impact focused.
You know, they have to have, they really have to believe in what we are building and the purpose behind it. And so we've been working with a lot of. Those types of funds and talking to those types of investors. And in terms of, I mean, the fundraising space is, is hard right now. In general, what's been positive for me is that actually the numbers for seed rounds, which we're in.
Are the best looking numbers in general for investors. It's one of the best stages of a company to invest in at the moment. And when we're thinking about, when I have conversations with investors, I talk a lot about IEPs, a really personalized learning, and there's a lot happening in the personalized learning, the school choice.
Kind of area. And so we are a foundation piece to make personalized learning more accessible to all kids, right? If you make IEPs easier, if you make multilingual learning plans or easier, then the schools are more apt to make individualized or personalized learning for all of their students. So it's a good building block for that.
And I don't know, I mean, the winter it's, yeah, it's just hard, you know? But I think my biggest strategy is to go into, I. Investors that have it in their thesis. The last thing that I'll say is there's way more investment firms and people and angel investors that are focused on disability and neurodivergence.
So for what we're building specifically within the education space, that's really exciting for us. Our actually. First VC is Difference Partners. They invested at us last year and their whole entire portfolio is about learning differences, neurodivergency and disability. And so seeing those firms pop up is really exciting and kind of as a testament to what I said earlier about society just being more open to understanding, more accepting of Neurodivergence disability in general.
[00:38:40] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. This is so interesting. One thing you know, you've mentioned a couple of times, but I want make sure our, our listeners understand is that you really are a special education teacher who transferred into EdTech. They're just looking at this amazing article from Business Insider about how you did that.
You had to find a replacement teacher, you had to fundraise to get your enough, you know, money coming in to leave the classroom. And this is something so many teachers are interested right now. I know we're closing out right now, but do you have any, you know, just words of advice or inspiration for teachers who are thinking about, you know, making that transition?
[00:39:14] Bridgette Leslie: Yeah, I really was. I was, you know, I took a couple investor meetings from the classroom. I, you know, listened to like how I built this by Guy Ross a lot and especially their Teach for America episode. I think my biggest piece of advice, or you know, something that I did is one. I would listen to, like I use the Blinkist app.
A bunch was on like Medium and just listening to different podcasts and stuff about like what is a pitch deck? I mean I, and leaning into people, anyone in your network that has information. I did a lot of research also around like, do I want it to be non non-profit or for-profit? And I did a lot of this ideating, like in the car on my commute at home.
Instead of reading a book, I would listen to a podcast or something like that. And then I. I figured out different people in my network that knew things that I didn't. So like I called my sister at one point and was like, what's a cap table? And she was like, I'm putting the kids to bed. This is a longer conversation.
I'll call you back. And you know, I had a cousin who had a startup and was like. Is this even an option? Is this like a, a business thing? Like would VC be interested in that? I had no idea what an angel was, so like just really leaning on many different people. I'd be like, you're in marketing, can I talk to you about marketing for a second?
And. A lot of that social capital was like really important and just not being afraid to say like, I have no idea. So I have a couple angel investors, actually. One, I got through a DM on Twitter. I DMed Baron Davis and was like, Hey, I saw you're interested in female founders. Let me tell you about myself.
So like lots of like no shame, right? No shame. And like being confident like, yeah, I'm a teacher. I know what I'm doing in the classroom, so let me show you that I can transfer these skills over. And asking so many questions and leaning into that. And my angel investors have been so supportive. I've just been like, I have no idea how to build a financial model.
Can you help me with this? Having those types of conversations with them has been really helpful because they've seen me figure everything out. You know, I had no idea what engineering was. I had no idea what no code was and just asked a bunch of people.
[00:41:33] Ben Kornell: Super inspiring Bridget, and I will tell you like we get countless outreach from classroom educators.
I myself, as a classroom educator, and I think just the summary I take away is. Kind of leaning into learning and being a learner yourself and having a confidence and fearlessness that you too can like figure it out. 'cause just like being a teacher where there's a lot of reinventing the wheel you have to do there, you know, being an entrepreneur is really a creative learning journey.
So great to have you on the podcast and so great to hear about the work you're doing to transform IEPs. This is Bridget and Bridget Leslie. IEP me do com. Is that what it is?
[00:42:17] Bridgette Leslie: Yep, exactly. Iep me.
[00:42:19] Ben Kornell: Check her [email protected] and you can if you want to, angel Invest. That sounds like the round is open. So reach out and thanks for joining the po.
[00:42:30] Bridgette Leslie: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:42:33] Alex Sarlin: Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more, EdTech Insider, subscribe to the Free EdTech Insiders Newsletter. I. On Substack. Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders.
If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more, EdTech Insider, subscribe to the Free EdTech Insiders Newsletter on substack.