In this second part of the Postcards from ASU GSV mini-series, we talk to a wide variety of amazing Higher Ed and workforce entrepreneurs about their companies, what they're seeing at the ASU conference, and what they're seeing in the field at large.
1) Manny Smith, CEO of Edvisorly, a platform to support community college students who are transferring credit
2) Fadl, CEO of Nexford University, a next-generation, online university that costs $150 a month
3) John Katzman, Edtech legend and Founder/CEO of Noodle Partners, an next-generation online program management company
4) Gautam Tambay, Co-Founder and CEO of Springboard, on online technical bootcamp with mentoring and a job guarantee
5) Manish Maheshwari, Founder and CEO of Invact Metaversity, a fully immersive university for business subjects that can be accessed via VR or computer
6) Kirill Slavkin, Co-founder and COO of Annoto, which turns passive video content into a social learning experience
7) Obi Felten, Founder and CEO of Flourish Labs, a peer-based mental health startup that trains college students to support others with similar conditions
8) Anthony Reo, Co-founder of Bunch.ai, which offers mobile microlearning opportunities for millennial and Gen-Z managers
In this second part of the Postcards from ASU GSV mini-series, we talk to a wide variety of amazing Higher Ed and workforce entrepreneurs about their companies, what they're seeing at the ASU conference, and what they're seeing in the field at large.
1) Manny Smith, CEO of Edvisorly, a platform to support community college students who are transferring credit
2) Fadl, CEO of Nexford University, a next-generation, online university that costs $150 a month
3) John Katzman, Edtech legend and Founder/CEO of Noodle Partners, an next-generation online program management company
4) Gautam Tambay, Co-Founder and CEO of Springboard, on online technical bootcamp with mentoring and a job guarantee
5) Manish Maheshwari, Founder and CEO of Invact Metaversity, a fully immersive university for business subjects that can be accessed via VR or computer
6) Kirill Slavkin, Co-founder and COO of Annoto, which turns passive video content into a social learning experience
7) Obi Felten, Founder and CEO of Flourish Labs, a peer-based mental health startup that trains college students to support others with similar conditions
8) Anthony Reo, Co-founder of Bunch.ai, which offers mobile microlearning opportunities for millennial and Gen-Z managers
Welcome to Ed Tech insiders at ASU GSB. In this second episode of ASU GSB postcards, we're going to focus on a series of amazing entrepreneurs and operators in the space of higher education and workforce development. Enjoy. Welcome to EdTech insiders at ASU GSB. We have with us today many Smith from advisor Lee with five good minutes. So many Smith, tell us a little bit about what advisors really does.
Manny Smith:We are a platform to help community college students and universities connect with each other to improve and uplift transfer.
Alexander Sarlin:Fantastic. And why is this a problem? Well, yeah, I would love to hear a little bit more about why community colleges and transfer are a major issue in education.
Manny Smith:So let's just go back to what is community college community college was kind of a platform for folks who didn't necessarily want to pursue a bachelor's degree, they wanted to start in a setting where they got either a certificate or an associate's degree and route to work opportunities. Community colleges today serve a new mission. And that's transferred. And that means helping students have a pathway to four year universities. So one of the most important things to consider is that four year university degree truly creates socio economic opportunity in the United States. I mean, I think that goes without saying, but the Transfer Pathways aren't always so clear. And so what are the factors that contribute to success and failure for community college students transferring from two year degrees to four year degrees? I think that is the most important question to really kind of dive down into. And we have a pretty amazing team of experts that have transferred from community college to schools like Berkeley and Cal State Long Beach. So we benefit from that perspective.
Alexander Sarlin:So tell us a little bit about how likely it is right now that a community college student would be able to transfer to a four year and then have a successful outcome? Is that very common? Or is it very uncommon?
Manny Smith:Yeah. So it's very uncommon, about 80% of students want to transfer to four year universities. In the first two years, only two and a half percent of those students actually do. In the first four years, I believe the numbers seven and a half to 8%. Wow. And then in six years, it's only about 17% of all the students that attend community college. To put that into perspective, this was published 70% of students that enter Community College will not finish with a certificate to your degree or four year transfer. So we have to think through what is fundamentally causing these challenges, and how do we solve the root cause of the challenges, not create Band Aid solutions? So creating seamless, scalable solutions, is what we have to focus on. And we have to think through outcomes, not just tech, not just you know what technology exists, but what exists in the operation that is limiting students from being successful? How do we improve that and make data driven decisions in order to draw attribution to actually creating an operation that educates and empowers students to be able to not just attend for your universities, but really achieve their dreams?
Alexander Sarlin:And where are you getting started in the US? I know there's community colleges everywhere.
Manny Smith:We're getting started in California. So right now, our markets in California, one in three community college students in the United States is in California, and community college is actually relatively large, about 50% of undergrads in the United States attend community college. So if you think about that one in six students are in California and undergrad in community college. Wow. So our first initial market specifically is in the Los Angeles Community College District. We are working directly with the district and district enrollment managers and Los Angeles City College to bring this to life. And we're very, very excited to be able to partner with such an innovative institution,
Alexander Sarlin:and one that serves so many students. It's really exciting. Yeah, so what is the most exciting trend you're seeing right now, whether it's at the conference here, or just in the EdTech space?
Manny Smith:You know, COVID was extremely challenging for a lot of edtech companies, as well as a lot of institutions. But one of the things I do think is that it was a blessing in disguise, and that we are actually moving toward a model where we're thinking about students welfare and their outcomes, because maybe because we have to advise really started before COVID. And we kept students always first but one of the macro trends that I see is, we're moving from this concept of buying names, and you know, just putting students in school to nurturing and curating with intentionality, the classes in the future of your institution, and we have to continue to shift the paradigm from buying names to nurturing outcomes for real students in real people.
Alexander Sarlin:That is a great trend. I really agree. And what is one challenge you see for your space right now? What is something that keeps you up that you want to overcome?
Manny Smith:That's a great question. I would say our biggest challenge is thinking about cohesion and alignment and helping the institutions understand the importance of interoperable solutions. So oftentimes, when you create a technical solution to solve an operational need, you'll find that sometimes, even if it's scalable, there may not be an understanding, there may be a learning curve around the gravity of why your solution should scale and what vertical it's intended to hit. So being able to create technical solutions that are actually simple, and just focusing on the outcome, rather than the actual technology, is how we've been able to have the traction that we have. Many folks in community college or in education don't necessarily may not be invested in how the technology works. They want an outcome. And that's what our drivers are so very grateful that we focus on outcomes and advisory and we have a performance oriented performance driven team and over 20 years of transfer experience and some amazing leaders on our team.
Alexander Sarlin:Fantastic. Well, thank you so much. Manny Smith from advisor Lee. Attack Tech Insider is here with fato. From next furred University. thought I'll tell us a little bit about what net furred does,
Fadl Al Tarzi:Alex Max is an end to end education to employment platform that's anchored in a next generation University. Our vision ultimately, as they equip learners across the world, with the skills that they need to access both local and remote jobs, regardless of their location, their gender, their race, their socio economic class.
Alexander Sarlin:That's fantastic. And how do you help bridge that gap between education and employment that we have really had trouble bridging in the past?
Fadl Al Tarzi:Right? It's been a bit of a hot topic for a couple of decades now. Yeah. So we started from scratch by backwards designing our entire curriculum based on extensive analysis of employer needs. So unlike, you know, traditional universities, we started by looking at millions of data points, which we continue to look at on an ongoing basis. So far, we've analyzed over 40 million data points, including job vacancies and reports by the likes of say, in the world that come in for World Bank, IFC, and so forth, we extract from those datasets, what are the skills, the tools, technologies and competencies that employers are looking for? And we design our curriculum to deliver on those specifically? So it's a competency based model.
Alexander Sarlin:So when people finish their time, next for university, they're already absolutely job ready? Can they come back to an expert if they need to skill up later in their life?
Fadl Al Tarzi:Sir? Definitely. I mean, a is, as you know, in the vast majority of online learners in the US or across the world actually working while learning, right, so they want to see direct relevance between what they're studying and what they're playing at work. And with us, they see that, you know, all of our assessments are authentic projects that we have no, you know, standardized tests, for instance. So they're all projects mimicking the kind of work that we've been doing in the workplace. Great. And to answer your second question, completely, we think, you know, the university of the future is one that uses what I think of as this interoperable ecosystem model, where learners can dip in and out of university throughout their entire career life cycles as their needs evolve. So they can start with a course to certificate a degree, they can transfer in credits from various different other forms of education, the certificate for Microsoft and Google could be work experience, and they all stacks into this stackable credentials model. So people can either earn larger or smaller credentials throughout their lives.
Alexander Sarlin:That's fantastic. And how does the finances work? How do students pay for next week?
Fadl Al Tarzi:So students pay on a monthly basis? So in thinking about what are the biggest challenges that exist in higher ed, three years ago, when we first started, you know, affordability is definitely the number one reason people don't go to college. And it's also the number one reason people drop out of college. So we made it super affordable, it's a flat monthly fee, learners pay the fee varies depending on where you are in the world. In the US at an undergraduate level, it's going to be approximately $120 a month, wow, at a graduate level, roughly double that. And because it's competency based means that you can graduate as fast as you want. So essentially, you can earn an entire, you know, MBA or Bachelor degree for three$4,000. And that's a degree that's directly comparable in quality to university striking 10 times that price. Yeah,
Alexander Sarlin:it's incredibly low, right. So if I'm doing my math correctly, that's about $1,500 a year for an undergraduate degree. And you can do it at your own pace, competency based, right. So even four years is 6000. But you can go faster,
Fadl Al Tarzi:you can go fast. And for the first time, you know, the really interesting thing here is from a learner perspective, you can actually control the cost of your completion of a concept that actually incentivizes people to graduate faster, right, if I know I only afford $4,000, I'm just gonna have to, you know, exert a bit more effort than someone else who maybe has more time. So it really rewards those who are willing to, you know, put in the time and effort and graduate faster. Yeah,
Alexander Sarlin:so you mentioned it's competency based, which usually implies that you can test your way out of particular classes or subjects by proving that you have already learned them outside. Are you also planning on offering credit for prior learning? I think you mentioned it, but I'd love to hear a little bit about that.
Fadl Al Tarzi:Yeah. So you know, we have to defend CIT, first of all, we are not a direct assessment model, meaning that they can essentially skip a course, quote, unquote, they'll just take the test and move on. Alright, because what we've seen is that generally tends not to promote learning and tends to promote really how to pass an assessment. So our assessments are sets of formative assessments that lead towards a summative assessment that you have to complete every module, of course, so you have to show, you know, progress on a weekly basis before you can take your final project in every course. Having said that, yeah, completely. I mean, we were designing what we call our prior learning assessment model today, you have to do something that you'd call even prior work assessment, right? So yeah, so we think, you know, next week should be part of a wider ecosystem that recognizes people learn in different ways, in different forms throughout their lives. And we should be able to grant credit against, you know, all of these different forms of learning. And that's something we intend to launch this year.
Alexander Sarlin:That's really exciting. So yeah, so somebody to pass a class, it's not that they just take the final summative assessment immediately. They work their way through the class, but at their own pace, then they do all the assessments there, prove that they're getting all the core competencies, exactly.
Fadl Al Tarzi:You can move as fast as you want, but you can't move as slow as you want. So there are guardrails. And we've seen that with universities that are completely self paced normally, you know, they have low completion rates and high, you know, churn rates. Because at the end of the day learners, you know, need some level of guidance. Now, they want the flexibility, but they also want guidance, they don't want to be told, Hey, you got to show up the classroom at 10am. Because that doesn't work with their personal schedules. But they also want to be told, Hey, on a weekly basis, these are the things that you have to complete, but you can complete them on your own timeline within that week. So it's a bit of a balance between the two,
Alexander Sarlin:it's fantastic. Tell us a little bit about an expert's footprint. Where in the world are your learners coming from?
Fadl Al Tarzi:Yeah, so by design, we were going online designed for scale and designed for emerging markets this time. So Africa is by far our biggest market today. And that's a content that you know, only has about 10% Gross enrolment rates right now has a severe shortage of university spaces. The second largest would be Southeast Asia, markets, like the Philippines is a big market for us. So yeah, emerging markets are, you know, our primary focus right now. And then we start, you know, we currently don't actively market in the US, but we're going to start doing that to them in the coming years. So
Alexander Sarlin:fantastic. And what are the core subjects that you teach? I think you mentioned this, but I want to make sure we highlight it.
Fadl Al Tarzi:Sure, we're at the intersection of business and technology. So we offer a number of business programs as well as technology programs, so things like AI, e commerce, supply chain, you know, cybersecurity, even software development. But ultimately, our view is that even if you study software development, you need to build some basic business skills, as well as of course, soft skills in order essentially not to cap your career growth opportunities. Yeah, so it's really the intersection of both and ideas for all of our graduates to be, I would say, champions of digital transformation within the organizations that they work out. And to really start eliminating this differentiation between technology and business, you know, all businesses are going to be tech enabled businesses going through such thing as you know, technical enablement, or digital transformation. So we're trying to build, you know, a graduate base that combines the best of both skills, right.
Alexander Sarlin:And I imagine that those majors in those skills come from that backwards design process. These are specifically tailored to the biggest unfilled jobs, the jobs of the future. Yes, definitely.
Fadl Al Tarzi:All comes from that data. So there's very little subjectivity or sort of opinion in our role, or the role of our learning experience designers, is really to think about the learning science elements like how do you teach this competency? Or how do you assess this skill? Rather than what do you teach? So the white answer using data at the house answer using our team
Alexander Sarlin:really interesting. So we're doing this interview from the ASU GSB conference in San Diego? What is the most exciting trend that you've seen whether it's at the conference here, or in general around the world?
Fadl Al Tarzi:So around the world? I mean, I think you can't not notice the growth of ad tech in India. Yeah. So that's definitely taking over at Center Stage across a lot of events, including this one. That's quite exciting to see. The other I would say as the prior learning, assessment sort of second might not sound the most exciting. I'm seeing a lot of convergence around this topic of how do we create a framework that allows universities to evaluate at scale, all forms of prior learning, because it's not something that you know, next marriage or any other single university can do on its own. It needs to be sort of, you know, this consortium sort of approach. There's just too much to evaluate out there. But I'm seeing a lot of conversation at ASU GSB this year about how to do that, how to use technology to do that. And companies like Google, Microsoft, HubSpot, Salesforce, even the MOOCs are all sort of coming together to figure out what is the framework that we can use to evaluate at what skills people are actually getting through these different initiatives are hugely important
Alexander Sarlin:as the average age of bachelor's degree recipients continues to serve rise and people coming back to school in all stages of life to upskill it's incredibly important to be able to reward that prior learning
Fadl Al Tarzi:and honestly, learners just should not need to make the choice between skills and credentials, right? That's just the reality. Today, folks are having to make that choice like go to college and not build the skills or do I build my skills, do these other providers, right? And there shouldn't be a need to do that. And that's really why NetSuite exists, people should be able to get both through one provider.
Alexander Sarlin:Fantastic. And last question, what do you see as your biggest challenge going forward? What keeps you up at night?
Fadl Al Tarzi:I would say it's the marriage between three sort of major challenges. were attempting to address pedagogy, regulatory compliance, and customer centricity.
Alexander Sarlin:Wow. You know, so
Fadl Al Tarzi:when you think about these three, they're somewhat at odds, learners One easy way to do stop, but easy way isn't Tina rigorous enough for outcomes? You know, the regulatory framework with which we operate here in the US, you know, has its challenges as well. So how do you marry between these three and deliver the best of all three is quite a challenging task for
Alexander Sarlin:us. Yeah, I don't think it's just for you. I think that that split between pedagogical rigor and customer centricity, you know, how do you get somebody to love their learning, even though it's difficult and rigorous and takes work is a challenge for the whole industry. Final thank you so much. fascinating conversation.
Fadl Al Tarzi:Thank you. Hi, everyone.
Ben Kornell:It's Ben Alex with Ed Tech insiders, postcards from ASU GSB. Today, we are joined by the legend, the one and only Tom Katzman, co founder of noodle. So excited to have you here today.
John Katzman:It's great to be here. Thanks.
Ben Kornell:All right, for our first question of five. Good minutes. Question number one, what do you do,
John Katzman:I've run a series of edtech companies that have scaled well, and the one I'm running right now is called noodle. And we work with universities all over the country, about 30 universities to help them use technology to drive down the cost of higher ed while raising student engagement.
Alexander Sarlin:So how has that gone during the last couple of years, where every university sort of had to suddenly come up with a really thorough online strategy and a way to really make sense of the pandemic world.
John Katzman:You know, working with schools, takes time and patience. And during the pandemic, everybody was sort of panicked. On one hand, we've got to use online better. And then utterly focused on getting students back to campus and all sorts of health concerns. And so it results fast start and couple months ago, you know, you really started getting people to the finish line and getting them to think not about solving today, but solving the next decade. So a lot of universities are now now get it that this was a preview. Right, um, we've got to use tech better.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah. crisis is an opportunity. And it's a long term opportunity to
John Katzman:think yeah, I mean, I thought of it is just sort of speeding up the thing. But it's less that in this space, and more just Oh, my gosh, this is where the world is going. Now, I want to be thoughtful about getting there smart.
Ben Kornell:So we've heard a lot of the dystopian ways that it can play out in the future. And John, you're kind of famous in the space for the John Katzman walks like people go for a walk with you take our listener on a walk of what you're most excited about.
John Katzman:The school to work. Nexus is an exciting space. And most people kind of conceptualize it wrong. And I think we're starting to figure it out. And so on the one side, if I'm gonna walk on one side, corporations are not necessarily the best kind of students, like the things they want to fund are the stuff you need right now for this job, and education that you're going to need for your career. To some degree, they're thinking, well, that's great, but you're probably going to have that elsewhere. And why am I paying for it? So when you think about like, you know, credentials, and Google certificates and all that they're less portable, and they're more useful right now. It's more like training than education. So how do you involve corporations in really the hard work of helping you fund your career, your arc, and at the same time, they need great universities to help them acquire talented people retain them, and upskill them. And I think that space is ever similar to the online space a decade, though, online education was the sole province of really terrible for profit schools with like 3% graduation rates, and traditional schools just weren't even in the game. And the notion of a viable company and downloadable is okay, we're gonna bring them in, and they have come to dominate it. Now look at lifelong learning. And it's probably I don't know, four times the size of the graduate school market. It's a big space, and it's growing, right, the stuff you've learned by the time you're 21 is not going to get you through retirement. So right now, higher ed's been sort of renting space from some platforms, who take the lion's share of revenue, who are building their own brands, and eventually kind of boxy out and so, again, traditional grade schools are not in the Lifelong Learning Sector the way they could be, how can we help them not come in just as a tenant, but come in as an owner, and take that space away that they take the online space?
Ben Kornell:I hear that view. And then in your talk this morning, you talked about the end of the degree, and there's this double sided coin of like, chains can be thrilling, and the opportunity to own you know, the lifelong learning or support for lifelong learning constantly, incredibly scary. What did you mean by that, and maybe talk a little bit about how to make sure we don't fall into the dark side.
John Katzman:There are some false narratives around the ed tech sector. And I think that they are the reason we've had as little impact on outcomes as we have, right, like over the last 30 years, education is more expensive. And none of the outcome measures are dramatically better. Right? So if we want to have impact, we got to think about, well, maybe some of the things that we believe Archer, and one of them, you've just keep hearing people say, Oh, it's the end of the we don't need degrees anymore. We're gonna have badges, you know, we can have certificates. It's like, yeah, and maybe that's true. But every year, the lifetime earnings of college grads grows, the gap between college educated man grows, between graduate school and college grows, every year, these degrees are worth more even as all these folks are saying that the greys are over. So at some point, I think, you know, that narrative and others have to really be examined, because, as I said, this morning, maybe next year, my pumpkin patch will be more sincere. And it'll all work out. And you know, maybe you're just wrong.
Ben Kornell:Maybe also this binary thinking of it works, or it doesn't work, or there's no value or there is value, what we're really talking about is how do we actually build, you talked a little bit about like, student friendly student empowering pathways that could actually navigate the gray space between full degree programs and partial and lifelong learning. And so it's not that it doesn't look pretty honest like that for a venture investor. But it actually is probably much more how it will play out.
John Katzman:And it's an app, right? You're gonna, kids are gonna be around till they're 100. Like, there's no rush gift. And then continue to get, it says as the world changes, and as your needs change, and your interest as a K
Ben Kornell:12 guy always bothers me when people say 21st century learning skills, I'm like, No, our kids are gonna be living on the 22nd. Come on, Alex,
Alexander Sarlin:oh, I just I'm interested in this idea of when corporations jump into the learning space, they want students to know, or students or workers to know just what they need for this current job. And they're not necessarily invested in the long term arc of the student. I definitely agree with that. And we've sometimes seen in the past that universities sometimes have struggled to understand what the jobs of 10 years or 20 years from now will require. So I'm curious to ask about, you know, how can you bring the employers and universities together to really get a clearer vision of what students would need to succeed in their career? Not just the first job, but the second, third, fourth job?
John Katzman:So two core principles behind it? One, there's no right answer for every kid, every student is different, their needs are different, their interests are different. And what's going to work for them is probably different. And the second is that nobody knows what skills you're going to need a week from now. Second Century, right. So there are some core things. I mean, it turns out that people with liberal arts degrees, end up making more money than then the people who get ostensibly more useful, utilitarian kind of degrees, the lines start out the wrong way, and then they cross, right. And, you know, core critical reasoning skills are going to be really useful. The ability to learn and be agile as the job market changes, that's going to be really useful. Any one skills, you know, you know, Python, or how do you work with social networks to write those go away very quickly.
Alexander Sarlin:So the more durable skills, they sometimes call them, underlying everything is more in the domain of the university.
John Katzman:Yeah, what people call soft skills, like yes, relative, the ability to learn with people and iterate around ideas. So a lot of the stuff that universities do is actually still pretty useful. And again, look at the data. And don't assume that skills are as dumb as you think.
Ben Kornell:That's fair. The last question, John is, you know, what's the biggest challenge or what keeps you up at night? You're a pretty optimistic guy, but also very pragmatic. What is that like top or top three biggest challenges or concerns?
John Katzman:Number one, with a bullet in higher ed, where I'm spending a lot of time is the cost of marketing and recruiting. And traditionally, schools spend one to 2% of tuition One on marketing and recruiting and on student acquisition. And the online schools for a lot of reasons, are spending 30 and 40%. In many cases, well, and is that really where we want to be subsidizing through title four and others? Is that really what we want to encourage, you know, those schools that would have spent one to 2%, spend 25% on teaching, and you've got the schools now that are spending like three or 4% on teaching and the 30% on marketing. And we've just, we've just got our heads on a little bit backwards. So how do we put the horse back in the barn and push down the cost of marketing and recruiting and higher ed, before it gets impossible to control
Ben Kornell:resonates with so many of the conversations we had, like, customer acquisition cost versus lifetime value, as well as programmatically, our ability to invest in value added content services is work. It's a conundrum facing all of that tech right now.
John Katzman:Yeah. And look, in the real world, the people spend a lot on marketing and recruiting, this should be less because it's public good. But because education is so hard to measure, there are fewer tools to use to really find the right program for your kid. You know, so you get these reductionist things like US news, but that's not really good counselors, but we've gotten rid of most high school counselors. So it's really it's really hard. And so people look at Google, right? Hey, I'm looking for a program in this. And every year the keywords go up, and they're not doing anything wrong, but the outcome is wrong. And we've got it. We've got to turn it
Ben Kornell:around. Well, John, thank you so much for joining us here postcards from ASU GSB. This is a special mailer. Excited for our audience here this and thank you for everything you do for a noodle Vasa for our space.
John Katzman:It's very kind of you and thank you so much for having me.
Ben Kornell:Hi, everybody, it's Ben Cornell from edtech. Insiders. I hope you're all doing well. We're doing our postcards from ASU GSB segment today, and we're excited to welcome Goutam from springboard. Welcome, welcome.
Gautam Tambay:Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
Ben Kornell:So in our segment, we have three questions. What do you do? What are you most excited about? And what's your biggest challenge? But before that, it's ASU. GSB. It's been a crazy conference. What's the experience been like?
Gautam Tambay:Oh, my God. It is. I don't have to say this positively. But I do think this positively it is in a zoo. We're really excited. Zoo and I am of the four year old.
Ben Kornell:Great, well, let's jump in. So tell us a little bit about springboard and what you do.
Gautam Tambay:Springboard is a career accelerator we enable people to transition into new careers in data science, cybersecurity, software engineering, new economy, careers that didn't exist 10 years ago, but now are highly in demand. Through completely online intensive mental guided programs, some call them boot camps. Really, you know, it's ultimately what we do is we get people into careers and we put our money where our mouth is. So if you don't get a job, within six months of graduation, we'll refund your entire tuition.
Ben Kornell:And recently, I've heard about your expansion into universities. I believe in Maryland, you have a university partnership, how has that gone? And have you navigated like b2c and partnership layer? Yeah,
Gautam Tambay:thank you for that question. Bree, we realized a couple years ago, and a lot of credit goes to my co founder, that there is a segment of people. So we had all these great programs that we were bringing to market direct to consumer and you know, they were having great attack. And I thought that's what else could you need. And we realized that there's a segment of people who will not spend a significant amount of their savings on a educational program unless it comes with a university credential. And that's for good reason. Because universities are well recognized in their in their, in their geographies by employers, it's because they've had generations of their family go to university because they may be an alumni. And we said, how do we bring these great programs that we have? And that the power of that career transformation to this audience who really wants university credentials? So instead of saying we are going to disrupt education by going up against universities, why don't we partner with them and do something together? So that was sort of the thesis of this. That's gone. We launched with a couple of partners about a year ago. And since then, we've grown to have seven partners. We just launched a really exciting announcement yesterday with UMBC, the University of Maryland Global Campus, we're gonna be doing 16 programs with them. So it's been I have been amazed at how quickly that has grown for us.
Alexander Sarlin:One of the things I've always been fired about Springboard is the mentorship model. And I think that's one of the big differentiators among other types of companies. I'd love to hear you talk about sort of the difference between a student working with a mentor versus working with a traditional teacher or even a non traditional teacher.
Gautam Tambay:Yeah, yeah. So one thing we learned the hard way and early on is that for people to have transformational learning outcomes for most people, they need tailored and customized human support. I would say tailor and customize high card support. Today, technologies are in a place where that support mostly has to be human. Could ai do it? Five years, 10 years, 20 years from now, maybe we aren't there yet. Right. And so when we found that out, and it was hard, because we still tried to it without it, people wouldn't complete. We said, what better way than to bring somebody from the industry who does the job already to become sort of a guiding person for them. So every single student talks to a mentor in the industry, say, mentor, every week, on a video call, 30 minutes a week, and you go to a six month program, you graduated talk, haven't talked to that person 26 times, that's really game changing for people because they can start to see a bit of their future selves. And that kind of makes me you meet somebody like that once at a conference like, Oh, this is somebody I can never aspire to be with them 30 times and 26 times, they start to become human. And you say, I can not only am I learning from them, but I can be a bit like them. And they've got my back and they're in my corner. And that's that's a very empowering feeling for people who come from backgrounds who would not have access. Yeah, it's a demystifies.
Alexander Sarlin:Absolutely this concept in psychology called the aspirational role model I love that's exactly what you're talking about there, the person seems like they're sage on the stage, they're doing everything you want to do. And then as you meet, the more you say, you know, I really could see myself being that person in a few years. If I work at it.
Gautam Tambay:I love it. I have not heard of that content, and I'm going to steal it, please.
Alexander Sarlin:So what are you most excited about from the conference here today,
Gautam Tambay:I am excited to just assimilate all of the learnings I've had in so many conversations, because it's been so back to back, right. And, you know, if this has been a zoo, I want an icon by my plane right back home, kind of like being to the zoo, my sort of takeaways from it. So that's what I want to do and be able to sort of bring that painting back to the rest of my team. You know, I'd say this is the take on my learnings.
Alexander Sarlin:Absolutely. Yeah, I feel the same way I get comes at you so fast. And then you have to integrate synthesize.
Ben Kornell:Yeah. So last question are five good minutes is what is one day challenge that you're facing?
Gautam Tambay:Figuring out how to reintegrate into the world as it opens up as an individual as a company as an organization. And there's all these I think nobody's figured it out. I think, you know, Google's back three days a week, but I talked to my friends at Google, and they want to go and they're, like, you know, you can come in. So this whole, like, you know, what's less, it really looked like in the post pandemic world? And how do we do effective work and effective collaboration that integrates the lessons and the good that's inadvertently over the last two years, while still keeping some of the good from three years ago? Is something that, you know, I don't have answers to, and I think about it every day, and we'll hopefully figure it out.
Ben Kornell:Yeah, so many of us when we were going into the early days of the pandemic, had to think through Scenario A, Scenario B, scenario C, and here's how our company is going to survive or thrive and what's good and what's not. And the hope was, at the end of the pandemic, there would be some sort of stable ground where it's now much more predictable future. But actually, there's been like an exponential increase in the scenarios. And there's many dramatic upside scenarios. And there's also still some dramatic downside scenarios. So I think this was a theme that many of the CEOs that we've met with at the conference, are grappling with. But then how do you lead your teams knowing that there's that uncertainty? How have you like communicated these various paths to your team?
Gautam Tambay:Yeah, one thing I've learned is just, I will not always have all the answers. And my team accepts that. And my team is very forgiving, for me not having all the answers. So there are times when I don't know the answers. And I will just say, you know, we're going to try this. I don't know if it's gonna work. But we got to try. It's my job as your leader to point you in a direction. And we'll check it out. And that's going. And if it's not going well, you tell me as I just sort of baring my soul, and being open about my own vulnerabilities, and about my own uncertainties, to the extent that it's not destabilizing for the team, that's been helpful. It also is like weight off my shoulders. So that's been really helpful, just kind of being honest with the team on what I know. And when I don't know, that's been helpful. And then at the same time, sort of, you know, ensuring that we're doing all the canvassing with them, but change is hard, and good change, it's hard to and just acknowledging that and saying, you know, this is hard on everyone, and we're gonna figure it out.
Ben Kornell:Yeah, before the pandemic even hit I often had aligned with my team, which was changes the only constant in education and I do feel like we've had like an exponential dosage of that. So thanks so much for joining us got some five great minutes with you. We're excited to have people check out spring word.
Alexander Sarlin:What's your website
Gautam Tambay:springboard.com
Ben Kornell:Catchy website. Great to have you here today and thanks for the postcard for me to CGS we thank you for having me. It's great to be here. And yeah, thank you for listening. Hello, everyone. It's been Cornell's from ASU GSB and I'm here with Manish from impact metal versity. Welcome to Five Good minutes our segment where we hear from you, the entrepreneur, changing the face of education. So Manish, let's start with the first question. What do you do?
Manish Maheshwari:Let's go to Ben, thank you for having me on your show. Really excited to be here. I run in vector diversity. And our vision is very simple. How do we make education accessible to everyone. And when we talk about education, education, in our view, is not only about making content available, it's also about whole experience of going to a campus having that camaraderie and the social and the community learning. And also the credential, which is like how can you own your own credentials, and use that to get the job that you want? So it's all the combined package of that. And that's what we are trying to work on. And so
Ben Kornell:you're launching it in India? Have you thought about how this competes against brick and mortar universities?
Manish Maheshwari:Yeah, so we don't see that as a competition, but we see them as in like VR enabled to them. So think about it this way, right? I mean, India is a large country, 1.3 billion people, 65% of those are below 35 years old. That's about like 700 million people. So no matter how many physical or brick and mortar colleges you open, you can never cater to that demand. Right? So the solution is not to open more physical colleges, but to create virtual campus virtual colleges, and bring the best education to people wherever they are, in whatever town whatever village they are, if they can shop something on Amazon sitting in their bedroom, why can't they get the best education sitting in their bedroom? Why do they have to crawl somewhere? And why do we have to open hundreds and 1000s of physical colleges, when technology can make everything possible?
Ben Kornell:So you mentioned before that the majority of our students are women? Can you talk a little bit about that dynamic dynamic?
Manish Maheshwari:Yes. So I want to talk about this. Because personally, for me, I mean, you know, focusing on Diversity and Inclusion is very important. And what people really surprised about was when we opened up the admission, for the first batch, more than 50% of the students who applied were women candidates. And when we spoke to them, we realized two things. One was, because in the way the site is set up, it's very difficult for women to leave their town, get the permission from their parents, or get the funds to move to a bigger town go to a larger College, and have access the same network that their male counterparts have. And the second thing is that because they also feel more obligated towards their family, they choose not to enroll for a long term course away from their hometown, and they want to be close to their family, and also devote themselves to more caregiving kind of pursuits. Now, when you think about diversity, you can bring the entire college and campus experience into their house, they can have access to the same network and the same professional relationship, and they can grow their career. And that was quite empowering for them. And therefore, when they learned about this, that they don't have to leave their town, they can have the same access to education that made more and more women to apply to our program. And they also quite blessed that, you know, we have access to such talented woman students, which would not have had access to good education. And by making them part of our first cohort, the quality of the entire batch is going up. And that is very heartwarming for us.
Ben Kornell:So last question, what are you most excited about? And what is your biggest challenge?
Manish Maheshwari:So most excited about? I mean, making sure that we have we can provide quality education to people, even when they can't leave their house, and they can go to a different town or to another country. Our challenge here would be how do we make this really accessible, both in terms of technology accessibility, and cost accessibility, right? When you think about technology, most people think that oh, so Metaverse, you have to have a VR headset. But the thing I want to clarify is that the way we have made this, you're using logical Web VR. So it can work on any laptop, as long as you have access to a browser and a 3g connection. It's like playing a 3d video game. You don't need a VR headset for a 3d video game. But it is still very engaging. I mean, think about kids play pub, G or kids hang out on Roblox the whole day. They don't feel bored. But if you put them on a zoom class for an hour, they have a zoom fatigue. So you got to ask, what is the reason why people don't get bored in a 3d game while they get bored on Zoom? And I think that's the part we are solving for technology saying, Can we borrow some the best ideas from the gaming industry and make it available to people in a way that we can solve the technological access problem. And on the cost side, because we are able to provide things without having the cost of real estate, we can bring the cost of education down and we can also maintain the quality because we can scale at a zero marginal cost here.
Ben Kornell:Wonderful. For our listeners. This is what ASU GSB is all about investment, diversity, changing accessibility, quality interactivity of online learning. We're so excited to meet you Manish and also to cheer you on as you take India and the world by storm. Thanks so much.
Manish Maheshwari:Thank you for your kind words and appreciate you having me on the show.
Ben Kornell:Hi, everyone, it's Ben Cornell at ed tech inside enters here at ASU GSB in the guild suite. We're super excited to invite Carrillo here today from Animoto. He's co founder and CEO. Oh, did the demo on the floor. It's so impressive, basically, I mean, you're gonna tell everyone about it. But this ability to make video, interactive traffic engagement data, I mean, it's the Holy Grail of kind of going from web to to web three, which is dynamic content. So welcome here today.
Kirill Slavkin:Yes, thank you. Thanks both to be here today.
Ben Kornell:So first question in our five good minute segment, what do you do?
Kirill Slavkin:Now first of all, I like, you know, not believing in Israel. But that was one new gray. Like my first sentence. Today, education is the most powerful when Okay, and it's true. Okay. For example, I have like a military background. I spent like five years in Israel attendance forces, and then five years since the Israel Ministry of Defense. And we still decided to make him authentication, because we believe this is the future. And this is the most important things that we need to invest our money, because every time I took my phone and look in my two daughters, I say, Okay, if I will fix something really, really small for them. This is success. Okay. So when we talk about a lot of, actually, it's a Latin word, which means to annotate is it's how it takes a name. And you know, today and we talk about education, it's not about connecting people to content. Okay, so that's about connecting people through content. Okay, teachers and students, you know, you should put few people in the same room given the topic to discuss this shoe learning. Okay? Because good example, it will go back 100 years, can we had libraries, right? So all the content was there, right? So why we need that university and colleges and school. The same happens today, every single valid will, you can always click Get any content, everything in the cloud. But again, we need to build an environment to consume this content. Okay. So it's a good example, you know, when we are taking an online course today, and you can take like the biggest platforms, it might be one person taking the course, might be 1000, but they don't know each other, they cannot communicate. Okay, so actually, is this what exactly we do? Not we bridging the gap between physical classroom and the online world. Okay. And we started with, we want to turn, like passive video consumption to interactive, collaborative user experience, okay, and what we did, you know, today, we have a different platform to deal with. Video, right? But when we started to build it, when it sounds really different, we decided, Okay, we will not build one more platform, we will create a tool that will be able to support existing environments, okay? It means that today, we are agnostic to infrastructures means we can work with Canvas or Blackboard was Moodle, they can use YouTube, Vimeo and other solutions can just take your website and use it not only. So we have an awesome infrastructure, it's enable us to make it simple to integrate with all the solutions can because trust me today, and even before Corona, universities and colleges and buttons, no new content is not enough. But then when they try to bring something unique to their solutions, like operative engagement analytics, it was complicated. Because all they have infrastructures is all they have environments, they cannot just do the content to go to another place. Or do you just have to develop something in the LMS system was not that simple. We provide a layer that covers all their media assets, and provides them collaboration, engagement, of course analytics, because we now want to understand what happened with content.
Ben Kornell:So things I find fascinating about that one is around how you take static or one way content and make it multi layer. And it's not just students annotating or back and forth with the educator, they're actually connecting with the students, it reminds me of like video games that used to be single player and then you could do two player. Now it's a whole world. Why can't we do that for video? What can we do that for digital content. But the other thing that is really fascinating is leveraging existing platforms to reach other people. And we're seeing a new theme and education around building on top of platforms. And that's because even if your product is free to switch from one platform to another platform is an incredible costs. So how you develop new products rather than building the full stack, really figuring out that interoperability and API layer is just a theme we keep seeing. So with that in mind, I'd love to hear like what are you most excited about either about an auto or also just what you've seen at the conference,
Kirill Slavkin:you know, this conference transpose the red portunity to meet your customers, because you know, during this two years, we did everything remotely, we sell the product remotely, but now we can see them you know, it's amazing because, like education, and will not ever be 100% Beautiful the same as our communication was people will never be posted online. Everything will be hybrid. Okay. I don't know believe they show in in 10 years, respond. We'll do every single line. It's always what we hired, most want to meet. So we're talking now and You know, it's a good example that sometimes people do. When you talk with them on Zoom, you thought they look different. Because if someone said like this, you will damage them. And so do you sleep was like two meters guy is different. That's why it's first of all, it's great fortune to meet people. So it used to be great, great, great network. And just, for example, to meet all these peoples, okay, outside of the sudo suite, it will take like six months, right? You can do it here for two days, three days. It's amazing. Okay, so I think this conference is how to call it flagship flagship. flagship.
Ben Kornell:So tell us about a Noto. What are you most excited about? On the business side?
Kirill Slavkin:Yes, first of all, the decision to enhance existing platforms was really, right. Because for example, we are not just thinking about the spectrum or customers. From one side, we can work with NYU, for example. And were you using an AutoP on 1200 courses, each semester, speeches, our students at the same time we work with to you, okay, for all failed platforms. At the same time, we provide solutions to mydlink, okay, was the same product, okay, because of what product is flexible enough to support any use case, is the last video usage. And today, when we will not only to read it, but also value our session today? Once it was on LinkedIn thinking about, we will be able to annotate the session with a lot of great so
Ben Kornell:at Tech insiders immediately.
Alexander Sarlin:I wanted to follow up. There's a number of really interesting Israeli startups at the conference today, and I've been looking a little into the Israeli startup ecosystem. It's the biggest in the world per capita. It's incredible. Tell us a little bit about the Israeli ed tech scene. I haven't been in it for a while. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah, it's really
Kirill Slavkin:funny, because because we have like military background. So most of our friends on this topic, you know, cybersecurity and AI and machine learning. And when we started indications It was what the question. There is no VC for education, Israel, like okay, so it was really challenging, and one was salutary as a company, we did not have even one meetup for education in Israel. Okay, so we started really like, well, it was really challenging. But now it's different now. Like, we have different different governmental projects that support educational startups, they provide like different, you know, grants. Now, it's really different. That's why you see more and more startups coming messages to me. Because, you know, as I mentioned, education is powerful weapon, and we should use it in the right way. So yeah, there we have a good growth network.
Ben Kornell:So our last question is, what's your biggest challenge?
Kirill Slavkin:I think there's a lot of challenges, of course, but human resources, this is the main challenge. This is the main challenge, find the right people to work with the growth of companies, this is the main challenge, okay. And I think this is the most important resource in the world, okay. I will challenge you. If you have a good human resources, you can win any challenge, okay, there is no image. So we really people is the most important and the most challenging part of any company, any startup,
Ben Kornell:but Bret built a friendship with yaki, who is kind of like the godfather of ad tech in Israel. He said the same thing. And, you know, this competition for talent between cybersecurity firms and between ad tech firms and so on. It's something that we're experiencing everywhere. But in particular, in Israel, where there is so much going on, that totally resonates. Well. Thank you so much for being here. Today. Noto check it out. We're really excited to have you on the podcast and representing huge group of Israeli innovators here, ASU GSV.
Kirill Slavkin:Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Alex.
Alexander Sarlin:This is Alex from Ed Tech insiders at ASU GSB. We have OB Felton from flourish labs. OB tell us a little bit about what flourish labs does.
Obi Felten:So we student mental health company. So our goal is to train students to become professional peer supporters so they can support other students who have mental health needs. And the origin of this is that we just don't have enough therapists and counselors to support the ever growing demand. And it takes a master's degree to become a therapist. But we can train people in a few weeks to become a peer supporter. And so we think this is a way to expand the mental health workforce create really meaningful jobs for students, whilst also addressing mental health crisis.
Alexander Sarlin:It's a fascinating idea is really exciting. And I wonder, so have you heard from your users that, you know, speaking to other students that are on age must have a totally different vibe than speaking to a counselor? Tell us about what that's like?
Obi Felten:Yeah, absolutely. So we've actually been co designing the product. We're launching the summer and we've been through the six month co design project with students. And the last episode that sort of speaks to that the most is like one of the students said to me, so I'm looking at these profiles of therapists and this woman says she's got 22 years of experience, like how can she possibly relate to me? You know, how can she possibly understand what my problems are? And it was so interesting because As this generation in particular is looking for something very different from therapy, so therapy was invented by Freud in the 1890s, it's still delivered largely the same way, it's an hour a week, you sit on a sofa. Now, maybe you sit on your sofa and look into a zoom window. But it's pretty much the same model that he invented all those years ago. And this generation is super tribal, they're really intersectional. And they're looking for people that reflect them. And that's very difficult. If you're a black first generation student with OCD, like good luck finding a therapist was like you. But it appears you have a different relationship, because you're talking to somebody who has been in your shoes. So we can match people through our platform with more than two peers who then collectively reflect them. So you might talk to one person about your OCD issues, you might talk to somebody else about you know, being transgender, you might talk to somebody else, because you're really struggling to feel connected, because you're a veteran who has just come back from the war, and everyone else feels really childish around you. And so with a peer group, we can support all that now, we're still going to deliver it in a therapy teletherapy. Like settings, it's still going to be one to one sessions, but we surround people with more than one.
Alexander Sarlin:So interesting. So we're coming out of this global pandemic, there's been a lot of isolation, there's been, it's really a mental health crisis in schools at all levels. I'm wondering how you see this moment as a turning point, do you feel like it's a watershed moment for the understanding of the need for mental health in academic settings.
Obi Felten:So the understanding is definitely really shifted. So the problem is actually been there for a long time. So there was a big study done by the WHO, nearly 10 years ago that showed that 33% of students struggled with substance abuse, depression and anxiety. So this age group has always had mental health problems at a much higher level than general population, which at that time was 15%. Now is about 20%. And students today are over 40%. But that was already before the pandemic, I think what's shifted in the pandemic is, everyone experienced some level of anxiety during the pandemic, so people became very used to talking about it. So the stigma is definitely reducing. And I've never seen this as a topic popping up at board level in companies, you know, exact level. And then increasingly, also college presidents like I think 70% of them last December said this was one of their top issues. Now what to do about that is another question, right, but at least they're recognizing the problem. And they realize that something probably shouldn't be done. Because it for colleges, it has all these impacts. So if 40% of your students mental health problems, it means a large number of those are going to end up dropping out. So it could be as large as 60% of the study is actually a very, and so that's a business problem for them as they don't just have a responsibility to improve the mental health of their students, but they also have a business problem on their hands if people have something out.
Alexander Sarlin:So there's a business incentive for them to take care of their students. And I imagine also a moral incentive that I'm sure they, you know, want to educate. And if they have a student population that suffering from depression, anxiety, substance abuse at record levels, they do education suffers as well, I imagine
Obi Felten:Exactly, exactly. I mean, to me, it's just such a huge motivator that you think now, right in the middle of the pandemic, it was over 50% of students. So if you know, the young people, too depressed and too sad, and too anxious to actually build their own future, then we're all doomed. So that was kind of my motivation of starting the students is that this is where we can make a real difference in somebody's life. Because if they ended up dropping out of college, we all know what impact that has on somebody's life trajectory. Whereas if we can keep them in college and help them deal with their mental health issues early on, they're much less likely to recur and later life.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, one thing that we've covered on this podcast a little bit is this increasing gap between the life outcomes of college graduates, and those who don't get a bachelor's degree, including issues like mental health, chance of substance abuse, chance of suicide, there's so many downstream effects of the graduation moment. So if people are already experiencing this type of mental health issue that threatens their ability to finish degree that can take their whole life completely off track, because it gets compounded by the fact that they then don't have a bachelor's which affects their prospects.
Obi Felten:Exactly, absolutely. And actually, about 70% of all mental health problems show up under the age of 24. So this is the time when mental health problems often appear. It's that transition between high school and college. That also is a time when the brain reaches a certain level of maturity, where unfortunately, some of the most serious mental illnesses also show up so it's schizophrenia and bipolar. Your first year in college is the most likely time you're going to experience it. And so that's really bad because that's the time when people are first away. from home, they have lost their support networks and so on. So it's definitely the time to enter into. Wow, that is really interesting. But only about 3% of students get their mental health care from the university, because counseling centers have been way over subscribed for such a long time, like the weightless are really long. So students end up going elsewhere, they either pay themselves or get their parents to pay for therapy, or they have insurance, but colleges themselves actually don't deliver that much mental health care, they play a really important role because they're on the ground. And there's a place where people can physically go, but in terms of where people get their mental health care, it's not the college itself.
Alexander Sarlin:So at this conference, there's been, I think, a relatively new or refreshed emphasis on mental health across the age spectrum. I don't know if you feel like it's enough yet, probably not enough yet. But I'd love to hear you know, as we've been here, or as you've been looking around the tech space, what gets you most excited,
Obi Felten:what actually gets me most excited is talking to the students. So to be really perfectly honest, the students have been disappointed by what administration's have been doing. So you know, one student said to me, like if I get one more email from my president saying, we really care about your mental health, like the students are self organizing. So there's peer groups that have sprung up at colleges over the past few years across the nation. So our partner is Active Minds, which is the largest network of student mental health volunteers. So they have 16,000 students across 800 campuses, in the US and Canada. And they're largely self organized. They don't ask for permission, they just found a chapter and then they run events, they do this the synchronization campaigns, and they run groups to support each other. So that I feel is like, again, we'll find out this generation, they like much more tribal and they want to support each other, like Millennials don't really care. But gender really does care. So we can tap into that spirit, provide them with some training, which then enables them to support each other more professionally. And then we can turn it into a job. So that's a qualification that they can put onto their resume. And so for some of them, that's just a job that they do as a student. So it's a much better job on campus, and then working dishwashing in the cafeteria, or in the library, it's actually something that's meaningful when they can get back to their community. And that also helps their own mental health, by the way, so you see an uplift on both sides, the person gets support the person who's the supporter, but then for some students that may then need a stepping stone to choose psychology as a major to maybe do a master's in therapy or go into psychiatry, if you're going into med school. And if they don't, frankly, we think that anyone should have some basic mental health training. So whether you're a lawyer and you become a public prosecutor, you know, the criminal justice system is full of people with mental health problems. So having some mental health awareness is really important for that, whether you're going into the police force, or first responder, or, frankly, any manager in any company, like 21% of adults have mental health diagnosis, that means one in five people in your team will struggle the best, like how do you recognize that? And how do you deal with it, that's something that we can train people for while they're in college. So whilst our company is focused on creating this mental health workforce to plug of the immediate need, we also think we can have an impact way beyond that of just creating more people who have been trained in mental health and able to deal with it better as they go forth into whatever they're
Alexander Sarlin:doing. It's fascinating, as I hear you speak to sort of metaphors come to mind here. One is this idea of sort of decentralization of mental health. So instead of relying on your college and their mental health counselors, as a central entity to take care of everything for you, students are turning to each other turning to people like them, and then you're offering them the training to be able to upload all that decentralized so that it really works as well as possible. It also reminds me a little bit of the sort of gig economy stuff we've seen over the last few years, when you say, hey, instead of a work study job in the cafeteria, maybe you're supporting somebody who has a similar mental health issue as you that is such a fulfilling job. And it's a way to really yeah, as you say, potentially change both yours and their life trajectory. Yeah, it's very exciting. I wanted to ask you about challenges.
Obi Felten:Yeah, no, actually just based on the business model. So that's actually our business model. So our long term business model is we're training people to bring them into a marketplace. So this is going to be a gig economy job. But unlike being an Uber driver, which is somewhat soul destroying, if that's going to nourish your soul, so when we think beyond students, that's exactly how we see a thing. So we're building a two sided marketplace where we have people who need support on one side, professional peer supporters on the other and then we'll have insurance reimbursement to
Alexander Sarlin:love it and not only D stigmatizes, it actually almost turns it all around that if you are somebody who's been suffering from any mental health issue, you then become qualified to become a peer supporter of People like you incomes actually, you know something that can help your life?
Obi Felten:Well, it's a unique qualification because actually the qualification that you need to become a professional peer supporters, you need to have a high school diploma and you need to have experience with mental health issues and be in recovery. And when you look at people with mental health issues, the unemployment rates actually about 27%. Because people struggled to hold jobs down. So this is probably the only job you uniquely qualified to do. Because you've had mental health issues in the past.
Alexander Sarlin:It's an exciting vision for the future. Are there any challenges that you see, either with your business or with the sort of mental health space in general right now that you'd like to share?
Obi Felten:Yeah, absolutely. So COVID has been a huge opportunity to D stigmatize. But also, it's showed people that we can deliver these kinds of services via telehealth, right, so this kind of business couldn't have existed, we couldn't build a marketplace where people can work from home unless we have telehealth established. But there's tons of talent to sell. So for us the biggest challenge, we're pretty confident we can train people and bring them into the marketplace. And we're very confident that there's going to be a lot of demand for this product. But insurance companies are only just starting to reimburse for this. So they are used to reimbursing for peer support in substance abuse and addiction. So it's very well established there. But we're applying it to general Youth Mental Health and the codes exists, the coverage exists, but it's done at a very small scale. So one of the challenges for us will be how can we find forward looking innovative insurance companies who realize that therapy won't scale and that therapy is getting more and more expensive. And not everybody needs therapy. This is not a replacement for therapy. But this is something different, it's a different modality that we should be deploying in a much, much larger scale. And so that's going to be like our biggest challenge, I think in the next year is going to be finding those pairs who want to sort of pilot this and then also say,
Alexander Sarlin:that makes a lot of sense. And I hope that you do find that kind of innovative insurance company, whether it's a big one or some kind of interesting amalgam of smaller, you know, new generation insurance, because it seems like a very necessary need. Right? I'll be thank you so much. I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference.
Ben Kornell:Hi, it's been an Alex here at ASU GSB with postcards from the conference. And we're really excited today to have Anthony from bunch welcome, Anthony into the show. Pleasure to be here. Thanks
Anthony Reo:so much for having me.
Ben Kornell:It sounds like you've been smoking a couple times. It's Wednesday. This is conference life. How's the conference contrary,
Anthony Reo:the conference has just been so exciting. And I've just lost my voice. There's so much has been going on so many people to talk to so many events. It's a good way to end it gets the authentic conference.
Ben Kornell:That's great. Well, first question is, what do you do?
Anthony Reo:So I'm one of the cofounders of bunch. And bunch is a daily AI leadership coach that helps millennial and Gen Z managers level up on critical 21st century leadership skills intuitive today.
Ben Kornell:Wonderful. You can tell it's Wednesday, also, because you've got that down? Yeah. Conference, you had to explain that different times. Jesus tell us a little bit deeper, like what's the experience like for someone who's using your app,
Anthony Reo:I mean, there's three things that really define the experience bunch is convenient to today, professionals are extremely busy, particularly Gen Z and Millennial managers, our attention is just the most important resource and you need to be able to fit really rich learning experiences into as long as possible and have it compound over time. It's active learning on the job. So convenient, personalized in the sense that there's really some robust psychology minutes product with a personalized experience from the onboarding on its learner lead and not in Chapter lead, that we're not just taking classroom education, where you're sitting down and consuming content for, you know, minutes and hours, it's gonna lead in the sense that you're not going to get content that's relevant to you. And I guess that's a little bit vague, but it's personalized, and learner led in the sense that we're not putting you through a 36 hour course of which 85%, you will forget right after this is hyper actionable, active learning, we do a two minute tip, you're encouraged to use it. And when you use it, you retain it. And that's relevant for you in your context, whether you're going into difficult one on one, whether you're too busy with meetings, whether you're struggling plenty focus time, whether you're, you know, giving feedback to a team member, it's for you, and whatever your challenges that you're facing in that day in that weekend. It's not just a bunch of theory, that's the experience on a highway.
Alexander Sarlin:And what is the format of this content? So I'm a millennial manager, it just got my daily tip as in, is that a video is a reading? Is it all of the above? Is it something recommended by someone else tell us what the what is actually in the
Anthony Reo:first and foremost, all of the content is inspired by real operators, real leaders, also authors in the space. This is real experiential knowledge. It works type of actionable, it comes from people who have used it. It's not again, just theory. So that's the idea. It's text and audio. But I think the format is the most interesting thing basically crossed like Duolingo with Instagram stories, so it's extremely millennial and Gen Z friendly, it's topical, you're moving through it like you would a Snapchat story. And it's visual, it's exciting, you move through it. And once you're done with it, you level up on these critical leadership skills. But it's engaging, it's quick, but it's packed full of rich, actionable stuff you can use and your business models are you selling directly to these millennial coaches or to the businesses that employ a bunch is completely free right now. So it's we're just out there learning from learners working with a lot of people, you know, learners, but also creators in the space that are creating this content. And we're trying to build a fantastic community around this product. And of course, down the road, we will of course, be offering subscriptions to the learners, those will be reimbursable, from the businesses catch, and, of course, working with businesses to help them identify emerging leaders, but also help them roll this out across the entire workforce. Because the benefit of April product and tech play is that it can reach everyone, the IC that wants to be a manager of the recently promoted tech lead that has no formal training and people skills or soft skills finally has something that they can use, because they can't afford coaches or organization, providing them coaches, trainings aren't really cutting it. I can't read as many books and listen to as many podcasts unfortunately, that will get me by. So here's this personalized solution that has the solutions I need, and is better than Google. And so when I run into these roadblocks, I have some. Yeah, that's the landscape noise. So we're
Alexander Sarlin:here at the ASU GSB conference, there's so many ideas bouncing around. What is something that's really exciting to you about the EdTech space right now.
Anthony Reo:I mean, it's poppin. I mean, this is the biggest ASU GSV of all time, it's actually my first one. So it's been a really rich experience. For me. I think Ed Tech, not only is it just a really kind of hot space, but I think the role of communities in products are awesome businesses is just super exciting for us on the creative side to a lot of creative platforms here. But also on the lender side, or part of the Transcend network, a fantastic ad tech community, shout out to those guys, just the role of being connected. The role of being able to spar with peers, the role of being able to level up with peers, just as role of communities in general is truly, truly exciting. And it of course plays a really important role in punches, ecosystems.
Ben Kornell:And you're based in Berlin, Germany,
Anthony Reo:is that right? I'm personally based in Berlin, Germany, we have offices in New York and Berlin, us as our target market, and you will be much more present now that we're all able to travel again, on the ground in the US.
Ben Kornell:Yeah, one of the themes of the conference for us has been a tech goes global. And like four years ago, the conference was mainly us with a heavy dose of China. And now the China contingent is almost all gone. And we're just finding people from sectors all around the world and cross pollination. So tell us a little bit about the challenge. You mentioned that COVID, and travel and all of that, but also like growing a freemium product into subscription. It's a common journey that people are trying to navigate what are the biggest challenges that you're tackling these days?
Anthony Reo:I think for us, the single most important challenge and focus for us is to create the most engaging, learner experience. Like that takes time that takes no one's attention. It takes patience, it takes a ton of r&d and user research. You spend a lot of time with these learners. I think we've really kind of nailed this two minutes a day, you know, just replace that morning coffee moment, replace Instagram with bunch that came from a lot of user research, understanding what that real real estate in their lives. What is that available real estate? How can we take your social media habit and turn it to something a little bit more productive? I think that was the foundation. But we're still spending as much time with these learners as we possibly can, turning our single player experience into a multiplayer experience that you can involve your own personal community and create your own Lifelong Learning cohort. Like all of that, that's just our single most important focus. And that brings me back to the community points. Each of us as individuals have our own communities as well. And I think more and more, we're seeing a lot of these tech products, kind of, yeah, eventually, they're all gonna be all gonna be but like, the consumer will win the day, I think a lot of us believe and the more power we can give them, the better. And that takes
Alexander Sarlin:a lot of sense. Fantastic. I wish you great luck, and we're really excited to see it. I'm going to download it and play it.
Ben Kornell:We're excited to use your product.
Anthony Reo:I think you've done a good job with my coffee.
Ben Kornell:I'm not even on Instagram. So I've got plenty of time really.
Anthony Reo:We call it the moment is what our users have told us professional boundaries. It's kind of real estate in the morning, where you just need that little boost of confidence to get into the day. And ideally, that timestamp can be used with the
Ben Kornell:leadership though. Yeah. Thanks so much. I love that.
Alexander Sarlin:Thank you, Anthony. Real bunch AI. Thanks for listening to the ASU GSB postcards from Ed Tech insiders. We want to thank all the GSB folks for inviting us to this incredible conference, and we looking forward to next week's episode of week in edtech. Thanks for listening