Guest: Philip Cutler, CEO @ Paper
Topics This Week:
Guest: Philip Cutler, CEO @ Paper
Topics This Week:
Alexander Sarlin 0:04
Welcome to Ed Tech insiders. In this podcast we talk to educators and educational technology investors, thought leaders, founders and operators about the most interesting and exciting trends in the field. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an educational technology veteran with over a decade of work at leading edtech companies.
Ben Kornell 0:27
Hello, everyone, and welcome to This Week in edtech. I'm your host, Ben Cornell with my co host, Alex Sarlin. Here today, we have a huge day in ed tech, lots of news. So we're doing a double episode. And not only do we have many headlines to bring you we also have an interview with our first unicorn CEO ever on the podcast, Phillip color from paper. We're really excited for today's episode and Well, we hope you'll hang with us as we walk through everything happening in the EdTech universe. Let's go to the headlines
number one, Alex.
Alexander Sarlin 1:15
So our first headline today it comes from an ad search article a very interesting initiative coming out of Facebook slash meta. It's about how meta is starting to help colleges recreate their campuses in the metaverse basically create Metaverse campuses, and it's clearly a sort of early move to try to create fully online and fully immersive education experiences. A meta as you know, is one of many companies, especially big tech companies that are all sort of in a big, epic fight to sort of own the metaverse. We also saw Apple this week announced a new device that will come in a couple of years. That's their sort of immersive device. We're seeing Microsoft make moves, we're seeing Disney make moves. So the metaverse the war for the metal versus on an education is one of the fronts in which it will be fought. Interesting times. What do you think about that? This movement?
Ben Kornell 2:16
Please, Lord, tell me they are not creating metal fraternities or I'm going to I'm just gonna give up on the whole thing. Please.
Alexander Sarlin 2:25
Know what happened? I mean,
Ben Kornell 2:26
my take on this, Alex is that, you know, Facebook, once again, inadvertently makes a huge education play. And it is always challenging when we in ed tech are a rounding error on a big tech corporate initiative. But this one actually could be really important because meta investing in the metaverse promises to be one of the leading platforms where people will, you know Metaverse their lives, I strongly believe that you know, we're actually going to be in a multiple Metaverse future where students are going to be choosing a Metaverse and then that likely converts them to lifelong users of that metaverse. And so this play into education is an early adopter kind of play. But I also think, you know, for any kind of platforms that we've seen, people will want to be able to switch between platforms. And so, you know, it'll be interesting to see how much lock in Facebook can get from people attending a Metaverse on their platform, versus, you know, people being able to switch back and forth between all of the big tech meta versus as well as the emergent tech meta versus so that's my take, what's your thought?
Alexander Sarlin 3:45
Yeah, so So I thought about this a lot this week, and I wrote a piece for the tech insiders newsletter and my, my thoughts are maybe a little odd and controversial on this. I'm not sure how our listeners whether our listeners will will agree with me on this. But my take is basically that, you know, the concept of multiple meta versus like you're saying is actually kind of not really what the web three folks mean, when they say Metaverse, I mean, we already have lots of gaming worlds. We have Second Life and World of Warcraft and Roblox and fortnight which have 10s of millions of active users. Those are immersive worlds with 10s of millions of people in them. All sorts of things are happening. But I think the idea of the metaverse is really that it is the one Metaverse like the one internet. And with that in mind, you can very much see why these big tech companies are all in the big fight to make the metaverse because it almost is by definition singular. They're trying and I totally agree with you that education would be one of the inroads to the metaverse, especially because it would work for you know, college students and high school and maybe even eventually K 12. Other ones would obviously be social networking, gaming, and work like meeting. So you know, we saw this week Microsoft announced a tool called mesh very recently, that is sort of their competition with Facebook's immersive meeting tool. So I think these companies are all looking and saying, Where can we insert the metaverse into people's lives in a way that actually might be interesting? And if we can, how can we, you know, then start to own it. And from what I've seen over the last couple of decades, even though it seems a little dystopian to have a single private company owning something as powerful and big as the internet. I don't think the government has regularly especially the US government has done any kind of good job of regulating this and I think these companies just have a little bit of free rein to to run with it. So I think, you know, you see Disney just poached a Big Apple executive this week to build their Metaverse strategy. Microsoft owns Minecraft that's one of the biggest existing virtual worlds if they were to put Minecraft and and World of Warcraft, which they're buying for Activision in a single Metaverse and put schooling in it to be pretty hard to resist. So I think this could be one of the big fronts for for tech companies for a long time. And I think education is going to be, like you say, a rounding error to some extent, but also maybe one of the main battlefields on which this on which this big tech throwdown happens. And frankly, I think it will probably end with a single company getting sort of owning, owning the metaverse and, you know, for all intents and purposes, that may not be true all the way around the world. But if you look at what happened with with social media, or even with music, you know, there's no reason why there should be one serious music platform in the world. But there is Spotify is much bigger than almost everything else, even including companies like Apple Music or Amazon. So I think sometimes the winners do take off and it may happen with the metaverse.
Ben Kornell 6:57
You know, I always love your analysis. And you're right when you say it's a dystopia, because first, the second that I was thinking that Mark Zuckerberg was finally going to go to a virtual frat, his constructed University and now I'm grappling with the fact that we may all live in a Minecraft Metaverse where everything is block shaped. Ultimately, I think it's, I think it's really, really unlikely in fact, like, you know, zero probability chance that there is a singular Metaverse, in part because that would be too powerful for any company and governments would absolutely be threatened to their core purpose. And while the US government is definitely not proactive, Europe would have a field day with a singular Metaverse and all of the, you know, not only that, but if you think about how they regulate trade and labor and all of that stuff, that would be a really tough Metaverse to run in the EU. And I would on top of that, I think that consumers really like choice. And that, well, Coke is the big company, there's always a Pepsi. And I think people like the alternative and people will gravitate to the alternative. And you know, ultimately what you'd have to argue is that switching costs, plus network effects become so incredibly powerful. That the fall off of going to the number two Metaverse versus the number one Metaverse, it'd be such a much more horrible experience that you you know, you have to go to number one, and you can't port anything over to number two. And I think that's just really unlikely, especially given that all these big companies are going after it. You know, if I'm a virtual real retailer, I would not want to be stuck in a binary. You know, all my chips are on this Metaverse versus that Metaverse, I'm going to be multichannel. What I will say for the those of us in the education space, though, is that we may end up defaulting people into meta versus based on the decisions of, you know, k 12, or higher ed institutions, adopting a singular platform because it's much more likely given their subscale that they will pick one and say, Hey, you want to attend, you know, Virtual College, you come to us on this metaverse. And that, you know, we're actually seeing tons of users getting exposed to the G Suite through K 12. And it creates powerful incentives for people to become lifelong Gmail users, and cloud and you know, Chrome and computing and you name it. And so again, like I'll avoid that some speech around Google and education. But what we're finding is education as a means to the end of locking in users and building a user audience. I could totally see that happening. And I think it's worth watching really closely.
Alexander Sarlin 9:58
Yeah, well Really quick last comment on that because I think that was a terrific analysis. You may be right that there wouldn't be a single Metaverse in maybe two, I remember when Android first launched. And when Google basically tried to break the monopoly of Apple, owning all the app stores, and basically being the platform in which, you know, mobile, mobile, everything was happening. And at first, it seemed like, you know, going to be a big uphill battle, but they got there. And by taking a different strategy, and now you have, you know, basically two to two big winners in the mobile space in that particular segment. And you know, Samsung, a lot of that was built on Android. I think you're right, that there may be two, but I don't think there's going to be a whole lot because it's very expensive to build these. And there's huge network effects in every different way. When they start getting built. It's going to be hard to create a new Metaverse once. They're ones that really exist. I mean, I know we're wearing our science fiction hats right now a little bit, but But I definitely hear you about European Union, you're also going to see places like China, perhaps create their own or have insane regulations, the way they've done. I won't say insane, but you know, very high high regulations, the way they've done with the Internet. It's gonna be a wild ride, but but I'd be surprised if there are no, there's more than more than two major meta versus if there are any at all. I just think that maybe maybe one for Europe and two in the US that kind of thing. But I don't know if it's going to go that much more than that. And you're right. Those companies will have insane power, unbelievable power over our lives. If things really start happening. They're including in
Ben Kornell 11:34
education. Yeah, all good points, and also a really great point about the intersection between politics and metaverse. Like, if there is a eu Metaverse, or there are two in the US, how does that actually affect geopolitics? And who has access to which better versus under which rules and regulations? And when we think about that from an edtech and learning perspective, okay, what, what then are the implications on how kids or early learners or college students are exposed to that, so fascinating to think about how that's going to play out. And you know, a big signal to everyone that Facebook is going to be a major player. Speaking of major players are headline number two is guild coming in with a huge $175 million round guild many of you will know as the unicorn that aggregates Community College content, works with employers offer career pathways, and celebrates with investors like Steph Curry. But turns out they're not no longer an ad tech unicorn. They are a benefits unicorn, they have converted to being a benefit platform. The word from Matt tower, thank you shout out to Matt tower for your your coverage of this guild is a platform for employee benefits made possible by a b2b payments data layer. I didn't hear education, or learning mentioned in that new statement of vision. Is this a pivot? Alex? Where is this actually doubling down on something that guild has been building towards?
Alexander Sarlin 13:14
I would, from the coverage, I think it's a doubling down. I don't think it's a pivot away from education as much as a natural extension when you're getting to be as big as gild is you have I think Oprah is in this investor round. And it's just really massive. I think you need to tell a story about what about how you're going to eat the next the next world? And I think just, you know, we all we know, on this show how people can look askance at education and learning as a, as a big as big market as it is. i My guess is that they are you have, you know, Rachel Carlson in these articles saying, it'll include the products that sit around education, everything a worker would need to know to move into middle class and then thrive there. And I'm guessing what she probably means by that is not only education benefits, but parenting benefits, but benefits that for leave, or anything that would make somebody's life easier when it comes to improving it, including education and sort of with education at the core. I'm it's a little bit of a squishy story, but I don't think it's just that they're becoming the new, you know, HR platform. I think it's really that they're, that they're expanding out from the specific type of education as a benefit they've been doing to all of the surrounding supports that students actually need to succeed there. Yeah,
Ben Kornell 14:41
that's great analysis. And I do think that there's an element of kind of pulling on a thread that they've been pulling for a while. When I heard this news. I thought that there were three potential stories behind the news. One, things aren't going really well and they needed more powder. they needed more money. And they needed a different vision or a bigger vision to try to drive to that. I think that that's unlikely, just given the type of investors that they brought in $175 million is not a patch job. It's not a bridge. And that's serious cash. And I do also think that the revenue and the stickiness that guild has demonstrated, while I'm, I often look at their top line revenue, you actually have to look down a couple of layers to, you know, what was their pass through to get to their real revenue. I have, you know, in all the reports I've seen, it's been growing, and other people have tried to try to crack corporate, you know, development and upskilling. And they are not anywhere close to guilds level of penetration, scale and impact. The second story that I could see is that this is really taking a channel approach. And when we, when we have b2b sales, the most common thing you can do to grow, is actually push more products through your existing channel, rather than trying to acquire new customers. And I think that this is what you're they're going. And you know, once you've got the trust of the learning, czar at Walmart, and who probably sits within the HR function, or people quote, unquote, function, why wouldn't you layer on some of these other employee benefits? You know, because that's often how those corporations are thinking of it. What worries me or would worry me about that is if you're a community college partnered with guild, how much are you going to continue to be the focus of the company and the packaging and repackaging and distribution of your products, versus like them finding other products to push into the benefits layer 3/3 story, which I think it might be a little bit of all of these. But the third story that's most interesting is CEO persona, really driving the evolution of a company and Rachel Romer Carlson, you know, I knew her back when she was Rachel Romer, her dad, Chris Romer, you know, active in Colorado, her, her grandfather, superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, as well as I believe Governor of Colorado. This is she has made an incredible play in terms of positioning herself as the new female CEO, who is able to build a huge company, manage family, and create a workplace where people from all sorts of backgrounds are welcome. And now she's essentially offering that for other companies to buy, which is, you can create a place that supports the whole worker. And you can see like Oprah, and Steph, these are strategic investors, designed to create PR and press that creates business momentum for them. So I, I will say, you know, we don't have that many superstar ed tech CEOs, a lot of people actually take a pretty low profile. And Rachel is out front on social issues. And I think this is a big double down her as a personality, and really raises the question of like, where could guild go with that theme? I don't know if any of those resonate with you, Alex. Oh, 100%. I
Alexander Sarlin 18:20
think that was a fascinating breakdown. I think of those three stories. They're, they're all meaningful. I think the second one resonates the most with me, because I think that that land and expand strategy makes a lot of sense. It's not just that guild is working with big companies, it's working with the biggest companies, it's working with the biggest employers of frontline workers in the country. And when you are working at that scale, and you had, like you said, you built the trust, there's a lot more you can offer. That said, I would offer maybe a slight variation on your first story about them needing the powder, I don't think they need the powder. I don't think they need the money, because they're running out of money or anything like that. But what I do think they may need is they may need to offer more to their students to get them to actually stay and complete the education experiences that their their guild is offering. I mean, anybody who's worked in this space knows, it sounds amazing to say, Hey, you're a Walmart or Chipotle, you know, Disney, you know, employee, you can get access to a to a degree to actually get them to the finish line there. It takes an enormous amount of work and a lot of people and I'm wondering if this suite of additional services may be basically ways to remove obstacles to completion, which we know are enormously you know, basically what what keeps people from completing decrees working people from completing degrees in every sector in every state. So I wonder if it's almost that they're they're expanding their suite to actually ensure they can deliver outcomes for both the companies and the learners realizing that it's not just about giving them access, you actually have to, you know, take a little bit of a whole A whole a whole support approach, which we've seen you and I have seen in K 12, happening more and more mental health services, loans, I mean, all the things that you need to actually move forward in life, it's not just access to education. So I wonder if that's sort of the play too, is that they're trying to offer more. And that's sort of a win win for everybody, you know, offer more to actually get to the completion
Ben Kornell 20:21
rate. So they want to see, yeah, don't be surprised if the next company you work for provides a childcare discount offered to you by guild. So by it's like, parental leave programs and support offered to you by Guild, and oh, by the way, if you wanted to complete your master's degree, or, you know, get those last 10 credits to get your undergrad degree, we will also offer that I think there's a move here that is also moving from frontline employees up to, you know, mid level employees as well. And I know her narrative is around, you know, let's move everyone into the middle class, and then help them thrive there. And then thrive there is about your mid level managers. And so what do you have, when you have a b2b channel, you sell new products, we also sell to more users within those companies. I'm really fascinated by this one. And it's a, it's a great business case study to be written here, a playbook of how to climb the ladder of value. And so hopefully, they can pull it off. It's super ambitious. And at this valuation, there's less room for error.
Alexander Sarlin 21:35
As a segue to our next somewhat similar story, actually, I think, part of what also why guild is getting the attention of these incredibly celebrity investors and just why Rachel Carlson is such a, it's such a subtle star right now, is because guild is also doing something that's very important for our moment in time, you know, we're at a time with incredible inequality, where service workers have just gone through hell, you know, for years, I think that there's a, there's something that just feels really right on the pulse of of the world right now to be able to provide meaningful pathways to those frontline workers who feel feel stuck. And, and you know, so not to be out of done, you know, to give that $175 million round. And then it's just today multiverse which is a British ad tech company started by the son of Tony Blair. So there's a little bit of parallel there with Rachel Carlson's background and government, family background and government just announced the $220 million series D round, making it a second European and tech unicorn, after go student in Vienna with a $1.7 billion valuation. So that is big news, especially for European ed tech and multiverse. You know, the name sounds like it's a Metaverse kind of kind of play, but it isn't I'm actually not entirely sure why it's called multiverse but it's really all about internships and apprenticeships, I should say apprenticeships, it's about bringing people directly into companies, with coaches so that they can start, they can basically work instead of going through college, they can go directly to employer partners, they have 500 organizational partners, and you have about 8000 people, instead of just going to school, they can go directly into work, and then learn while on the job with coaches. And basically they become apprentices. So it's a major apprenticeship play on a continent that really does know how to do apprenticeships in amazing growth there. I think that money is going to be used to go to go broader and broader and have more and more people, maybe even in more regions. What do you think about about multiverse and our second European ed tech unicorn ever?
Ben Kornell 23:53
Well, first, I wonder how much they can claim? A you know, European because they're co headquartered in New York City. And so it's like straddling the Atlantic a little bit, but I'll give it to them. You know, I do think that it's not surprising to have a unicorn in your focused on upskilling space. I think the biggest surprise is that goes student was the first one doing tutoring, to be honest. Because if you think about models that leverage career based learning, they've been around for 50 to 100 years in all parts of Europe, and they've kind of gone out of fashion for a period in the US, and now are just coming back. What I find really interesting is this, the business model here, where there's the it's almost like a recruiting fee that the businesses pay to create this influx of students. And I think that that largely fits with large companies. You mentioned Cisco and Verizon and boxes, companies that they work with. I think the core Question is for smaller companies, whether they can truly afford a like apprentice fee, because that will totally affect their total addressable market. It also apprenticeships are an incredible way to de risk the hiring. And in Europe, when you hire someone, you're stuck with them forever. I mean, basically, good luck trying to terminate an employee in Europe. And so I also think the incentives for employers to get apprenticeships right and then hire the right people, really, really high incentives to get it right. Whereas in the US, I think the the kind of norms around that, as well as the laws are much more fluid. The mentorship model is something we've seen, Springboard is a Goutam buzz on our postcards from ASU GSB. It's a model we've seen in b2c models as well, I think they do a university partnership model, the mentorship model can be quite profound with bigger companies, because you can actually use the company's own employees as the mentors, and you're creating connections between frontline employees. And we're senior employees creating stickiness. So all of that very interesting. I think that
Alexander Sarlin 26:14
as of this moment, that that is aspirational for multiverse, I think as of right now, they employ their own coaches, sort of and mentors. So they train them internally to sort of help these apprentices make their way in a company and learn on the job. But I agree with you that they have a scalable approach, and one that I'm sure they've thought enormously about is having the mentors be within the company. And I think that works really well. I just find it so interesting how many parallels there are between Guild and multiverse, they're both really about helping, just sort of changing the face of the workforce, changing the face of what the pathway from education to employment actually looks like. And multiverse is arguably a little more more radical in that it in some ways, almost pushes traditional higher ed to the side and says, Hey, you know, you can come directly to Verizon, or box, and you'll be able to work there, I think most of their their learners are actually I shouldn't speak to this, I don't know how many of their learners already have some or any college. But I can this model really sort of seeks to displace, you know, higher ed as the core pathway to how you get a good and middle class job. And guild has something similar comes from a different direction. But it's basically saying, Hey, we're going to take the cost. So one thing they have in common is built, both of them are free to the learner, which is really key, right? So so in multiverse, the cost is borne entirely by the employers. In fact, the apprentices and learners earn a salary because they're working for the company, while they're learning. And then guild in a similar way, as long as you stay working for the employer, the employer is footing the bill for your education. And I mean, in a time when people are so unhappy about the cost of education, higher education, both of these are really viable approaches to shift the bill back into the employer. And I'm surprised they've grown quite as fast as they have that it makes sense that they've grown that fast. And I think the fact that they're both children of, of famous politicians, and that they both are, you know, very well connected, I'm talking about you and Blair. And Rachel Carlson gives both of them a little bit of an advantage in just being able to walk into these corporate boardrooms. And while people right off the bat, so exciting times, well, and
Ben Kornell 28:38
also, that's such a great insight in that they, their ancestors are connected with government. And the new way to scale things is not through government anymore. It's through multinational corporations. And if you think about how challenging it would be to create a European wide government education entity, it's impossible. But if you can attach yourself to multinational corporations across all of the different geographies, regulatory environments, and so on, in Europe, it's actually one of the most effective ways to break the biggest challenge in the past and ad tech, which was that EU was actually just a bunch of really small markets that are really hard to crack. It can be one market, if you're leveraging employers as the the through line. And also, I do think that it really puts universities on their heels because universities have been the they've been sourcing international talent for specific regions. So you almost have the flip where the university anchors people and makes them come to the the geographic space. Now the company is basically making that education distributed out to all of the geographies so you can Imagine eventually, the multiverse or guild offering that benefit could exist in Sub Saharan Africa or in South America. And it's at the same quality that's being offered in the US or EU. That could be game changing in those developing countries.
Alexander Sarlin 30:19
Absolutely. I love your point about corporations or the way you scale it. These are both people with government backgrounds. But instead of looking to government looking to states or countries to do this, they're saying, yeah, if we want to go big, fast, you go to Cisco, and Walmart, not England.
Ben Kornell 30:38
In our listeners, think that we endorse that wholeheartedly as like all roses. There's definitely some pros and cons. There's some trade offs with that strategy. And actually think Topic number four, is a really great connection to this. So sauna is a Finnish company, and they acquired Pearson's K 12, learning content business in Italy. And they announced the group's Strategic Growth ambition for 2030. Cinema is probably the education company you've never heard of. That's because it was a media company. First, they bought up newspapers all across Europe, specifically in non English speaking language countries. And as they started buying those newspapers, and then eventually digital media outlets, they saw learning as an as a parallel system. And so they've been buying left and right content companies learning companies that specifically cater to the individual language culture and learning standards of countries not served by English language press, or English language learning companies. And now they're a multibillion, I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 billion, that they have total in revenue. And they're investing over 10 million in the development of digital learning platforms for secondary education. So they and ultimately, you know, this acquisition that we talked about is about 190 million in euros. Sinoma is one of the biggest roll up companies in all of Europe, and no one's really heard of them. And I think this is the opposite strategy. Like let's go with a multinational corporation, and get penetration in every single region. Sonoma publicly traded, by the way, is going market by market and picking up the small providers that really understand the unique facets of that market. And then is aggregating them together and unified learning platforms, unified media, content, etc. And I think it's such a fascinating strategy, because whenever we talk to an investor, for any startup, it's like, is the TAM big enough. And what sama has done is said, each of these deals on their own, the TAM is quite small. But when you add them all up, it creates an incredibly defensible business, and an aggregate really attractive portfolio.
Alexander Sarlin 33:05
Yeah, I don't have much to add to that. It makes a lot of sense. It's really It's interesting to see a media company looking at education content as sort of a means to to pursue that kind of strategy. I think we've seen some, some media companies do that kind of thing where they buy newspapers or public publishers, or, you know, small media companies in different targeted markets and sort of roll them up, but I can't think of seeing it in education. And it's just, it's really interesting to see a company look at educational content through that kind of strategic media lens.
Ben Kornell 33:40
Yeah, and one of the things that popped out to here is started as a media company now 75% of their revenue, nearly $2 billion coming from the learning business. So their valuation is largely now driven by the learning side of the house, even though they started as a media conglomerate. So we've talked a lot about us unicorns, we've talked about Europe, where else should we go in the world Alex?
Alexander Sarlin 34:07
So we'll do a quick round because there was you know, we've talked in the last few weeks about some of the Indian edtech and their bide US has had some some bumps and there but now they're trying to head to the US. There's some big rounds coming in India as well we're seeing all the all the money's coming through this week. So we saw Indian at tech company physics Wallah become a unicorn, the newest edtech unicorn out of India, which there are a number with $100 million series a funding and that's a that's a company that charges students as low as $4. So it's designed for a really large low income market like India, and it's all about getting paying subscribers to be able to learn physics and other science topics in efficient ways. This On this series A came from GSV and Westbridge. And it's it's actually has something a little bit in common with a Sonoma in that it's starting in sort of the villages, it's starting in the rural areas of India, but it's starting to become a hot commodity grown nine fold over the last year in terms of their their revenue. And just one of these groups that is just this is feels like a story that would have been two or three years ago, you know, pre pandemic, when this sort of was no, there's no cold water splashed on things yet, where a company starting in rural India can just grow so quickly, even charging so little per student that they can, they can get $100 million, Series A. So that's exciting to see we also saw queue math, raise $57 million, that's nothing to sneeze at, especially right now it's a lot of money. Because it's a personalized learning platform. It's focused specifically on math. So you're seeing you know, math, and science. And then scalar, which is founded in Bangalore is all about technology. upskilling, they also raise $50 million. And people think that the you know, this is all about acquisitions. So similar to what you're seeing with with Baidu is acquiring I think they're party to 10 companies this year scalars, raising a lot of money. And because so many other Indian ad tech companies are struggling, there's been 3600 employees laid off in 2022. So far, there may be some big bargains in terms of scooping up companies that are sort of facing post pandemic moment when students have gone back to school and are turning away from edtech. So three big rounds of 50 million to $100 million for Indian edtech companies all being announced this week. What what is your take on that?
Ben Kornell 36:49
Well, a couple takes on it. One is, you know, you see some of these numbers, and you see the revenue and you wonder when the deal actually closed, you know, 65 million for physics Wallah. With a 1 billion valuation, that's nearly at 20 million times revenue valuation, which is kind of what we saw six to eight months ago, not what we're seeing now. And you've got to wonder what the burn rate is, you know, generally speaking, the rule of thumb for our listeners is that, you know, whatever someone raises in around, they expect to burn over the next 24 months, because investors do not want the additional dilution by raising more than you would need over a 24 month, you know, maybe 36 on the outer end. So you've got to assume physics, wala is going to be burning 50 million a year, Q math burning 25 million a year scaler burning 25 million a year, that's high burn in a market where your average customer value, maybe as low as $4 per month. And on the cautionary side. So second thought is, there is becoming a sense of a winner takes all kind of mentality for India. And bad news may be one of those winner takes all you know, maybe like our first conversation, there's two or three major players. But there's a bit of a space race here to roll it all up. And some of this money coming in for acquisition some of this money coming from market consolidation makes sense. But ultimately, all of these people cannot win. So some of these are going to be losers. Therefore, the third thing would be that India, if people can figure out how to incubate grow and scale in India, and then leapfrog into other developing markets. No, that is a game changer. And that's where that's why we're so intent on watching by Jews and their international expansion plans. Oddly, they're going to the US, you know, might actually make more sense for them to go to the lat M or something like that. I think the idea that you get a huge lead by building up a great engine and business in India, and then you enter, you know, small and mid markets across the developing world, that could be a playbook for growth. The last thing is, you know, it's possible that we've made too big a deal out of the downturn, 3600 employees laid off with the magnitude of the Indian edtech market, or the Indian market in general. I mean, that's just a no offense to the those individual employees, that is a drop in the bucket. And when it compares to the kinds of layoffs we're seeing here in the US market, it may actually be a more resilient market than than our market is. And when you think about the cost of each employee in the Indian market, the kind of power of layoffs to drive cost savings is reduced. So you either have to, because it's maybe a fifth of the cost there. You'd have to lay off five times as many people to have the same effect as you would in the US. So definitely, like a really interesting moment in India. It feels like a space race. I wish Do postcards from Bangalore or something like that? Because I do think it's an exciting time for the Indian ed tech scene.
Alexander Sarlin 40:07
100%. And, you know, it's funny because we've, you know, a lot of our headlines this week have been about these, these big rounds that, as you say maybe have are a little bit sort of lagging indicators. Maybe they were, they were closed a few months ago, they probably were and might be a little bit cooler now. But we're not even at the end of our big are huge rounds. So let you want to just do a quick run through of the m&a Before we get to our game, Ben, let's do this real fast, because there's just so much and we'll of course, as always, we will put the notes and links to all of these stories in our in our show notes. But so we saw go one, which is the Australian at Tech unicorn, does corporate training, get $100 million at a $2 billion valuation to upgrade its existing platform. So that's another 100 million dollar round. We saw teaching aid platform Ed Rolo raise $40 million in a series B, that's all about content, improve the way resources and content that the school is used for, for teaching learning. That's a 10 year old company with over a quarter million students, we saw a $30 million round for our compliance training platform. But through GSP, a platform called Athena with an E, we saw a Dillo, a Spanish Madrid based white labeling platform for customized e learning race, $64 million. And we haven't seen numbers like this for a while back down unless I'm forgetting least
Ben Kornell 41:33
three months. And by the way, I will also say the dollar is super strong right now. So when you see these rounds, and they're in markets, where they're in a different currency, and the dollar because of interest rates, is trending stronger, the buying power of these rounds significantly goes up, I think it's something like, you know, six to 12% increase in the buying power of the dollar in some of these in developing markets, maybe not versus the euro. But overall, I mean, these are huge rounds that will ultimately, you know, Crown some of these companies de facto as the winner before the race has really even begun. Yeah. And you
Alexander Sarlin 42:17
know, if the funding does continue to sort of lag from here on out, then the companies with these 10s of millions of dollars to spend can go on an incredible buying spree or just accelerate past because they think they can work without a lot of without the same amount of competition with every other every other company sort of being strapped and having to lay people off. It's a it's a it's a vital time. There were a bunch of companies that got you know, smaller, relatively smaller rounds Biblio of British ed tech company is I think this may be a rumor, so we don't want to report unless it's for sure, but they said that they are going to announce a $15 million injection for working with digital access to textbooks that's reported by Sky News, prisms, VR, that's a VR mathematic to VR company. We have raised 4 billion Calendly LATAM company for playability. Raise three Kira learning which is a sort of deep computer science course creator, led by Dr. Andrew Ng's AI fund and Drang of Coursera got $6 million seed round a million dollars for learn averse, which is an education Metaverse platform with over a million users, you know that I feel like they're gonna get eaten someday by the Facebook's and Microsoft. But let's see what they can do. Uni app raised a million dollars at a seed fund a billion euros and
Ben Kornell 43:34
a seed fund round they're doing simplifying admissions processes for International Education. I mean, she's simplify, got about a million dollars. So we saw, we've seen you know, a dozen funding announcements this week, many of which are $50 million or higher. That is wild. We would not have guessed that last week. And a couple of mergers as well. ServiceNow acquired a company called hitch for AI powered skills mapping for enterprises. And Riverside insights acquired a company called aperture education. I'm doing these as rapid fire because I know we're a little low on time here. But we'll we'll provide all the links and quite a quite a moment, isn't it? I would not just wouldn't have seen this coming. But I wonder if it's just the sort of the last gasp the last big set of announcements and then it's going to go quiet or if next week we'll be saying a few more 4050 $60 million rounds. Well, typically we do see things quiet down in the summer. COVID days, people didn't go on vacation. So we just had hot summers, where people were closing rounds. But this is actually a common time of the year you know, your close out the spring fundraise sprint, as well as some fiscal years our July one so this is an opportune time. It's also a time where people are holding on to their fundraising announcements a little bit longer, in part because there was so much news of fundraising rounds it blended in, in the past. But also, you know, the closed process takes a while. And once people had the news, it's very hard to make, you know, any belt tightening moves when you're leading headline is you're rolling in cash. And so, you know, I do think even for those who do have more money, that mentality is meaningfully different, which is around, not just driving top line growth, but also building for profitability and long term sustainability. So it is a it's a good week, for those out there trying to grow and trying to build, it's also probably a good week for those who need an exit and want to get acquired, it means that the powder is not totally on the sideline. And there's some folks out there who could be really great strategic exits for you, even if you know your Exit Multiple isn't as high as you would have liked.
Alexander Sarlin 45:52
Absolutely. It's it's it's just, I feel like amazed. Having just machine gun fired all of those rounds. But it's, it's, it's going to be interesting to see how it unfolds all over the world. So then I think it's time for a short round of our game.
Ben Kornell 46:13
All right, for a game today, we are going to play 100 Club, we each have 100 fictional dollars to invest in real companies. And we are going to explain our allocation hypothesis. We each get three companies in the lineup. And we can split that and you get penalized if you do 3333 33 you automatically lose the game. So let's start. Alex, I'm gonna go with you first. And I'm gonna go with the big boys. We've been talking a lot about three companies, Chegg to you. And by Jews check into you, their stocks have really tanked. So you're able to put $1 in at current valuation there, or by Jews, you're able to put in money at their latest valuation last round, which by Jews himself doubled down on for $400 million, I believe that place them somewhere in the $18 billion range in terms of valuation. So you have $100 Where will you put your buckaroos?
Alexander Sarlin 47:15
That is a tricky question. So I feel that that Chegg, and to you have been somewhat unfairly maligned over the last couple of years, especially I guess, over the last year, and the combination of the ad tech landscape sort of confusing, people are drying up a little bit sort of generally. And both of these companies sort of sitting as publicly traded companies, sort of harbingers of almost signals of the EdTech world, but that come across as maybe a tad older school than some of the startups. I think that I would actually put, boy, this maybe come to bite me in the future. But I think I'd put 50 on to you 30 In shag, and 20. invitees only because I think bind us has grown so fast has done so many acquisitions, I think they're going to have to sort of make their acquisitions work together before they can continue to grow on the path they've been growing. Whereas I think, yeah, I mean, you saw, you saw too, you lose 75% of its stock value in the last year. It is, you know, its market cap is extremely low. And I think I don't think it's it reflects reality, I mean, their revenue, I think their yearly revenue is higher than their market cap. Right now, I think there's a little bit of a like punishment for for to you and Chegg for a different reason for sort of the tutoring accusations. And I think they're both going to kind of bounce back. Hopefully, you know, not not too long from now. So I think I'd go 50 To you 30 Chegg and 20. By Jews thinking that, you know, I don't want to miss out on the bad news, but I'm not, you know, I think they're gonna they still have some source of adjusting to do.
Ben Kornell 49:05
And we should caveat, this is not real investment advice, by the way, anyone who's listening? Yeah, this
Alexander Sarlin 49:13
is not advice. on any level.
Ben Kornell 49:16
I agree with you on your relative bullishness on each one relative to their you know, most recent valuation, you know, when you look at to you, it's actually a great counter cyclical business like in a downturn who still pays their bills and as Sue still has money university partners do and both to you and check have really strong b2b Business motions that are going to hold up a little bit better than what typically is more flexible spin and in fact, like universities are going to be more desperate for new revenue sources and to you can be a great channel for that. I also think you know, I'm I probably go all the way at like You know, 65 $70 on the to you, just because I think their edX acquisition was a really baller move really game changer and puts them in competition with the course eras, as well as, you know, being being able to do their OPM model, so that they're kind of strengthen on the business front for being able to do direct to consumer and direct to universities, and they're reaching a much larger group. So given where they're currently trading, I think that you know, that they're way undervalued. What do you have for me?
Alexander Sarlin 50:36
All right. For you, Ben, I have 3k 12 math companies. So the first is Q math, the Indian company we talked about today, the second is Photomath. And the third is Desmos, as bought by AMPLIFi. Last week, or let's just say amplifies math offerings, including Desmos.
Ben Kornell 50:59
Yeah, it's really interesting, because each of these companies are in a very different stage, cue math, still relatively early, but growing like crazy in the Indian edtech market, you've got Photomath, which has been one of the top 10 education apps for years now, you know, hovering around, you know, 200 million active users. But as far as I know, with relatively low, you know, revenue conversion, and then you've got Desmos, which is famous for its graphing calculator, but also, you know, just had the kind of content division acquired. And so I think it'll reveal some of my biases about what I think works in education, I really do feel like customer acquisition costs is the challenge in our space. And second to that is average customer value or lifetime value, however, you want to talk about value. And where I think Q math gets a little dinged is on average customer value and lifetime value. And on Photomath, I think where they get dinged is average customer value, lifetime value. And on Desmos, this move to amplify, they immediately improved, their customer acquisition costs just went way down, because they essentially have access to this huge channel and amplify. And number two, their average customer value went way up, because they have really rich content that's sold to us school districts that are paying in US dollars, have lots of money. And they're pairing that with, you know, the AMPLIFi suite, which, by the way, there's a big, like, New Wave publisher battle going on, amplify, is trying to really assert themselves because they are facing real competition from curriculum Associates, and curriculum associates as kind of taking the lead through their iReady products. So I felt like that was a big move. And Eli, the founder of Desmos, also, I think, is really inspirational leader. So I'm gonna go with I'll go with $50 on Desmos. And then I'm gonna go with just because the valuation is so high on cue math on this latest round, I'm gonna go with $35 on Photomath. By the way, I think their fototec could be incredible if distributed by a big tech platform or something like that. So I see Photomath, almost in the same way, we talked in an earlier conversation as an entree for any tech company that wants to have a relationship with learners. And then I'm gonna go with 15 for key math. What do you think? Oh, no,
Alexander Sarlin 53:47
I'm not answering that. Not gonna touch that with a 10 foot pole. But I like your analysis a lot. You know, it's
Ben Kornell 53:55
funny, because like six months ago, we were so bullish on India, and it was like, Yeah, India's really blowing up. And now with all this money going into India, and all the challenges, it does feel like it's a much more competitive. It was an open market, like a year and a half ago, two years ago. And now it's going to be ruthlessly tight.
Alexander Sarlin 54:15
Yeah, I'm super curious about the future of Photomath. As you say, it's been sort of sitting there at the top of the education App Store quietly for a long time, I think you'd be you'd be hard pressed to find a high school student in the US who has not heard of it or used it, but it somehow it's hard to project out where it's actually going as a business. It's a it's a tricky one, but ya know, things change quickly. All right. So with that, let's move to our deep dive. Our deep dive today is with an incredible guest, Philip Kotler the CEO of tutoring, mega company, paper
Ben Kornell 55:21
Hi, everyone. It's Ben and Alex, and we're with our guest for this week CEO Phil Cutler of Paper. We're so excited to have you here today. Phil,
Philip Cutler 55:30
thank you for having me. This is really, truly an honor. So appreciate the invitation.
Alexander Sarlin 55:36
Absolutely. Paper, we've talked on about paper on the podcast a couple of times, it's been an enormous success, especially in the last few years as tutoring has really taken off all over the world. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, pre, during and post pandemic, how have you seen the world of tutoring evolving? And how have you seen paper evolving along with it?
Philip Cutler 55:58
Well, Alex, I appreciate that. Obviously, we've all lived through the last couple of years, like the school system, in general has been, has really been front and center, a lot of places, given schools closing, opening all of that it's been a difficult time for our students, for teachers, administrators, parents, everybody's struggled with different challenges. It's forced us all to think differently. And number of different ways. I think tutoring has really emerged over the last couple of years as a resource. And the solution that we've known about for a long time really become highly dependent on to try and make sure a our students have the tools to reach their potential. But also, for students that have been struggling or falling behind or maybe need some additional support, it's a great resource for them as well. So from our perspective, we've seen enormous change in terms of how tutoring is perceived in the market. I think the biggest thing that we really saw happen quickly when everything started shutting down in March and April point 20 Was that a lot of the districts started to recognize the fact that they needed to solve their problems with technology, right, and that could be any problem. And we saw that manifests itself in the billions of dollars spent on hardware and network infrastructure to get kids connected, right pre pandemic, you had about 60% of school districts who are one to one with devices. By the time kids came back in August 2020, that number had risen to like 95%. So it took 15 years to get 60% and then 15 years and four months to get to 95%. Really what that meant was that enormous amounts were invested. Now districts could actually think of their problem solving in a different lens. They knew that their students had devices that they can get connected, they're all tuning into their zoom classes, or whatever it may be. And now it opened the door for a solution like paper to really step up and be a resource that district count on the students could use. So that really, really catalyzed quite a bit for us. Again, we are growing quite rapidly pre pandemic. But with everything that happened from that perspective, just technology being more broadly adopted, we really did see an accelerated adoption.
Ben Kornell 58:11
Yeah, I'm really curious about the business model. Because we've seen so many tutoring companies decide to go direct to student or direct to parents and b2c models. And if I had a nickel for every time and entrepreneurs that venture capitalists hates the b2b sales cycle in in districts and loves a b2c, it seems often that the path of least resistance for tutoring is selling to families, you took the harder road. How did you make that decision? And how do you think about tutoring and your tutoring business differently as you go to schools and districts?
Philip Cutler 58:48
Yeah, that I mean, this is something that is definitely unique about how papers been built. And a lot of it stems from my own experience having been a teacher, right, I started my career in a classroom study that McGill University and I saw firsthand students in my class, I mean, I was running when I was in university, I was running an in home tutoring business, part time jobs sort of thing. Really straightforward business model. They didn't realize the families that I was typically helping, were the ones that could afford to get that help. Those weren't always the students who needed the help. It was only when I was really getting the classroom teaching that became more apparent to me that the families who had means 10 20% That had the ability to afford tutoring, were paying for it, which was great. But those students typically were doing quite well. A lot of them actually had resources available to them. And so there was the other 80 to 90% of families that I felt needed the support but didn't have the resources to get that support. I want to try and find a way to support that when I looked into the market, it was saturated with companies, all of them very much focused on this beat to see if you can afford 5060 100 bucks now or even in the case of some old lower cost online option. was 25 $30 an hour for most of the families that use paper that's just not affordable for them. So we wanted to build something that would actually support all students. And the only way we felt we could do that, in a large scale was by going through the schools and partnering directly with the districts. And so there's no question that the sales cycle for district is longer than one individual family on the consumer side. But in our eyes, that was the only way to really make it equitable, and something that everyone can take advantage of. So we've focused heavily on on that. Yeah, I
Ben Kornell 1:00:33
often talk to people with this dilemma. And they look at the time cycle or the customer acquisition cost side of it, but I always try to help them understand the lifetime value is really good with these institutions. And now that we're heading into some economic uncertainty, actually, schools are really a reliable customer, because they, they continue to get funding, and they continue to have this intense need around tutoring and around, you know, learning loss and learning differences. So kind of when you're looking at the pros and cons of b2c versus b2b, it's often lost on people that the average customer value as well as the lifetime value can be quite good in in district sales.
Philip Cutler 1:01:17
There's no question that that's true. Right? I think that that is true. It's hard sometimes for people to see those kind of, or over the horizon view, and understand that long term, it's the right route, but we were always playing the long game.
Ben Kornell 1:01:31
Yeah. And from an equity standpoint, I think any of us who are in education, you know, we're doing it because we want to make an impact. And that channel through schools is is incredibly powerful. Alex, you ever next question?
Alexander Sarlin 1:01:45
Yeah, I totally agree, that sort of equity play, I mean, that that equity minded model is really powerful. I was a tutor in my 20s professional tutor for years. And just as you say, fell, you know, you, you end up spending a lot of time with families with a lot of means to, to, to hire you and realize, you know, you're not helping the people who need the help the most. So it's really amazing to hear your attitude on that. You know, tutoring is often a very inhuman intensive relation based activity, you know, you have tutors and students building relationships over time. And it's sort of traditionally done in a very high touch, often, you know, two people sitting across from each other in a in a home or a coffee shop way. How do you think about the role of technology? Obviously, you deliver tutoring through technology, but what do you see as the overall role of technology in delivering high quality tutoring at paper? Well,
Philip Cutler 1:02:43
it's a good question. I think that there are merits obviously, to having somebody sitting next to you, and helping you for an hour at a time or whatever it may be. I don't think it's the most efficient, definitely not the most cost effective way of doing it. And it's by far the least scalable of options. So if we could do that, and I've said this before, like, if we could put a tutor next to every student in the country, that would probably be the best model that makes sense and have them sit with them and shadow them throughout their day. Of course, that'd be great. We just can't do that, right? We don't have the humans to do it. We don't have the capital to do it. It's just not doable. So our perspective is always find the most scalable way that made sense for us to be able to support as many students as we possibly could. I always felt that technology could actually personalize the experience even better in some situations, right? You want to build a relationship with your tutor. Absolutely. And that's super important. But at the same time, you don't necessarily want to work with the same tutor for every question that you have for every class that you have. And even from my own experience, when I was teaching, sixth grade, I was a homeroom teacher. And I was a great math teacher. But I wasn't a great history teacher, right? That's sixth grade. I mean, it gets even more challenging later on. But the reality is, the same is true with tutoring, you're not necessarily going to be the best tutor for even geometry as you might be for algebra. And in our view, if we start to understand the question that the student is asking, and the type of learner that they are, we can match them with the best available tutor for that question on that topic and the way that they learn, you're actually going to have a better experience. Again, sometimes it may feel a little bit transactional. And that's something that we work on, we don't want the students to feel too, like it's too transactional. But at the same time, it means that they're getting matched with a great tutor every time. And that, to me is really valuable. And really, you can only do that with technology.
Alexander Sarlin 1:04:33
So the balance of that effective but transactional, you know, I have a question about a specific topic, and I'm going to find a tutor who knows exactly what I'm asking versus the relationship driven. I might know my tutor really well and trust them, but they might not really be the best person for this type of activity. It sounds like you're trying to balance that and continue to balance that as you grow paper to be bigger and bigger and more and more scalable,
Philip Cutler 1:04:58
right and the ultimate It really comes down to what is the scalable model that works for as many students as possible, right? We support over 2 million students today, it's almost impossible to have a model like that, you know, where you have a tutor sitting next to each student for that scale. You know, there are a bunch of organizations that exist that have models, you know, where you're working with the same tutor continuously, which is fantastic. You're doing it for a handful of students, it's not the type of thing that you can roll out. You know, we work with some of the largest school districts in the country, Hillsborough County, Clark County, Palm Beach County, I mean, these are massive mega districts, you need to be able to support hundreds of 1000s of students, many of whom are coming online all at the same time, at different hours of the day and night, I mean, you need to be adaptable, and to make sure you're reaching the students where the students are,
Ben Kornell 1:05:47
yeah, it's almost like you have to build a logistics infrastructure on top of here tutoring infrastructure to deliver it. And I also have seen, it's not an either or I've actually seen a number of districts that use paper, but also have like a local tutoring organization or volunteer organization. So it's not this binary all has to be, you know, efficient online, versus all in person actually think people are finding what the right blend is for their students or for their different age levels.
Philip Cutler 1:06:20
And we'll encourage them to do that. By the way, in our eyes, what's most important is that the students are getting support. And that doesn't mean papers and exclusive within any of our partner districts, it's almost the opposite, right? We know that there are going to be students who may be able to benefit from an in person experience. Now, that might be restrictive, not everyone can do so. But if they if there are students that can, that's fantastic. It's not the type of thing that paper exists and nothing else exists, it's, you know, we work very well with some of those different resources that are out there. And to be perfectly honest, there's even online solutions that work very well to write if you've got specific demographics that may be benefiting from certain solutions, like we're all in favor of that. And my intention is to try and build those bridges as much as possible, because ultimately, it's best for the students.
Ben Kornell 1:07:09
All right, so last question, you know, you've been in our news on the podcast from your series, see, it was 100 million and series D 343. million in February. But most people don't realize that you've been grinding on this for a while. And the success doesn't just happen overnight. And a lot is being made of the kind of quote unquote, edtech winter that we're in now, where funding is tightening up, the economy is headed to tough place. But you actually built paper in many of those same conditions. What kind of advice would you give to entrepreneurs, as they're thinking about, you know, a seed or series, a Stage Company as they're trying to build and have the kind of impact that you've had at paper?
Philip Cutler 1:07:53
Yeah, I appreciate that question. I think that the reality is folks see the headlines. And they don't necessarily understand what's gone in behind all of that paper is over eight years old, we were only we've only been in market for four years, we spent four years, our first four years trying to figure out kind of to your point, then, what does that logistics look like? How do we manage the service side of the business to make sure it's scalable? How do you integrate into a school district so that you can roll something like this out at scale that took an enormous amount of time and energy. What it meant, though, is that we had created a really stable foundation, we didn't cut corners, we want to do things as well as we possibly could. Because we knew that the school districts expectations would be that we would be able to deliver, right we were coming with to them with a pretty big promise, right? That we were gonna be able to support all our students, we needed to make sure that that would actually be so. So my advice to anybody out there is a you need to have some patience and persistence, there's no way around this, you're gonna it's gonna be up and down. You have to really have that earnestness, believe in what you're doing, and believe that you're creating something that matters. If you don't have that, regardless ed tech or any other industry, you're going to have a difficult time because the swings are so crazy, the ups and downs, and you'll lose motivation. When you take a couple of losses. Our team was always so convicted. And what we were doing was always about the students was always about unlocking human potential, making sure students could could, you know, succeed. And on the good days and the bad days, you always fall back on that it makes the good days that much better. It makes the bad days tolerable, because you're thinking, Well, if we can crack this code, there's a lot of students who are going to benefit and so my advice to anybody out there who's thinking of starting a business a go do it, right. It's waiting around is never there's never been the best time to start is today, you know, or the best time to start is yesterday, I forgot the saying is but you are always going to want to wish you have done this earlier. Just do it now, take the leap. And then you're going to need to have that persistence. Find yourself a good network of folks around you who you can count on that you can bounce ideas off of no one's gonna steal your idea. I mean, there's a zillion tutoring companies out there. Uh, you know, we share ideas like people do things differently. That takes time to sort of get the ball rolling, but don't be afraid, especially. But the reality is, I think a lot of the listeners for the podcast are teachers. The truth of the matter is teaching is probably the most transferable skill into leadership in a company, being able to convey complex ideas to your team, explaining things, breaking things down, standing up in front of a group and doing it that way, which is very nerve wracking to a lot of people. Teachers do this every day. So I do think that there's a lot that can be taken away from your experience in the classroom that can actually make you a very strong and distinct leader.
Ben Kornell 1:10:38
Well, that's a great way to end it. Thanks so much, Phil Cutler, CEO of Paper, it's an honor to have you on the show. Thank you
Unknown Speaker 1:10:45
and good luck.
Ben Kornell 1:10:47
Well, that wraps up our show today. Thank you to Phil Cutler. And thank you to all of our listeners out there. It was an incredibly crazy week in ad tech, as this year wraps. We are so grateful to everyone out there who's been tuning in, please send us your thoughts or ideas on our LinkedIn. If it happens in ed tech. You'll hear about it at the weekend at Tech.
Alexander Sarlin 1:11:10
Thanks for listening to this episode of the EdTech insiders podcast. If you liked the episode, remember to subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're listening on Apple, please leave a rating and review so others can find the podcast. For more ed tech insiders content subscribe to the Ed Tech insiders newsletter at edtech insiders.substack.com