The EdTech Startup Show

It's been a long time since there's been a new episode on the EdTech Startup Show feed! Today, I (Gerard Dawson) am cross-posting my appearance on EdTech Sales Trainer Matt Gambino's Always A Teacher podcast. This was a great conversation about my journey from teaching to EdTech. Learn more about Matt Gambino Listen to the Always A Teacher Podcast on SpotifyLearn about Propel Skills, Matt's EdTech Sales Training businessConnect with Matt Gambino on LinkedIn Learn more about Gerard Dawson Visit Gerard Dawson's websiteConnect with Gerard Dawson on LinkedIn Are you interested in hearing more episodes of the EdTech Startup Show? If so, let me know on LinkedIn or via email: gerard.dawson1@gmail.com.

On this episode of the EdTech Startup Show, my guest is Chrisman Frank, CEO and co-founder of Synthesis School. Synthesis is an enrichment club that teaches complex problem-solving and decision-making for kids 7 to 14 through online team games. Chrisman's cofounder Josh Dahn developed the Synthesis concept while running Ad Astra, a small lab school he built for Elon Musk on the SpaceX campus. Before Synthesis, Chrisman was engineer #1 at ClassDojo, a K-12 network that reaches ~30 million teachers, students, and families every month. Connect with Chrisman on Twitter @chrismanfrank and read his essays at www.ChrismanFrank.com. Learn more about EdTech Startup Show host Gerard Dawson at www.GerardDawson.com, or find the podcast on your favorite podcast player here: https://linktr.ee/gerarddawson.

Today's guest on the EdTech Startup Show is Kelly Smith, founder and CEO of Prenda. Prenda helps create flexible learning environments known as microschools. Often described as the “reinvention of the one-room school house,” microschools combine homeschooling, online education, smaller class sizes, mixed age-level groupings, flipped classrooms, and personalized learning.

Today's guests on the EdTech Startup Show are Nimit Maru and David Yang, co-CEOs of Fullstack Academy. Fullstack Academy is an innovative software development school with campuses in NYC and Chicago. Fullstack has graduated thousands of students working across every part of the technology ecosystem from first funding to FANG-sized. Fullstack also created the "Grace Hopper Program" - the first deferred-tuition coding bootcamp for women.

This episode is an excerpt from The 5-Day Copy Fix, a free course on marketing your education product or service to decision makers. To download it, visit https://www.gerarddawson.com/free-course/.

Today's guest on the EdTech Startup Show is Zachary Silverzweig, founder of Tiny Ivy. Tiny Ivy is working to close the achievement gap in literacy, leveraging their unique approach to teaching English called TIPS™. Zach is a seasoned startup executive with a history of developing innovative products that drive social good.

No interview with an EdTech CEO or founder today. Instead, this is a personal update on my career. Connect with me: https://www.GerardDawson.comOn TwitterOn LinkedIn

Today's guest on the EdTech Startup Show is Sara Mauskopf. Sara is the CEO and co-founder of Winnie, a marketplace for daycare and preschool helping over 4 million parents across the United States. Sara has a background in consumer technology and product management. Prior to founding Winnie she held product leadership roles at Postmates, Twitter, YouTube, and Google. She graduated with a Computer Science and Engineering degree from MIT. Sara lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area. To access this episode's bonus clip, where Sara shares her lessons learned building a marketplace, join The Business of Learning Letter.

Today's guest on the EdTech Startup Show is Megan O'Connor. Megan O’Connor is serving as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Kaplan, one of the world’s largest and most diversified educational services providers. She is currently spearheading development of Kaplan’s new Boost program, designed for pre-college students to help bridge the gap between the college experience and work readiness. Prior to joining Kaplan, Megan founded, led and sold Clark, a provider of end-to-end operation software, education services and coaching for teachers who want to grow their tutoring business. Before Clark, Megan was a founding partner of New York-based startup studio Human Ventures and Director of Development at the nonprofit Pencils of Promise. She has an MPA from NYU's Wagner School of Public Service and a BA from Santa Clara University.

This episode is brought to you by Trends.co, which is one of the only sources I read to learn about what's going to happen next in the world of business, tech and startups. The community has also given me what I'd call a free-MBA's worth of insights. Get $100 off your subscription to Trends using this link. Today's guest on the EdTech Startup Show is Austen Allred. Austen Allred is the co-founder and CEO of Lambda School. A native of Springville, Utah, Austen’s start-up journey began in 2017 with him living in his two-door Civic while participating in Y Combinator, a San Francisco-based seed accelerator. This experience became the foundation of Lambda School’s rapid growth. Before founding Lambda School, Austen was the co-founder of media platform GrassWire. He co-authored the growth hacking textbook Secret Sauce, which became a best-seller and provided him the personal seed money to build Lambda. Austen’s disruptive ideas on the future of education, the labor market disconnect, and the opportunity of providing opportunity at-scale have been featured in: The Harvard Business Review, The Economist, WIRED, Fast Company, TechCrunch, The New York Times, among others. Austen is fluent in Russian and currently lives in San Francisco with his wife and two kids. You can find him on Twitter @Austen.

Shawn Young is the co-founder and CEO of Classcraft, the Engagement Management System for schools. Since its launch, Classcraft has gained traction with educators worldwide, providing tools to gamify their classrooms. Shawn taught 11th-grade physics for nine years, holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s in education from Université de Sherbrooke and is also a seasoned web developer. The Great Exchange Student Engagement Summit, hosted by Classcraft and Google for Education, happens October 29. Learn more here. To download this episode's bonus clip, sign up for The Business of Learning member library.

To hear this episode's bonus clip, where Jamie explains TeachFX's bottom-up strategy for implementation, subscribe to the Business of Learning Letter. Jamie Poskin is the founder and executive director of TeachFX. Jamie is a former high school math and English teacher, coach, and athletic director with an MA in Education and MBA from Stanford. He also spent seven years working as an experimental theater artist with The Wooster Group and as the director of his own company. TeachFX’s mission is to promote more meaningful and equitable classroom dialogue by superpowering teachers’ work — using technology to provide educators with regular, automated feedback on their practice.

Don’t miss Sara’s exclusive clip for Business of Learning Subscribers. Sarah answers What have you learned about proving the efficacy of an EdTech product? Sign up here for access. Today’s guest on The EdTech Startup Show Podcast is Sara Potler LaHayne, Founder and CEO of Move This World. Move This World strengthens the mental, emotional, and social well-being of Pre-K to 12th grade students, educators, and families by building a daily practice of identifying, expressing, and managing our emotions in healthy ways. The learning program has impacted over a million students across 30 states for more than 13 years. In addition to projecting the strategic and creative vision and direction of the organization, Sara is an advocate for mental health and social-emotional wellness for all children. Move This World was largely conceived out of Sara’s own experiences growing up. It is this personal quality that defines the program’s unique approach to learning: Parents and teachers are encouraged to practice Social-Emotional Learning in their own lives; the program is continuously updated as it adapts to the ever-evolving realities of its end-users; and SEL is taught to become an ubiquitous part of schools’ learning cultures. Questions for Sara Potler LaHayne Highlights from the conversation Impact Important links from this episode Move This World Move This World's COVID-19 Resource Center If you liked this episode, then please Subscribe to The EdTech Startup Show in your favorite podcast playerTwitterLinkedIn Want to hear from other entrepreneurs focused on social-emotional learning? Ami Shah, CEO & Founder of PeekapakMatthew Gross, CEO & Founder of Newsela

Don't miss Joel and Ryall's exclusive clip for Business of Learning Letter subscribers. Subscribe here for free access. Today’s guests on The EdTech Startup Show Podcast are CR SCORE founders Ryall Carroll and Joel Weingarten. CR SCORE aims to solve two problems, namely, the uncertainty around college readiness, and the overmatching and under-matching problem that students of varying backgrounds tend to face during their preparations. Ryall and Joel aim to provide students with positive reinforcement by using a score to make college readiness a fun experience. As a companion piece to the score, students will also receive personalized recommendations on how to incrementally improve their college readiness. A largely bootstrapped venture, the idea for CR SCORE came to fruition as a result of its founders’ lean approach to business. Together, Ryall and Joel successfully created an app that effectively engages high school students with its mobile-friendly design and gamified features. Questions for Ryall Carroll and Joel Weingarten Highlights from the conversation Important links from this episode CR SCORECollege and Career Ready StandardsRyall Carroll at St. John’s UniversityPell GrantsCredit Guru 2019 College Admissions Bribery ScandalUniversity of MichiganGeorgetown UniversityGamificationAmazon Mechanical TurkFAFSA If you liked this episode, then please: Subscribe to The EdTech Startup Show in your favorite podcast playerTwitterLinkedIn Don’t miss Joel and Ryall share advice and experience building a mobile-first EdTech company. Only available in this week’s Business of Learning Member Library clip. It's free. Get access here.

Don't miss Rebecca's exclusive clip for Business of Learning Letter subscribers. To watch the short video of Rebecca answering "What are you top 2-3 tips for hiring in EdTech?" Sign up here. ### Today’s guest on The EdTech Startup Show is Rebecca Sadwick, startup advisor, go-to-market strategy consultant, and the founder of Strategica Partners. Rebecca’s track record of helping tech companies develop actionable customer insights to drive growth and go-to-market strategies has been recognized by Inc. 5000, Forbes, and the Los Angeles Business Journal. By actively mitigating assumptions and emphasizing first principles thinking, each strategy and brand Rebecca develops has a fresh advantage, while leveraging the depth of experience that comes from working with diverse tech clients across all industries. Through radical open mindedness and responsiveness to companies' unique needs, Rebecca elevates brand identities that users internalize and advocate for. Questions for Rebecca Sadwick need Highlights from my conversation with Rebecca Sadwick Important links from this episode Reforge Growth Series by Brian BalfourSeth GodinSean EllisThe Lean Startup by Eric RiesRebecca Sadwick on Twitter If you liked this episode, then please Subscribe to The EdTech Startup ShowTwitterLinkedIn

Today’s guest on The EdTech Startup Show Podcast is Martyn Farrows, COO of SoapBox Labs. Martyn is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of SoapBox Labs (www.soapboxlabs.com) an award winning deep tech company that specializes in developing voice technology for kids. Proprietary and built from the ground up, SoapBox Labs' accurate, safe and age appropriate voice technology powers immersive play and learning experiences, including literacy and language learning tools, for kids from 2 to 12 years old. Martyn has a Ph.D in European politics and is an experienced public speaker on the topic of children's digital privacy, the future of AI and the use of voice technology in education. Martyn has been a member of the Irish Government’s Data Forum since its inception in June 2015. He was previously Director of the Learnovate Centre, a strategic investment by the Irish government to establish Ireland as a global centre of excellence in learning innovation. Highlights from my conversation with Martyn Farrows: Important links from this episode: SoapBox LabsSoapBox Labs on TwitterSoapBox Labs on LinkedInSend SoapBox Labs an Email at hello@soapboxlabs.comMartyn Farrows on LinkedInLingumiAlexaFlorida Center for Reading ResearchYaacov PetscherReach Every Reader ProjectChild Data CitizenLex FridmanSee SoapBox Labs' Voice Technology in Action with Lingumi Want to hear from other entrepreneurs discussing voice tech in education? Philip Cutler - PAPERBryanne Leeming - Unruly Studios If you liked this episode, then please: TwitterLinkedIn Want more? Join The Business of Learning Letter, and get the only email newsletter written by a teacher on the intersection of business, tech, and education.

Today’s guest on the EdTech Startup Show is Mike Teng. Mike Teng is the CEO and co-founder of Swing Education, a tech-enabled marketplace business that matches substitute teachers with schools in need. He was a software engineer in the private sector and then the tech director at a K-12 charter school network. He and two of his friends who are now co-founders saw the need for fill rates of substitute teachers in districts and decided to start Swing education. Swing Education helps schools and districts find and schedule substitute teachers. They have also recently added tutoring with the same teachers in their classrooms. During this episode, Mike and I discuss: Time-stamped questions from this episode: Links from this episode: https://swingeducation.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpteng Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook by Dan Shapiro Want to hear from other entrepreneurs building EdTech marketplaces? Amir Nathoo - CEO of OutschoolRuben Harris - CEO of Career Karma If you liked this episode, then please: TwitterLinkedIn Want more? Join The Business of Learning Letter, and get the only daily email newsletter, written by a teacher, on the business of education.

On this episode of The EdTech Startup Show podcast, you’ll hear 10 one-minute pitches from 10 different companies. As you’re listening, I encourage you to listen for ideas that you find fascinating or useful for yourself or for somebody in your life. I encourage you to explore the websites of these EdTech startups and reach out to them if you’d like to talk more. The 10 EdTech Startups You’ll Hear ClassHook – Easily find educational videos from TV shows and movies to use in your lessons. SpeakAgent – Combine your STEM curriculum with the language needed to master it. Chef Koochooloo – STEAM education with Cooking. CR Score – A college counselor in your pocket. Product Value Solutions – K12 Educational Research and Technology Consulting Machitia – The education for liberation platform. Biochemistry Literacy for Kids – Unlocking the true potential of young learners. Class Composer – an online tool to help elementary schools make better student placement decisions. Transizion – “Conquer college admissions with our help.” Knowledge Avatars – Teach and Learn Intelligently If you liked this episode, then please: TwitterLinkedIn Want more? Join The Business of Learning Letter, and get the only email newsletter, written by a teacher, on the business of education.

Today’s guest on The EdTech Startup Show is Bryanne Leeming. Bryanne is the Founder & CEO of Unruly Studios, and inventor of their award-winning product, Unruly Splats. Unruly Splats engage elementary and middle school students with learning STEM skills and computer science through active recess-style play. Unruly Splats was recently awarded MassTLC's 2019 Digital Transformation in Education. Bryanne has a degree in Cognitive Science from McGill University and an MBA from Babson College. She was named a 2018 Inc Rising Star and a 2019 Boston Business Journal 40 Under 40. Bryanne answered these questions: Can you tell me about what your company does in your own words? And what your role is there? How has your company adapted during COVID-19 school closures? Why combine learning STEM/coding and movement? If you could make a basic STEM curriculum all elementary kids had to learn, what would it include? Do you have any suggested resources, people, books, etc. that helped you develop your perspective on learning? You’ve received investment from the Amazon Alexa fund. What’s your perspective on the role voice-enabled devices will play in education? Are we close to them becoming a regular part of it?What’s a call to action or suggestion you have for listeners? Bryanne also discussed these great stories Lessons learned from running a successful Kickstarter campaignWhy and how Unruly has gone through 18+ iterations of their productWhat Bryanne saw and experienced growing up business-owner parents Bryanne discusses Unruly’s brand, which is a fun, bright contrast to many other EdTech companies. How does she feel about the look and of their product and marketing?And more Links mentioned: Bryanne’s TwitterUnruly Studios TwitterUnruly Studios Company KickstarterAmazon Alexa FundMIT Media LabMurphy’s on the Green, New Hampshire Babson MBA ProgramGSV Labs Unruly in the HouseDr. Amon Millner Want to hear from more Boston-based EdTech entrepreneurs? Kirby Salerno - BroadReach EdTech Advisors Monica Brady-Myerov - Listenwise If you liked this episode, then please: Subscribe to The EdTech Startup Show in your favorite podcast playerLeave a rating.Write an honest review of the show.Share it with an educator, parents, or entrepreneur in your life.Send your feedback to Gerard Dawson onTwitterorLinkedIn Want more? Join The Business of Learning Letter, and get the only daily email newsletter, written by a teacher, on the business of education.

Today's guest on The EdTech Startup Show is Lauren Dachille, CEO of Nimble. Lauren started her career as a member of the Human Capital Team at D.C. Public Schools, where she focused on teacher recruitment and selection. She spent several years working on teacher quality policy across 18 states through the nonprofit StudentsFirst. Lauren founded Nimble in 2016 to help school districts identify and hire high-performing teachers. She received her B.S. in Human Development and Education from Cornell University and her MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. Nimble is the next generation of K-12 recruitment and hiring software. Our product is an applicant tracking system that leverages AI to save districts time and help them identify and hire the best fit teachers for their classrooms. Founded in 2016, Nimble now serves clients nationwide ranging from small charter school networks to some of the largest urban districts in the country. For more information, visit us at www.hirenimble.com. Links for Nimble: www.hirenimble.com LinkedIn: @hirenimble / @LaurenDachille Twitter: @Nimblek12 / @LaurenDachille Questions Lauren Dachille Answers Can you tell me about what your company does in your own words? And what your role is there? How did your experience in DC schools lead to your work at Nimble? “Predictive technology” is a phrase used often now, but folks don’t always know if it actually means anything. How does Nimble try to predict what teacher candidates will succeed? To follow-up on that, Can you tell me about some of the interesting insights that have been uncovered after looking at the data around teacher hiring? Any surprising correlations or trends? Your company recently published a blog post called “Demo Lessons at Scale in a Virtual Environment.” How are schools handling the hiring process right now? How are you supporting them? I’ve spoken to lots of folks at companies who use a bottom-up approach of getting teacher users then moving onto school and district accounts. Your company is by necessity a district-level sale. What’s your approach for that? What would you tell someone new to sales or marketing at a startup who was taking a similar approach? In your interview on Education Next, you said: “One of the reasons districts aren’t sold yet on the benefits of novel approaches and user-friendly tools is because there are too few companies and founders willing to inject a bit of healthy competition into this space. Products should have to be outstanding to get districts to use them, but unfortunately, there are too many complacent incumbent companies and products out there today.” What are some lessons you’ve learned about competing against incumbents? What’s a final message or call to action you’d like to leave listeners with? Want to hear other interviews with entrepreneurs who moved from education to the business of EdTech? Michelle Brown - CEO of CommonLit Eileen Murphy Buckley - Founder of ThinkCERCACharles Best - CEO of DonorsChoose If you liked this episode, then please: Subscribe to The EdTech Startup Show in your favorite podcast playerLeave a rating.Write an honest review of the show.Share it with an educator, parents, or entrepreneur in your life.Send your feedback to Gerard Dawson onTwitterorLinkedIn Want more insights on the EdTech Business? Join The Business of Learning Letter, and get the only daily email newsletter, written by a teacher, on the business of education. Sign up here.