This interview was originally recorded on December 10, 2021, as part of Leoni Consulting Group’s All Things Marketing and Education Podcast.
Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.
Elana:
Hello, and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni, and I’ve devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week I sit down with educators, EdTech entrepreneurs, and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing or content marketing, and community building. I’m excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience.
Welcome, everyone, to this week’s episode of All Things Marketing and Education. Today I’m really excited to talk with my friend, Sandro Olivieri. Sandro is the co-founder and CEO of Project FoundED. He’s also got a lot of other stuff going on he’s going to talk about, too. But Project FoundED in particular I want to bring attention to all of you, because it is pertinent to the educators and EdTech entrepreneurs listening; it is a community of EdTech entrepreneurs dedicated to ensuring that our industry of EdTech stays focused on equitable learning outcomes, which is so important, and equitable learning outcomes for everyone.
So welcome, Sandro. We’re really excited to have you on the show, and I know you have a lot on your mind. You are a very passionate person, and I know we’re going to get into a lot of fun things. Every time I talk to Sandro, as a side note, I walk away incredibly inspired. I only met you about a year ago through our good friend [Raina], and I walked away from that conversation really rethinking the entire EdTech landscape. And you did that.
So I know you will do the same for these listeners – not to put too much pressure on you. But welcome, Sandro. Is there anything that you’d like to tell the listeners about yourself? I intentionally kept your bio brief because you have a lot of experience that I’d love you to talk about.
Sandro:
Yes, thank you. I am so excited to be here. Ditto on how I felt after my conversation with you, Elana. I just felt like I walked away – you know how you feel when you find one of your people? Like it just felt so invigorating. I knew that I wanted to not just follow the work that you were doing, but then do it with you. And so, I’m excited to be doing this podcast with you.
As far as background for me, I’m not one to ever have made like a five-year plan. That is just not me. My path has been so crooked in the way that I got here. But I tend to just follow the things that I’m passionate about. And early in my career, I was really passionate about new product innovation and how technology is driving new product innovation, but wasn’t really focused on the sector until I found education.
And then once I found education technology as a thing to focus on, I started realizing that I was the last person in my entire family to get into education. Both my parents are educators, my brother is in education. All four of my grandparents, my extended family. I come from a long line of educators. And I just – I don’t know why I never sought it out when I was younger, but I’m extremely happy that I find myself working in the education space because it feels so natural. My wife is in education. You know, our dinner table has always been around conversations around education.
So I’m happy to be here. I got in by designing an EdTech accelerator program for the AT&T Foundation from seven years ago. And I’ve been fortunate to be running that program for them for the last seven years. It’s called the AT&T Aspire Accelerator. And I’ve just learned so much about what it takes to build any EdTech business, really. And also, what distinguishes impactful and equitable EdTech from a lot of other things.
And more so, and what led me to start Project FoundED is the hurdles that are in the way to making sure that these businesses can get set up and into the hands of kids, where they can be the most helpful.
Elana:
Great. And for all of you listening, we will put the links that Sandro is talking about – so you’ll have links to Project FoundED to learn more about it. How you can join that community. You’ll have links to the AT&T Aspire Accelerator and whatnot, too. So I believe it’s going to be at leoniconsultinggroup.com/nine. So that’s /nine.leoneconsultinggroup.com for all the Show Notes as well.
So throughout your career, it was really interesting to hear that you had this deep connection to education. But you’ve also had – what I like about you is you have different lenses. So you were also a computer scientist, you got your MBA. You’ve been in the service industry. You even said you were a comic strip artist. But coming in somewhat new, even though you weren’t green because you were surrounded by education and EdTech, what were the things when you were first starting that accelerator program that were – what were the assumptions that you made around education and EdTech in particular?
Because we have a lot of people listening to this podcast that might be new to education, and maybe they’re an education director or sitting on the leadership committee that are just coming in to make an impact. But they’ve done it in different industries like finance or whatnot. So they might be able to learn from you and say, "Gosh, he was green. What are the assumptions he made and the mistakes he made first?"
Sandro:
Yeah. Well, lots of mistakes all the time. But I think that the primary thing to know about the way the EdTech industry works and something that I made an assumption that – you know in any tech industry – previous to my running the accelerator program, I was in general consumer technology. And there’s all sort of material out there. There’s like Startup 101. This is how to do lead in startup. Here’s your business model canvas. This is what you do. This is how you achieve product market fit. This is how pricing works. This is how marketing works. And I assumed, OK, well, all that stuff will apply but this is a new sector. It’s education, different kind of customers, different kind of language to use. But it will work the same because it’s another tech sector. And I think that’s the primary assumption that I got completely wrong. Completely wrong. It works totally differently.
This is such a unique sector, and it makes it pretty challenging to operate within, especially if you make the assumptions that the stuff you know about tech generally will work in education. It doesn’t. One of the primary things that I think we assume and we try and shoot for, for good reason, is this idea of product-market fit. It is a dominant idea in tech markets today. It’s like, well, you have to sort of test and iterate and test and iterate, and do your user research, and make sure you’re iterating your product to a point where you’ve achieved your product market fit. And then you raise more money, or you raise your growth capital, and then off to the races. Right? That’s your hockey stick moment.
And that just doesn’t happen in EdTech. And I think the primary reason it doesn’t happen in EdTech is one simple fact. And that simple fact is that your buyer in EdTech is almost never your user. Almost never. So you could iterate as much as you want with your users. You can iterate and make your product better and improve it, and iterate and make the product better and improve it. But it’s not – you’re not iterating with the folks making the decision about how they’re going to give you money. And so, you can iterate and make a really great product, but it might mean nothing from a revenue generating perspective. And that takes special care. It takes new processes. It takes new mindsets. It certainly takes brand new methods of marketing to really make yourself successful in EdTech.
So I think the assumptions that I think I got wrong certainly at first – and I’ve come to know most people still make today – is assuming that EdTech is another tech sector just within a different industry. No, everything works differently.
Elana:
Yes, and if your ultimate user is your buyer, and say that is the exception to the rule, your buyers are people that don’t have a lot of disposable income. You’re working in the field of education. And if they’re going to put their out-of-pocket money into something, it’s got to really make an impact in their day-to-day. And I think that’s the ultimate test for your buyer, is that most of the time they’re educators with little or no disposable income. And so, if you are the exception to your one rule, it’s still a big hurdle. Right?
Sandro:
It’s still a slog. And you know, if your customers or the folks that are giving you money ultimately are educators, then there’s always going to be a push-pull there. Like, should we be selling things to educators directly to do their job? You know, should their employers really be providing the resources necessary for them to do their job? And there’s always been the push-pull. Always, always, always. Right? Even before technology. It’s always existed. Like it’s not any different today. And I guess, for me, the way that I’d led my career and the things that drive me that I’m very passionate about is taking big sort of either pots of money or spheres of influence and then just kind of shifting them a little bit to have more impact.
So it’s more interesting to me to work on the problem of how do I influence educational institutions, districts, states to think differently about how to better support educators in the classroom by making it easier for them to make choices about the technology they should use in the classroom, and making it easy for them to adopt it and implement it. Right? That is much more interesting to me than it is to decide – to figure out a better method for or make it easier for teachers to spend their own money on tech products.
Elana:
Yes, and that comment also made me think about the various silos in education. So, one of the hard things as a marketer is sometimes your product, you’re talking to multiple stakeholders in education. You’re talking to – there’s lots of stakeholders in the ecosystem that should be working together for the ultimate outcome, but sometimes the system isn’t set up so they actually do work together in the most collaborative way. So we’ve got parents, we’ve got teachers, we’ve got educators supporting and throughout the system. We’ve got education administrators, principals, we’ve got school board members. We have all these people and sometimes technology can exacerbate the silos rather than bring them together, too. And I don’t have an answer for that. I just – what you said just sparked that.
Sandro:
[Laughs] I don’t know if there’s an answer. And you know, I make the same arguments myself, and I list all the same people that you just listed. And I always have to remind myself and sort of kick myself in the pants and say, "Don’t forget students. Don’t forget the learners." They are such a critical component of this entire thing. Because if we’ve learned anything over the last year-and-a-half to two years, if the kids don’t like it, we’re up the creek, right? It doesn’t matter if it’s based on extremely rigorous research and it’s like the best way to teach this particular concept, if the kid that’s in front of it at that moment is not engaged in it, it’s game over. It’s game over. And so, we’ve really got to make sure that we center all of our discussions in education technology around – at least one of the components we consider has to be engagement.
Elana:
Yes. So important with the students, too. And really making sure that it’s just not another buzzword in terms of values and EdTech organizations is that we’re student centered. Schools say that a lot, too but what does that truly mean?
I’d like to dive into something that’s a pretty complex topic, but with the pandemic, we’ve all of a sudden had this big EdTech boom. EdTech is now this new shiny-object industry that a lot of investors are flocking to. And they’re flocking to it in different, sometimes not-so-great ways at times, too. But I’d like to talk about what the impact of all this means to our industry. And when this all shakes out of investors saying, "Wow, there’s this whole industry that’s something that wasn’t on my radar and now is more relevant to me and there’s a lot of growth in it," who is actually getting left behind in all of this?
I’d love for you to just talk about the trends you’ve been seeing, and more importantly, if you could just estimate what do you think the impacts will be on the industry? And that’s a big question, so if you want to pause...
Sandro:
No, no pausing. I think by talking. [Laughs] So it is a big question, but it’s one that I think about a ton. A ton. And I think that as I started thinking about it, it’s really thinking through this is what led me to start Project FoundED. Because at the beginning of the pandemic, having worked with early-stage EdTech entrepreneurs for so long, I felt in my gut a really bad feeling. Not just about, "Hey, we’re going to lockdown. I’m going to have to educate my kids from home and become an educator and a parent and all of these things." Not just that. I felt in my gut that this was not going to be a good thing for EdTech generally.
I knew even then that the dominant narrative out there was going to be: "This is it. It’s go time. This is what we’ve been investing in. This is what we’ve been saying all along. Technology can be the answer to our problems in education. We are going to lockdown, but it’s going to be OK because we can do this at a distance. We know how to do this. It will be more personalized. It will be better, etc." And that was going to be the dominant narrative out there. And it is. It is still the dominant narrative out there about how this is EdTech’s golden age and off to the races. So many dollars invested.
The reality, though, is that so many EdTech companies that were based on in-classroom interactions, dealing with teachers directly, etc., have either already just decided to close their doors or are struggling so hard right now to continue to raise money, have had to pivot to direct-to-consumer models, etc. It is kind of a war zone out there for early stage EdTech.
And so, why is that? What’s happening? What I’ve come to realize when I think about this is that we’ve been working in this industry for so long and we used to blame investors for a lot of the ills. Like, I hope I’m investing in the right things, the things they’re investing in are not right. They’re not the impactful things. They say they’re impact investors, but where is the impact? And I’ve come to realize something super important. Investors are a blunt tool. Right? They do one thing. Whether they’re impact investors or VC or private capital doesn’t matter. Their job is to take some money and make it into more money. And so, they’ve chosen to invest in EdTech, which is great. We need some private capital in this industry. No tech industry works without it. We’re happy it’s here. We probably need more.
Now they’re doing a great job of their job. You know? They’re raising funds, returning their funds with profit, and they’re doing a good job of it. The problem lies in the things that they are feeling like they have to invest in because that’s the only place for them to make money. And those things tend to be things that are direct-to-consumer. So education technology that goes directly to parents. And these are great products that I use with my own kids. Like Outschool or your Prodigies or, I don’t know, MasterClass. These things are direct-to-consumer. Right? And those are the things getting a lot of investors. Of course, they are. Lots of investment. Now that’s where they feel like they can make their money. What is being left by the wayside are technology tools that are designed to be sold and implemented in the classroom, in the K-12 classroom and higher ed. It doesn’t matter. They’re being left behind.
Why? Is it because it’s impossible to build a business in this area? No, it’s not impossible. Does it take longer to return the money that you’ve invested in that kind of business than it does with a direct-to-consumer business? Yes. And so, the underlying problem is not that investors are malicious or silly or stupid, or they’re not making the right decisions. The problem is that they’re making the right decisions to do their job. And we’ve created an environment in which selling to schools is so hard that nobody’s interested in working in that area. And that is the problem. We’re allowing investors in the ecosystem generally to dictate the kind of EdTech that will win in this market by making it so excruciatingly difficult to adopt EdTech at a school or a district or a state. And that’s the real problem.
Elana:
Yeah. And I think this trend of direct-to-consumer blowing up like you said, it does make the path for the EdTechs that are really looking for those hard to find buyers for the district admins. And I can’t even – the sales cycle is long. All of these things they’re already up against, and now they’re also competing with these goliaths with tons of funding, too. It’s so hard.
I’m wondering if you could talk to – you work alongside a lot of EdTech founders that are still going the B2B route, right? The direct-to-district route. What is the advice you give them to navigate this really challenging road knowing that they’re not going to be flooded with a ton of investment in the beginning?
Sandro:
Yeah, I mean, the only way to do it is to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just go and have as many discussions as early as possible with passionate educators that you can get to believe in your vision and build with you. Right? There’s a lot of procreation that needs to happen in early stage EdTech to make sure that your product is hitting the direct needs of the educators in the classrooms that you hope to implement in. And so, it’s all – my advice is always to never assume or never maybe build a business plan based on – you know, with an assumption that you will raise some money. Never make that assumption. You can’t. You will, but don’t make that assumption. Right?
When you’re building a business like this, it’s so important to figure out how to get to an MVP of your product, or see one of your products get into the hands of teachers as early as possible. Get feedback, testimonials, whatever you can get, and sort of build on that success to start building your revenue as early as possible. Revenue ultimately is the only thing that will get you investment. Well, not the only thing, because we’ve seen lots of people with no revenue raise some money over the last couple of years, but I think those are edge cases. You know, folks like ex-Blackboard CEOs that the site doesn’t launch a new startup called Class for Zoom, and they’re already raising $30, $40 million on day one. That’s an exception. That’s not the way the industry works generally.
The only way to raise money in this industry is to make sure that you can show some sort of revenue, some sort of traction, right? And so, it’s unfortunately slow. And so, you have to start as early as possible to start building that revenue pipeline. And that’s really the only way to do it. And once that revenue comes, you’ll be able to raise money to grow and scale out bigger.
Elana:
Yeah. And the optimist in me feels like sometimes when you don’t have a lot of VC funding, you don’t have a lot of different people on the board telling you what to do and making you super revenue-focused when you might not be ready, that can also be a gift, too. So also, really looking at EdTech startups that aren’t that shiny object to investors right now and treat that as a gift, because they can make you grow faster than you’re ready to and they can also – I’ve seen sometimes startups lose their way because they get so focused on acquisition and growth, and then the product is not designed as they intended for impact.
So hone in on the growth in terms of making your product as effective as possible. And then I think everything else will come. But sometimes this can be a gift. It’s a very hard journey though. It’s a hard journey in my field in marketing of reaching them, too. Getting districts to raise their hand and say, "Yes, I want to be part of a pilot" in the middle of a pandemic is almost virtually impossible. They are like, "No, we want to work with some tried-and-true solutions that have been around forever. And we want to implement them now." So I would say it’s a long journey. Do everything that Sandro was talking about. Surround yourself with people like him in industries like Project FoundED. And be as educator-centered as possible.
So I’ve talked a lot about this podcast on how do you truly insert educator voices and help them co-create the product with you. Do you want to add anything, Sandro?
Sandro:
I would. You know, and it’s a big hairy question, and I’ll try to distill the answer down as much as I can, but I think one of the outcomes that we’re talking about with investors sort of driving the narrative and deciding who the winners in the space are, is that what the effect is ultimately is that we’re taking educators out of the driver’s seat of deciding what gets implemented in that classroom. And I think that that’s the biggest mistake we could possibly make in education. Right? If we let market forces decide what wins in this market, then we are taking educator voice out of it entirely. We need to make it easier for educators to not just discover and implement and find but use the products in the classroom that they feel are going to be right for their kids.
And so, one of the things that I like to talk about is the importance of efficacy. Understanding the efficacy of the EdTech products that we put in the classroom. But I think one of the things that I would be remiss to not talk about is the fact that when we do this, when we let market forces and investors generally drive the discussion around what EdTech wins in this market, what we are doing is just removing educators from the discussion. We’re removing educator voice from deciding what gets to be implemented in the classroom. Because the choice of technology that’s there at the district or gets pushed down from the district level or is sold or implemented, folks just lean on things that they know or you know, they know that the district next door bought, what we’re doing is we’re telling teachers you’re not in the driver’s seat of what gets done in your classroom. You’re not – we’re taking agency away from educators deciding what gets done in their classroom, and I think that’s a giant, giant mistake.
We do a lot of – we tell EdTech all the time as a market, we say, "The onus is on you to prove the efficacy of your product beyond a shadow of a doubt. You need to tell us that your intervention does this, this, this and this." Which is something that we have never done before. Ever. For any curriculum or tool that gets put in the classroom. It is a brand new and much higher bar that we’re putting education technology tools – we’re making them clear. All good reasons. And I think it has this unintended effect of continuing to make it difficult for EdTech companies to get into classrooms and start having the intended impact.
And so, I think there’s a lot of things that we need to evaluate. One is how easy is it for EdTech to be implemented and adopted in schools at the educator level? And two is how can we decide what the right level of efficacy and impact measures we want? Are we – depending on the situation – are we OK with just saying, "Maybe if I know that there’s a teacher out there in a district that looks a lot like mine and a classroom that looks a lot like mine, they’ve used it and they say it’s good. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe I don’t need a full, randomized control trial to tell me X, Y, and Z gains are going to be made here." And so, just adding some of my pet projects to the answer. [Laughs]
Elana:
Yeah. I think evaluation and really honing in on that impact is something so important that sometimes gets skipped for a lot of reasons. We, in our previous episode, just talked to Jason Torres Altman, and he’s an evaluator within the K-12 industry, and I partner with him on a lot of projects. He has provided lots of frameworks for startups like you to begin to figure out if I’m planning strategically for the year, how do I map that to impact metrics as well. So check that out. It’s at leoneconsultinggroup.com/eight. It’s with Jason Torres Altman.
I mean, there’s so many things that come up in these podcasts, but one of them is how do we make sure that we’re as impact driven as possible? But at the same time, you’re in the midst of a pandemic with – The last time I talked to you, we were right in the middle of the pandemic, and you said, "Gosh, I’m really worried, Elana, because a lot of the startups I have and the research I’ve done show that there’s only a six-month runway for a lot of these EdTech companies. I don’t what’s going to happen, but I do know that it’s probably going to squash innovation in EdTech."
Sandro:
I think that’s still true especially – and when I did that work, that was going into the summer. That was going into the summer. Right? Folks had a six-month runway. And so, you know, a few months of no sales at a time when investments had dried up in EdTech right before it got started again. And so, I was really worried about where we were headed. And honestly, I’m glad that there’s a lot more new investment. I’m extremely dismayed at the places where it’s going. But it makes a ton of sense. Right?
You know, we need more investors in EdTech thinking critically about what their investment means. Right? Today investors will tell you that the EdTech ecosystem is extremely competitive. They want to know how you stack up against your competitors. Right? How is it that you’re going to win in this market. When the reality is that all it takes to win is investment. That’s it. You know, investors, foundations, supporters of the EdTech ecosystem generally, they are king and queen makers out there. If you get that investment, you’re going to have a real decent shot at winning. Right? And so, you’ve got to be able to tell a good story.
For early-stage entrepreneurs that come to me and say, "Hey, investors are telling me I need to figure out how I stack up against competitors," I say, "Yes, have that slide on the ready, but operationally, don’t worry about it. Right? We are in such early just stages of EdTech adoption still. We’re still in the replacing textbooks and moving furniture stage of EdTech. It’s going to be a long time before you’re going to butt up against a ton of competition in the market for your particular product."
I would be – I don’t know, I’ve never seen an administrator sort of have a list that’s like, "Well, these are all of the middle-school math products that I have to choose from. And now I have to have a meaningful sort of analysis on which one I’m going to buy." That doesn’t tend to happen. Right? For lots of good and bad reasons. One is there’s not a ton of middle-school math products that fulfill the requirements as it is. And two is, they typically don’t have enough tools to discover the EdTech that’s out there. So they tend to just go with what they know. And so, they’re going to go with i-Ready, or they’re going to go with, you know, whatever their amplified sales representative has for them. They’re going to go with what they know.
And that’s what we’re trying to work against. Right? We’re going to try and create new channels for discoverability for impactful EdTech and keep educators in the driver’s seat of discovering that EdTech. Because we think that’s the most impactful thing we could possibly be doing. If we continue to make it easy for incumbents to win, then we’re going to hand the keys over straight from the McGraw-Hills and the Houghton-Mifflins straight to the Googles and the Cahoots. And, I don’t know, I don’t think there needs to be only two or three winners in education. I think it’s a big industry and there’s lots of room for lots of winners.
Elana:
Mm-hmm. And reaching the decision makers is always tough in this B2B model. And my approach has always been working alongside brands to create a groundswell. To create a grassroots movement to work alongside educators and get that brand awareness and engagement and trust built up with the people that would be the actual users more often than not with the educators.
So we do that with social media, with community building and whatnot. But that’s not enough. It needs to be in concert with all of the other things you’ve got going on. So you need to have a sales strategy. You need to have some networking. You need to have an influencer strategy. You need to have some paid marketing. You need to do all of these things in concert. But it is also very hard when you’re a startup. But I can tell you that, even with the Cahoots and the big EdTech brands, I see a huge opportunity to use social media in a level playing field way. Minus the paid ads scenario. I very rarely look at EdTech companies and go, wow, their social is on point or their community – and there are some great communities. But there’s always opportunities to be out and differentiate your product that way.
But do you want to talk a little bit about – like, you are an EdTech company. I need to talk to the decision makers. How do I get beyond maybe going to Project FoundED and networking and whatnot? What do you think they should do?
Sandro:
Well first and foremost, if you are the founder of an EdTech company and you’re not part of the FoundED community, come through, join. We have lots of resources available for you. Second of all, I think that you – I think the reason we’ve always gotten along is because I think you get this absolutely right. Education is an industry that runs on authenticity and trust. It’s an industry that seeks to educate our youngest and our most vulnerable. Right? And educators better than anyone, I think, can smell a rat, right? Can just sniff it out. They can sniff people out that are not authentically involved in the endeavor of educating our kids.
And so, the way to do this best is to get your brand recognizable in an authentic way by educators first and foremost. Building communities of educators that have seen your product or at least like what you’re saying about the particular industry you’re working in. If you are – if through building your product you’ve discovered all sorts of great ways to talk about social-emotional learning, build a community around that. Be seen as an expert in your niche or your area. And that translates into so many other things.
Like you were saying, there are so many different marketing channels that you can leverage to reach the right decision makers. But right now, the only channel that’s available to EdTech entrepreneurs to make sales, or at least the way they see it – because they’re following all of the tech playbooks – is cold calling and cold emailing. And I’ll tell you what. It might work one time out of 10,000. Right? But it doesn’t work very well. It’s worse than direct mail. All the stuff you get in the mail works better than sending out cold emails to education leaders today. And so, you know, I think the best way to do it is build a community, build awareness for your brand just like everything that Elana’s been talking about for the last couple years. I think that’s really the best way to do it.
Elana:
Yeah, I mean, it comes down to what people would call in the business, like, touchy-feely things. But actually listening, actually caring. And it’s a long haul. People come to me and say – especially in the pandemic – they’re like, "I need something right now. I need acquisition, especially in the pandemic. They said if I don’t get these users or if I don’t get this revenue, I’m not sure about our future." And I say, "Well, community and social media is not going to get you there in the short-term. It will in the long-term. And contact marketing – all of these things are long-term plays that you should have in concert with other things."
So I know we could talk about this in particular forever, but I’d like to talk about one trend that’s slightly disturbing but also slightly optimistic at one point, is the trend to individualize models in education. So we’ve seen with COVID people moving towards micro schools, learning pods. Home schooling is more relevant now. This screams inequity to me. I’ve seen it everywhere. I’d love to hear your thoughts about it and its effect on EdTech.
Sandro:
There’s a couple of different ways to think about this. And I’ll come out and say it, that I think we need to never really close the door on experimenting on new methods for educating kids. I think we are always doing ourselves a disservice if we close the door on those things. But again, I take a look at these trends and try to understand what the real underlying problem is. Why people feel like they need additional choice, different models, etc. And I think that it’s – a couple of things have been clear. Cleared up, at least, or accelerated. The clarity has been accelerated by the last couple years.
And let’s start with the home schooling numbers. Home schooling has exploded over the last – ever since it really got started as an endeavor and since it’s been tracked, and especially over the last couple years. And we’re at a point now where between 10 and 12 percent, depending on the survey, of families are home schooling today. Which is an extraordinary number. But what I think is more extraordinary is that 16.1 percent of Black families are home schooling today. That’s one in six. Now why? Why? And it’s similar, not as high, but similar numbers in Latin American communities, lower but rising numbers in Asian American communities.
And they give two reasons, two primary reasons. And this is really focused around COVID times, so it’s tainted a little bit by COVID reasons, but they’re high numbers so it deserves some analysis. The reasons that they’re giving for shifting to home schooling for all three of those groups – LatinX, Black Americans, and Asian Americans, and for some of them it’s number one, some of them it’s number two – number one is the public school system, so the response to COVID was essentially the last straw: "I don’t have any more trust in the system that doesn’t teach my stories, doesn’t take care of my kids, and sort of ignores the things that we say we want. And once we shifted to COVID and I was at home, and I didn’t have Internet connection or I didn’t have a computer, or I didn’t have this and we’re not well prepared, that was it. That was the last straw. I’m going to do what I have to do to home school my kid." And the number two reason in those three groups was, "There’s a lack of virtual and blended learning opportunities for my kids."
And so, it’s a combination of reasons. It’s a public education system that these particular subsets of people feel like just is not interested in teaching them well. And two, there’s a lack of technology use to help us cope with supporting our kids through their education journey. And so, the problem isn’t necessarily that micro schools are potentially bad, or more choice is potentially bad, or home schooling itself is bad. The problem is that parents need a good way to – parents need to feel good about the education that their kids are receiving. They’re not feeling that way right now. They’re just not. And they’re telling us that one of the reasons, you know, one of the reasons is really hard to work on but we should, which is you don’t support me or tell my stories or teach my history.
The other one is we don’t have enough flexibility in our education system today for me to just keep doing this. And that’s one we can work on and we should, and can be helped by additional technology adoption that can make more flexible models happen. More asynchronous models. Make it easier for parents to support their kids in their educational journey. And that’s a very tech-based thing to work on.
And so, will micro schools work for some kids? Yeah. Will they work for every kid? I don’t know. You know? So when I talk about innovative models for education, I say yes, let’s try them. But I want to make sure that we’re trying them and also constantly looking for ways to build that back into a freely available and public system in education. And if we can’t do that, then it isn’t worth it.
Elana:
I hope you all just pause and reflect, those that are listening. And know that education is an incredibly nuanced industry, and that answer kind of represented that. It’s that, sure, there’s always a good, there’s always a bad. Everything is incredibly complicated. And I think the hardest part is sometimes when people come into education – and outside of education, when you see with education reform – they’re always looking for this silver bullet. This one thing that’s going to fix education. And you’ve seen it time and time again with like No Child Left Behind, Common Core. You see all these ed reforms come in with this silver-bullet syndrome. And there’s nothing. But what you said is really important, is that innovation should be supported but with the goal to potentially integrate it in effective ways into the public school system. You know, at Edutopia, where I was at for eight years, we always looked at innovation, but with the spotlight of can it be adapted into any single environment. We know environments across the spectrum are unique in itself – suburban, urban, charter, public, magnet – whatever it may be. But let’s get to the core of what’s truly working, and let’s try to figure out how we can integrate it into the system. And that’s at its core. So thank you for that.
I want to switch gears to the educators that are listening, because we’ve talked a lot about EdTech. A lot of startups are probably taking a lot of notes right now. But let’s talk to you educators. You’re in the midst of all of this. The educators right now are undoubtedly on the front lines. Burnout is at the highest I’ve ever seen it. I’m talking with educators every day in communities and online and social. And it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart what they’re going through. And more often than not, their voices are not being heard. And with EdTechs, they’re kind of swarming around them trying to get their attention. Do this, do that. All of these trends with micro schools and individualized learning and so much more. They’re caught up in it.
So how do you suggest they navigate life as it is now? I know that you’re not – you don’t have all these answers just like me. But I’d love to hear your perspective to educators, because you work with a lot of EdTechs, too, that are partnering with educators. And like you mentioned, your family are all educators, too.
Sandro:
So I don’t have a great answer for this. I wish I did. But we’re getting to one soon. One of the things that we’re discovering over the last six months of our work is that the providers of education technology products – so, the founders of EdTech companies – they could be literally anyone anywhere. And more often than not, they’re former educators, they’re parents, they’re students, they’re folks that have lived experience – like everybody has – lived experience in education. They’ve seen a problem, and they’ve created a solution to solve that problem.
And so, they have a goal of educating kids or learners. Teachers, educators generally, they have that same goal. So the providers of EdTech and educators, they have a shared goal of educating kids. But everything that stands between them – the way the market works, the way the sales process needs to work, the way – the channels we have to reach out to each other and to discover new EdTech products or to discover educators that might use your product, they all sort of force this relationship of two entities, again, that have a shared goal to just get totally warped and resort to cold emails and sales tactics and continuous just contact, contact, contact. And upsell, upsell, upsell. To the point where this relationship, if one exists at all, is not one based on trust.
And I think that that’s something that we can and should work on to continue on that trend of keeping educators in the driver’s seat of deciding what happens in their classroom. Right? And it starts with – it starts with creating new channels of discoverability for educators in EdTech. But also, with just letting educators know that they continue to be the most powerful and influential force in education. Period, full stop.
That is true. I know you don’t feel that way a lot of the time. But when it comes to the EdTech market, there’s nothing more influential than teacher’s voice. There never has been. And there always will be that way. It will always be that way.
And so, when you think through all of these cold emails you get, and they’re terrible and annoying, and I’m not saying respond to them. Don’t. What I’m saying is when you meet an EdTech founder at a conference, for example, ask them their story. Get to know where they came from, why they created the product. You’ll find so many interesting and just fascinating and impactful stories behind the people that are starting EdTech companies.
And I think that there’s a lot of work for us to do – people like us at Project FoundED to do – to humanize EdTech founders. Sort of show them what’s behind all those sales tactics. And also, just create new channels so that that relationship between educators and the providers of EdTech can be repaired or established at all in a much more authentic way and one that’s focused on learner outcomes rather than sales tactics and pricing and things like that.
And so, you have more power than you think, I would say. And I would encourage you to just try and connect personally with the founders of EdTech companies and try and get all the sales talk out of it.
Elana:
Yeah, great advice. And from somebody on the front lines on the social and community side and creating content for them, I’d love more educator pushback. I’d love to hear all of your opinions and thoughts. I’d love for you to DM and tweet and do whatever you can to say, "Hey, you know, this feature isn’t quite working for me." It’s very rare that I see that, unfortunately. Usually, I see educators trying to make it work and say, "How? I can’t make this work." But they’re not proactively – and I know you don’t – we all don’t have a ton of time to do this. But if something comes up, and I know you’re all not used to making your voice heard. People just dismiss and they don’t take your opinion. Know that if you do that on social media, you are immediately heard. And you should be. And you will get elevated. So I’d love to – if you’re an educator, you matter. Your voice matters so, so much. And now we have platforms that surround all EdTech companies to allow you to give feedback 24 hours a day if you’d like to. So that’s a really great point.
So Sandro, unfortunately I have to cut this now because we could talk for days and days about EdTech. And I am just so blessed that we got to talk again about this. And this is – last time we talked pandemic was in full swing. We’re still into a huge state of uncertainty as we approach the New Year. And as we look at January, this is when the episode will be launching in 2022, do you have any parting thoughts to educators or EdTech entrepreneurs on just how to navigate the upcoming year? All of this uncertainty, all of these trends that we will not see go away anytime soon.
Sandro:
[Laughs] No. I mean, again, I wish I had a great answer for this. I think just like it’s been for us – it’s been a huge slog for us. But I really – I have such a tremendous respect and admiration for educators that any chance I get to just lift educators up, I will take. Because it’s not a situation where I feel like I need to tell you something you don’t already know. I know it’s been a hard year. And it will maybe continue to be a hard year. Hopefully not. Hopefully everything will get better next year.
But I just want you to know how influential you all are, not just in the EdTech industry but in educating our kids. I’ve got three little girls – seven, four and seven months. And they’re all going to go into this public education system. And they’re all going to be extremely positively affected by the educators they come in contact with. So yes, you have influence in the EdTech ecosystem. That’s just a tool. That’s a tool that you use to do one, I think, of the most important jobs in our entire society, which is educating our youth. And so, the most I can say is to tell you that from my perspective, you have all my respect and all my love. You guys do one of the most important jobs in our society, and I am so grateful for it. So to the extent that that is helpful for you as we head into next year, into this year, then there it is. It’s all yours.
Elana:
Thank you. Well, one last question as we get going, here is one I’d love to just hear – you have Project FoundED. We’ll put those resources in the show notes. Are there other ways that people can reach out to you and learn alongside you as 2022 and all the challenges come up whether they’re an educator or an EdTech founder?
Sandro:
Sure. Follow myself personally and Project FoundED predominantly on LinkedIn and Twitter. And so, we’ll make those links available. And you know, we talk about all of our events that are coming up in there. We don’t have – actually, in probably February, we will debut our first resource that we will make available to educators. Don’t have a lot to share yet, but obviously it’s along those themes of making sure that educators have the ability to discover impactful EdTech for their classrooms. So watch our social channels for more about that. But that’s the best way to follow along. And sign up for our newsletter at projectfounded.org.
Elana:
Great. And sneaking in one last question: we always end our podcast around inspiration and hope. And I’d love to know when things are tough – which they are; you’re juggling three kids, a nonprofit, being an investor, doing all of these things, the EdTech accelerator – how do you get inspired? How do you keep going? Is it something that you do, like an activity? Is it something that you’re reading right now that people might want to put in their repertoire to help them in challenging times? How do you keep inspired?
Sandro:
My goodness. I mean, I have a cheat code. My cheat code is that I need to talk every day to extremely passionate entrepreneurs in the education space. And I can’t tell you the amount of passion that I am just confronted with on a daily basis. And it’s passion for educating our kids. And there’s nothing better than that. There’s nothing better than that. How can we do this better? How can we help kids achieve? How can we help minimize achievement gaps? How can we help create equitable learning outcomes for all our kids? What can we try? How can we innovate? And that for me is just the most – it really fills my cup. I love it. I love it. I can’t get enough of it. And I think that’s why I do what I do. [Laughs] Because now I have a community of over 700 entrepreneurs that I’m supporting through the Project FoundED community and it really makes me feel great.
Other than that, I read. I read a lot. I read a lot and for whatever reason, reading about education policy and EdTech policy really [laughs] keeps me thinking about the big problems and understanding what the solutions might be keep me going. As long as there’s problems, I’m going to be motivated to find solutions. So it’s a weird one, but that’s what keeps me motivated.
Elana:
Well, you certainly picked the right industry for that. And I feel very lucky that you decided to come into EdTech, because I was talking to my team prior to this interview and I just said, "You know, no one’s asking the questions you’re asking that I’ve heard of. No one’s thinking about it this way." So I thank you for doing that because we are all the better for it.
I need to wrap up, unfortunately. I want to say thank you so much, Sandro, for spending time with me and all of our listeners. I know that they’re going to be beaming and looking at EdTech in a very different way, whether they’re an educator or just in the throes of EdTech. And everyone, there are a lot of resources that we threw around. We will do our best to put everything in the show notes. So @leoneconsultinggroup.com/nine. You’ll find ways to follow Sandro and what he’s doing at Project FoundED there as well.
And please, everyone, make sure to review us. We are starting out small. This is our ninth episode, and every review matters. So please take a moment to just go to Apple or anywhere you listen to us on podcast and review us. Even if it’s just a little star review. Everything helps.
So we appreciate you taking the time, especially everyone in education where your time is limited. So we’ll see everyone next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Thank you so much. Take care.
Thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode. If you liked what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can visit leoneconsultinggroup.com/podcast for all show notes, links, and freebies mentioned in each episode. And we always love friends, so please connect with us on Twitter @leonegroup. If you enjoyed today’s show, go ahead and click the subscribe button to be the first one notified when our next episode is released. We’ll see you next week on All Things Marketing and Education.
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Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.
Sandro Olivieri, Guest
Sandro Olivieri is the founder and president of Productive – an impact investment innovation firm – and Executive Director of Project FoundEd. Though his first job was in EdTech 20 years ago, most of his passion and knowledge of the industry was developed inches role as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the AT&T Aspire Accelerator. In previous lives, Sandro was a Computer Scientist, MBA, restaurant manager, and comic strip artist. He loves building new things, and especially loves when these things have positive social impact. He lives with his wife and three daughters in Berkeley, CA.
About All Things Marketing and Education
What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.
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