May 7, 2025 • 39 mins
Dave Sherwhood shares his journey from Rhodes Scholar studying chemistry at Oxford to founding BibliU, an educational technology company tackling textbook affordability and streamlining content access for universities.
• Started as a B2C business before pivoting to B2B after realizing consumer businesses are incredibly difficult to build successfully
• Discovered that long sales cycles in education (averaging 6-12 months) make EdTech a challenging fit for venture capital expectations
• Found product-market fit by developing a usage-based pricing model that addressed universities' concerns about paying for unused content
• Expanded from the UK to US market, navigating significant differences in university systems, budgets, and technology adoption patterns
• Experienced dramatic variations in digital adoption rates between similar institutions, largely influenced by leadership empowerment
• Sees AI as transforming content creation economics while recognizing that print still makes up approximately 70% of textbook adoptions
• Growing rapidly (60% last year) through both organic expansion and strategic acquisitions
Check out BibliU to see how we're helping institutions transition from physical to digital learning materials and creating more affordable, accessible options for students.
https://bibliu.com/.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/davejlsherwood/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm happy to be here with Dave Shugler.
Dave, thanks for being here.
Yeah, so we had a great startto the conversation last time
and then we had tech issues popup.
You know some Wi-Fi and someconnectivity issues, but maybe
as a place to start it, sort ofjumping through, you were a
(00:23):
Rhodes Scholar studyingchemistry at Oxford and then you
dropped out to start an ed techcompany.
Can you walk me through whathappened and how this led you to
doing what you're doing now?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Sure.
So, as I say, I'm Australianoriginally and moved to the UK
10 years ago it's just a bitover and I had this scholarship
but I never really wanted to domore study, um, uh, it sounds
kind of crazy to say, but, likeI, when I finished my first
(00:55):
degree in australia, I didn'twant to do chemistry, research
or teaching or whatever thatdegree is supposed to supposed
to give you.
Um, and I really enjoyed it.
I'd set up this charity calledTeach, learn, grow, and I really
enjoyed that kind ofentrepreneurship stuff.
So I was pretty set on doing abusiness from there.
But I didn't have a clearoption to do that, so I applied
(01:18):
for a few jobs.
The charity had just gotten bigenough to start paying me salary
, which was great.
That was unclear.
That would be possible just afew months prior and I got the
scholarship.
It was sort of like I wasapplying for different things to
help, um, you know, support mewhilst I set up a business.
Anyway, obviously veryprivileged and fortunate to get
the scholarship.
Um, had a great time at oxfordbut, uh, yeah, even so, on the
(01:42):
train on the way there weactually call the trans-siberian
because, um, they didn't thestipend to get from australia to
the uk, but they don't specifyhow, so you don't have to do it
flat, you can do it all over andfor the price of a flight you
can basically do thetrans-siberian through russia.
Oh cool, a lot of your food,accommodation cost is quite
cheap.
So anyway, did that, came upwith the idea on the train
(02:07):
essentially just that textbooksare really one of the worst
problems for a student-agedperson in terms of cost and
experience and then incorporatedit in the first week and then
fast forward a year.
I drop out of Oxford and gofull-time at Biddley.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Nice, nice, and you guys started as a response to
the textbook affordability, youknow but then you've sort of
like essentially sort of swam,like you know, upstream to
really sort of start to kind ofsolve more problems and improve
institutional systems.
Can you walk me through, like,what that initial journey was
like and how you guys startedand then how you've pivoted to
(02:48):
where you are now?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
yeah, yeah, sure, so, um, yeah, as like I alluded to,
like, obviously, being astudent, I think this is one of
the biggest mistakes foundersmake is they think, well, I, I'm
a consumer, therefore I shouldbuild a consumer business, and
the reality is, consumerbusinesses are incredibly
difficult to build, particularlyin software, and it's much
(03:14):
better to build a B2B business.
And, like you know yeah, ofcourse you know if you're
Facebook, it's a hugeopportunity, huge, huge business
.
But for every Facebook, thereare 10 000 failures, maybe a
million failures, but probablyyou know tens of thousands of
successful b2b companies, ifthat kind of puts things into
perspective.
I don't know a single b2cfounder that's done really well
(03:37):
personally.
most of them went bankruptpretty quickly, that's the other
thing, there's a nice middleground between bankrupt and huge
business, anyway, I guess sortof diverge there.
Uh, we launched this b2cproduct spotify.
You know all you can eat.
Um, two big problems one, andthis is super going to b2c.
One you cap the cost ofacquisition to ltv.
(04:00):
What value?
Just made no sense.
And my co-founder and I weplayed around with so many
different variations ofmarketing and advertising.
I'm like I don't think thiswill ever work.
I don't think it's possible forit to ever work, partly because
Google is a monopoly and theylike scam everyone out of ads
(04:20):
and hopefully they get broke upsoon.
I mean, the FTC has just saidwhat they're doing with ads and
ad managers is illegal andhopefully, you know, we see the
cost of ads come way down.
I still wouldn't advocate for aB2C business, but if the cost
of ads was, you know, a tenth ofwhat it is today and there was
competitors all bidding for adson Google sorry, all providing
(04:43):
ads on Google There'll be a lotmore B2C and small-ticket B2B
businesses exist.
It'd be really good for theeconomy and anyway.
So we pivoted to B2B sort of abit.
I think we knew B2C was fairlynot working.
A bit was like Sussex and a fewother universities came to us
and were like hey, we know somestudents are talking and using
(05:06):
you guys.
Can we just pay for all thechemistry students?
We sort of focused on chemistryinitially, so we were like sort
of drawn to it a bit.
And then we had this advisor,tom Hatton from RefBeat, and he
was super.
Like guys like I did B2C here'sa different site, different
business EdTech.
It was a complete waste of time.
(05:27):
We got tons of users, norevenue, cacti also become a
problem again, um, and then, uh,uh, he was come onto our board
and was like what, what did?
Actually sort of work for uswas b2b, so you need to start
doing that.
So that's essentially how wegot there and it took two or
three years.
We wasted a lot of investment.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Um, you know, testing , b2c, art and this kind of
thing, but it's probablyprobably pretty common story
here, I imagine yeah, that'ssuch a good story and I like I
don't know, um, if there's likea sexiness to b2c that people
really like or if it's just thesort of narrative around the
sort of like2C that peoplereally like or if it's just the
sort of narrative around thesort of like founder story that
people consistently chase that.
(06:08):
But it's such a fascinatingthing that you see happen again
and again, with people sort ofstarting and founding found-ups
that like go to the B2C categoryrather than the B2B.
It just seems to be one ofthose things that people
gravitate to when there's justlike so much fertile ground and
need and capital in the B2Bspace.
(06:29):
So that's a brilliant move.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, you're exactly right.
Quite.
A few of the other edtech B2Bcompanies I know also started
out in B2C.
I think it's a classic thing,like, a lot of us are consumers
and we don't have a lot ofindustry experience, so we don't
have a lot of visibility overb2b pain points, particularly if
we're like younger founders, ofcourse.
Um, and you know, just jump inthat way.
(06:54):
So you know, I think foundersshould really think if they, if
there's a big consumer problemon their mind, it's better for
them to think well, how can Iapproach this market from a b2b
angle?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
um, so yeah that makes that makes sense.
Can you walk me through likethe lessons that you had to
learn with like sort of jumpinginto this space right and just
like sort of offer some contextand something I learned right
like from doing the I'm workingon the ground like chief of
staff kind of role and it's sortof pivot to like doing a
business like you kind of forgetlike how long the sales cycles
(07:28):
are or like how long theiteration cycle is.
Like if you're somebody thatcan build and scrap like pretty
easy, like you're trying to sortof test it in this market,
that's like moving very, veryslow right and then you're
you're working with this sort ofpace, so like the, the, the
pace and the energy and all ofthat kind of thing is like a
different thing to work throughas a startup, like because
(07:48):
you're working in such atraditional space.
Can you walk me through some ofthe lessons and like how you
guys have sort of like right,right in your direction in in
that cycle?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
yeah, no, really good question.
So I think, in terms of some ofthe learnings in education, I
think it's not a great fit forventure capital and so a lot of
founders and investors come inwith a like, let's invest.
(08:20):
You know, grow super quicklyand you know exit quickly.
It's not like there are plentyof examples where venture
capital has worked.
Obviously we all knowInstructure, like Coursera.
There's plenty, so it can work.
But I think generally what themistake's?
Not that you can't grow quickly.
The mistake is more that thesales cycle is very long, as
(08:42):
you've just said, ours isaveraging six quickly.
The mistake is more that thesales cycle is very long, as you
just said, ours is averagingsix.
But like Gateway Tech, a schoolthat we're partnered with now,
I met them four or five yearsago and you know they recently
just partnered, so like that'spretty typical.
So I think the average is morelike 12 months six.
Therefore, if you're building aproduct, it's very hard to
(09:05):
pivot sales and get the livefeedback quickly because the
sales cycle is so long.
So getting product market isprobably a two to three year
process minimum.
We have to do a b2b, the initialb2b, initial B2B.
(09:25):
There was like a second thing,where you can't really go into
the US, I mean there's a teamthere.
Once you have Australia, youjust need to build the sales
cycle into your financial plan.
That's why lead generation wayof sales, because, again, if you
want, you know, next quarterway, again you know, it doesn't
(09:49):
matter what you're doing.
Pipelines are what it is, itexists as well and it's into the
future so again, it's just,it's not important.
But obviously it's much morecomplex when you have suppliers
(10:12):
that are coming through to thebusiness.
Their kind of approachobviously sometimes differs from
the university's.
You know different needs anddesires, actually, just
listening to both you and thepublishers because I think
they're moving from a B2Cproduct to a product Well, I've
seen students do a product thepublishers are not the only way
(10:36):
that helps them with some oftheir issues and needs.
So I think we've run out oftime.
Coming in like design is coolbut tell a lot of people in the
line of work what this propertyis, but we are trying to find
out if it is more listening andbeing flexible.
And unfortunately, a lot of thenurses and volunteers have very
(10:58):
, very similar feedback andneeds.
So we're all like that's feelslike custom dev shop, but once
you've got five or 10 schools,actually they're kind of all
asking for the same stuff, sothere's not much custom in the
apps.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, yeah, those are really great insights.
I'm working with this startupright now, helping with a few
different pieces, and it's thisbrilliant piece of analytics
software that looks at all 990data, so all tax records for all
US colleges.
It pulls in all the iPads data,so national statistics for
(11:32):
everything in the United Statesdays, and you can see very
clearly like how much you spendon contracts and where your
investments go.
And all of these pieces and 60plus like analytics, you know
visuals for every kind offinancial metric.
You can assume Like the softwareis absolutely incredible and
it's so powerful, but it's likethis interesting challenge where
(11:54):
it's like we, the founder,can't get the schools to like
know how smart it is right.
So it's like it's like thisbrilliant piece of software is
doing all of these things butthere's not necessarily a
fluency and the kind of likeadvanced analytics that the that
the software is essentiallysort of having.
(12:14):
So it's just like just missinga little bit right, like some
sort of meeting in the middleand two ends.
So those those kind ofprocesses make make a lot of
sense.
Can you walk through like how,how you iterated on your product
and like what some of thosesort of changes were in those
listening sessions to so thatyou could essentially sort of
hit that fit yes, sure, andinterestingly, like the us and
(12:39):
the uk had very different needsfor us.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I think that's actually quite common, that,
like I hear that a lot of ukcompanies have issues, uh,
scaling to the?
U because they just try to copypaste their product and their
sales team, um, and the realityis you can't do that with either
generally.
I mean some, obviously, somecompanies get lucky, but
generally it doesn't work likethat.
So, yeah, no to your question.
(13:03):
Like what were some of the keylearnings?
I guess maybe I'll start withone of the key mistakes, or like
when we weren't listening.
So our first product in the UK,I don't know, we got like 10, 15
universities all paying a smallamount and we were like, kind
of the bottom of theirpriorities, in the bottom of
their budget, which indicatesnot great market fit, right,
(13:25):
sure, any part of the budget.
And they kept saying, look,it's too expensive, um, we need
a more affordable way to accessthis um and we don't like paying
for content that's not beingused.
So it was like those three.
Everyone was saying that and wewere like, well, we can't
change the price.
The publisher sets the priceright, let's focus on the
(13:46):
student experience.
And we invested tons of time andmoney there and like they were
already happy with the studentexperience the buyer, this was
right and the student feedbackwas good.
So like it wasn't like thestudents were saying, whoa, this
was right and the studentfeedback was good.
So like it wasn't like thestudents were saying, whoa, this
is a terrible experience weneed.
We need a better one, yeah, soso, yeah, um, that's essentially
(14:07):
, that's essentially a key linethat eventually, probably it
took us two to three years, um,I can't remember what happened
exactly, but one day we had abit of a moment where we were
like, well, actually thepublishers don't need to,
because we had this model wherethat all would be paid up front
for all the students in theclass.
(14:27):
It's a big game model and notreally relevant to the US at all
, honestly, but anyway, what ifthe publishers were paid based
on usage and the universities,you know, paid for what they use
(14:49):
?
It's a government, this is more, it's called user acquisition.
And then format was a hit.
It actually we released it justbefore COVID happened and it
was sort of the perfect storm.
It would have scaled prettywell anyway.
Probably not to that extent,but it would have scaled pretty
well anyway.
And the university, suddenly itbecame, you know, maybe the
(15:11):
third or fourth item in theirbudget and critical to their
strategy.
Like, we ended up with like 60UK universities and there's only
really 100 big ones here.
So that's like good productmarket fit right.
And I just kind of like, well,three years prior we just
listened and being a bit morecreative and maybe if we'd sat
(15:31):
down with more publishers andbeen creative with them, the
publishers would have given usthe answer or come up with
something else.
But classic case of a founderjust ignoring essentially the
advice from the customers andthinking they know better, um,
or thinking there's impossible.
Like oh, yeah, yeah, we knowthat's, that's the advice, but
but there's nothing that can bedone and yeah maybe occasionally
(15:54):
that's true, but I think it'sactually pretty rare that
nothing can be done.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah, that is a great story.
Yeah, I think just shows theimportance of really sort of
listening and integrating thatfeedback and being creative in
terms of how you're applying it,sort of pivoting from there to
where you are now, where you'vegot bigger systems and you're
sort of solving bigger problemsthat are streamlining real stuff
for for institutions.
What are the biggestinefficiencies that you're like
(16:24):
that you're looking at and howare you working to sort of
systematize, um, solving thoseright and streamlining those and
making automation, pricingtools, improve visibility, like
all those things that you'resort of working through?
How are you doing that and whatare the bigger problems that
you're trying to tackle?
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Yeah, good question.
I guess there's like acombination of like you know
what we're talking about forlike, building very specifically
what the customer wants andthen also building to a longer
term vision, maybe what thecustomers want next or in five
years, or, like you know, sortof impact you're having on
education as well.
(17:03):
Um, and it's hard because, likeyou're quite small company,
you've got a lot of prioritiesto juggle.
Often sales isn't working verywell.
The board think you're goingtoo slowly.
These you know the classicthings.
You don't have your productmarket fit.
Um, I think I think it'ssomewhat about reading the
(17:25):
growth curve.
So, like most founders know,when they've come to the end of
the product market fit andthey've saturated the market,
and before they've hit it, justbefore you've hit it, you
shouldn't be thinking if youhaven't even hit it once and
you've've hit it you shouldn'tbe thinking if you haven't even
hit it once and you've gotpractically no revenue.
You shouldn't be thinking tootoo long term.
Obviously, that impact isreally important and a positive
(17:47):
impact like on students or theinstitution will help help the
product market fit and help youfinancially.
You should just focus on likewe were talking about before.
But moving on to like we'vebeen through the curve, like our
situation in the uk, um, maybewe're sort of like a little bit
of way through the curve, likeclearly we're growing really
fast, point, like it's working,revenue's going pretty quick.
(18:10):
It was clear to me well, theuk's only got 100 universities,
so we need to have a visionthat's going to hit a thousand
and four thousand universities,which obviously has an impact
effect.
Like you go from a market witha total of 2 million students to
a market with 20.
I mean, we've had a millionstudents use the platform now
and that would be practicallyimpossible to do in the UK alone
(18:30):
.
I mean, in the B2B market weoperate in, there are 2 million
students here, but it's verydifficult to get that and so,
yeah, anyway, we startedinvesting pretty heavily into
the US go-to-market product kindof that, before the US
saturated, fortunately, yeah,that's cool.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
What's the learning curve been like with tackling
that right and sort of goingupstream into a different market
?
Because, like you said before,right, like sort of going
upstream into like a differentmarket Because, like you said
before, right, like universitysystems in the UK and the US are
very different in so manydifferent ways.
You know, and we probably golike what are some of the key
lessons that you've learnedthere?
Yeah, that's a good question aswell.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
They are very different.
I mean, obviously you've gotthe fact that the loans are
uncapped in the US and so youcould be paying like 300 grand.
So we operate mostly in thecommunity college space, which I
think people don't realize isactually pretty good value.
You can come out for a lownumber of thousands.
(19:35):
You can come out with a, youknow, a diploma certificate,
that kind of thing.
But anyway, obviously in Europeand the UK cost is capped so
you can only charge up to acertain amount and get the line
from the government.
So that changed the dynamic alot.
Try to think of the other majordifferences.
You know the US is different inin kind of the more republican,
(19:59):
the more democrat areas, theway they think, the way they um
their values, like how you sellto them, how you partner with
them, and I think peopleunderestimate that.
Um, yeah, and I guess the us inthe classic sense is privileged
.
It's a huge market.
The universities, whilst notnecessarily having big surpluses
(20:20):
, generally have a lot morerevenue per head.
So there's bigger researchprograms happening, there's
bigger edtech investmentshappening, all of these things.
So one good example in ourmarket is like courseware, which
the publishers are all about.
It's like kind of all they talkabout and yeah, it is the future
of the textbook, don't get mewrong.
But outside of the US it hasn'treally sold much, you know
(20:42):
maybe the business is talkingabout it, price point, the fact
that people generally learn froma long list of books doesn't
work with just like one piece ofcourseware necessarily.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, the US, it's everywhere and that has big
product implications for usmarketing, like you know,
go-to-market implications aswell yeah, that makes that makes
a ton of sense is is there arethere differences in terms of
like adoption of, uh like,digital tools and like
onboarding processes and thingslike that that you notice
between the two environments?
Speaker 2 (21:17):
um, well, that's a good question.
We're um and maybe this isn'tisn't distinct to us.
We sell to the library in inthe uk and the president provost
vba, obviously um, cfo in theus, so sure, um.
So yeah, the cell is differentand when you come to
integrations, we integrate intodifferent systems.
(21:38):
If you're a edtech product thatjust plugs into the learning
management system, I don't thinkthe experience with that
different uk us us has a biggerfocus on accessibility and
actually it's not just liketalking about accessibility,
which most people in educationlike to do, but like university
University of Phoenix, forinstance.
(21:58):
I think this guy on the techteam is full-time.
He did like a proper likefull-on tech accessibility test
where he used all the featureshimself, he benchmarked he has
some benchmarking users and waslike, sent us like a very
detailed report, being likethese things are not good enough
and we will not partner withyou until you prove it, whereas
(22:23):
in the uk people would talk agood game about it.
But then you know and alex'sreally is not bad we met like
wcag requirements but like theynever got into the detail.
So that's one thing.
Um, increasingly people wantthe data stored locally.
So, uk, you will want yourservers in in the uk and the us
one in the US.
So that's quite a new thing.
It's kind of dumb becauseAmazon owns all the servers and
they could easily funnel intothe back door of the US and the
(22:45):
UK and move the data.
I mean, technically they're moreregarded, but we all know, that
it's one company and how thingswork within one company.
But whatever, this is whatcustomers want.
It's what the government wants.
I guess the population wantsreally.
Um, so that are the main ones.
But yeah, plugging into lms ispretty straightforward yeah,
(23:07):
that's good, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
um, any success stories that come to mind in
terms of, like something thatyou're particularly proud of
with with regards to yourproducts, whether it's a story
in the UK or the US somethingthat sort of just solved real
pain points I mean, there's somany in terms of sort of costs
and different pieces but likeone of the things that you, I
think, really hang your hat on.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
you're like okay, this felt good oh, good, good
question um yeah, I mean thereare a lot of um, a lot of things
that that um over the yearsthat have kind of I've been
confident about, I've felt goodabout.
(23:48):
You know, everything from likemaking a positive impact to like
, oh, this product seems to work.
It's interesting, as I foundyou have to try to be pretty
optimistic and sometimes whenyou have a good feeling, you're
kidding yourself a little bit.
But there were multiple timesin the UK when we had a product
market fit across the twoproduct categories where I was
(24:08):
like, yeah, I think we've got itnow, like this feature or like
this would change the salesmessaging to this and it's going
to click and like it.
It didn't.
It didn't um, so so yeah, but Ithink like, overall, um, what
what's like kind of the mostfulfilling is um, just seeing
what's been built, so like we'vebumped into a few users, which
(24:33):
is really cool and like for a b2product.
That's not a common thing to do, right.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So I was at one of our early users.
She now works for us.
She has for a long time, butthat was quite cool, that like
that connection, but I waswatching the Premier League in
Leeds.
My chair's a Leeds fan, I'm aLeicester fan and the guy across
the table from us.
We were talking to him and hispartner and he'd used us for his
(25:00):
accounting qualification.
We suddenly realised that bigconversation and we explained
what we all did and that kind ofthing he was like yeah it's
pretty good.
I mean, obviously he's not goingto say too much to your face,
but yeah, that kind of thingLike man, that's pretty cool At
some point.
The football is like use theproducts and it makes you think
a bit about yourself, right,like, oh, that was me, right.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Ease out of you.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
That was me not too long ago.
Help future me with theseproblems a little bit.
That is super cool, very, very,very cool no-transcript, to
(26:06):
like nearly a hundred percent atanother and you might.
You might think, oh well, youknow, you know, I believe you'll
be less adopted or whatever.
But you literally have like twocolleges in Texas very close
together geographically,probably feeding from pretty
much the same demography, moreor less.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And I think it largely I mean, I don't know,
but I think it largely comesback to the leadership.
Most community colleges wherewe operate um particularly I
guess we operate a lot in in thesouth and kind of the east
coast it seems the executiveoften very empowered to make
change.
So if you get a president, vpa,cfo, that's like we like
(26:49):
horseware or we don't likehorseware, or we like oER or we
like e-books, whatever kind ofinitiative it is, it seems to
get implemented.
And then you have others thatmaybe are a bit more maybe
they're less empowered.
And power is such a funny thingJust because you have a title
doesn't mean you have power.
Right Like?
People want to respect you andbuy into what you want to do.
(27:11):
All sorts of other complicatedpolitical factors, and I think
the ones that sometimes feeldisempowered as disempowered as
they feel are maybe just notchanging Totally Instead of
people themselves.
Then you'll see that we've justleft the doctrine of newer
(27:32):
technology, not just in relationto cross-wage, I'm sure you see
this all the time it's, it'sinsane.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
I mean like no, you're, you nailed it.
Like the, the adoption is likewildly all over the place and so
like and and like doesn'tnecessarily like have easy, like
you know, if x, then y kind oflike factors like you can't
really make, make full sense ofit.
I think that your insight aboutthe leadership is, is is dead
on um, uh, what do you like?
(27:59):
So, with everything sort ofhappening like what, what trends
do you see potentially sort ofcoming, and then like what are
you excited about and what'skind of a little bit scary and
all that yeah question.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Well, I think a lot about ai which scares me a lot.
Um, obviously I'm probably anoptimist, like I think it would
be good for society, even ifthere is a prospect like we
don't really want to kill us all.
I think well healthcare, allthese kind of things.
Technology is historicallynever Even.
(28:36):
This is a bunch of actual,completely wrong, aside from
when the nuclear bomb was huge,which is horrific and wrong.
Obviously.
Sure, it seems Really.
Maybe that's one example whereI think people are extremely
(28:57):
fearful of the technology.
Maybe there's a bit more peopleexpected.
But I don't know, I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm too close to the analysisbecause who knows what the
future holds Really For us?
It's super easy to createcontent, whether that's full
(29:22):
text or content within thecourseware.
So you've seen OEMs writecommunication resources which is
actually like textbooks thatare really like stacks or some
others, grow from 10 to 10.2again very similar.
We're saying we have schoolsthat are like over 50 and
(29:42):
schools like zero.
Um, but I haven't just gonefrom 10 to 20 in the last 10
years.
That's a pretty big shift in mylife and then I think I could
easily run.
And then I think AI could easilyrun and on the flip side
because I think a lot of OER issort of given by publisher
pricing that if the publishersreally take advantage of the
(30:06):
production cost way down,potentially OER goes down and
stays kind of the same.
Right.
It's like in my mind if contentcosts are more than $50,
there's a strong incentive for aparticular class, there's a
strong incentive for theprofessor to consider.
If they're $50 or less, thenthe incentive's really not that
(30:28):
strong.
There might be philosophicalreasons, but complaints from
students and all that it's lessfor sure.
So you can go ahead and talk tothe judge.
I can obviously generatequizzes and things like this.
So if you're thinking about thecourse weight, it's not just
(31:07):
writing the snippets.
I think all of that stuff.
You think about Che, and if youwent there to get a book
writing in a cell doing theright thing, why would you have
to do that?
Sorry, again, there could be afall away from written-wise
(31:29):
textbooks to go to GBT.
But we have this unique set ofhighly curated publisher content
, a lot of which is not on thetraining set, and so if we get,
we stick on top of the contentwe have obviously with our
publishers sell it to theinstitution.
(31:51):
Sell it to the institution.
Maybe they only use, you know,iteration of the app because it
has the right content so thingskeep going.
You must hear that no,completely.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
I think you nailed some of the meta trends.
I think there's also somecompanies you know, collegevine
being one of them and a fewothers that sort of popped up
that are, I think, integratingagetic AI in interesting spaces.
But I think, like in fulldisclosure, haven't really fully
nailed it.
I think there are some peopletalk a lot about privacy
(32:28):
concerns.
I actually think that's maybe alittle bit sort of talked about
more than they need to.
As much as like the data accessand as simple as it sounds like
broader api connections thatbring in the right kinds of data
.
Like that is massively behind ineducation to to an extent where
I don't think I think it's abottleneck for agents that gotta
really sort of take off, um,you know, particularly at
(32:50):
smaller places.
So I I do think there is a lotcoming, but I think there's a
lot of sort of like smallerbottlenecks and things that need
to be fixed before you canreally sort of have an
integrated sort of system.
I do think kind of put yourpoint on community colleges and
value.
I do think there's massiveopportunity at a lot of these
sort of smaller places, who haveto run an extremely tight
(33:11):
bellage, to be reallyinteresting test grounds for
some of this new tech, so I'mpersonally invested in seeing
more prototypes and differentkinds of things that are
happening, because I do thinkthere is actually some massive
potential if we can get smarterAPI connections and better
(33:33):
system integrations at places,which, again, from what I'm
seeing, seems to be asignificant challenge that a lot
of places are facing.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, totally, and it's funny because often we'll
speak to an investor and they'reequally panicked and excited
about AI and they don'tunderstand that print still
makes up probably 70% of theadoptions in the US and similar
in the UK.
It's like how is a professorgoing to use AI and get the
(34:04):
students using AI if they'restill using print?
I'm like don't get me wrong, Ihaven't heard it quickly for six
months.
It's like disregard possibility.
I think there's just a lack ofunderstanding of when finding
this to do yeah and have some ofthe more old school professors,
which is most of them.
Face it, it's like a lady.
(34:27):
They work right.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
So no, complete completely.
Um, I, you, you have.
You have problems andchallenges in the classroom.
You, you have, I think, likemassive system integration
challenges.
I think like the reality oflike how work is structured and
like what you know down.
So I think, like you know, foradoption to work, you have to
(34:58):
really take a smart look atworkflows and different pieces
and try to sort of like notnecessarily sort of I do think
you need to sort of changebehavior in one direction, but
you also need to really sort oflook at behavior and design for
you know, capturing, ai andsmart pieces, that sort of
actually sort of feed intoexisting systems and that work.
(35:19):
But just kind of curious, whatelse are you guys up to and like
what are some new partnerships,product expansion, things that
you're sort of thinking on, likewhat's the road ahead looking
like for you all, because you'vegot so many interesting things
happening and it's some bigexpansion.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no good question.
I mean, we did an acquisitionlast year and that's been really
, um, really transformative forus.
It's opened our market up tonew segments, um, you know, it's
given us new products andservices.
It's given us new referenceaccounts in states we didn't
wouldn't have.
So definitely would considerdoing more acquisitions in the
future.
Organic growth has been really,really good.
(35:59):
Last year we grew 60%, sohopefully can continue that as
well, which is just like moreschools and more students, right
, nice.
And then, yeah, the productside, uh, the, like I said, the
engage, the second product ofours.
It feels like the future insome ways.
(36:23):
Like, yeah, it's probably notgoing to grow as fast as our
core product for the reasons wetalked about before our core
product is having people makestep one going from physical to
digital happen.
And this product is like goingfrom digital to like advanced
digital with a little bit of AIand mostly just you know,
(36:44):
quizzes and stuff.
I don't like to overstate thethings like every company is
like it's like two weeks ago,yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Very cool, very cool.
I appreciate the time today andI encourage everybody to check
out the great work that Dave andhis team are doing.
We'll obviously link everything, but, dave, I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
I appreciate it.
I had fun as well.
Thank you, dave, you nailed it.
I'm happy to be here with Dave Shugler.
Dave, thanks for being here.
Yeah, so we had a great startto the conversation last time
and then we had tech issues popup.
You know some Wi-Fi and someconnectivity issues, but maybe
as a place to start it, sort ofjumping through, you were a
(00:23):
Rhodes Scholar studyingchemistry at Oxford and then you
dropped out to start an ed techcompany.
Can you walk me through whathappened and how this led you to
doing what you're doing now?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Sure.
So, as I say, I'm Australianoriginally and moved to the UK
10 years ago it's just a bitover and I had this scholarship
but I never really wanted to domore study, um, uh, it sounds
kind of crazy to say, but, likeI, when I finished my first
(00:55):
degree in australia, I didn'twant to do chemistry, research
or teaching or whatever thatdegree is supposed to supposed
to give you.
Um, and I really enjoyed it.
I'd set up this charity calledTeach, learn, grow, and I really
enjoyed that kind ofentrepreneurship stuff.
So I was pretty set on doing abusiness from there.
But I didn't have a clearoption to do that, so I applied
(01:18):
for a few jobs.
The charity had just gotten bigenough to start paying me salary
, which was great.
That was unclear.
That would be possible just afew months prior and I got the
scholarship.
It was sort of like I wasapplying for different things to
help, um, you know, support mewhilst I set up a business.
Anyway, obviously veryprivileged and fortunate to get
the scholarship.
Um, had a great time at oxfordbut, uh, yeah, even so, on the
(01:42):
train on the way there weactually call the trans-siberian
because, um, they didn't thestipend to get from australia to
the uk, but they don't specifyhow, so you don't have to do it
flat, you can do it all over andfor the price of a flight you
can basically do thetrans-siberian through russia.
Oh cool, a lot of your food,accommodation cost is quite
cheap.
So anyway, did that, came upwith the idea on the train
(02:07):
essentially just that textbooksare really one of the worst
problems for a student-agedperson in terms of cost and
experience and then incorporatedit in the first week and then
fast forward a year.
I drop out of Oxford and gofull-time at Biddley.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Nice, nice, and you guys started as a response to
the textbook affordability, youknow but then you've sort of
like essentially sort of swam,like you know, upstream to
really sort of start to kind ofsolve more problems and improve
institutional systems.
Can you walk me through, like,what that initial journey was
like and how you guys startedand then how you've pivoted to
(02:48):
where you are now?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
yeah, yeah, sure, so, um, yeah, as like I alluded to,
like, obviously, being astudent, I think this is one of
the biggest mistakes foundersmake is they think, well, I, I'm
a consumer, therefore I shouldbuild a consumer business, and
the reality is, consumerbusinesses are incredibly
difficult to build, particularlyin software, and it's much
(03:14):
better to build a B2B business.
And, like you know yeah, ofcourse you know if you're
Facebook, it's a hugeopportunity, huge, huge business
.
But for every Facebook, thereare 10 000 failures, maybe a
million failures, but probablyyou know tens of thousands of
successful b2b companies, ifthat kind of puts things into
perspective.
I don't know a single b2cfounder that's done really well
(03:37):
personally.
most of them went bankruptpretty quickly, that's the other
thing, there's a nice middleground between bankrupt and huge
business, anyway, I guess sortof diverge there.
Uh, we launched this b2cproduct spotify.
You know all you can eat.
Um, two big problems one, andthis is super going to b2c.
One you cap the cost ofacquisition to ltv.
(04:00):
What value?
Just made no sense.
And my co-founder and I weplayed around with so many
different variations ofmarketing and advertising.
I'm like I don't think thiswill ever work.
I don't think it's possible forit to ever work, partly because
Google is a monopoly and theylike scam everyone out of ads
(04:20):
and hopefully they get broke upsoon.
I mean, the FTC has just saidwhat they're doing with ads and
ad managers is illegal andhopefully, you know, we see the
cost of ads come way down.
I still wouldn't advocate for aB2C business, but if the cost
of ads was, you know, a tenth ofwhat it is today and there was
competitors all bidding for adson Google sorry, all providing
(04:43):
ads on Google There'll be a lotmore B2C and small-ticket B2B
businesses exist.
It'd be really good for theeconomy and anyway.
So we pivoted to B2B sort of abit.
I think we knew B2C was fairlynot working.
A bit was like Sussex and a fewother universities came to us
and were like hey, we know somestudents are talking and using
(05:06):
you guys.
Can we just pay for all thechemistry students?
We sort of focused on chemistryinitially, so we were like sort
of drawn to it a bit.
And then we had this advisor,tom Hatton from RefBeat, and he
was super.
Like guys like I did B2C here'sa different site, different
business EdTech.
It was a complete waste of time.
(05:27):
We got tons of users, norevenue, cacti also become a
problem again, um, and then, uh,uh, he was come onto our board
and was like what, what did?
Actually sort of work for uswas b2b, so you need to start
doing that.
So that's essentially how wegot there and it took two or
three years.
We wasted a lot of investment.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Um, you know, testing , b2c, art and this kind of
thing, but it's probablyprobably pretty common story
here, I imagine yeah, that'ssuch a good story and I like I
don't know, um, if there's likea sexiness to b2c that people
really like or if it's just thesort of narrative around the
sort of like2C that peoplereally like or if it's just the
sort of narrative around thesort of like founder story that
people consistently chase that.
(06:08):
But it's such a fascinatingthing that you see happen again
and again, with people sort ofstarting and founding found-ups
that like go to the B2C categoryrather than the B2B.
It just seems to be one ofthose things that people
gravitate to when there's justlike so much fertile ground and
need and capital in the B2Bspace.
(06:29):
So that's a brilliant move.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, you're exactly right.
Quite.
A few of the other edtech B2Bcompanies I know also started
out in B2C.
I think it's a classic thing,like, a lot of us are consumers
and we don't have a lot ofindustry experience, so we don't
have a lot of visibility overb2b pain points, particularly if
we're like younger founders, ofcourse.
Um, and you know, just jump inthat way.
(06:54):
So you know, I think foundersshould really think if they, if
there's a big consumer problemon their mind, it's better for
them to think well, how can Iapproach this market from a b2b
angle?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
um, so yeah that makes that makes sense.
Can you walk me through likethe lessons that you had to
learn with like sort of jumpinginto this space right and just
like sort of offer some contextand something I learned right
like from doing the I'm workingon the ground like chief of
staff kind of role and it's sortof pivot to like doing a
business like you kind of forgetlike how long the sales cycles
(07:28):
are or like how long theiteration cycle is.
Like if you're somebody thatcan build and scrap like pretty
easy, like you're trying to sortof test it in this market,
that's like moving very, veryslow right and then you're
you're working with this sort ofpace, so like the, the, the
pace and the energy and all ofthat kind of thing is like a
different thing to work throughas a startup, like because
(07:48):
you're working in such atraditional space.
Can you walk me through some ofthe lessons and like how you
guys have sort of like right,right in your direction in in
that cycle?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
yeah, no, really good question.
So I think, in terms of some ofthe learnings in education, I
think it's not a great fit forventure capital and so a lot of
founders and investors come inwith a like, let's invest.
(08:20):
You know, grow super quicklyand you know exit quickly.
It's not like there are plentyof examples where venture
capital has worked.
Obviously we all knowInstructure, like Coursera.
There's plenty, so it can work.
But I think generally what themistake's?
Not that you can't grow quickly.
The mistake is more that thesales cycle is very long, as
(08:42):
you've just said, ours isaveraging six quickly.
The mistake is more that thesales cycle is very long, as you
just said, ours is averagingsix.
But like Gateway Tech, a schoolthat we're partnered with now,
I met them four or five yearsago and you know they recently
just partnered, so like that'spretty typical.
So I think the average is morelike 12 months six.
Therefore, if you're building aproduct, it's very hard to
(09:05):
pivot sales and get the livefeedback quickly because the
sales cycle is so long.
So getting product market isprobably a two to three year
process minimum.
We have to do a b2b, the initialb2b, initial B2B.
(09:25):
There was like a second thing,where you can't really go into
the US, I mean there's a teamthere.
Once you have Australia, youjust need to build the sales
cycle into your financial plan.
That's why lead generation wayof sales, because, again, if you
want, you know, next quarterway, again you know, it doesn't
(09:49):
matter what you're doing.
Pipelines are what it is, itexists as well and it's into the
future so again, it's just,it's not important.
But obviously it's much morecomplex when you have suppliers
(10:12):
that are coming through to thebusiness.
Their kind of approachobviously sometimes differs from
the university's.
You know different needs anddesires, actually, just
listening to both you and thepublishers because I think
they're moving from a B2Cproduct to a product Well, I've
seen students do a product thepublishers are not the only way
(10:36):
that helps them with some oftheir issues and needs.
So I think we've run out oftime.
Coming in like design is coolbut tell a lot of people in the
line of work what this propertyis, but we are trying to find
out if it is more listening andbeing flexible.
And unfortunately, a lot of thenurses and volunteers have very
(10:58):
, very similar feedback andneeds.
So we're all like that's feelslike custom dev shop, but once
you've got five or 10 schools,actually they're kind of all
asking for the same stuff, sothere's not much custom in the
apps.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, yeah, those are really great insights.
I'm working with this startupright now, helping with a few
different pieces, and it's thisbrilliant piece of analytics
software that looks at all 990data, so all tax records for all
US colleges.
It pulls in all the iPads data,so national statistics for
(11:32):
everything in the United Statesdays, and you can see very
clearly like how much you spendon contracts and where your
investments go.
And all of these pieces and 60plus like analytics, you know
visuals for every kind offinancial metric.
You can assume Like the softwareis absolutely incredible and
it's so powerful, but it's likethis interesting challenge where
(11:54):
it's like we, the founder,can't get the schools to like
know how smart it is right.
So it's like it's like thisbrilliant piece of software is
doing all of these things butthere's not necessarily a
fluency and the kind of likeadvanced analytics that the that
the software is essentiallysort of having.
(12:14):
So it's just like just missinga little bit right, like some
sort of meeting in the middleand two ends.
So those those kind ofprocesses make make a lot of
sense.
Can you walk through like how,how you iterated on your product
and like what some of thosesort of changes were in those
listening sessions to so thatyou could essentially sort of
hit that fit yes, sure, andinterestingly, like the us and
(12:39):
the uk had very different needsfor us.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I think that's actually quite common, that,
like I hear that a lot of ukcompanies have issues, uh,
scaling to the?
U because they just try to copypaste their product and their
sales team, um, and the realityis you can't do that with either
generally.
I mean some, obviously, somecompanies get lucky, but
generally it doesn't work likethat.
So, yeah, no to your question.
(13:03):
Like what were some of the keylearnings?
I guess maybe I'll start withone of the key mistakes, or like
when we weren't listening.
So our first product in the UK,I don't know, we got like 10, 15
universities all paying a smallamount and we were like, kind
of the bottom of theirpriorities, in the bottom of
their budget, which indicatesnot great market fit, right,
(13:25):
sure, any part of the budget.
And they kept saying, look,it's too expensive, um, we need
a more affordable way to accessthis um and we don't like paying
for content that's not beingused.
So it was like those three.
Everyone was saying that and wewere like, well, we can't
change the price.
The publisher sets the priceright, let's focus on the
(13:46):
student experience.
And we invested tons of time andmoney there and like they were
already happy with the studentexperience the buyer, this was
right and the student feedbackwas good.
So like it wasn't like thestudents were saying, whoa, this
was right and the studentfeedback was good.
So like it wasn't like thestudents were saying, whoa, this
is a terrible experience weneed.
We need a better one, yeah, soso, yeah, um, that's essentially
(14:07):
, that's essentially a key linethat eventually, probably it
took us two to three years, um,I can't remember what happened
exactly, but one day we had abit of a moment where we were
like, well, actually thepublishers don't need to,
because we had this model wherethat all would be paid up front
for all the students in theclass.
(14:27):
It's a big game model and notreally relevant to the US at all
, honestly, but anyway, what ifthe publishers were paid based
on usage and the universities,you know, paid for what they use
(14:49):
?
It's a government, this is more, it's called user acquisition.
And then format was a hit.
It actually we released it justbefore COVID happened and it
was sort of the perfect storm.
It would have scaled prettywell anyway.
Probably not to that extent,but it would have scaled pretty
well anyway.
And the university, suddenly itbecame, you know, maybe the
(15:11):
third or fourth item in theirbudget and critical to their
strategy.
Like, we ended up with like 60UK universities and there's only
really 100 big ones here.
So that's like good productmarket fit right.
And I just kind of like, well,three years prior we just
listened and being a bit morecreative and maybe if we'd sat
(15:31):
down with more publishers andbeen creative with them, the
publishers would have given usthe answer or come up with
something else.
But classic case of a founderjust ignoring essentially the
advice from the customers andthinking they know better, um,
or thinking there's impossible.
Like oh, yeah, yeah, we knowthat's, that's the advice, but
but there's nothing that can bedone and yeah maybe occasionally
(15:54):
that's true, but I think it'sactually pretty rare that
nothing can be done.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah, that is a great story.
Yeah, I think just shows theimportance of really sort of
listening and integrating thatfeedback and being creative in
terms of how you're applying it,sort of pivoting from there to
where you are now, where you'vegot bigger systems and you're
sort of solving bigger problemsthat are streamlining real stuff
for for institutions.
What are the biggestinefficiencies that you're like
(16:24):
that you're looking at and howare you working to sort of
systematize, um, solving thoseright and streamlining those and
making automation, pricingtools, improve visibility, like
all those things that you'resort of working through?
How are you doing that and whatare the bigger problems that
you're trying to tackle?
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Yeah, good question.
I guess there's like acombination of like you know
what we're talking about forlike, building very specifically
what the customer wants andthen also building to a longer
term vision, maybe what thecustomers want next or in five
years, or, like you know, sortof impact you're having on
education as well.
(17:03):
Um, and it's hard because, likeyou're quite small company,
you've got a lot of prioritiesto juggle.
Often sales isn't working verywell.
The board think you're goingtoo slowly.
These you know the classicthings.
You don't have your productmarket fit.
Um, I think I think it'ssomewhat about reading the
(17:25):
growth curve.
So, like most founders know,when they've come to the end of
the product market fit andthey've saturated the market,
and before they've hit it, justbefore you've hit it, you
shouldn't be thinking if youhaven't even hit it once and
you've've hit it you shouldn'tbe thinking if you haven't even
hit it once and you've gotpractically no revenue.
You shouldn't be thinking tootoo long term.
Obviously, that impact isreally important and a positive
(17:47):
impact like on students or theinstitution will help help the
product market fit and help youfinancially.
You should just focus on likewe were talking about before.
But moving on to like we'vebeen through the curve, like our
situation in the uk, um, maybewe're sort of like a little bit
of way through the curve, likeclearly we're growing really
fast, point, like it's working,revenue's going pretty quick.
(18:10):
It was clear to me well, theuk's only got 100 universities,
so we need to have a visionthat's going to hit a thousand
and four thousand universities,which obviously has an impact
effect.
Like you go from a market witha total of 2 million students to
a market with 20.
I mean, we've had a millionstudents use the platform now
and that would be practicallyimpossible to do in the UK alone
(18:30):
.
I mean, in the B2B market weoperate in, there are 2 million
students here, but it's verydifficult to get that and so,
yeah, anyway, we startedinvesting pretty heavily into
the US go-to-market product kindof that, before the US
saturated, fortunately, yeah,that's cool.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
What's the learning curve been like with tackling
that right and sort of goingupstream into a different market
?
Because, like you said before,right, like sort of going
upstream into like a differentmarket Because, like you said
before, right, like universitysystems in the UK and the US are
very different in so manydifferent ways.
You know, and we probably golike what are some of the key
lessons that you've learnedthere?
Yeah, that's a good question aswell.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
They are very different.
I mean, obviously you've gotthe fact that the loans are
uncapped in the US and so youcould be paying like 300 grand.
So we operate mostly in thecommunity college space, which I
think people don't realize isactually pretty good value.
You can come out for a lownumber of thousands.
(19:35):
You can come out with a, youknow, a diploma certificate,
that kind of thing.
But anyway, obviously in Europeand the UK cost is capped so
you can only charge up to acertain amount and get the line
from the government.
So that changed the dynamic alot.
Try to think of the other majordifferences.
You know the US is different inin kind of the more republican,
(19:59):
the more democrat areas, theway they think, the way they um
their values, like how you sellto them, how you partner with
them, and I think peopleunderestimate that.
Um, yeah, and I guess the us inthe classic sense is privileged
.
It's a huge market.
The universities, whilst notnecessarily having big surpluses
(20:20):
, generally have a lot morerevenue per head.
So there's bigger researchprograms happening, there's
bigger edtech investmentshappening, all of these things.
So one good example in ourmarket is like courseware, which
the publishers are all about.
It's like kind of all they talkabout and yeah, it is the future
of the textbook, don't get mewrong.
But outside of the US it hasn'treally sold much, you know
(20:42):
maybe the business is talkingabout it, price point, the fact
that people generally learn froma long list of books doesn't
work with just like one piece ofcourseware necessarily.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, the US, it's everywhere and that has big
product implications for usmarketing, like you know,
go-to-market implications aswell yeah, that makes that makes
a ton of sense is is there arethere differences in terms of
like adoption of, uh like,digital tools and like
onboarding processes and thingslike that that you notice
between the two environments?
Speaker 2 (21:17):
um, well, that's a good question.
We're um and maybe this isn'tisn't distinct to us.
We sell to the library in inthe uk and the president provost
vba, obviously um, cfo in theus, so sure, um.
So yeah, the cell is differentand when you come to
integrations, we integrate intodifferent systems.
(21:38):
If you're a edtech product thatjust plugs into the learning
management system, I don't thinkthe experience with that
different uk us us has a biggerfocus on accessibility and
actually it's not just liketalking about accessibility,
which most people in educationlike to do, but like university
University of Phoenix, forinstance.
(21:58):
I think this guy on the techteam is full-time.
He did like a proper likefull-on tech accessibility test
where he used all the featureshimself, he benchmarked he has
some benchmarking users and waslike, sent us like a very
detailed report, being likethese things are not good enough
and we will not partner withyou until you prove it, whereas
(22:23):
in the uk people would talk agood game about it.
But then you know and alex'sreally is not bad we met like
wcag requirements but like theynever got into the detail.
So that's one thing.
Um, increasingly people wantthe data stored locally.
So, uk, you will want yourservers in in the uk and the us
one in the US.
So that's quite a new thing.
It's kind of dumb becauseAmazon owns all the servers and
they could easily funnel intothe back door of the US and the
(22:45):
UK and move the data.
I mean, technically they're moreregarded, but we all know, that
it's one company and how thingswork within one company.
But whatever, this is whatcustomers want.
It's what the government wants.
I guess the population wantsreally.
Um, so that are the main ones.
But yeah, plugging into lms ispretty straightforward yeah,
(23:07):
that's good, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
um, any success stories that come to mind in
terms of, like something thatyou're particularly proud of
with with regards to yourproducts, whether it's a story
in the UK or the US somethingthat sort of just solved real
pain points I mean, there's somany in terms of sort of costs
and different pieces but likeone of the things that you, I
think, really hang your hat on.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
you're like okay, this felt good oh, good, good
question um yeah, I mean thereare a lot of um, a lot of things
that that um over the yearsthat have kind of I've been
confident about, I've felt goodabout.
(23:48):
You know, everything from likemaking a positive impact to like
, oh, this product seems to work.
It's interesting, as I foundyou have to try to be pretty
optimistic and sometimes whenyou have a good feeling, you're
kidding yourself a little bit.
But there were multiple timesin the UK when we had a product
market fit across the twoproduct categories where I was
(24:08):
like, yeah, I think we've got itnow, like this feature or like
this would change the salesmessaging to this and it's going
to click and like it.
It didn't.
It didn't um, so so yeah, but Ithink like, overall, um, what
what's like kind of the mostfulfilling is um, just seeing
what's been built, so like we'vebumped into a few users, which
(24:33):
is really cool and like for a b2product.
That's not a common thing to do, right.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So I was at one of our early users.
She now works for us.
She has for a long time, butthat was quite cool, that like
that connection, but I waswatching the Premier League in
Leeds.
My chair's a Leeds fan, I'm aLeicester fan and the guy across
the table from us.
We were talking to him and hispartner and he'd used us for his
(25:00):
accounting qualification.
We suddenly realised that bigconversation and we explained
what we all did and that kind ofthing he was like yeah it's
pretty good.
I mean, obviously he's not goingto say too much to your face,
but yeah, that kind of thingLike man, that's pretty cool At
some point.
The football is like use theproducts and it makes you think
a bit about yourself, right,like, oh, that was me, right.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Ease out of you.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
That was me not too long ago.
Help future me with theseproblems a little bit.
That is super cool, very, very,very cool no-transcript, to
(26:06):
like nearly a hundred percent atanother and you might.
You might think, oh well, youknow, you know, I believe you'll
be less adopted or whatever.
But you literally have like twocolleges in Texas very close
together geographically,probably feeding from pretty
much the same demography, moreor less.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And I think it largely I mean, I don't know,
but I think it largely comesback to the leadership.
Most community colleges wherewe operate um particularly I
guess we operate a lot in in thesouth and kind of the east
coast it seems the executiveoften very empowered to make
change.
So if you get a president, vpa,cfo, that's like we like
(26:49):
horseware or we don't likehorseware, or we like oER or we
like e-books, whatever kind ofinitiative it is, it seems to
get implemented.
And then you have others thatmaybe are a bit more maybe
they're less empowered.
And power is such a funny thingJust because you have a title
doesn't mean you have power.
Right Like?
People want to respect you andbuy into what you want to do.
(27:11):
All sorts of other complicatedpolitical factors, and I think
the ones that sometimes feeldisempowered as disempowered as
they feel are maybe just notchanging Totally Instead of
people themselves.
Then you'll see that we've justleft the doctrine of newer
(27:32):
technology, not just in relationto cross-wage, I'm sure you see
this all the time it's, it'sinsane.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
I mean like no, you're, you nailed it.
Like the, the adoption is likewildly all over the place and so
like and and like doesn'tnecessarily like have easy, like
you know, if x, then y kind oflike factors like you can't
really make, make full sense ofit.
I think that your insight aboutthe leadership is, is is dead
on um, uh, what do you like?
(27:59):
So, with everything sort ofhappening like what, what trends
do you see potentially sort ofcoming, and then like what are
you excited about and what'skind of a little bit scary and
all that yeah question.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Well, I think a lot about ai which scares me a lot.
Um, obviously I'm probably anoptimist, like I think it would
be good for society, even ifthere is a prospect like we
don't really want to kill us all.
I think well healthcare, allthese kind of things.
Technology is historicallynever Even.
(28:36):
This is a bunch of actual,completely wrong, aside from
when the nuclear bomb was huge,which is horrific and wrong.
Obviously.
Sure, it seems Really.
Maybe that's one example whereI think people are extremely
(28:57):
fearful of the technology.
Maybe there's a bit more peopleexpected.
But I don't know, I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm too close to the analysisbecause who knows what the
future holds Really For us?
It's super easy to createcontent, whether that's full
(29:22):
text or content within thecourseware.
So you've seen OEMs writecommunication resources which is
actually like textbooks thatare really like stacks or some
others, grow from 10 to 10.2again very similar.
We're saying we have schoolsthat are like over 50 and
(29:42):
schools like zero.
Um, but I haven't just gonefrom 10 to 20 in the last 10
years.
That's a pretty big shift in mylife and then I think I could
easily run.
And then I think AI could easilyrun and on the flip side
because I think a lot of OER issort of given by publisher
pricing that if the publishersreally take advantage of the
(30:06):
production cost way down,potentially OER goes down and
stays kind of the same.
Right.
It's like in my mind if contentcosts are more than $50,
there's a strong incentive for aparticular class, there's a
strong incentive for theprofessor to consider.
If they're $50 or less, thenthe incentive's really not that
(30:28):
strong.
There might be philosophicalreasons, but complaints from
students and all that it's lessfor sure.
So you can go ahead and talk tothe judge.
I can obviously generatequizzes and things like this.
So if you're thinking about thecourse weight, it's not just
(31:07):
writing the snippets.
I think all of that stuff.
You think about Che, and if youwent there to get a book
writing in a cell doing theright thing, why would you have
to do that?
Sorry, again, there could be afall away from written-wise
(31:29):
textbooks to go to GBT.
But we have this unique set ofhighly curated publisher content
, a lot of which is not on thetraining set, and so if we get,
we stick on top of the contentwe have obviously with our
publishers sell it to theinstitution.
(31:51):
Sell it to the institution.
Maybe they only use, you know,iteration of the app because it
has the right content so thingskeep going.
You must hear that no,completely.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
I think you nailed some of the meta trends.
I think there's also somecompanies you know, collegevine
being one of them and a fewothers that sort of popped up
that are, I think, integratingagetic AI in interesting spaces.
But I think, like in fulldisclosure, haven't really fully
nailed it.
I think there are some peopletalk a lot about privacy
(32:28):
concerns.
I actually think that's maybe alittle bit sort of talked about
more than they need to.
As much as like the data accessand as simple as it sounds like
broader api connections thatbring in the right kinds of data
.
Like that is massively behind ineducation to to an extent where
I don't think I think it's abottleneck for agents that gotta
really sort of take off, um,you know, particularly at
(32:50):
smaller places.
So I I do think there is a lotcoming, but I think there's a
lot of sort of like smallerbottlenecks and things that need
to be fixed before you canreally sort of have an
integrated sort of system.
I do think kind of put yourpoint on community colleges and
value.
I do think there's massiveopportunity at a lot of these
sort of smaller places, who haveto run an extremely tight
(33:11):
bellage, to be reallyinteresting test grounds for
some of this new tech, so I'mpersonally invested in seeing
more prototypes and differentkinds of things that are
happening, because I do thinkthere is actually some massive
potential if we can get smarterAPI connections and better
(33:33):
system integrations at places,which, again, from what I'm
seeing, seems to be asignificant challenge that a lot
of places are facing.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, totally, and it's funny because often we'll
speak to an investor and they'reequally panicked and excited
about AI and they don'tunderstand that print still
makes up probably 70% of theadoptions in the US and similar
in the UK.
It's like how is a professorgoing to use AI and get the
(34:04):
students using AI if they'restill using print?
I'm like don't get me wrong, Ihaven't heard it quickly for six
months.
It's like disregard possibility.
I think there's just a lack ofunderstanding of when finding
this to do yeah and have some ofthe more old school professors,
which is most of them.
Face it, it's like a lady.
(34:27):
They work right.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
So no, complete completely.
Um, I, you, you have.
You have problems andchallenges in the classroom.
You, you have, I think, likemassive system integration
challenges.
I think like the reality oflike how work is structured and
like what you know down.
So I think, like you know, foradoption to work, you have to
(34:58):
really take a smart look atworkflows and different pieces
and try to sort of like notnecessarily sort of I do think
you need to sort of changebehavior in one direction, but
you also need to really sort oflook at behavior and design for
you know, capturing, ai andsmart pieces, that sort of
actually sort of feed intoexisting systems and that work.
(35:19):
But just kind of curious, whatelse are you guys up to and like
what are some new partnerships,product expansion, things that
you're sort of thinking on, likewhat's the road ahead looking
like for you all, because you'vegot so many interesting things
happening and it's some bigexpansion.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no good question.
I mean, we did an acquisitionlast year and that's been really
, um, really transformative forus.
It's opened our market up tonew segments, um, you know, it's
given us new products andservices.
It's given us new referenceaccounts in states we didn't
wouldn't have.
So definitely would considerdoing more acquisitions in the
future.
Organic growth has been really,really good.
(35:59):
Last year we grew 60%, sohopefully can continue that as
well, which is just like moreschools and more students, right
, nice.
And then, yeah, the productside, uh, the, like I said, the
engage, the second product ofours.
It feels like the future insome ways.
(36:23):
Like, yeah, it's probably notgoing to grow as fast as our
core product for the reasons wetalked about before our core
product is having people makestep one going from physical to
digital happen.
And this product is like goingfrom digital to like advanced
digital with a little bit of AIand mostly just you know,
(36:44):
quizzes and stuff.
I don't like to overstate thethings like every company is
like it's like two weeks ago,yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Very cool, very cool.
I appreciate the time today andI encourage everybody to check
out the great work that Dave andhis team are doing.
We'll obviously link everything, but, dave, I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
I appreciate it.
I had fun as well.
Thank you, dave, you nailed it.
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