Jess Lee, Tanika Lynch, and Shavar Jeffries discuss investing in education for underserved students. Tanika's fund has deployed $15M across 85 edtech companies; Shavar, a civil-rights lawyer and former Newark school board president, describes how structural litigation and philanthropic investment transformed Newark schools. The panel connects venture criteria to education equity and DEI as a business imperative.
I'm Ed Zimmerman from Lowenstein Sandler, and we're very excited to thank you, Steven, for the comments about the flowers. Yeah, appreciate it. And we're gonna do our venture crush here for about a little bit more than an hour and a half, and that'll give us some time to get some deep background on our amazing panelists. And we appreciate all of you being here. And just a quick note about how things will go as more people filter in, and then we'll ask the panelists to introduce themselves. We're going to talk a little bit about each panelist's background. And we did a survey, which you folks were kind enough to fill out in great numbers. So we know the things that you found most interesting. We promise not to ignore them. So we will talk about early stage venture funding and what's going on there. We'll also talk about edtech, and that will include things like how students are financing their education and what happens when we fully virtualize and going back to school. And we'll also talk about the next chapter in diversity, equity, and inclusion. And in the context of that.
We'Ll.
Have a discussion about the founding of All Rays, although I think everyone up here has done some real significant work in that area. So we'll talk about a number of things in that context. All right, so now that we have more than 200 of you and still climbing in, why don't we start with Jess and get a little bit of Jess background, and then we'll go to Tanika and Shabbar. So, Jess, do you want to tell us a little bit about Jessica, your background, hopefully starting comfortably before Polyvore, and then take us through the hops and skips that took you from Polyvore to Sequoia.
Sure. Thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning, or I guess this afternoon in New York. Let's see. I'm originally from Hong Kong. I'm half Chinese, half Japanese. And my goal in life was to be a comic book artist. That did not work out very well, although I still spent a lot of time reading comics and going to comic. Not this year. Today would have been the start of Comic Con. That's not happening because Pandemic. I ended up at Stanford, studied computer science, then went to Google for a little bit where I was one of the early product managers on Google Maps. And then one day someone showed me this little app called Polyvore. It's a fashion app where you could mix and match your favorite products and create these outfits or collages. And then you could Shop them. And it was sort of the perfect intersection of art and technology. And so I decided to leave Google and join as the first PM there tiny startup, just me and the three founders at the time. I think in the early days you just do whatever needs to get done to make the company successful. And so I did everything from like washing the dishes to writing the code to whatever needed to be done. And then over time became the CEO. The co founders made me an honorary co founder, which is a little unusual. They came and said, hey, we've always thought of you as a co founder. You've always acted like one. So they came, they said that, and they actually gifted me their founder shares. So I've always sort of felt like a co founder. We were acquired in 2015. It was a roller coaster, nine year journey. I think consumer startups are super hard. That's where startups go to die because it's very hard to stay cool and relevant for a long time. We managed to do that for a decade, which I'm proud of. But I think the thing we did best was we built a community. And that's always been something I've always been excited about. How do you get people to come together around a topic, build real friendships and connections, and then become advocates for some sort of cause or for your brand, whatever it might be. As a female founder, working on a product targeted at women's fashion is pretty tough. I had to go into a lot of rooms and pitch all male VCs and explain, well, actually, women's fashion is a large market. It's where 50% of humans, 100% of us wear clothes. Much bigger than you think. I have to take fashion magazines and slam them on tables to try to get people's attention. Because of that, I thought maybe the best thing I could do for the cause for helping women in tech might be to go to the other side of the table. So I ended up at Sequoia. I've been there about three and a half years, worked with a lot of different companies ranging from Moss, which is an ed tech company that we'll get into probably a little bit later because the panelists here are incredible folks who know education really well. I know very little, but just one company that I work with and then, you know, lots of, lots of other companies. Well, Winolo, it's an on demand staffing platform. I also, along the way, my side hustle is I co founded All Raise, which is a nonprofit targeted at improving diversity in tech, mostly for women. But yeah, I think that's me. Thank you for having me, Ed.
Thanks so much. So that's. There's a lot in there, and I want to skip back a little bit. So you have also worked for some interesting women at Google in particular, right? Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Sure. I had the honor of working with Marissa Mayer, who was. She started the Google APM program. She ran a bunch of search there and then later became CEO of Yahoo. She was just a very early mentor who, starting from my very first job interview, gave me some really incredible advice about always following the more challenging path. Doing, like, trying to do things that you felt like you were not necessarily qualified for because at least you'd learn something and take risks. And that stuck with me along the way and made me try a lot of things that's remotely qualified for. So. But that often turned out to be a better career choice, so. Yeah.
And you stayed with. You stayed with the Polyvore acquirer for a little bit. Can you talk about life at a big company after life at a startup? Was it pretty different from your Google experience?
Yeah, very different. You know, I mean, just Yahoo treated us wonderfully. Right. Like, I mean, just to be honest, they were so. We were so. I'm so grateful they acquired the company. They did, but just I think what as a founder, to go from like, controlling the important things like culture and pay and exactly how your team is treated, the policies, and then to go into a larger company where that's completely out of your control, it's just really difficult. So I think that was the hard part. But overall, I mean, I think they gave us resources. Our team went on to ship apps inside of Yahoo that were interesting. And so I would say overall, I'm just very grateful, but I think I'm probably not meant to be at a large company, but I did stay there.
For about 14 months and we're going to come back to all raise. So my last question before we head over to Tanika is comics. Are you still drawing, animating, doing art?
Yeah, I do still draw on the weekends. Wish I had more time for it, but I definitely read a lot of comics.
And you also have a partner at Sequoia who has a spouse with that particular talent and background.
Yep, that's right. Alfred Lynn, his wife is a former Disney animator. She's very talented.
Yeah, super talented. All right, great. Well, we'll talk more about cartoons and the founding of All Rays, because I know people want to hear about that and where you're taking it because it sounds like there's a little bit of a directional expansion, which is an interesting thing as well. So, Tanika, you're not in Silicon Valley today, right?
No, I am here in Dallas, Texas. So I'm originally from Houston, Texas. So I have to always shout out my people and just gonna take it back to my high school, Booker T. Washington, which actually used to be. It was the first black school that. Or the first school that blacks could attend in Houston. So they called it Old Colored High back in the days. And they actually. Our rival school, Jack Yates, was one of the schools that came. Came soon after. Once more black kids, they were like, oh, you know, they weren't. We were still segregated or we. I wasn't still segregated, but back then, Jack Yates, which is incidentally the high school where George Floyd graduated from. And I take it back to high school because that was a moment in time in my life as a student, I realized that something was wrong with the system because I was in the engineering magnet portion of the high school and in an AP physics class where 20 of our students, we were sharing textbooks that were like. It was like six textbooks literally from the 1970s. And you know, back then, this is before the Internet, this was, you know, when you had to have books to learn. And it became even more clear to me, like the disparity or just the level of preparation that I received was different once I got to Harvard. And you could see differences among students that came from other public schools, but especially students that came from like the private elite schools. And so you know what, you still get in there. You hustle, you do your best. I landed a dream job at the NBA. As I was telling you all earlier, I'm a huge Rockets fan and actually interviewed with David Stern and Adam Silver, which is incredible. That's a whole incredible story. Had an amazing time in a startup kind of experience at the NBA, starting up what's now the G League. And while I was at the NBA, 911 happened in New York. And that was really a defining moment kind of in my life because I was thinking, like, what am I doing? I feel like I need to be doing something purpose driven. Thought back to my experiences in education, wanted to do something in education on the business side because I've never had the patience to be a teacher, love my kids, love my three kids. But like, I knew that, you know, that was something that I could personally couldn't do. So I have the utmost respect and empathy for teachers and the work that they do and ended up working on the Public Education Leadership Project, which At the time was a joint venture between Harvard Business School and the Graduate School of Education, where a group of alumni from the business school decided that they wanted to invest some money to see if we could figure out how to apply business principles to education to improve student performance. So with Stacy Childress, who's now the CEO of New Schools Venture Fund, and some other professors we were working with Arne Duncan, Jerry Weiss, Arlene Ackerman and Carol Johnson and other superintendents who were leading at the time to see what we could learn. We wrote a bunch of case studies about it. And actually, through that work, I met Larry Berger, who's one of the co founders of Wireless Generation, because Montgomery County Public Schools at the time was one of the few school districts in the country that was actually receiving a royalty from a tech company. And we were like, what? Who? Like most school districts were losing money and struggling, and this company was like, getting royalties from this tech company that they had worked with to take running records, which is a literacy assessment that takes a lot of time that teachers were at the time spending time on. And they had pioneered putting it on these Palm Pilots, and they were able to get this data that could support student learning. So fascinated with this technology, and ended up going to work at Wireless Generation when they were still. They were at that early stage, but entering into the growth stage. And so, you know, just not starting out where you were, but like, did lots of different roles in the growth of that company. Starting out with what a lot of people call customer success now, then leading sales teams, then doing projects, leading product management. And we ended up getting bought out by News Corporation. I stayed with the company for another four years. The company still is now called Amplify. Many of you may have heard of it because we got bought out by News Corp. For around 360 million. And so throughout that experience, I kept in touch with Stacy, and Stacy Childress is like, hey, Tanika, I'm moving over to New School's Venture Fund, with love for you, to come and lead our EdTech investment portfolio, which is focused on increasing equity and really trying to figure out how we can invest in companies that can accelerate positive outcomes for historically underserved students and working with entrepreneurs that are committed to this work. So since then, I've been working at New Schools Venture Fund. Over the past five years, we've invested around 15 million across 85 companies in particular market segments. And yeah, and it's a real interesting time to be in K12 ed tech, given where we are right now. And I'm sure, we'll go into that a little bit more, but that's right.
And the firm is based in a couple of places or based and really started in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley.
Yeah. So New Schools is based out of Oakland. I'm in Dallas. I've been in Texas for the last. We're back in Texas for the last 13 years. And so, you know, I've been working remotely this entire time. But just a little background on New School's venture fund. It was started in, gosh, 1998 by social entrepreneur Kim Smith and venture capitalist John Doerr and Brooke Byers with the goal of funding and supporting entrepreneurs that are reimagining education. And the thinking is, you know, if you get money, early stage money into the hands of, of entrepreneurs or folks that are trying to innovate, then you're going to get more innovation. And obviously we still have a long ways to go to fix the system that I was talking about that was broken many, you know, even back in my time. And so, yes, so we're headquartered in Oakland. We have a few, you know, now everybody's remote. Right. But before this all happened, just a few of us work remotely and then the rest of the were in Oakland. But our investments are national. Like, we have a concentration of the 85 companies that we supported are on the different coasts. But we made a real effort to try to find innovators and entrepreneurs that are all over the country because thinking about how insular the Silicon Valley community is and seeing innovation prop up in other cities and communities has been great to see.
Do you think it's easier for you? And this is kind of where I was going with the, you're in Texas there in the Bay Area. Do you think it's easier for you to have that lens on the nation and on what's happening in innovation because you're in Texas?
Yeah, I mean, I think it gives me just a different perspective, which I think is important when you're trying to just open up access for various entrepreneurs and innovators to capital. And so it's, I think it's been helpful for me to be outside of it, but, you know, also to have people that are living and building relationships there too. You know, you can travel up there and go, you know, monthly, as I do, but, you know, when you are there, you obviously are able to build a lot more relationships. So having people there and connections there, but then also having connections in other places on different coasts is important.
Great. Okay. Well, thank you. And we're going to talk a bunch more about the firm and about the venture challenges and about shared physics books. I want to hop over to Shavar for a bit and spend a little time on Shavar's background. And because, and I warned Shavar I was going to do this without, you know, of course, the specifics, but because we've been partners for a little bit more than five years, I will have to give him a little bit of a hard time first, only because I'm going to say nice things about him after. There was an announcement when Shavar joined our law firm, and I have not mentioned it because I've been laying in wait. But this is five plus years ago. Shavar's quote was, lowenstein Sandler has some of the best lawyers anywhere and tremendous strengths in its litigation practice and other core areas. And so I just want you to know that your partners in other core areas, like, I don't know, venture, whatever the little people, we appreciate you and we're really glad that we can just be here to look up at our litigators.
It's great.
So, Shavar, there's a lot of press on you for a whole bunch of reasons. And in particular, there's a terrific opinion piece that David Brooks wrote, both profiling you and endorsing you as a political political candidate a number of years ago, about a year before you joined us. Can you talk a little bit about some of the personal history that he shared in the New York Times?
Sure, I'm happy to. I mean, maybe one tip from that is if you want to win an election, maybe David Brooks's endorsement, at least in a city like Newark, isn't that helpful. But I appreciate, nonetheless, I appreciate what he wrote. And, yeah, I mean, he talked both about, you know, kind of my upbringing in the city of Newark, as well as a lot of work that I had done subsequent. And, you know, to summarize, I'm from the beautiful, amazing city of Newark, New Jersey, from the Southwood in particular, which has at that time, when I grew up and even more so now, has amazing, brilliant, beautiful human beings who are strong and tough, smart and persevering and creative. And I kind of grew up in that environment. My mom was very young when she gave birth to me. She was only 18, but she always spoke. And my father was only 20, so they're both very young. You know, I was 30 when I had my first kids and married and didn't know what I was doing then. So to think about how my parents tried to figure it out was amazing. But my mom always Just spoke power to me. You're the best. You're amazing. The world hasn't seen anything like you. So she was always pumping me up, you know, David talked about the fact that, sadly, When I was 8, my mom met a person who had become her husband who became abusive. And so we dealt with domestic violence. I've done a lot of work in this area for reasons that'll be clear in a minute. Happens all the time. We lose women, you know, every few hours in this country through domestic violence. I lost my mom that way. He became very abusive. Got to the point we had to flee. I might not be here if we didn't flee, because two weeks after we left where we live, he waited for my mom at her job, and she didn't make it out, which was obviously horrible. So I was in California when that happened. So I'm from Newark. Was in Newark till 8. My mom moved to California. I was with her for a couple years. Didn't have much time to really enjoy her because she met this gentleman, and then it was just a lot of drama. And then at 10, when I lost my mom, came back to North. My grandmother took care of me at that point, and she was very. She was a former public school teacher in Newark. And her view was that the Newark public schools, at a time while I had so many amazing teachers and school leaders, was just too political and too inefficient and just not effective enough. And so she found this scholarship for me to go to this college prep high school in West Orange, New Jersey, called Seton Hall Prep, which I did not want to go to because it was all boys. It was Catholic. You had to wear the tan khaki pants. I wasn't trying to wear that. Some of y' all may still wear those. Knock yourself out. I don't think that was hot now. I definitely think it was hot. In 1987, it was all boys. I had never been to a church service without percussion. So when we visited, we went to the Catholic Mass, which is a beautiful ceremony, but at 12 years old, coming from Newark, no percussion, I wasn't feeling that. But my grandmother said, that's what you're going to do. So that's what I did. So I would take, you know, about almost two hours of public buses up to West Orange every day from Newark. And it really was a powerful experience because everything was about preparing kids for college. I didn't know what college was. I didn't know people went to college. Always did well in school. I mean, always, frankly. I had straight A's all the time and cause that's what my family pushed me. But I know what it meant. And so in any event, I saw day by day how when I would take these buses, I had a different educational experience at Seton Hall Prep than the kids I grew up with that I would see every day when I went home. And something about, even as a young teenager, I thought that was very problematic and unfair. How is it that I just happened to be at the Boys and Girls Club and the great Ray Chambers, who I love, created the scholarship program and I get it and now I have access to this opportunity and others don't. That was very unfair. I even then saw some other unfairness. So as I got older, because I didn't really know about college, I really wasn't. And there weren't the programs then that there are now to support kind of first generation kids. So I still remember I played baseball and the guidance counselor said, advised me to go to James Madison. I should apply there. And that's the kind of most rigorous school I should apply for, mind you. I was number five in the class at the time at a 4.6 GPA and I played baseball. And one of my classmates said, hey, Shabbar, where you gonna apply to college? And I said, well, I'm apply to James Madison Monsignor too. He's telling me that's where I should go, that's where I'm gonna go. And he was like, he was like, James Madison. He was like, you're way higher in the class than me. Let me tell you what he's telling me where I should apply for. And he told. He'd started talking to me about Duke and Harvard and Columbia. So I got the US Guide, saw those schools, I bought the insider's guide to the college and I just applied to those. I would find out later we just couldn't afford this. The same friend of mine told me about SAT tutors that his family had access to and he, he said they would guarantee 150 points on the SAT. We didn't have money for that, so I wasn't able to do that. I still beat him on that test. Anyway, for whatever it's worth, I don't even know if these tests matter, but to whatever matters, you know, that was that. He told me he had somebody to help him with his application and that sort of thing. And of course I didn't know about any of that. I had to go through the fee waiver process in order to apply. So I saw those inequities as well. Long story short, I'm talking too long. I would go to Duke, be the first in my family to go to college. I became a lawyer and I became, after graduating from law school, I wanted to disrupt these systems that weren't working for kids like me. And so for most of the last 20 years, I've been involved in one way or the other to make public education more amenable to innovation. And so that's meant lawsuits. I've been involved in many, many lawsuits to sue school systems, to frankly empower families with more options. I've had a perspective that I believe particularly low income families have more choice and more options. And frankly, when you loosen up the system, which frankly more of a competitive system that enables more innovation. So I've done a lot of work in this space. I was the founding board chair of the KIPP charter schools in New Jersey at that time. We're maybe the fourth and fifth. Fourth or fifth KIPP school were very small. Kit was small. KIPP is now a very big organization now. We now send more African American students to college than any other public school system in the state of New Jersey. Very proud of what we've built over time. I spent some time as a president of Newark School Board. We did a lot of work to innovate within the system. And now, you know, my main clients at the firm are involved in advocacy work to reshape public policy so that public policy is more aligned with much of the innovation that, you know, folks like Tanika and Jess and others are involved in seeing. I mean, a lot of the rules in our public education system are really designed to block innovation taking hold. And so I'm involved in a lot of work to loosen that up because I frankly believe more choice and frankly, even more than that, more innovation and reimagining what instruction pedagogy ought to look like will move the whole country into the 21st century in terms of productivity and our GDP. But also for those students who were historically disadvantaged and didn't have access to all the tutors, didn't have access to all the guidance counselor counseling resources, and may not have had access to a fancy private school to make sure they have opportunities to build their potential as well.
Thank you. And I mean that in several respects. You kind of very quickly mentioned the school board president role that you played for Newark, but that was at a particularly troubled time for Newark. Can you just talk a little bit about, because I think that you really kind of led a revamping and a reopening or a New opening of a number of schools, but a revamping of the school system in Newark at a time when it was really, really troubled.
Yeah, yeah. I ran for office in the spring of 2010, which was amazing experience. I love that. And then that summer after I won that, I became the president. Then that summer, Mark Zuckerberg made his $100 million investment in the Newark public school system, which was a challenge. So other donors kicked in another hundred. So we had $200 million. And so Mayor Booker at the time, Governor Christie, and then I was the president, school board, and then obviously a whole range of others, you know, engaged in a reform campaign, which I'm very proud of, because now just came out two weeks ago, the city of Newark leads the country in terms of what's called beat the odd schools, which are schools where basically low income students outperform state averages, basically do better than the average student in the state. And it was a tremendous experience. We've opened new schools within the district. We paid our educators dramatically more. We made bonuses available for our educators. We increased their pay. We reimagined professional development. We reimagined accountability. You know, we love our educators. Our kids are amazing, but we also, you know, we got to hold folks accountable, make sure that kids are learning. We open new school models within the district because again, we the district, you know, frankly, in 2010, when we did a lot of work, didn't look dramatically different than it looked in 1970, not only in terms of the footprint of district, but even what the classroom experience looked like. So we opened up some new schools that we felt would be able to innovate faster. We wanted some early college programs, some alternative education programs. We partnered with the public charter school sector in a really powerful way. I thought as well, we best practice sharing. We did a universal enrollment program so that it'll be easier for families to make choices about what school they felt to serve their child. To be clear, there's a lot of political pushback and there's a lot of political upheaval, and there was a lot of political fights. I got kicked out as president, so I was the president of board for the first year. And we were very bold and aggressive. They kicked me out because maybe a bit too bold and too aggressive. So I still won the board for the last two years. So we continue to do a lot of work. The superintendent at the time, she got kicked out a few years after that, you know, and kind of all of us in that regime ended up getting kicked out. But it's all Good to me, because the babies are better off.
Right.
Because I didn't run to just be in the position we ran. The great change for the babies. And so, like I said, now Newark leads the country in this. And frankly, because there's so many families now and who are embracing significant parts, innovation, even those who came after, they can't roll it back too much because too many of the families are clear. They like a lot of what we did. So it was a great experience. Learned a lot, made a bunch of mistakes, but, you know, the kids still, we have a lot of work to do. District, no question. And the charters, nowhere near perfect, but the babies are better off.
Amazing. And, Jess, I want to bring you in because Shavar and I spoke to you last week a bit about things you look for in founders. And when you hear the passion with which VAR talks about these issues and the innovation as well as the accomplishments that are measurable, objectively, mathematically, it does sound a lot like some of the fire in the belly combined with intellect and achievement that we see in founders. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what you're looking for in founders and maybe even some parallels in what Shabbar was saying.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think what Shavar was saying about, you know, you don't. I think just the whole story about the board and how, you know, getting kicked out, even that, that. That fight, that grit, the wanting to make that change and see it in the world, I think that's. That's kind of the number one thing that I personally look for in founders is that grit. Right. If you think about it, starting a company, being a founder, like, the odds are really not in your favor. Like, you know, 99% of companies end up at zero. And so to want to defy the odds and to want to keep going when the going gets tough, like, that's probably the number one thing is just that grit. Maybe I can give an example. I mean, it varies. Like, some people are just incredibly passionate about their cause. Some have a chip on their shoulder. Some have just been underdogs their whole life. And I think that that willingness to, like, fight is probably the number one predictor of success. In fact, I think there's a book. There's actually a book called Grit that says that grit is the number one predictor of success. And so that's absolutely the number one thing that I look for in founders.
Including the willingness to get kicked out.
Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, especially if you're going into, like, a dinosaur industry. Where you need to break some glass, like that is important. I mean, I think there's a difference, though, between being willing to break glass externally and internally. Like, you still need to be able to build a great culture maybe around your cause. You still have to be able to rally a team. So I think those two things, you need to know where to apply that assertiveness or that aggression and that fight, because you still need to bring your team along with you into the fire. But, yeah, absolutely.
And when you talk about building a great culture inside, and I'd like to see if we can get all four of us in this particular conversation, because, Tanika, you're obviously supporting company building, and Shivar, you are on the board of an edtech startup. You're also on a whole bunch of nonprofit boards and political boards, and you're the president of a political organization. How are you seeing people keep things together effectively as leaders in those rooms where things are so hotly contested?
I mean, I can. Grit is definitely hugely important, but also passion. I mean, and I guess it's tied to passion for education in the K12 space like this. K12 is a tough space for tech, even though, like, we gradually seen, I mean, back to. From our days Palm Pilots to where we are now, we've come a long way.
But.
Changing behavior in schools, as Shavar can attest to, changing systems, massive systems, is very difficult work. And so when you're talking about integrating technology into an entrenched system, changing behavior and fitting it in, especially in places that oftentimes are very localized. Right. States have different standards. I mean, Common Core went a long way in trying to align some of these things to make it easier for tech to build out tools that could scale across cities. But still, even understanding whether or not your product is actually working and having rigorous evidence to show that your product is working takes time and research and effort. And so, you know, I definitely look closely at what is their background, why are they in this work? And you have to have not just the grit and not just, like, the understanding about how students are learning and how your technology is going to move the needle in the classroom or with student learning, but you also have to have an understanding of how purchasing happens in school districts and how you're gonna connect those things. I mean, we've seen, we're often mindful of, like, the researcher that's in a lab that's building this thing that can't actually sell it because they haven't spent enough time in classrooms or observing. It's like, oh, it Works well with this and with math and maybe executive function or whatever it is. But when you get it into classrooms, you need to be working with school districts to make sure that they can integrate it in, because that is the hard part, implementation. So there's a lot of things to consider when you're evaluating entrepreneurial teams and companies in the edtech space before you make an investment.
So if you're talking about how you assess a founder's ability to make a sale, and again, any of you, welcome to jump in, but it's really hard to do that when there's very little sales data, particularly if there's a really long sales cycle. And so as investors, Tanika and Jess in particular, how do you assess a founder's ability to make a sale when the startup is either pre product or there is a product, but you know, we don't yet know how it's going to monetize or be adopted?
Yeah, that is, I mean, we, we would invest. They had to have a working prototype in some customers because we just in terms of how we were trying to manage risk of the investments that we were doing. But we recognize that, you know, your ability to convince, you know, one or two customers has nothing to do with your ability to convince a whole. You need to be able to do to have a repeatable sales model. And so we will work with companies on product market fit and, you know, being careful not to customize it so much to one particular customer that, you know, you're not thinking about whether or not it can in a different district or. And so I'm just trying to make sure I answered your question.
Yeah. And Jess, the Sequoia view.
Sure. I mean, I think after grit, maybe the second thing I look for in founders is personally is are you a good storyteller? Right. And storytelling is a little bit of a sales skill. Right. The story you're telling, when you walk into the pitch and meet with the vc, a lot of that is grounded in do you understand your audience or your customer? Right. And so that translates both to, you know, when you're pitching a vc, the audience is the investor and that investor mindset. When you walk into a school, you need to understand, are you pitching the teacher, are you pitching the administration, are you pitching the student, the parent. That also translates to hiring. Right. Like you're pitching, you know, an engineer who works at Google and is making a lot of money to come work for you for $75,000. Like that requires a lot of sales skill as well. And understanding that human and like what do they care about? Is it the mission that they care about? That's your hook to like, get them to come work for you. So I think that's. It's incredibly important. And so that. And then when it comes to the sales skill for the customer side, like, you really need to understand who is the buyer you're selling to. Cause like Tanika said, I mean, it's really, really hard to sell into schools, especially K to 12. Yeah.
And what are one or two ways you've seen people actually get that message across without showing you sales numbers?
Oh, you know, I think. Yeah. So there's. I think the better your story is, like, it's almost like the less you need the traction unless you're at the growth stage. I mostly do early stage investing, but, you know, you're trying to think about what's the risk in this investment. So the combination, like, the better your storytelling skills are, the kind of less traction maybe you need for me to believe. And then, you know, or if you're really bad storyteller, then you need a little bit more traction to sort of prove that it's investable. So I think on the storytelling side, like, just like I said, nailing the what is the problem you're solving? Right? Like being able to sell the story of the problem. And I think a lot of founders actually spend a lot of time thinking about the solution because that's your day to day. You already know your problem, so you're just like, oh, you spend all the time just pitching your solution, but you actually need to pitch your problem because investors are not evaluating your solution. They're actually evaluating which of the millions of problems in the universe are worth investing in. Because, you know, you're being compared not against all the other edtech startups that you think about as your competitive set. You're being compared to like the, you know, social gaming company that pitched me the other day or the fish farming company. And so it's just this very broad range. So being able to sell the problem as important is actually something very critical. And then being able to some unique insight into that problem or into that customer is another thing I look for.
So, Shavar, taking what Jess just said about being able to sell the problem and why the problem is important, you represented 30,000 children who were denied free tutoring services under the no Child Left behind act and advocated for thousands of Newark children seeking mandated special ed services. I know that you led Newark's school board in joining a lawsuit that returned over $30 million to Newark after The state had illegally cut the district budget. How are you choosing which lawsuit to invest in? Because that's what you're doing when you're, I mean, you're a nationally renowned civil rights and social justice lawyer. How do you choose?
I tend to choose based upon what can facilitate the greatest impact, but with a structural lens. So I tend to work on cases that can help to redesign the structure of public education because I just think that's what's going to be sustainable. So I started off working on school finance cases, which are important because clearly got to have a certain level of money. I then moved into more, what I call the structural cases because I wanted something that could last, that could last over time. So, for example, you talked about the NCLB case. That was a case that, that where if we're under the no Child Left behind act, which has now been succeeded by something called the Every Student Succeeds at which, which was enacted in late 2016. But from, you know, early 2000s to 16, we had NCLB and among many other things, one, it required a national floor of data, which was new, right? Prior to the Standards and Accountability movement of the last 30 years, there really wasn't comparable data that states, let alone districts, could use to one, know the extent to which kids were growing and learning, and two, hold districts accountable, you know, for that growth. Among other things, what NCLB said was if certain subgroups of students aren't learning, and it had a particular interest in certain groups that have been subject to historical disadvantage. Low income students, students of color, students who speak English as a second language, students who have an iep. If each of those groups weren't learning over a long enough period of time, then there were certain remedies that parents and families had. And the remedies were, there are many of them, but they really boil down to the parent has an option to choose something else, right? So I've always been interested in cases that frankly empower parents that have more decision making authority over what happens to their child. Because my view is the more parents have frankly control over resources, then systems have to be more responsive to parents than the parents being responsive to the system. And in big cities in particular like Newark, where I'm from, the reality is if you were middle class, you moved to our suburbs around Newark, largely because folks are looking for good schools for their children. If you stayed in the city, if you had certain political capital, right, you can call downtown and get your, get your kid placed in certain schools. If you knew somebody on the school board, I mean, that's the reality of it, if you're low income, you know, or just working class and just going to school, going to work every day and putting food on the table, but you don't know a whole lot of fancy political people, they would just look at your address and that's your school. And you had to just take whatever you would receive at that school. Unless you could organize some political movement to then run people from school board and do something about that which, which isn't sustainable for people who are already working 50, 60 hours a day. So anyway, long story short, I've tried to focus on cases that try to reimagine the structure of public education rooted in choice and that had broad impact. And then frankly and then the last thing I would say is then there that the clients because the clients really own the case. Right. I work for the clients. But I did have some ability of course to decide what clients I want to partner with. Likewise, I want parents who were selfless. So while their individual stories are at the heart of the case, because we either did class action cases or cases even if they were individual cases, our primary goal was injunctive relief that would apply to many people. I need, I made sure that we had clients who were thinking about the whole it just wasn't what it was in for them and that they also had writ because litigation type, the type that I do, you're going to, we're going to be, we're going to be involved in case five, six, seven, eight, nine years. So you have to be willing to persevere and you also got to be not be willing to be bought off if they come and say we'll take care of your baby and we'll give you individual damages. And that's, you know, obviously should be a part of it. But we also wanted somebody who were also thought about the group.
So from a reframing at in a venture context, you wanted a large TAM or total addressable market. You wanted to back essentially people who wouldn't sell too early so that you could achieve the big return. And you wanted something that had purpose and material impact.
That sounds right.
That sounds like a venture thesis. Jess Tenika Same deal. Right. So Tanika, when you're looking at the projects, because you also fund projects and you fund projects even if they're non profit, you're also looking for that impact, but you're willing to to look at kind of the orphan drug equivalent in edtech. Can you talk a little bit about funding overlooked stuff in small markets?
Yes, for sure. So again because we're focused on historically underserved populations. We're looking for innovators that are building tools to support English language learners. We're looking for innovators that are building through society, support students with special needs. And so recognizing that, you know, for students with special needs, there's, there's not really a market to get to like the traditional VC level of funding. Right? We're talking a small subset of the population. But still these organizations can build sustainable models so that they can serve a particular population. So, you know, we have to be careful because we gotta understand what is the business model, what is, how are they growing and what other businesses do they have that maybe supplement building the type of product that can support students? Because in that particular cohort we had some businesses that would do like consulting. They were, you know, therapists on the side, or they had like businesses that were joined and creating the products that were used to serve kids. And so again, our, the priority for impact metrics and how we're measuring our success is looking at how many students are being reached. What evidence do we have that is leading to positive student outcomes? And so the investments that we make, we're looking, of course, we're looking at financial sustainability and growth and scale, but within the contained markets. So, like, it is a smaller market. Like, we don't have expectations for them to go on and get like the traditional VC follow on funding so they can scale. Our expectation is that they'll have a different type of business model that will keep them sustaining and growing. And potentially they could be acquired by, you know, other companies that are looking to build out all of, or just add to their collection of how they can support school districts and have other products that can, that can be more like a comprehensive solution to provide to schools.
And Jess, when you hear what Tanika's saying about assisting with products or services that have a smaller addressable market, but they're really important. Is there a way that you as a VC can support that kind of project other than having your portfolio company acquire it and include it as a feature?
Well, I actually think that education is a much larger market. I know there's like this classic, like, VCs don't like ED tech. There's no one's ever made any money in it. Like, I just don't buy that. That's good. Like, at some point, you know, people were like, travel's done, don't work on it. Now look at Airbnb, right, which came in with this idea, which sounds pretty crazy. Like, let People stay in your house. So I just. And we look at Sequoia China, Sequoia India. And I know culturally education may be more important there, but you know, the biggest Companies there are VIPKid and Baiju, which are. I just don't buy that education is a small market. Like there's, it's too important. You just need that person who's going to persevere and who's going to figure it out. I recently led an investment in a company called moss, moss.commos.com, and it isn't focused on K12, which is definitely a difficult go to market. It's focused on higher education, which tends to be a little bit, I think, easier than K to 12 because you don't have to necessarily sell into the district. But what it does is it helps students get financial aid, free financial aid from the government. There's actually 135, I think billion dollars of AIDS out there. It's just spread out across probably 500 or more programs that are at the federal, the county, the city level. Very difficult to figure out. Do you fulfill the requirements? How do I fill out this form? You know, especially, I think a lot of kids trying to fill these out, maybe their parents didn't go to college so they don't know. Like, you know, what are all these questions about, you know, the Social Security tax questions. It's like pretty complicated, potentially more complicated than doing your own taxes, which is already pretty difficult. And so MAS actually rolls all of these applications up into one simple form. You fill it out once. It's kind of like having a counselor in your, on your phone, like in your back pocket to actually walk you through all these steps. And kids are getting, you know, when I, when I remember I did due diligence on the company, I called up a bunch of students and everything from like, my brother went to college and has like so much student debt. But I didn't, we didn't know that our family qualified and I got a full ride to mit, right to, you know, I wouldn't have gone to college if I'd had to pay get $3,000 in loans. But because Moss found me like $1500, now I'm going to college, right, for that to be, you know, the diff between getting education or not. Like this is, I mean it's pretty impactful stuff. And I think going back to grit and founders, Amira Yayoi is the, is the founder and you know, she doesn't have a classic tech background. She is from Tunisia. She is a human rights activist. So she, at age 18, was kicked out of Tunisia for protesting, like left at the border, like just kicked out of the country. She found her way to France and was basically undocumented there and lived there, tried to go to school, but didn't have the ID card, like pretty, a pretty insane. And then she became one of the leaders of the Arab Spring, that revolution. And Tunisia eventually was, I think now it's one of the only Arab democracies in the world because the president was actually kicked out of the country. And then she came back, she started a nonprofit there called Al Balsala, 600 person nonprofit that became sort of this watchdog for the Tunisian government and got people involved in the rewriting of the Constitution. I mean it's pretty totally not tech, right? But that grit to go through all of that to start a 600 person organization to be able to sell a whole country on this notion of like, you should really pay attention to what's happening in the rewriting of the Constitution like that. I mean those are all the skills that I think you might need to. I think that perfectly translates to running an ed tech startup. So she's sort of overthrown one government and she's here in the US now to try to, you know, shake, shake things up and do some reform. So that's, you know, I think an example of how the opportunity there could be really, really large. Right. It's not a small market. You just need people who are willing to like fight that uphill battle and hear from every sandhill firm like, oh, edtech is a small market. It's not. So anyway.
Yeah, no, and just to build on what Jess is saying, I always felt like I'm like, in some ways I feel like we're, as adults, we're limiting kind of where innovation can go. Because when I see what my kids are doing with tools right now and when they become teachers, I'm like, when the digital natives become teachers, I just feel like it's going to open up a whole new world. But I actually think that the pandemic and our experience working from home, I think it's going to accelerate all of that. And so to your point, Jess, about, you know, how big we need the people that are just going to come up with the solutions that can really grow and personalize and support students where they are and all of that stuff. And I'm still, I'm definitely optimistic that we're going to keep moving forward. And I, I think we're going to see some really Interesting stuff coming out in the next couple of years because our, I mean, even as an ed tech investor, having to homeschool three kids elementary, middle and high school is just an eye opening, intense experience in learning how much we struggle with, I mean, products. There's so much room for improvement. There's so many pain points. And when my husband, who's a corporate attorney is coming to me with ideas about edtech tools that I should invest in, like, I'm imagining that there are people across all industries that are now like, thinking about technology that they have that can now be applied to this. And I just, I feel like we're going to see an expansion. And my hope is that early stage funding is going to go back to this space. I mean, it's always been there, but it's been trickling down and down and down and down over the years. And a lot of investors have been really doubling down on the big kind of like incumbents. And they're going to win too, right now because the superintendents that we talk to are like, look, if you've been working with us, we're talking to you right now. We are doing some, looking for some new things, but you know, everybody's like trying to just get it, to get it all together right? So it's not a great time for sales. But for folks that have already been in there and been gaining ground, like, I've seen tremendous growth for some of our portfolio companies because, you know, school districts are talking to each other and like, well, what are you using for this? And what are you using for this? And that's how they're figuring out new companies to try out in the coming year. So I'm optimistic that we're going to see a lot of movement. And just like we're having this discussion two, three years from now, we'll just be like, there's going to be hopefully an influx of a lot of great innovations.
I absolutely agree. Yeah. I mean, I think the pandemic has supercharged the space because, I mean, a few things. One, every parent is now a teacher. And it's just realizing like, oh my God, teachers, we are underpaying them. They work so hard. This is really hard. So newfound appreciation for teachers. I think you, you've got higher ed is like, oh, no, everyone is deferring. And you know, it turns out that those $45,000 educations, a lot of it is the experience. But what happens if we go virtual? Like, could we accept more people into college? Could we like distance learning for a higher ed is also a thing. And then I think like Tanika said, the administrators and the schools are struggling to figure out what do you do. Just putting teachers on zoom is not, that's not the final solution. That's not the, the end all be all of products. So I think every customer, every person who might pay in this market is suddenly realizing there's a big problem and there's a lot of opportunity. Plus the pandemic means that like your husband there now thousands of people, including all the kids who are going to go to college but are deferring. Right. Are suddenly thinking ed tech. I am now a customer of this. I, I should start a company in that space. And so I think you're going to see this wave of founders come out of this pandemic focused on this problem. So I'm very excited about that.
One other thing folks should keep in mind in terms of this market, in the stimulus bill that passed on March 31, there was 31 billion that was allocated to states to deal with the educational consequences associated with the pandemic. A lot of that definitely has been earmarked for personnel, but it was also a big piece of it supposed to deal with the instructional consequences of the pandemic. Most states are really using that to just get the one to one access to make sure that kids have an Internet enabled device and have access to the Internet in broadband, whether it's through a hotspot or some other mechanism. There's talk now of another stimulus bill. There's been conversation of as much as 175 billion to deal with education. And that next piece is going to be once the infrastructure is in place and those resources have been made available for that and clearly more still. But the next piece is going to be okay, now what do we do? So the government is going to be a huge purchaser of these services where up prior to the pandemic it was kind of very disjointed. Some states would invest, some districts might invest in this space. The Fed's about to come in big. All of the politics now where there's kind of a meeting of the minds, you know, Democrats just want to invest generally to make sure kids are taken care of. Republicans have that interest. But there's also an interest to put a lot of money in schools because some people want to use that as a lever to push schools to potentially reopen, maybe sooner than some might argue they should. But long story short, there's going to be scores of billions of dollars that the Feds are going to make available to the states to frankly purchase technological resources to provide instruction. And so wherever folks perceive the market to be today, there's going to be a lot of dollars going into this space pretty soon. And of course, states are all over the map in terms of what purchasing looks like and what it looks like at districts. We're in the work I'm doing and a part of. So we're encouraging states to basically have basically approved providers where the state can go to districts and say that they, that the state has vetted certain providers and have determined them to be high quality in terms of their capacity actually deliver instruction. Because things are so disaggregated in this country around K12, each district still is going to have tremendous autonomy in terms of which vendors that they partner with. But the more the states can help the districts, you know, we think that'll be significant because frankly, most districts simply do not have, from our experience, the R and D resources to really vet who's good and who isn't in any sort of sustainable way. So that'll be something that people have to obviously keep in mind in terms of, you know, how they pitch their services to districts and to governmental purchases.
And I just want to add that building out an infrastructure to really support families who are living in poverty. I just feel like it's so immensely important to the recovery that's got to happen after this. And I'm also on the board of the Dallas Community College Foundation. And one of the struggles that we were having with the pandemic was that many of the students, like even once we went online, students that may have had computers didn't have reliable bandwidth or they didn't have the computers that they needed to participate. And that's obviously another issue that's happening in K12. And so what gets me super excited now, I don't know how we can maintain and sustain this. But if we're able to build out an infrastructure where families and students and kids have access to technology that, I mean helps out for a number of different reasons related to education, but reskilling and just in being able to even work remote during a time like this. And so I'm hopeful that, you know, the governments and states and all the players will continue to work together to keep pushing that forward.
So we have some terrific questions in the Q and A which I'm going to want to get to. I know that people did want to hear a bit about what's next in diversity, equity and inclusion and a bit about all raise and obviously what we're Talking about right now is all about that same issue as well. The questions are about things like the equity gap. So with that, maybe Jess, if you want to tell us a little bit about co founding, All Raise and then we'll go into DEI and then take the Q and A. And people, please feel free to load questions in to the Q and A. I know that there are at least three we're going to answer live.
Sure. On All Raise. You know, I don't think any of us intended to start a nonprofit. What actually happened was after some of the MeToo stories in tech, Aileen Lee at Cowboy Ventures, you know, very powerful woman in D.C. she was one of the first partners, the first female partner at Kleiner Perkins started her own Fun Cowboy. She just called together a dinner and just said, hey, ladies, like, let's chat about this. Maybe we should do something together. And I think Venture is quite competitive. So those kinds of gatherings where you actually truly work on something together, like, don't often result in anything. But I remember we just got on it. Like a Google Doc was sent out before the meeting. Everyone put their ideas in. We walked out of that meeting with a mission statement, like a set of goals we cared about, helping funders, helping founders, and a bunch of ideas. And the first idea that we had was this thing called Female Founder Office Hours, which was just, hey, why don't we pair up and coming female founders with, you know, 45 minutes of time with a female VC that's friendly, right? Or a female founder. And we, you know, we announced that with a group, a small group, like, I think 10 of us who were at that meeting to just say, hey, we're going to do this Office Hours thing. We got 500 applications in a week and a bunch of press. And we realized like, oh, interesting, like there's a lot of demand here and maybe we should just keep working on.
So that.
That went well. Then we just started to do other initiatives. Another one was called Founders for Change. Sound was really simple. It was just founders, actually. Everyone from Instagram founders to the Airbnb founders signed on to this commitment. That's pretty simple. Like, I'm committed to diversity, inclusion. When I have the choice of investment partners, the diversity of their firm will be an important consideration, like a fairly, like, simple statement. But I think over a thousand founders have signed it. We did this little campaign on Instagram where they held up a sign that said, I'm a Founder for Change. And that I think the year following we had a record number of women partners added to firms the first, I think at the time, 75% had no women at all. And so just push. Trying to figure out, like, how to push the industry along a little bit from the inside has sort of been our calling. And we think about two things. We think about how do you reshape culture? I think Founders for Change is an example of reshaping culture. Making it clear that the founders who are the customers of the VC firms care about this. They care about. They genuinely care about dei. Like, that's sort of a reshaping culture sort of initiative. We also do work with Time's up in Hollywood, or Time's up is more than Hollywood, but it started in Hollywood. Then there's rewire the industry from the inside and create the flywheel where, you know, how do you get more women into venture to back. How do you get more women founders? How do you get more women operators on the board? Just like thinking about that flywheel and creating programs like Female Founder Office Office Hours to increase that, that flywheel. So anyway, that's. That's the sort of the story behind all race. Oh, I guess I should say we did a bunch of projects and then we're like, hey, this is pretty interesting. Maybe we should formalize this. Forbes wrote an article, was writing an article about it. Like all these women are doing, all these initiatives are the same group of people. And then we're like, maybe we should make a nonprofit. So that. That's what we did. About 30, 30 co founders. So it's a very large organization with a lot of volunteers, a lot of folks involved.
It's terrific. And I applaud the work that you and all Rays have been doing. It's great. We are also seeing in term sheets for hotly contested growth rounds that people are saying, when you suggest a board designee, please suggest someone who will bring diversity and inclusion into our boardroom. And that's becoming part of the process. I think I've now seen that in four different competitive deals in the last three weeks. One of the problems is that it's in the last three weeks and that this has been insanely slow to change. And I've talked to a number of people, including my friend and partner Shavar, about the fact that talk is cheap and that there's a lot of performance going on. And I would invite any of the three of you since we're talking about diversity, equity and inclusion. Last night, the lawsuit against Carta was filed. I not taking a. I'm not informed enough to know what the underlying facts are, but I Do know that when you read the complaint, which is a well crafted story, just like a pitch deck would be, it talks a lot about the difference between what Carta said they were trying to do, being on a mission to bring equity and inclusion into the cap tables of startups and growth companies and what Carta is alleged to actually be doing, which is perpetuating inequity and exclusion. And so I'd love to hear from the three of you on how you're handling and how you're recommending against an atmosphere where talk is cheap.
Yeah, I can start. So diversity equity includes inclusion is a core piece of our work at new schools across all of the investment areas. It's been a journey for even us at new schools, which is we are a very diverse organization and so we understand the challenges that people have, but you still have to get started if you're really committed to this. And we are, we evaluate companies that come through and we try to get a sense of how committed they are to it. We look at their teams, we look at who's represented on their teams, on their boards, advisors. We ask very explicit questions about it. And I just think back to, you know, five years ago when we started asking and at the time, I remember K Poor Capital had the pledge out and that, you know, at the time felt super bold. And I remember our team was like, we were like, well, do we ask? Like, what should we ask? And you know, and I think back to that and to now where we are. It's a totally different world. Like, it's like, okay, tell me all the information. Show me, you know, what your strategy is for diversity, equity, inclusion. Once you, you know, have a strategy, like, show me that how you're recruiting. Show me what you're doing to retain employees. Like, what are you doing to make them feel included on the ed tech side, specifically the edtech industry still in the early phases of this, and tech in general is in the early phases of this. Like, I mean, I'm sure you've probably heard stories about the, you know, the biased algorithms and the machine technology where you put your hands under dark hand. It doesn't, you know, the water doesn't come on if you go into the automated faucet. Well, my biggest concern is that we're baking in all of this bias into the technology that's going to be in front of kids, right? So we are really focused on like, what does it mean to build a product with equity in mind and are you working with the students that need the product the most? To actually get it done. And so we've invested money in supporting companies to do this work. We've got research partners that are thinking about this to share the latest information that we have on it and how you do it in the right way, but also recognizing that we're all learning together and we all just have to keep pushing on the venture capital side. Yeah. I mean, something's wrong with the system when 90% of venture capital dollars is going to white men, white founders. Like, something is wrong with the system. Like, we've got to do better. And our country is at a moment of reckoning where communities are really now starting demanding, like, we want to see evidence that you are committed to our people, our community. It's translating to brands and, you know, what, you purchase power and all of that stuff. And so as we move forward, kind of in this year of resetting, I'm hoping that we'll see a lot more progress on all of these fronts as it relates to diversity, equity, inclusion.
Shavar and thank you.
Yeah, I agree. I agree with everything Jess and Tanika said. Yeah, for me, it's kind of simple. I mean, it. You know, my understanding of folks who are starting companies and folks who are in venture investment, obviously, you all know way to know this space better than I do. My assumption is they actually want to make a lot of money and they want to be the best. And I'm reminded, so my grandfather played the Negro League. He played baseball. He just remembered. I just remember telling me the stories all the time. I went when, you know, Branch Rickey went to go look at Jackie Robinson. Because, remember, at that time, the thought was, you know, black folks aren't creative enough and aren't don't think fast enough to be able to play baseball at a high level. Right. Because that was. Those were the stigmas and those were the biases that folks had in terms of why black people weren't allowed in Major League Baseball. You know, it's a cerebral game and they can't think fast enough.
Right.
And then Branch went to go see Jackie Robinson. And at the end of the day, Branch Rickey brought Jackie Robinson, not really because he wanted to make a political statement. He wanted to go win championships. Right. And then Jackie comes in, he's the best player in the league, and they win championships. Right. The talent. So for me, it's like, look, those companies that are smart on this issue and then and can do the work to recognize their own biases. Because the bottom line is, and sometimes some people, you know, can get uncomfortable there's no human being in this country, I would venture, really, in any country. But we'll talk about this one who doesn't have all types of biases around race. I mean, it's just built in, into this country, right? And particularly when you talk about bias on the basis of black people, right? I mean, black people were brought over here as slaves because the thought was they're not human.
Right?
That's just the reality. That's what it was. Right. And then we just saw this week that in Texas a fence was taken down between the cemetery where they buried the black bodies and the white bodies. So we had Jim Crow after that. Because the idea was these people are so different. Not only got to have a different water fountain and the different bathroom even when they're dead, we can't even have the bones comingle. Because that's just a whole different sort of thing. Right. So my point is, when you have a, when you have a cultural space rooted in these ideas, no matter how much progress we've made, all of us are going to have a lot of these biases. And if you're not intentional, proactive about it, they're going to then manifest. So when we talk about this data, it's just not possible for that to happen separate from these biases. It's just not possible. Right. The talent that you have in terms of people of color and women is just there, right? I talked about when I was in high school, even though I was at the top of the class, you know, only five kids in the whole school of 230 had better grades. And I did. He was telling me about a certain set of options he thought was, was, was the right ones for me. And people who on any objective basis weren't where I was, they got a different set of options, right? And I can tell thousands of stories of this sort of thing. So I just say, look, I mean the, you know, I mean, at some point, you know, those who don't want to make progress on that, at some point they're going to lose out, right? Because others are going to be smarter, they're going to get better talent. Like I'm not one of these. And then I'm gonna be quiet. I'm not one of these who's about pleading anybody do anything. People do what they want to do. Those who want to be myopic or want to be small minded, you're going to lose over time. Those are going to identify the amazing and brilliant talent and creators who are going to create new businesses that will Change the world. Those are the ones who win over time. People got to decide where they want to be.
So this is.
I agree.
Go ahead, Jess.
I'm just going to say, you know, you asked originally about how to motivate people to make this change. You know, I think one way is, like, it's the right thing to do, right? This is. This is. These are systemic things that need to be fixed. I would say there's another way to convince them, which is use not fear or, you know, the right thing. Use greed to motivate people. And I think that's actually been one of the principles that always is like, let's motivate with greed, not fear. Instead of like, oh, you'll be caught for the thing you did 10 years ago, and now you have to go do the bunch of things to hide it and know, be afraid of us. We're going to, like, come catch you. It's more, hey, this is where the world's moving. There's a lot of profit to be made here if you invest in people who have. Who are underdogs, right? Who have that grit, who see the opportunities that other people are not investing in, who are more capital efficient in general and have lower failure rates, right? Like, these are all positive things, like using that greed. I think Founders for Change was a great example of that, Right?
It's.
It's like the customers that you care about, including, you know, the white men who run Instagram and Airbnb, care about this too. So you should care about it, right? Like, let's. Let's get people there. Because for whatever reason, back to the sales skill that I talked about in the beginning of, like, understanding your audience. Like, how do you understand the audience? Right? There's a group of people for whom doing the right thing is absolutely the right message. And there's a group of people for whom, if you don't do this, like, you will lose out on making money. Like, that maybe is the right message for them as well. Whatever works. At the end of the day, let's get the impact that we're looking for.
Yeah, and I was talking to Tanika about this yesterday that I personally have pursued a thesis, and this is with my own investments, but also in my professional life and in my personal life, when VCs talk about their own differentiated deal flow and their differentiated network, they often talk about things like, I'm a founder. I went to these amazing schools. But so many VCs went to those same schools and are founders. And I know I published something in the Wall Street Journal that said that more than 50% of VCs went to the same 10 schools. I published that in 2013. Richard Kirby published something in 2018. The stats hadn't changed. The differentiated deal flow is actually, I have a diverse network and that network buys and spends money and is increasingly going to spend money and is increasingly going to look for where they've been equitably included, represented, advanced, promoted, welcomed, loved. And Shavar, when you said, you know, and then I'll be quiet, I certainly don't want you to be quiet. I would love for that to be a recruiting video for Lowenstein Sandler. Come work with Shavar and me and our, and our colleagues and Shavar's old boss, Ann Milgram. But I do think that it's important and I'm okay appealing to people's dollars because we are at a point where, and I will quote a 6% icon where by any means necessary is becoming a really important part of the strategy. All right, so with that, let's go to the Q and A and maybe we can start with There's a question from Michael Romrel. And I'll just mention, by the way, that if people are interested, no one should at all feel obligated that Shabbar and my wife and I are hosting Reverend Raphael Warnock and Mark Kelly for an event on August 19th at 6:00pm Eastern Time. So just shoot us a note. We've got some other cool co hosts for that as well. I should say some cool co hosts for that as well, like Joey Ryan of the Mill Carton Kids and some other folks. So anyway, if people are interested in that, just shoot me a note. Michael Romrell's comment is, how can edtech founders do more to close the equity gap among students? And I know that that's, that equity gap is something that Shabbar has spoken a lot about. I'm happy to open that up to any of the three of you.
Yeah, so I think it's, you know, if you have a great product and you, you already know what the outcomes are, I mean, you have to be clear, like, what outcomes are we trying to achieve with the product? So if you know that your teachers know that the students, the parents like, they know how to use your product, and then when you're looking at the students who need it most, and many of those are black and brown and underserved communities, is that product, when you look at the effectiveness in that product for those demographic groups, is it the same? Is it more like, can you refine your product to make it even better, to support those student groups? And are you testing those student groups to ensure that they're achieving mastery, making progress in an efficient way? And so really it comes down to research and testing and then improving the product and product iteration. So if you have like a concept and you know exactly where you're going with the outcomes, making sure that you're testing and improving and iterating along the way and you know, the goal is to just keep improving and getting better and then make sure you understand what the late, the latest learning science is out there. There's lots of, you know, researchers that are exploring all different types of things related to different subject areas, seeing if, you know, staying up on that information and then applying it to make your product even better.
Yeah, I would agree. I think tech can be a huge lever for bringing about more educational equity. I mean, even the product Jess talked about that she's invested in around, I mean, there's all this aid out here and frankly, what wealthy people would do, they would hire consultants to help their student, you know, navigate their way through it. So the ability to just go on some sort of app and get access to that information is amazing. You know, wealthy families, they'll pay for tutors to help their student for the sat, right? There's, you know, products I've seen to begin to provide those type of services on a low cost and some even on a free basis. You know, leveraging technology to working families and working poor families after school tutors. Right. Whether it's Khan Academy, there's all type of other types of products out there as well. To be able to bring, to begin to bring some of those type of services and support to young people on either a free or low cost basis I think is powerful. And then the real huge piece I think is beginning to reimagine what pedagogy instruction looks like. Too many classrooms teachers are doing for the most part on a day in and day out basis, what they've done for many, many decades. So maybe instead of a textbook, students have a laptop in front of them. And I mean across class categories as well. Maybe there's a whiteboard instead of a chalkboard. But the fundamentals of teaching and learning from a pedagogical standpoint aren't dramatically different. And this is a space where research and development, ed tech investors, entrepreneurs can really reimagine how can we use these technological resources not only to provide remote educational opportunities, but even reimagine what the fundamental classroom experience looks like too. So I think there's tremendous opportunities and all this could be leveraged to bring about more educational opportunity for low income families and working families.
Yeah, I agree with that. I would say definitely agree with what Tanika said about your customer, who you talk to as customers. You're going to speak to your customers. Make sure you speak to a representative set of customers. Right. And then maybe to use greed to motivate purchase to try that tact as well. Like if you're customer happiness is the gap between expectations and reality. Right. And if you find a customer who doesn't really expect that much to you from you and then you blow their mind with how amazing, you know, how amazingly well you served them, that actually leads to growth and organic word of mouth. Right? An organic word of mouth is the best way to grow a company. So the greed way of thinking about this is if you can serve the underprivileged students and do a fantastic job at that, like you actually have the possibility of building an incredible brand and an incredible growth engine. Those could be your best advocates. So that's another reason to do it. Not just because it's the right thing to do. I would say like as an example, Moss actually did this. Well, they did it for the right reasons because it was the right thing to do. But put together a small program during the Black, Black Lives Matter campaign, sort of around a scholarship 100k. We found donors and just gave, created an application for that. And just the stories that came from that, from the students who got 500 bucks to help them of that aid, like is just incredible, incredible word of mouth.
Right.
And so I do think you need to speak to your customers. Know that those customers could be your, your best fans, your best advocates and lead to major growth.
And I just want to add on like you want to blow me and my family away. Cultural relevancy, like something that in research shows that students can see themselves or if they can relate to what they're learning, they're more likely to be successful. And I can, I mean, as the parent of black children, finding just protagonists in books that aren't about like slavery or the race struggle, like, it's like frustrating. Like, you know, they just want to learn about dragons or whatever. But you want, you know, some protagonists to be a black girl or a black boy. But it doesn't have to be like the heavy. And so like from an equity standpoint, like show students with special needs, like include them in the dial, like all of the populations, like make sure representation is there in the content too.
I'm sorry. I laugh so much in that it reminds me of. It's so true. I took my daughter to the American Girl doll store a few years ago. She really wanted an American Girl doll and she's talking all about the American Girl doll. So I took her to the store maybe four years ago in Manhattan. And I walk in and the only black dolls who had a story, because I guess they had some dolls who don't have a story, then they had some dolls who have a story. And the black dolls with the story, they were marching for freedom and they're running from the plantation. I was like, can I just have a baby? Just be a baby and just living life and having fun. Which is what most of us do most of the time. But to the point it was. And that becomes habit forming when in the images, when it's black folk, it gets into the song and a dance and. And how bad everything is and all of that, which isn't our experience. So anyway, when you said that I just have this image of walking into that door and seeing the doll with the running from the plantation and all of.
That's a good point. Yeah, it resonates with me as well, very strongly. I invested a couple of years ago in a company called Healthy Roots Dolls, which is founded by a woman named Yelitza, who's amazing. And it is based on the research that was the underpinning of the expert Testimony in Brown vs Board of Ed, which is exactly what you're talking about. And that is research that is 70 years old and it gets brought up time and time again. And Jess, this goes back to your comment because when I was talking to Yelitsa about what she was doing, she started to explain the research. And I knew the research because I care about this issue. And I was like, you can skip all this. I got like this. Of course, of course. And I have my own kids, so I. I have shopped for toys for them. And. And so it's like with the female founders you were talking about. You could Skip the first 30 minutes of the conversation because I got it. I'm sold. And a year and a half ago at our venture Crush San Francisco, we had Gabby Moreno, who is a Latin Grammy winner and an Emmy winner and a Grammy nominee and is amazing. And we did a conversation before she performed. And one of the things that Ann Milgram and I talked to her about was she was nominated for another Emmy for being in a show that has the first Latin Disney princess. How did it take Disney this frickin long to have a prince, you know, like, it's crazy. So, yes, and I know that we are timing out. Jess, I didn't mean to interrupt you, though, but was there something that you were gonna add, or was there a question you wanted to grab from the qa?
I was gonna say pop culture is absolutely so important. It really influences the way kids grow up and feel like, hey, is this possible? Is this a path for me or not? I often think about Glee, the TV show Glee, and how I think it probably did a lot more for LGBTQ rights than, like, almost anything. Just. Just seeing, you know, a gay kid and then a trans kid. It's just, like, not about them being gay. Right. It's just like, I'm singing and I'm in high school and, you know, just. Just nothing but that. Just seeing that character broadcast into the homes of, like, millions of Americans who love that show and it just being normal, you know, no mention of, you know, just normal. And I think that's really important. We need more of that. We need it to just be really normal that There are women CEOs and black CEOs. We need TV shows about that. We need, like, comic books about it. I think that that could go a really long way to influencing the next generation.
And the arts plays a super important role in that. And whether it's someone like the amazing Sara Bareilles doing Brave, which becomes anthemic for the LGBTQ community, among others.
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