Impact Investing: Modulo interview with Jomayra Hererra (Reach Capital)

How do we create an education experience that actually engages kids, that makes them want to learn, that makes them excited to go to school? If I knew the way to do that or what it looked like or what it meant, like, I'd be the founder, but I'm not. I'm the investor. I'm the person that, that funds the incredible people with amazing ideas. And so I think solutions that help to solve this fundamental engagement problem, fundamental relevance problem of our education system. I think those are the solutions that ultimate going to help crack the nut on some of our biggest, more most pervasive issues and challenges within the education system.

Hello everyone. I'm Manisha and this is the Modulo podcast. And I am so honored today to welcome Jamira Herrera from Reach Capital. Welcome, Jamira.

Thank you for having me. I'm super excited for this.

Awesome. So Jamira was born in Orlando to two parents who believed passionately in her education. She was the first person in her family to go to college. And at Stanford, she ended up getting a master's in education Policy, Organization and Leadership Studies. She started her career at an edtech startup called Bloomberg Bloomboard and then eventually began a career in venture capital, first at Emerson and then Reach, Cowboy Ventures and Reach Capital. She's championed investments in Contra Career Karma, Handshake, Guild Education and other incredible companies. And at Reach, she is the point person for Kai Pod Learning, who are great friends of ours, Steppe Winnie and Work Wild. So we are just so excited to dive into everything about K12 education. New changes coming with the new administration, equity, which is, I know, something you have really devoted your life to, and I think it's going to be a really rich conversation. So I shared a little bit about you. From what I know, which is still little, but I would love to just hear really your story. And as someone who cares about impact in education, how you ended up at this point in your life working in venture capital and, and why that was the trajectory your career took.

Yeah. So you started to get a little bit into my story, which really drives what I do today. So I was born to two incredible parents. And like you mentioned, they always said education was the one thing that no one could take from you. And so I devoted myself to my studies and to be quite frank, school was one of the few things I was actually good at. Tried my hand in a lot of sports, was not good at that. I didn't get any of those athletic jeans. But I ended up being the first in my family to go to college. And when I got to school in My mind you, when you get the opportunity to go to college, you become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, like those are the things, those are the careers that I was taught were the valuable careers. And if you have the opportunity to access them, you should, you should go for it. And so I was never really good at math or science, and so it was the only option for me was being a lawyer. So I started down that path and I did all the things you're supposed to do to become a lawyer. You, I intern at the law school, I interned for a senator. Um, and I started prep preparing for the lsat. And I remember the morning of the LSAT came around and I just didn't go. I didn't want to go, I didn't want to take it. And the reason was because when I thought about where I naturally wanted to spend my time and where my energy was, it wasn't in all the things that I should be doing or I thought I should be doing. I was actually really excited to spend time in school schools and tutoring and working with students. And for me, you know, in retrospect, Einstein is 2020. I think I was realizing that so much of what opened doors for me and my family was education. And for a lot of reasons I got lucky and I was able to get access to an incredible university and college experience and really open up the doors for, for myself and my family. And, and I wanted that experience for everyone else. And so I ended up going and pursuing a graduate degree in education, not really knowing exactly where it would take me. I tend to be opportunistic in terms of how I think about my career opportunities. I try to focus on what I call my North Star, which is I want to create a world that is better for the girl I was. And so that's what drives a lot of my career steps. And so as you mentioned, I started my career as an operator I didn't know very much about, about venture capital other than working at a venture backed startup when I started. And one of our investors I got connected to while I was at this, at this company. And that's when I ended up joining Emerson Collective, which was an incredible experience and really where I started my venture career and fell in love with the idea of deploying capital towards issues that I care really deeply about.

That's, that's really incredible. I mean, I'm curious, you know, I think, you know, my mother also made a really big, I mean, my mother made a big sacrifice for me to attend college, but I always assumed that that was somewhere I would go because everyone in my family for generations had gone to college. And you know, as you were navigating these career changes, was that difficult to negotiate with your family or were they supportive of you? What was that transition for people here who are thinking maybe they might be able to make impact in a different way?

So my family has always had a lot of trust in, in my judgment. They've never expected me to do a certain career path or a, you know, a certain pathway. That said, there's of course fear that comes from, well, wow, she's moving across the country for a university that's really expensive and a university they honestly had never heard of. And so for them, you know, there's fear in that and, and some discomfort in that. And so it was less, you know, negotiating with family or trying to convince them of a certain pathway. And it was more of just making it clear that I was making the best decision I could with the information that I had and bringing them along in that journey as well. And that's really all I could do in terms of my career path. I think what's hilarious is I still give it the amount of times that I have told my family what I do. None of them could ever repeat to you what it is I actually do on a day to day, which I think is hilarious. But the most important thing for them is they see that I'm happy, they see that I'm paying my bills, they see that I get joy from being around my co workers and the work I do. And really that's what they care the most about. Just don't ask them to try to explain what I do because I think the best they can probably get is she does something like shark tank.

Oh my goodness, that's so funny. And just yesterday I was telling my mom I was so excited and I was trying to explain this growth hack I had discovered that involves some like reverse engineering of URLs. My mom was just, they staring. That's really nice, Sunny, but I just couldn't quite get her there with that. But yeah, that's, that's wonderful that your family has come along. And you know what, it's turned out really well for them and I'd love to dig in a little bit more to venture because for people early in their career who are thinking about how they want to make their impact, whether that is in the classroom, as a teacher, as a tutor, as maybe starting a nonprofit or starting a venture company, you know, clearly I think my path, I don't know that I necessarily Sat down and made a list of pros and cons. I still don't quite understand how I ended up in tech, but just maybe if you could share a little bit about the impact you think you are able to make as a venture capitalist. Yeah.

So I would say one, I feel very fortunate to be at a fund that cares very deeply about impact. And I don't take that for granted because it's not true of all funds that are out there. Right. But we take our commitment to impact and measuring impact very, very seriously. So you'll see that we release a report on our on impact every single year. And so the way we think about impact, we don't try to aggregate it up to some score that we apply to all companies. Because the reality is, is each company is different both in terms of stage, in terms of product, in terms of user base, in terms of their theory of change, of what impact they're trying to drive. And so instead of trying to aggregate it to some singular score, we focus instead on what is your theory of change? Is it evidence based? And let's start to work with you to figure out what are the right metrics to track and then how do you increase the rigor of those metrics over time. And so we work really closely with all of our portfolio companies to do that on a very personalized basis. And you'll see we, like I mentioned, every year we release an impact report. Typically we used to actually aggregate it across the portfolio and now we've started to do like our K12 impact report, a higher ed impact report. Just recognizing that again each sector is so different. And so that's really, that's how, that's how we think about it. And so in terms of my impact specifically as a vc, it's really about helping to enable these incredible founders and entrepreneurs and companies to achieve their impact at scale.

Wonderful. That was actually what I was going to ask you about next. Not to put you too much on the stop on the spot, but thinking about a theory of change, what would you describe as your own theory of change? Maybe overarching theory of change?

My personal theory of change?

Yeah. How do we make education better?

Yeah, I mean I can talk about it from a personal perspective, from a professional perspective. I guess as a vc, the way we think about our theory of change is that we are providers of capital to visionary, amazing founders that have really compelling ideas that are going to create products, tools and services that are going to serve those, their users at scale and beyond capital. Obviously that's the primary lever or at least where we start our relationship, we help with hiring, providing strategic expertise, providing customer introductions, and helping to shorten that learning cycle for each portfolio company. So really, our theory of change is that by enabling these incredible founders with community education support and of course, capital, we can help to accelerate the pace of change that's, that's happening across the sectors that we invest in.

So you're identifying people who really have a good plan and strategy for making impact and then empowering them through resources. That. That's wonderful. I had Dr. Rebecca Winthrop on the show from the Brookings Institution, and we were talking about her theory, I think, is around quality, accessibility and relevance as being the keys to education. Because you see, for example, in Africa, a lot of schools have been built, but in some of these schools, even at a fifth grade level, children don't know how to read. Or the schools might be really emphasizing a westernized curriculum that's not relevant to them, I guess. I'm curious, that would be maybe a good segue into talking about equity in education. And you know, what are some efforts that you see as making a big impact, especially in the K12 space, and what, if any, are warnings you might give to excited founders? You know, especially because, you know, when these massive online courses came out, a lot of people thought this is going to be the great equalizer in education, but unfortunately seen that more affluent people were benefiting from these online courses. And that's still to some extent true with school choice. So I'm curious, you know, if you could maybe signal what are, you know, one or two efforts that you think have done a really great job in creating more equity in education and what are things that people should look out for?

Yeah, so I would say that first, just to go back to the example of Dr. Winthrop that you shared. So we think quality, accessibility, relevance, all of those are important. I think in our line of work. The other factor we consider is scale, because we want impact at scale and it's not to minimize, if you are doing impact in a smaller scale, that it doesn't matter. Of course it matters. It deeply matters. But in our line of work, we're ultimately driving towards scale and we want to impact as many people as, as possible. And so we consider that as part of our impact analysis. And so to your point, around what are some efforts, I'll keep it within the portfolio because those are the efforts, obviously that I know and understand best. So one of our portfolio companies, for example, is Paper, which provides on demand tutoring services to students for free 24 7. And when we made that investment at the time, the most focused efforts within tutoring were focused on direct to consumer. That's where a lot of capital was being invested in for us. We were like, look, everyone's zigging. They're investing in these direct to consumer options. Let's zag. Let's focus on investing in a company that's actually going to go through schools and provide access to tutoring completely free to students 24, 7, especially students that otherwise wouldn't have access to them. And so this company now has been around for a few years, have scaled all across the country and impacting tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of students across the country and offering free 24, 7 chat based tutoring that's on demand when students need them. And for me that's, that's impact and it's happening at scale. You're providing an offering that otherwise would not be possible. And the buyer in this case is the school district instead of the parent or the student. So I think that's a really powerful example. On the other end, actually a direct consumer model, we have a company called Outschool and what their unique model is, is even though it's direct to consumer and the parent is paying for it, their model is to actually offer virtual classes that is one to many. So they effectively bend the cost curve for the consumer to be able to access these really engaging, exciting courses for their students. So instead of paying $60 for an hour of class, now a parent can pay $8. So maybe a parent that otherwise couldn't afford that $60 class, but they can pay the $8 so their child can attend a class on poetry or on, on painting or you know, these courses that unfortunately are not happening in the school system as often as before. So I think those are two, two examples at least within the portfolio that have achieved pretty significant scale.

That's so wonderful. I mean Outschool is such an incredible company and how far they've come in such a short amount of time is truly amazing. And paper is so cool. I'm going to have to get the founder of paper on this show for sure. One on one tutoring is massive impact and they have such a clever model for delivering it. I really agree with you that the school by school approach is really probably the most impactful in terms of equity and distribution. And now we're seeing more and more essays and for what people who might not have heard of those, it's a special type of funding. It's kind of like school choice but you can use it for classes and tutors and really to create your homeschooling, although sometimes you have to register for essays instead of homeschooling to use it. And I know that some of your companies like Outschool and Kaipod, are benefiting from essays. I'm curious to know what are some of the obstacles you see in more under resourced families learning about essays and what are some efforts that have been successful in helping them find out that that exists for them, that funding?

Yeah, it's such a good point. So Education Savings Accounts are this really incredible opportunity truly for a parent to take control of their child's education. And in a way, this is honestly the largest unlock of public financing going into the hands of consumers within the education realm that we've ever seen in history. And one of the big challenges, as you mentioned, is awareness. I can even speak anecdotally here in Florida we have a universal ESA program. And so it's effectively no strings attached, eligibility to access an esa. And yet when I speak to even my own family members, cousins and aunts and whatnot, they're not aware that this resource is available to them because there's no one talking to them about it. And if you think about it, they're, they get most of their education information probably from their own teacher or their child's teacher or school leader who's not going to say, hey, leverage the CSA to get your child out of my schooling. And so many of them, it's, it's unclear where they, they would get that information. So a lot of them are just relying on Google or on word of mouth or hearing it from, from others. And so there are some efforts underway to help, to help give more information to families, but quite frankly, they're not really scaled out in any meaningful way. As you can tell, their awareness continues to be a big factor. And so I'm excited about emerging players that are wanting to take this awareness really seriously. And so you mentioned Kaipod. Kaipod is a company that does focus on enabling the growth of micro schools and we can talk more about that. But one of the things that they focus on is helping with this awareness factor. So they've actually created guides for parents to be able to understand what are their different school choice options. It might not even be a micro school, but at the very least they should be aware of what options are available to them and what financing is available to them. And so there are some early efforts underway, but there is a lot of work to be done. And I think there's a lot of work also to be done in figuring out the right avenues and mechanisms to reach these families. So I often find that community groups, churches, places where people have trusted sources of information and where they rely on a lot of referral, word of mouth, those are usually the better places to be able to really to, to reach these families for sure.

And I would say it's almost counterintuitive, but I do think that collaborating with schools can also be a good way to disseminate information. I know that Fusion Academy, when they first started, they do very high end one on one tutoring and they go out and contact guidance counselors to identify students who might not be thriving at a school. And you know, and for example in New York State sometimes kids are told that they are really not a good fit for public school and then they have to sue the state in order to attend a private school. So I think the more that we can collaborate with the public school system that can really benefit all of us. Also, you know, Class Pass had a really effective strategy of direct mail which I think startups sometimes overlook. But a good old fashioned postcards and you know, we did it during the election can be a good approach as well for sure. Wonderful. Yeah. I'm so happy to hear that Kaipod is getting creative about that and it's, it's such a wonderful company and I think it ties in nicely to a question I had for you about for profit and venture models. When I first started Modulo, I knew I really wanted to make a big, a big impact in the education space and I'm kind of an idealist. I want to deliver high quality personalized learning to every child in the world. So I talked to some advisors and mentors like Eric Reese and Naval Ravikant and said like do you think I should do a for profit or a non for profit model? And the kind of consensus that I heard was that a venture funded company could make a much bigger impact. And you've traveled the for profit and non for profit sectors and I'm curious what your thoughts are on that.

I don't ascribe to. There are certain types of business models or certain types of models or corporate structures that will lead to better impact or less impact. There are huge scaled non profits that have delivered amazing impact within the world of education, even other worlds. Like some people forget that the NFL for a very long time was a non profit and who can think of a larger organization?

Yeah, I never knew that. That's incredible.

Wow. Yes, you can be huge as a Nonprofit other nonprofits. SEO is another one that provides incredible access to under resourced students to careers in finance consulting and others. YMCA Boys and Girls Club. I mean there are just amazing examples of nonprofits that have driven real measurable impact for people and at scale. And so I don't believe that certain models will lead to less or more impact. I think the question is more so the time frame. So in venture, the reality is that you need to build a company that is at minimum worth a billion dollars within a seven to ten year time frame. So that assumes a certain growth trajectory and compounding growth over time and so assumes that you are going to grow very quickly and grow to a certain scale in a short period of time. And so but that, that's the venture model and that's what the venture model necessitates. And to be very clear, 98% of those companies will never achieve that outcome. And so it is a yes potential high impact, but also the potential of it just flattening out and not existing in a certain period of time is also very high versus a bootstrap model. It might take you longer to hit scale, but it is generally less risky. And you have a little bit more control over your destiny. You have a little bit more control over the things that you do versus don't do similar non profit model, you're heavily reliant on grant dollars and philanthropic dollars. And so maybe you move a little bit slower, maybe it's a little bit harder, maybe the fundraising and financing landscape moves a little slower. But like you again have control over the things that you're doing. And in a non profit model you don't have to focus on creating the most cost efficient, cost effective service model that's growing very quickly in a short period of time, which allows you to provide support services to higher need populations. It allows you to do deeper interventions for again higher need folks. And so I don't, I don't ascribe to this, this philosophy that certain models are better than others. I think it's about figuring out you as a leader and as a founder, what is the impact that you want to create over what time scale and how, how do you want to do it? There is no right or wrong, it's just figuring out what makes most sense for you and for what you're trying to do.

So if you were today going to build, for example an AI tutor and you were trying to decide if you wanted to make it a for profit or a venture funded company or some different type of structure, what would be the top two or three questions you would ask yourself.

Yeah, so I, in terms of how we think about financing, about what type.

You know, whether you want to go the nonprofit route or the venture funded route. I think this is a question that a lot of edtech founders are asking themselves right now.

So the first thing I will say is there's a third model. There's a bootstrap. Yeah. So I think the biggest questions I would ask myself is one, what are my capital needs? If I can finance it myself with a couple of dollars and start bootstrapping it and then get some revenue in the door, like I might decide, you know what, I will take the bootstrap model. The lifestyle business. Maybe I'll never create a multibillion dollar company. Maybe I could, but maybe I don't. And it just depends. So one, or what are my capital needs? To what are my growth aspirations? Do I want to grow into a multibillion dollar company in a 7 to 10 year time frame and like backtrack from there? Do I, are those the aspirations that I have? Or am I okay going a little slower or am I okay actually focusing on a smaller subset of people or smaller population but having potentially much deeper impact? And three, do I, to what extent do I want to give up control of my company? And by the way, when you have a nonprofit, you also don't have control. You have a board that you respond that you are responsive to and whatnot. And so to what extent do I want to control my, my company? In a bootstrap company, you'll control 100% of it, theoretically. And so I would say those are three, the three big questions. My capital needs, my growth, or maybe in the order my growth aspirations, my capital needs given those growth aspirations and then my desire for control of the company.

So great. And just one more on this topic because I think a lot of people in this community are thinking about it. What are some examples of really good things to spend money on when you're raising venture to scale, like technology? And maybe even some things you've heard recently in your conversations with founders.

The most important thing is talent, right? Your company is going to live or die based off of the talent that you get access to. And so spending money on great talent. And I'm not saying great talent is equated to spent 10 years at Google, five years here, six years, you know, but just great, incredible talent with a demonstrated track record or potential to be able to execute at the pace of a startup, which is very fast. And so I would say that is probably the most important thing you can spend money on. And then do not go cheap on a lawyer. That is the only advice I will always give is messing up your legal documents from the beginning is really painful and really expensive long term. So do not go cheap on a lawyer and spend on incredible talent, because that's what your company is going to really live or die off of.

But make sure to ask your great lawyer how much every item is going to cost before they do it so they don't run up here. You have to keep that great lawyer on a tight leash. Right.

Don't spend recklessly, but also don't go cheap. There are some things you should just not go cheap on. A lawyer is one of them.

Lawyer is one of them. Wonderful. All right, let's talk a little bit about homeschooling. You know, that's the space that I'm in. Do you see homeschooling as a big opportunity and what are some of the challenges you see with that space? Yeah.

So, I mean, homeschooling has grown considerably since the pandemic. And I think what's interesting is that when you look at the reasons for why parents decide to homeschool, historically the primary reason was religious. That has changed post pandemic to being more so focused on concerns about academic performance, concerns about bullying, concerns about safety, a whole host of reasons that are no longer there. There's always going to be a percentage that is religiously driven, but that is now minority, which was not true even just, you know, five, six years ago. And so what that tells us is that there is a real desire from parents and families to have a different learning environment for their child. And I personally think that homeschooling was the. One of the primary places that are one of the fastest growing places that parents went to, particularly since from the pandemic, because that's where kids were when. When schools shut down. I think the challenge with homeschooling is that in a world where you have two working parents, which is the vast majority of households these days, or a single parent that is working, it is very hard to overcome the real obstacle of schools are also a form of child care. Right. Like it's a form of free child care where you can send. You can send your child and they spend the day there while you're working. And so it's really hard for a parent to. For working parents to be able to facilitate that homeschooling environment. Beyond that, I think you. We can all agree being a teacher is really hard a lot of parents during the pandemic were like, like, oh my gosh, send the kids back to school. Like, this is incredibly difficult and I can't even imagine doing it with more than, you know, just my child or my children. And so I think that does create a challenge to actually implement homeschooling effectively. And so for us, like one of the areas that we've gotten really excited about, not to, not to continue harping on, on Kaipod, but I think it's relevant is the area of microschooling. So the reason why we find a lot of opportunity there is that microschooling provides that more individual, individualized smaller school setting that's more personalized to the specific needs of kids. So you see micro schools that are focused on students with special needs, micro schools focused on a curriculum based on racial justice. Micro schools focus on the kids of veterans, a whole host. I mean you see them all across the board, all different types. So you see that level of individualization and personalization, but you still get that child care benefit and socialization benefit that you would get in a traditional public school. And so it kind of meets parents in the middle and gives them what they're looking for while also providing, taking, you know, taking that childcare benefit off there or taking on that child care benefit. And so that's where we, we think that there is a lot of opportunity. We think that like one of the biggest bottlenecks for micro schools is in supply. Right. Like it is a fairly, it's still like a little, it's a bit misunderstood, not really well known sector. People don't really know what to call like a micro school, what was previously like a pod during, during the pandemic. And so part of the issue is education awareness, but also increasing the supply and liquidity of microscope options available. And so, so that's why we made our investment in Kaipa because that's directly what they're impacting by helping educators to become empowered and enabled to build their own micro schools.

Wonderful. You know, so before I founded Modulo, I founded a company called Cottage Class, which is a marketplace for micro schools in 2015, around the time that Altschool was started. And one of the challenges that we found was in the unit economics of micro schools and that you had, you know, one teacher, maybe five to 10 students. And with, you know, when you're trying to think about making that model equitable, first of all, the teacher founder was pretty underpaid relative to what they might make in a traditional public school or they might even need for a living wage. And then on the other hand, it was difficult for parents who are not like middle or income or affluent to afford that school, even though it was still cheaper than private school. Have you, have you witnessed anything kind of creative in being able to make it affordable or make it that you might want to share?

Well, I think the biggest accelerating now is going back to the topic of BSAs is now we've unlocked a set of dollars that didn't exist before. Right before this was capital that was going to have to come out of the parents parents own wallet. Now we're saying, hey, the seven to $10,000 that you were going to get or your child was going to get in public school, that is in your pocket to spend how you would like to. And so what that means is the market for parents that could actually afford another private option or micro school option has increased significantly. Which also means that micro schools now have a bit more leverage in terms of their pricing than the other was wise would have had before. And so then the unit economics actually do start working in a way that I don't think was possible before. And so that's why I think one of the big why nows is there's all these trends and desires around parents wanting a different learning environment for their child, teachers being burned out from traditional public schools and wanting more autonomy and agency. But I think the biggest unlock and what makes this market now viable is that you actually have the financing to enable this transition.

Interesting. So I'm thinking like if there are 10 students and they each get 7,000 from the state, that comes out to about 10, 7,000, you know, 70,000. But then after supplies and the cost of space, I mean, is teacher still the founder, still able to make a living wage?

Generally, yes, because in addition to having the, you know, 10 students, oftentimes they'll take on part time students, they'll take on students after school. So there's usually some degree of ancillary services that they'll provide in addition to just the traditional tuition, which would then start to add to that top line revenue. Many of these, many of these teacher founders are also considering now how do you think about scaling so actually adding an additional pot of students with that, which then of course increases revenue. You bring on a kind of part time teacher or collaborative collaborator into the classroom and, and so they start to make the unit economics work. And that's what we're seeing happening. The other thing I'll add is in terms of space, many of them leverage existing space like a church for example, which is either ends up being free or heavily discounted. And so they start to see that cost disappear as well.

Great. Okay, excellent. So, and so just beyond micro schools, and I know your focus is not exclusively K through 12 and I've been grilling you a lot on, on the children and teens, but I'm curious what you see just as the biggest opportunities in education, Whether that's online school, AI tutors, what are the sectors that you think really have the highest potential to become big billion dollar companies?

So it's funny because I think that a lot of the biggest challenges in education are still very much the same kind of first order priority problems where we still have challenges around making sure kids have access to high quality curriculum, making sure they have access to high quality educators, making sure they have access. Like they're still making sure they're even showing up to school. Right. And we reduce chronic absenteeism. And so those continue to be some of the biggest challenges that schools are facing. And I think they continue to be really big market opportunities. If I take like a step back and try to think around like a 10 year time frame, like what is the biggest challenge to solve? I think current, our current education system, and we can keep it just a K12 has severely disengaged most of our children. And you can see that in the chronic absenteeism rates that are happening across the country. You can see it in that a lot of students and a lot of kids report that they don't want to go to school, they don't see the relevance in school, they aren't engaged in school. And that's a big problem because that's where we're asking kids to spend the vast majority of their day. And so we ask them to go to school, they're often going into classrooms where teachers are not properly trained or inexperienced. Unfortunately, because of the way, you know, we've created an ecosystem of that does not really support educators, we then say, okay, go to college. Which right now college grad unemployment rate is something like 24, somewhere between 12 to 24, depending on which way you slice it. Right. And rack up a bunch of debt. Like that is not an inspiring story for students, it's not a motivating story for students. And I think one of the things that we have to fundamentally figure out over the next decade, if not sooner, is how do we create an education experience that actually engages kids, that makes them want to learn, that makes them excited to go to school. I, in my opinion, like, if I knew the way to do that or what it looked like or what it meant, like I'd be the founder, but I'm not. I'm the investor. I'm the person that, that funds the incredible people with amazing ideas. And so I think solutions that help to solve this fundamental engagement problem, fundamental relevance problem of our education system, I think those are the solutions that ultimately are going to help crack the nut on some of our biggest, more most pervasive issues and challenges within the education system.

For sure. And one of the real complexities of K12 education is that the person who's using the product, the child, is not necessarily the person who's paying for it. And it might not even be the person once removed to their parent. It might be the school district. And unfortunately the startups are few and far between that are actually there with the kids watching how they engage with the product. And I think about something like Toca Boca which has this very user centered child friendly approach and kids just love that app. And a lot of the times, I mean we have a curriculum planner on modulo and I find if you can match a kid with a curriculum they love like Beast Academy Online or maybe another child is a nature based curriculum, the learning just takes care of itself if it Right. And there's no perfect match for every child because children are so different. And you know, it's great. You really highlighted the childcare problem and I think I'd love to see a world where we find a way to not mush childcare, socialization and education altogether. I mean there are trends like remote work and we do see families who are able to work while their children play and are developing really independent learners and educating their kids in more of a community. But it's a real paradigm shift. But yeah, such good, such good thoughts. Wow. Oh my gosh. I've asked you so many things and so we asked, I asked you a big billion dollar companies and I also wanted to ask you, you know, I mean you've, you've worked with these great companies that have empowered gig workers, right? And our homeschooling community is so entrepreneurial. Like there were a bunch of parents who were working for VIP kids before they had to shut down their operations of hiring US tours in China. And you know, I think that I just saw a study that every American would like to earn about $250,000 a year. That would be a sweet spot. So I'm wondering, I don't know if.

You saw it split by generation, but okay, I think it was Gen Z in order to feel Financially confident, they'd want to make close to $600,000 a year. And I was like, wow. I, I love it.

I love the inflation, you know. All right, so let's talk about, you know, your. Maybe a homeschool mom or dad who's in their 30s, 40s, and, and would like to get to 100 or $200,000 a year or maybe become a millionaire. What.

What did.

What advice would you give to that person in terms of thinking about what type of company they might want to create or how to get started, perhaps if they haven't been an entrepreneur before.

Yeah, so I would start with, what are your. Actually, let me take a step back.

There was a lot there and like, just to give you some context, families who are building homeschool curriculum.

Yeah, no, I, I'm taking a step back because I.

One of.

So we recently changed or renewed our thesis at reach. One of the really important things we added was this idea of we're investing in. In solutions that ignite purpose. Because we, we know, all the research tells us that having a sense of purpose, and most people, particularly Americans, describe that they do not feel like they have a sense of purpose. Having a sense of purpose is linked to living a longer life, having a healthier lifestyle, being more happy. I mean, you, you name it, better sleep better, lower risk of Alzheimer's, dementia, all across the board. Having a sense of purpose is probably one of the most important things that we do and help people achieve. And so I always, yes, like having a basic set of capital and money in order to meet your basic needs and pay your bills and put a roof over your child's head and put food on the table, like, that is super important. And having, like, making sure that after you hit that baseline, you're really focusing on that purpose is also critical. And so the reason I say that is I, I'm not against the idea of making money. Like, everyone wants to make money, everyone wants to feel comfortable, totally get it. But money on its own only gets you so far. And so I, I do always come back to this idea of purpose. And the reason I start there is I would just take a step back if I'm a parent and say, what are my skills and talents that I have? Like, what am I really good at? And then also, what do I really enjoy? What brings me energy, what brings me what, what makes me feel valuable? And then based off of that, see if that is something that's monetizable. And so let's say you really enjoy working with kids and you like teaching kids. You could do private tutoring. Private tutoring, quite frankly, is, is pretty lucrative on a one. On one basis. And you can offer that and, and sell that. You could. You know, my mother loves cooking and she, after 30 years of working, finally said I have the space and the capacity to take a step back and pursue my dreams. And so now she's opening up her own business and she's starting with private catering and with an idea and goal of building a brick and mortar business in the future. And so these are just ways to start generating some additional capital on the side and start to build your own business. But it is not. Yeah, I, I'm even seeing it from the side of just a small business owner through my mother. It's not, it's not easy at all. There's a lot of hoops you have to run through and you end up realizing that it's a lot more business than the actual craft that you love. And so, but people stick through it if that's truly their, their dream. And again, going back to. That's truly their purpose and what drives them.

Yeah, I think that's such great advice. So much in the startup community hear about what's a problem you have in your life that you want to solve. And it should all be focused on solving that problem, which can be a good approach too. Like, your kid needed a homeschool curriculum, so write a homeschool curriculum. But, but I love the idea of focusing on purpose and it's a little bit different than focusing on just what makes you happy. Like, for example, there's this great book, the E. Myth Revisited. You might have heard of it, but this woman loves pies and so she decides to start a bakery and just, I mean it just drains her of all her love for pies because it's all getting up at 5. All these logistics and purpose is something that you really are deeply committed to and love like helping children and that provide. That can provide so much fuel to a person who's building a business. And it really, I mean it's hard, but it, the, the other side is freedom and impact and creation and that's, that's priceless.

Absolutely.

Oh my gosh. So, so many great things. Well, I did want to ask you about new trends. We have a new administration coming in, for better or for worse. Lots of different opinions in my community about that. What are, what, how do you think that is going to impact education over the next four years? What, what kind of trends do we expect to see? What problems will get Worse what new opportunities will emerge in your, in your prophetic capacity here?

Yeah. So what we know about this upcoming administration, and you know, we've had this administration for four years before. So what. So I can only go off based off of what has been said and what we've experienced in, in the prior and his prior administration is that there's going to be a lot of uncertainty. Right. So we don't actually know how any of his proposed policy changes are going to really manifest or how they'll be implemented. I think there's a couple of trends that we should expect. One, there will be an acceleration of school choice. We're, we're expecting that. I think we're already, we've been seeing it at the state level, particularly in red leaning states, an acceleration of ESAs and school vouchers and basically just tools to, to facilitate school choice. I think we'll see more power go back to state and local governments. And, and to be clear, education is one of the few areas where actual federal control is somewhat limited relative to some of the other areas of our, of our country. And so, and so even though there will be changes, I think that they will not be as drastic as folks are anticipating because there was already quite limited federal oversight on, on education to begin with. I think the other thing that we've been hearing a lot from the administration are changes to accreditation. And by the way, I say all of this with no subjective point of view. Whether it's good or bad, all of this is always devil is in the details and based off of implementation. So at a high level I, I could say yes, I love the idea of empowering families to make decisions based off of what they think is right for their children. But it's really in the implementation of those policies is where you start to get to whether or not it ultimately will be good or bad. But like I was saying, we'll probably expect to see some changes to accreditation to maybe make it more flexible. And I think you can all agree there needs to be changes to accreditation. It's a pretty archaic process, but again it's all based off of implementation and the devil's in the details. And how do you balance the rigor of quality with also the flexibility of innovation? And so I think overall what I expect will happen is we'll have higher degrees of flexibility around education, perhaps additional opportunities for innovation within education. But it's really hard to tell of how any of the this will, will be implemented. I think the other thing we'll probably continue to see is backlash around.

Things.

Like sel, social emotional learning, dei, diversity, equity and inclusion. Any of these statements or concepts that have really been popularized over the last year and have also on the same token been really used as, as, you know, quote unquote, negative concept or ideas, particularly in red leaning states. I think we'll see additional backlash around, around that as well. And so that's really, that's the best that I can predict as of now and we'll know a lot more starting January 20th.

We certainly will. Well, this has been such a fascinating conversation. We covered such a wide range of topics and I really appreciate you digging into them all with me. Is there anything else burning in your heart and mind that, that you want to talk about or share?

I don't think so. I mean, I think I said I don't think so and I'm going to, and I'm going to finish that statement. So I guess I did. I, you know, we have, as a fund, we've been investing in education for quite some time and many of us have been working at education for much longer than that. And I think right now we're at, at a really critical moment in history. There's a lot of, you know, you can describe it as challenges, but at the same time there's a lot of desire for innovation. We're seeing incredible entrepreneurs and founders of such great caliber and quality coming in and getting excited about building in the space. And that is what gets us excited and what makes us feel optimistic about the future. When a, when the sector attracts, attracts the best talent to try to address these pervasive problems is when we have a much better chance of actually addressing them and starting to solve them. And so we'll learn a lot and we'll see a lot over the next few years. But I continue to be optimistic.

Me too. I do too. I think education is a wonderful investment with huge potential both for impact and for people who want to invest in a fund like Reach and make more money. And it's, it's a, it's a great, great place to invest. So thank you so much for all the wonderful work that you're doing. Jamira. I think people are going to really benefit from listening to this conversation and I just really appreciate you.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.