In this instructor spotlight video, Shuo Chen—general partner at IOVC, industry fellow and executive scholar at SCET—introduces the Challenge Lab on Education Technology and Entrepreneurship he will teach at Berkeley. He emphasizes a hands‑on, real‑world startup experience where students identify problems, form complementary teams, and pitch ideas. Chen notes that the pandemic accelerated the adoption of exponential technologies in education and cites research showing that 80% of jobs projected for 2030 did not exist in 2016, underscoring the rapid evolution of the labor market. He frames the blurring lines between education, technology, and entrepreneurship as both an opportunity and a challenge, describing how each domain feeds the others in multiple ways. Chen stresses that a robust business model is essential for edtech ventures, regardless of technological hype. He highlights blockchain as an under‑explored intersection with education, mentioning its potential for decentralized accreditation, funding mechanisms, and gamified learning. Throughout, he praises Berkeley students for their grit, passion, and prior startup experience, and shares personal favorites—Laval’s broccoli chicken penne and Thai iced coffee—as light‑hearted touches.
Chapters
Hi everyone, this is Shuo Chen. I'm a general partner at IOVC, and here at SCET I am an industry fellow as well as an executive scholar. And this semester I will be teaching the Challenge Lab on Education Technology and Entrepreneurship. I'm super excited to work with all of my students across the semester to hopefully kick off their own startup project. I really hope that students have as much of a hands-on experience as possible in this class and We want to make it as practical and real life as possible. So minimizing any work here that is not going to be conducive to the work that they do in the real world. Hopefully everything that they do here is going to help them better identify the problem that they want to solve, find teammates that are going to be really complementary to their skill sets, and then of course work on pitching a really great idea. I think even prior to the pandemic, we already had all these exponential technologies that we could leverage to really empower and enable an education that is more multifaceted. However, the pandemic has forced us to use a lot of those technologies. So I think it's taught us a lot about how to better leverage technology to complement what we were already doing right pre-pandemic and do better on the things that we weren't leveraging as well yet. And the second thing that I definitely want to cite as data is there's actually really extensive research that was done that cites 80% of the jobs in 2030 weren't even created back in 2016. So that really shows us the accelerating rate of change in the kind of jobs that are going to be available. And if we look at the ripple effects of that, then of course we backtrack to education and the blurring lines between the two, where we really have to rethink about the role of education in terms of better preparing people for long-term success in the future. So I really like to think of this both as an opportunity as well as a challenge for the future of education. I think the intersection between education, technology, and entrepreneurship is extremely exciting because the 3 of them actually feed into each other in very different ways. So typically we think about education being empowered by technology. Technology and then startups working in edtech. So we tend to traditionally think of edtech startups whenever we think about the intersection, but there's actually other really fascinating combinations of them as well. For example, how can we think about education making technology more accessible to more people? How can we think about technology being better leveraged to enable more accessible education for more people? How can we think about entrepreneurship changing the way that we learn and that we continue to learn throughout our lives in the long run. How can we think about technology being leveraged in a way where it's conducive to startups actually starting companies and having better infrastructure that lowers the barriers for someone to start something new? If we have significantly lower barriers to entrepreneurs being able to start new startups, then that certainly enables a whole new playground for experimenting different new ideas in education. And as is the case with any startup, it's very important to do trial and error practices. So hopefully this particular class that I'm teaching this semester will have a very safe environment for students to test and trial a lot of different ideas. Before I answer that, I just want to take a quick step back and share that regardless of technology, it's important for any education startup to really think about having a very robust business model. Because that's the top reason why startups don't work out. So it's very important that despite the fun, fascinating, world-changing technology that you're using, that it's really used in a way that's solving a very important problem and that there is a robust business model behind that. But of course, I think one of the least expected combinations of these technologies that we've talked about is the intersection between blockchain and education. I've actually been teaching blockchain since 2014, and I think there's a lot of fascinating opportunities Whether it's leveraging blockchain as a decentralized ledger for tracking education accreditation, or it's to actually help facilitate funding behind education. And then of course there's other innovative plays leveraging blockchain as well, where can we think about education in a very gamified manner. And so plenty of fun use cases, and I actually have a number of students in class now who are really excited about using blockchain as applied to education. There's so many things that I love about working with Berkeley students. I'm obviously a little biased as a Berkeley alum myself, but I think Berkeley students have this grit behind them that I rarely see in other places. So I really do see this hunger and this grit to do more and make a positive impact in the world. I think that Berkeley students are really passionate Another about their work. thing that I really enjoy is that I really do see my students, particularly in class now, having already had extensive experiences in startups. So they're not talking about wanting to do something in the void. They've actually already worked for multiple different startups. They've worked on a few that have failed and that have succeeded in their own ways. And so I really admire that ability to be very hands-on, really to say, this is the opportunity for me to do get to know awesome people that I want to work with and actually build things hands-on. I've been here since undergrad, so I've seen a lot of places evolve over time. And so my staple go-to food in undergrad on Northside— so I've been on Northside since undergrad— was Laval's broccoli chicken penne, hands down, just by default awesome food to go to. And then obviously for Coffee Brewed Awakening. Thai iced coffee, my go-to drink.
