latest edtech transcript ggv podcast with jenny lee - next billion questions on edtech since 1995 -why wasnt the web -its metrucs - segmented by ed and
commerce - why dis=d usa leave edteck k-12 to one charity instewadof eg 1% of edu budget - lee howdo we define
edtech when tabling biggest- eg is YouTube
an EdTech company, given how many people watching the tutorials online. And also do you benchmark DingTalk, Zoom became the infrastructure but truly you cant value deep edutech without context - so eg in china edtech for one fifth of the workd- if you are targeting language learning, say for English, then it’s
about, can they innovate on content, can they make this content, part AI and part avatar, and then with the right teachers
to come in, during that learning process, along that learning process, they have coaches or builders, who’s helping
the student to review the course material after class. And that’s the surface element that needs to come in as well.
And in some companies, they have discovered a way to have a free tool in the case of Zuoyebang, for example, a tool as a homework
assistant, they’re able to acquire users. What is interesting is over the years, people would think, is it education first, or
is it tech first. And in the first wave, there were a lot of startups started by kind of teachers, be negative here, what
we’ve found is that those hasn’t worked that well. I think if you come at it as more of a teaching, the emphasis
tends to be more just curriculum, over time, it’s not a long-term advantage. So, the ones that have actually worked
very well are cross vertical CEOs, the companies that we have seen, for example, Zuoyebang CEO came from Baidu, more tech background, Huohua’s CEO was the CTO of his previous startup.
So, these are internet entrepreneurs, they understand what it means to use tools and services and software to attract a huge
user base, the freemium model works for them, the product centric feature rich app works for them. So they think internet
and through that they are able to then destruct the traditional sector allows themselves to get a head start to create that
first, batch of users. And then of course, because they are still education go back to the service part where you have to
make sure your operation, your service is growth in line to support the users as they go from free to pay users. The other
angle that we’ve seen is technology enhanced, latest investment in Europe, that one completely takes the lab out of
the school. And in that sense, it’s using innovative technology to recreate the entire classroom, the entire lab. It’s
something that traditional teachers or educators may not think of, because they are so used to saying, Okay, I need to kind
of feel in touch. And so, I think that’s the other angle, the first angle is more of the product sense, the feature
sense, the acquisition part. The second part is, we have seen founders who commented, they are not, in the education sectors,
they are technologies. And they are the ones who’s coming out with very interesting products. With that they can build
early competitive moat. hans tung I think, by the time this podcast is released, we would have announced our investment in Europe, the first one EdTech in Europe, the company called Labster, it leverages a Unity game engine based approach
to build a kind of VR enhanced learning environment, like Jenny said to replicate in power lab, it’s not experience
without the cost of building a new science building on campus, so that a lot of students can have a very good lab experience
across all science subjects, then the power of technologies utilized as a way to make the learning even more interactive,
and become even better. lee hile we are talking about two groups of people, traditional educators, and the tech entrepreneurs, actually this
world is colliding and converging as well, I think in today’s virus world, the educators are forced to learn very quickly,
right, where they may be averse to assimilated labs, or a after school AI tutor for the student. Today, it’s all about
tech, because when schools are close, when the infrastructure that cannot support continuing to educate their kids. They are
moving faster as well. So I actually think that on that front, the adoption of a lot of this new technology and service model
in the schools it’s gonna go up. Countries governments are pushing forward with this budgets are being recast. And I
think traditional educators just like parents, when you don’t want to send your kids to online class, you now have to.
So that’s a habit change. I think similarly, as well in traditional public schools, that system is also being pushed
forward, maybe, you know, a celebrated as much as you know, three to five years. So, I think that’s why this topic,
or the sector is now getting its day in the sun, which is good. jenny lee - examples Vedantu in India, that’s a classic example of how the
China experience has actually drawn the CEO to come talk to investors in China at tech startup as well, I think potential
is actually a very good case. Vedantu or Ruangguru in Indonesia, jenny
lee- he holy grail in education
when we started saying it’s their two biggest pain point. One is relying on school’s physical location, and to
relying on teachers. I think relying on school you can address with current technology, bring It online, mobile live streaming,
asynchronous recorded, all that stuff. The second biggest thing how do you replicate high quality learning experience consistently,
and make it available to the masses, right and also have this customized because learning is a very customized experience.
Some people learn faster, slower, some are more graphical, some are born number driven. So, the holy grail here is general
AI. Which startup can create elaboration of AI technology, so that you have the super learning teacher who can answer all
question in the universe.
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