The EdTech Startup Show

It's been a long time since there's been a new episode on the EdTech Startup Show feed!

Today, I (Gerard Dawson) am cross-posting my appearance on EdTech Sales Trainer Matt Gambino's Always A Teacher podcast. This was a great conversation about my journey from teaching to EdTech. 

Learn more about Matt Gambino

• Listen to the Always A Teacher Podcast on Spotify
• Learn about Propel Skills, Matt's EdTech Sales Training business
• Connect with Matt Gambino on LinkedIn

Learn more about Gerard Dawson

• Visit Gerard Dawson's website
• Connect with Gerard Dawson on LinkedIn

Are you interested in hearing more episodes of the EdTech Startup Show? If so, let me know on LinkedIn or via email: [email protected].

On this episode of the EdTech Startup Show, my guest is Chrisman Frank, CEO and co-founder of Synthesis School.

Synthesis is an enrichment club that teaches complex problem-solving and decision-making for kids 7 to 14 through online team games.

Chrisman's cofounder Josh Dahn developed the Synthesis concept while running Ad Astra, a small lab school he built for Elon Musk on the SpaceX campus.

Before Synthesis, Chrisman was engineer #1 at ClassDojo, a K-12 network that reaches ~30 million teachers, students, and families every month.

Connect with Chrisman on Twitter @chrismanfrank and read his essays at www.ChrismanFrank.com.

Learn more about EdTech Startup Show host Gerard Dawson at www.GerardDawson.com, or find the podcast on your favorite podcast player here: https://linktr.ee/gerarddawson.

Today's guest on the EdTech Startup Show is Kelly Smith, founder and CEO of Prenda.

Prenda helps create flexible learning environments known as microschools. Often described as the “reinvention of the one-room school house,” microschools combine homeschooling, online education, smaller class sizes, mixed age-level groupings, flipped classrooms, and personalized learning. 

Today's guests on the EdTech Startup Show are Nimit Maru and David Yang, co-CEOs of Fullstack Academy.

Fullstack Academy is an innovative software development school with campuses in NYC and Chicago. Fullstack has graduated thousands of students working across every part of the technology ecosystem from first funding to FANG-sized. Fullstack also created the "Grace Hopper Program" - the first deferred-tuition coding bootcamp for women.

 

 

This episode is an excerpt from The 5-Day Copy Fix, a free course on marketing your education product or service to decision makers.

To download it, visit https://www.gerarddawson.com/free-course/.

Today's guest on the EdTech Startup Show is Zachary Silverzweig, founder of Tiny Ivy. 

Tiny Ivy is working to close the achievement gap in literacy, leveraging their unique approach to teaching English called TIPS™.

Zach is a seasoned startup executive with a history of developing innovative products that drive social good. 

No interview with an EdTech CEO or founder today. Instead, this is a personal update on my career.

Connect with me:

• https://www.GerardDawson.com
• On Twitter
• On LinkedIn

Today's guest on the EdTech Startup Show is Sara Mauskopf.

Sara is the CEO and co-founder of Winnie, a marketplace for daycare and preschool helping over 4 million parents across the United States. Sara has a background in consumer technology and product management. Prior to founding Winnie she held product leadership roles at Postmates, Twitter, YouTube, and Google. She graduated with a Computer Science and Engineering degree from MIT. Sara lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area.

To access this episode's bonus clip, where Sara shares her lessons learned building a marketplace, join The Business of Learning Letter.

Today's guest on the EdTech Startup Show is Megan O'Connor.

Megan O’Connor is serving as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Kaplan, one of the world’s largest and most diversified educational services providers. She is currently spearheading development of Kaplan’s new Boost program, designed for pre-college students to help bridge the gap between the college experience and work readiness.

Prior to joining Kaplan, Megan founded, led and sold Clark, a provider of end-to-end operation software, education services and coaching for teachers who want to grow their tutoring business. Before Clark, Megan was a founding partner of New York-based startup studio Human Ventures and Director of Development at the nonprofit Pencils of Promise. She has an MPA from NYU's Wagner School of Public Service and a BA from Santa Clara University.

This episode is brought to you by Trends.co, which is one of the only sources I read to learn about what's going to happen next in the world of business, tech and startups. The community has also given me what I'd call a free-MBA's worth of insights. Get $100 off your subscription to Trends using this link. Today's guest on the EdTech Startup Show is Austen Allred. Austen Allred is the co-founder and CEO of Lambda School. A native of Springville, Utah, Austen’s start-up journey began in 2017 with him living in his two-door Civic while participating in Y Combinator, a San Francisco-based seed accelerator. This experience became the foundation of Lambda School’s rapid growth.  Before founding Lambda School, Austen was the co-founder of media platform GrassWire. He co-authored the growth hacking textbook Secret Sauce, which became a best-seller and provided him the personal seed money to build Lambda. Austen’s disruptive ideas on the future of education, the labor market disconnect, and the opportunity of providing opportunity at-scale have been featured in: The Harvard Business Review, The Economist, WIRED, Fast Company, TechCrunch, The New York Times, among others. Austen is fluent in Russian and currently lives in San Francisco with his wife and two kids. You can find him on Twitter @Austen.