The GSV Big 10: Spot On!
Spotify Courses, Performance Pay Platform, And A New President At The Farm
#1 Spotify tests video courses to teach everything from music production to Excel | TechCrunch
If you want to see the future of learning, study Spotify. The disruptive music platform announced it’s entering the $8 Trillion Education industry. As a pioneer of News 2 Knowledge, subscribers get everything from music to podcasts to books, and now courses. Spotify made the Record Label irrelevant and lifted up the Star Performers…and changed the model from purchase to subscription. So to complete the analogy, the University is the Record Label, the Professor is the Rockstar, Tuition becomes Subscription, and Low Churn becomes the Satisfaction Metric.
#2 Exclusive: Performance pay platform Protiv raises $2.4M | Axios
If you get compensated for your performance, your learning will be highly focused on either refining your skills or learning how to do better. This will help eliminate the waste between cup and lip from learning to earning. Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” is about to find a new application in education.
#3
In our view, Stanford couldn’t have made a better hire for their next President than Jonathan Levin. Jon was a terrific Dean of the Stanford GSB who was constantly looking to innovate for excellence. Good genes play a role here too, as President-elect Levin is the son of the highly-regarded Past President of Yale and Former CEO of Coursera Rick Levin…and good friend of ours and a GSV Ventures Advisor.
#4 Los Angeles Unified Bets Big on ‘Ed,’ an AI Tool for Students | EdWeek
The LAUSD has over 565,000 students and the latest to the AI Agent for Students, Teachers, and Parents wave. While many issues remain with how this will work with privacy, cheating, and the litany of other concerns, one thing for sure…this is the future. Having every student have their own tutor in their pocket and every teacher a very capable TA at no or low cost provides great hope for having scale positive impact.
Early reviews of new Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker is that she’s the Real Deal. Not necessarily as big as earthquake as the City of Brotherly Love experienced on Friday, her Honor’s first budget included increasing $24 million spend for the city’s school district…importantly, it doesn’t appear to just line the pockets of her cronies, but new initiatives that reflect ways to make real change.
#6 GV invests in Home From College, a career platform for Gen Z | TechCrunch
Anyone who knows anything about Gen Z knows they love a great side hustle. LinkedIn’s nearly 25 years old, and a tool like this built for a digitally native and extremely resourceful generation makes a ton of sense. Home From College is looking to become the Snapchat to LinkedIn’s Facebook.
In the Analysis of the Analysis, our esteemed friends Michael Horn and Diane Tavenner are joined by Stacey Childress to discuss what was right and wrong about our other esteemed friends’ Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s recent 6-hour podcast series on higher education. Spoiler alert, they’re generally agreeing to agree. Nonetheless, it’s good to listen to smart people discussing such an important topic.
#8 Quit Asking Teachers To Play Therapist | The Fordham Institute
To the hammer, all the World’s a nail. Abigail Shrier's book "Bad Therapy" critiques the growing trend of therapeutic education, cautioning against the potential harms of overemphasizing mental health interventions in schools, which she argues can pathologize normal experiences and create fragile students. Despite the need for character education, Shrier warns that expecting teachers to act as therapists can be detrimental, urging a more measured approach to integrating social and emotional learning in education.
#9
There isn’t a better Growth Investor in the World than Baillie Gifford, and there isn’t a hotter EdTech company than Duolingo. Modeling success is one of the fastest ways to get smarter. Come see Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn at the ASU+GSV Summit, where he’s getting a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Yolande Beckles, once a disgraced British reality TV star and accused fraudster, has reinvented herself as a respected education policy consultant in California, advocating for math equity among black and brown students. Despite her controversial past, which includes allegations of financial misconduct, Beckles now collaborates with prominent educators and influences the California Math Framework. By the way, this is ChatGPT’s summary, so don’t shoot the messenger.