we want to talk about out school and online education
platform that offers 100,000 virtual classes to young learners around
the world. Today the company announcing 100 and$10
million in a series D round bringing its valuation to
$3 billion. Well out school saw significant growth during
the pandemic. And this latest round of funding signals
confidence from investors about its long term potential despite schools
across the US returning to in person classes this fall
. So here to talk about all of this is
out school ceo Amir Matthew Amir, thanks so much
for coming on the show, congratulations on the round
, How are you going to use this money?
Well we're really delighted with this new funding in that
it allows us to accelerate our plans to increase access
to our platform for more learners. We've served over
a million learners so far in 174 countries. But
58 million school age learners in the US1.3 billion worldwide
. So we're just incredibly excited about our ability to
increase access and increase the impact of our platform in
your words, what is your company looking to offer
? So our company offers small group live online classes
that really inspire kids to love learning. This is
a new format of learning that many many families have
become familiar with in the pandemic and offers the opportunity
to combine the best of in person learning in that
it's a social learning format with online learning in that
you can access teachers and classes from anywhere. And
we have a marketplace based model with over 100,000 of
these classes where teachers can really be creative and create
the classes they've always wanted to teach and really tap
into learners passions. So these aren't just core classes
in the typical subject's teachers are creating classes such as
, learn about cat anatomy from a vet or learn
critical thinking skills and creativity through dungeons and dragons or
learn math and geometry through art. And so,
by linking kids interests to learning, it really inspires
kids and what we hope is that by inspiring kids
, this can filter into their regular school learning so
that we supplement and support local schooling in a way
that's become possible with this new technology. How is
the pandemic? Amir change demand for your business?
Well, we started in 2015 and launched our first
products in 2017. So we've been very, very
focused on live online learning for a while. But
of course the pandemic resulted in just tremendous adoption of
online learning because of the critical situation that we faced
where kids could not safely Going to school. So
it's had an immense effect on our growth. At
the start of the pandemic, we were 25 employees
and about 1000 teachers teaching through the platform and now
we have 11,000 teachers on the platform are above 160
employees. So we're very, very quickly transitioned from
being an early stage start up into being a growth
stage company and that's really reflected the change in edtech
and education. I think many people have sensed that
there was a need for there to be widespread change
in education, but it hadn't happened yet. And
really the pandemic has acted as a catalyst for families
and schools to reconsider difficult practices and change up how
they think about kids education going forward. And I
think that's incredibly necessary given the challenges we see in
the world and the globalized economy, and we are
immensely proud to be in a position to help so
many families during that critical time in the pandemic and
now going forward. Sure, let me ask you
this, Amir, is this meant to be an
alternative to in person learning or are you trying to
bring your technology into the actual classroom itself in person
? We see it as a supplement to local schooling
. So we believe in a hybrid future of education
where kids are going to spend time learning in person
or subject in school and that local community is incredibly
valuable and will continue to be valuable, but they
will also spend a lot more time in the future
than they do currently in school learning online. And
that's because of the benefits of online learning in that
you can really personalize the class, the teacher,
the learner's group to the individual learner and give them
access to the types of classes and teachers that wouldn't
necessarily be available locally. So we see it as
a combination and parents are coming to out school directly
. Today it's a consumer marketplace and enrolling the kids
, and classes were also increasingly working with school districts
so that they can offer out school classes as enrichments
and integrate them into the school curriculum. So we
see that possibility of supplementing local in person school is
being incredibly exciting. All right, I'm your nephew
ceo of out school. We appreciate it. Thank
you so much for coming on the show. Congratulations --> .