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What we covered:
– It's been a few months since our last podcast, and in that time, we've seen a huge increase in the number of schools wanting to use Math Academy for this upcoming school year.
– Now, if you've been following our podcast, you already know that one of the recurring themes at Math Academy is that before you automate something, you gotta first do it manually so you really understand what you're automating.
('Cause if you skip that step, and you jump straight to automation without really getting your reps in, getting your arms around the problem, you end up building a whole bunch of infrastructure that not only does not solve the problem, but in fact just scales your confusion. And then you gotta unwind all of it later. It puts constraints on more things that you build once you actually know what you're doing. It's just terrible.)
– So just like Jason did with individual customers at the beginning, onboarding hundreds of people over hour-long Zoom calls, getting those manual reps that have been really such a vital component of building a system that really solves the problem... Well, that's what he's doing again with schools. And that's what we'll talk about in this episode.
– We'll talk about the anatomy of Jason's onboarding sessions, why onboarding a school is way more challenging than onboarding an individual, and what successful school implementations look like. In particular, why it's most sustainable for each school to start small, lock in some wins, get solid in managing students who are using the system, and then gradually scale up to more classes and teachers.

0:00 - Introduction
2:44 - Onboarding lots of schools recently
6:39 - Different types of customers
9:13 - Why conversations with customers matter
15:05 - Streamlining inevitable school sign-ups
17:10 - Identifying high-leverage tasks
18:35 - Manual school account creation
19:30 - Manual processes make sense in the beginning
22:05 - Learn the workflow before automating
23:28 - The hidden costs of new software features
25:25 - Keeping product scope minimal
27:40 - Anatomy of a typical school onboarding session
37:26 - Intentionally growing without a sales team
40:11 - Schools promote students without requiring mastery
42:20 - Why every school onboarding call is different
43:48 - Building automated school onboarding
51:05 - Validate success at a small scale before scaling up
55:30 - Sustainable growth over rapid expansion
58:41 - Looking ahead: proctored exams

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The raw transcript is provided below. Please understand that there may be typos.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Math Academy Podcast. I’m Justin Skycak, Chief Quant and Director of Analytics

at Math Academy,

and I’m here with our founder, Jason Roberts. So it’s been a few months since our last podcast. And in that time, we’ve seen a huge increase

in the number of schools wanting to use Math Academy

for this upcoming school year. Now, if you’ve been following our podcast,

you already know that one of the recurring

themes at Math Academy

is that before you automate something,

you gotta first do it manually

so you really understand what you’re automating.

’ Cause if you skip that step,

and you jump straight to automation

without really getting your reps in,

getting your arms around the problem,

you end up building a whole bunch of infrastructure

that not only does not solve the problem,

but in fact just scales your confusion.

And then you gotta unwind all of it later.

It puts constraints on more things that you build

once you actually know what you’re doing. It’s just terrible.

So

Just like Jason did with individual customers at the [00:01:00] beginning,

Onboarding hundreds of people over hour-long Zoom calls,

Getting those manual reps

that have been really such a vital component

of building a system that really solves the problem.

Well, that’s what he’s doing again with schools.

And that’s what we’ll talk about in this episode.

We’ll talk about the anatomy of Jason’s onboarding sessions,

why onboarding a school

is way more challenging than onboarding an individual,

And what successful school implementations look like.

In particular, why it’s most sustainable

for each school to start small,

Lock in some wins, get solid in managing students

who are using the system,

And then gradually scale up to more classes and teachers.

So let’s get into it.

Jason Roberts: All right. So what- So- … what’s on the docket? It’s been a while

Justin Skycak: Well, yeah, you s- got your, your mic all ready to go. Um, yeah, I figure, I mean, it’s been a few months since the, since the last one, right?

Jason Roberts: Wow.

Justin Skycak: So maybe we could give a, [00:02:00] just a brief update what we’re, what we’re up to , you know, what’s, what’s been going on in the last months.

I mean, I know we got a lot of stuff that, uh, is kinda, you know, behind the scenes. Um, can’t talk about everything, but, uh, just give some, some idea of like what’s, what’s life like on Math Academy Island.

Jason Roberts: Yeah, you gotta hold some stuff back, right? You, you can’t give it all away at for, at one go, so. Okay, so I’ll let you drive.

You know- Yeah … what’s, what do you, what do you wanna start with?

Justin Skycak: Well, I guess, um- You know, lots of, uh, we g- we’ve been having to get a lot of pla- stuff in place for schools. Um- Right … that’s a whole thing, right? Um- Yeah …

I mean,

Justin Skycak: it sounds like, uh… I mean, w- we kinda hit on this in, in a, in a previous episode, but, uh, just like the whole, you know, onboarding customers and stuff where you would have, like, these hour-long calls with hundreds of customers.

Um- [00:03:00]

Jason Roberts: Hundreds of families, right? Yeah, right. So it all started, initially we only sold to, uh, individual adult, uh, customers, uh, or for parents who were, were, were buying it for their, for their kids. And, um, when we h- this whole thing started, you know, um, s- you know, Sandy was like: “Look, you know, we don’t have any way for people to pay or sign up- Mm-hmm

so I’m just gonna set, uh, I’m just gonna schedule Zoom calls.”

Justin Skycak: Yeah. Right.

Jason Roberts: I was like, “Okay.”

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: Sh- then you can… And then if they wanna, they wanna, you know, use it or if they wanna purchase it, you know, um, a subscription, then you can just send them the Stripe link. Mm-hmm. That was how the whole thing started, right?

And I would do, like, she just started filling up my, um, calendar, three, four Zoom call, hour-long Zoom calls a day, which is, if anybody who hasn’t done that before, and I don’t mean like, like a meeting where you’re talking with some people on your team. I’m talking, like, a demo with a new [00:04:00] customer, which is, is exha- exhaus- it’s exhausting, right?

Yeah.

Jason Roberts: Because you have to… You’re not, you’re not al- they’re, you’re not alw- they’re not always giving you a lot of, um, to work with. They’re kinda just sitting there listening, so you have to keep all the energy up and you have to be like, okay, trying to read what their level of comprehension is of, of what the s- what the service is and how it works.

You’re trying to get, um, some understanding of what it is they need and their points of confusion or whatever. And so it’s, it’s, it’s exhausting, you know? Mm-hmm. And even if it goes well, it’s still tiring. Um, so after you get off one of those, or when I would get off, I’d just be like, “Oh, wow.”

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: And then Sandy’d be like, “Well, good, you got another one in, like, 15 minutes.”

Like, “Oh, geez,” you know?

Justin Skycak: It’s- Just on loop. Groundhog Day over and over and over again.

Jason Roberts: And I think I did, uh, over 200 in the first six months, maybe, six to nine, something like that. Mm-hmm. I mean, it was exhausting. And, um- But it was ecr- it was [00:05:00] extremely useful because, you know, when you talk to hundreds of customers, you really get an understanding of what their pain point is.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: What is it– What problem are they solving? You know, you, as an entrepreneur, you, you have some idea of the problem you’re solving, right? You know what problem you wanna solve or, you know, whatever, but it may not be exactly the right problem, or at least the way you’re solving it or the way you’re communicating it or what the priority of, of the aspects of the problem that’s being solved.

You know, all these things are, are kind of unclear. You have this sort of probability distribution and ranking of all these things, and those things kinda get resorted over time the more people you talk to, and it’s like, “Oh, geez, there are more adults,” or, or there’s more of this situation or more of that situation.

So it’s extremely useful But it’s time-consuming and it’s exhausting-

Justin Skycak: Yeah …

Jason Roberts: is the way I would put it.

Justin Skycak: Yeah, it sounds like you’re kinda… It’s almost like constructing, constructing a heat map of the things that you need to be focused on, and right, you just have… Uh, you just talk, just talk to a few people.

It’s like, well, that’s [00:06:00] not really a heat map. That’s a few observations. You don’t really know what’s the density where. You just have some sense of, okay, the space co- the space extends to at least this boundary, but it’s probably further than that, and who knows what’s the, you know, the, the value at every…

But, but once you layer on, like, hundreds of points, then it’s like, it’s pretty clear. Just know. Like, all right, ground zero for like what everybody wants is, like, right there. What everybody n- Oh, and then, like, all the different archetypes of people. You get a idea of what, uh-

Jason Roberts: Yeah, these- Yeah … clusters start to accumulate.

There’s certain, there’s certain types of categories of customer. So in our case, there’s the adult customer- Mm-hmm … who’s like, “Well, I’m going back to grad school,” or, “I wanna get into machine learning,” or, “I wanna do 3D program,” you know, 3D programming or something, and they just, they decide they need to learn, um, more math for that.

And that’s a certain type of customer. They have a certain requirement- Yeah … certain needs. And then you have the, the parent who’s homeschooling, and they got two or three kids at different levels, and they’re just like, “Okay, I’m not really a math person,” or, “My one kid [00:07:00] is getting beyond the mathematical level where I f- I can just wing teaching them stuff,” or u- any number of things, right?

Or just it’s too much. I gotta… I,

Mm-hmm …

Jason Roberts: I can handle the, the, the history and the literature and the science, but math is just so time-consuming. So anyway, you have those kinds of things you’re- people are communicating to, right? Or the-

Yeah …

Jason Roberts: again, or the parent of the, of the, of the, uh, gifted student- Yep

needs to go and needs a whole different, uh, level of, of- Yeah … um, treatment.

Justin Skycak: So- Adult learners, parents, kids, subtypes of parents with kids in different situations, adults in different situations. Uh, adults who are, have their kids on the f- system, and they also wanna be on the system, and it’s this whole family thing.

Uh, people who are homeschooling their kids, who are, you know, their kid is literally using Math Academy in place of their math class, or they’re, they do math at school, but they also do Math Academy or whatever. It, like, it’s, I, I, you know… S- sometimes people ask me, like, “What, what kind of customers do we have on the system?”

And I’m just like, “Literally name any type of person in any sort of math [00:08:00] learning situation, I guarantee you we have, like, at least 10 of them on the system.” It’s

Jason Roberts: like, “Are they just in the US?” I’m like, “No.” “Are they just in Europe?” “No.” “Are they in- Yeah … Asia?” “Are they in Africa?” I’m like, “Yeah.” Everywhere. Yeah.

Are they… Is this just, like, wealthy kids? No. Is it just, like, people who speak English with a Brit- No. Anyway, so but what’s interesting, so as a, as an entrepreneur- And whenever you’re doing a startup, you construct your co- your concept of reality, right? And even if you are think you’re right, it’s imagine you’re driving somewhere, and you don’t…

This is before GPS, so you couldn’t confirm you had the right directions, and you’re like, “I’m pretty sure this is the right road.” Right? So back in the day, that’s kinda… You’d be like, “Oh.” And then, but you wouldn’t be driving at full speed ‘cause you’re like, “I think we’re going down the right path,” and like, “Do I need to back up?”

So you’re, you’re tentative about everything you’re doing ‘cause you’re not sure. But once you know, then you’re like, “Okay, let’s go. Like, we know. Like, confirm. This is the right… This- Okay, get on this highway, go.” So that’s it. When you t- when you get confirmation and your [00:09:00] confident builds that you have the right, the signal, and the right idea, then you can just move.

You really move. That’s why it’s so helpful to talk to customers. ‘Cause, you know, before you talk to customers, you could kinda delude yourself into thinking that you really know. And you might have a good instinct. It might be right, but when it really, the rubber meets the road, it’s not 100% accurate, and you- Yeah

deep down you know that, and so you’re always kinda second-guessing yourself and it slow- slows down. So it’s, so it is critical. Anyway, the, this whole thing, it’s like Groundhog Day all over again, right? It’s like you’re, you know- Yeah … it’s like a- You go through the whole cycle again. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jason Roberts: Yeah, except now it’s with a, the, now it’s with, uh, schools.

Yeah.

Jason Roberts: And Sandy’s like, “Well, since we don’t have a way for schools to show, uh, to sign up, and we don’t have any information about even a school offering, and there’s no information about the admin UI or for instructors, guess what?”

Justin Skycak: You got four calls tomorrow from schools.

Jason Roberts: Exactly. [00:10:00] And, um, so I’ll get up and then I’ll be making my breakfast, and Sandy’s like- Yeah

“Okay, well, you got three calls in.” I’m like, “Three? I thought it was only one.” She said, “No, two more signed.” I’m like, “Oh.” She’s like, she’s like, “Oh- Yeah … it’s gonna be f- I think it’s gonna be fine. They’re, they’re, you know… I- I’ve been back and forth with so-and-so from the school, and I think they have a pretty good understanding of things, and they just wanna…

They have some questions,” or, you know, whatever. So, but it’s always like, ‘cause on the one hand, I enjoy s- I, I enjoy speaking with people, and it’s fun speaking with customers and people who are excited about what you’re, you’re doing. Um, so that’s, that’s… It’s not bad. But it’s like I can’t get other work done that I kinda wanted to get done, you know?

It’s like, oh God, I gotta, gotta do this, this, this, and all of a sudden it’s like instead of having-

Yeah …

Jason Roberts: you know, however many hours a day, there are now three or four or five hours less. And then like I said, you know, when you get off one of these, you j- I’m just blown out. Like, I can’t just like, okay, I had a call from 10:00 to 11:00 [00:11:00] AM, and now I’m gonna start writing code at 11:01.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: There’s a

Justin Skycak: recovery area, there’s a reorientation, context switching, and if you got, like, four calls in a day, it’s like, well-

Jason Roberts: I, first of all, I have, like, a half hour of recovery. I’m just like, “Ugh,” you know? And that’s why when they’re back to back, I’m like, “Wow, that’s-“ ‘

Justin Skycak: Cause these calls are like a, a demo, right?

It’s like a, it’s like a whole… It’s, it’s not just a, like- It’s a

Jason Roberts: presentation …

Justin Skycak: you know, half hour sorta like, okay, Bob, answer a few questions. This is like a whole, like, let me show you the world. Like, you know, just big sorta- It’s a

Jason Roberts: whole presentation- Yeah … a whole explanation, and it’s, you know, if you’ve given, like, a talk at a conference, and you say, “Well, those are exhausting,” maybe it’s not as, as, as exhausting as that, you know, talking to a room of 50- Mm-hmm

or 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 people, whatever. It’s like, okay, well, it’s not that. But it’s not talking with a couple people who, your coworkers or something for, and sorting out [00:12:00] some, you know, priorities and details. It’s, it’s much closer to giving- Yeah … a talk. So, um, because there’s always concern that you’re, that things aren’t going well or you’re not giving the right, doing a good job of giving the information they need or answering their questions, and sometimes they’re getting confused, or sometimes you have people on the call who are just not excited about it, and they’re just, they have to be on because their head of school or chief academic officer wants to investigate it, and they’re like, “Wait, what is this thing?”

And so they come in kinda- Yeah … with their arms crossed, and then-

Justin Skycak: Right … it’s like- ‘Cause sometimes it’s, like, one person, right, who’s, like, kinda excited about it and kinda sets up this sorta demo and stuff. And so it’s like you don’t, they don’t all show up just, like, just chomping at the bit like, “Let’s do Math Academy.”

Maybe it’s, like, one person, and then, and then you have to convince a few other people, or y- you know, it’s like this whole-

Jason Roberts: I mean, sometimes I’ll have, like- It’s, yeah … nine people on.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: It’s like the Brady Bunch squares- … on, on the Zoom call. Yeah. You know? I mean, typically it’s, it can, you know, it’s quite often three to [00:13:00] three or four people.

Justin Skycak: Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: But sometimes it can be seven, eight, nine people, and they’re popping in and out, right? Their- Yeah … video goes off, they’re gone, they’re in, they’re out.

Justin Skycak: Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: Which is very disruptive in a way.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: You know? I mean, they think they’re being con- uh, considerate ‘cause they’re like, “Oh, I, someone’s blocking them off so I can answer a question.”

T- people are coming and going. Like, who am I even talking to? You know?

Justin Skycak: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Who are you gonna make eye contact with? Yeah.

Jason Roberts: It’s very… And then you’re like asking, “Uh, does that make, does this make sense?” And you’re going around, “Does this?” You’re kinda looking at everybody has their microphone off because of external noise or whatever, and-

and if, uh, yeah, we under- you know? So that-

Justin Skycak: It sounds almost like trying to teach a class or something, like with, live remotely with kids, and they’re like nobody has their, the camera on or, you know. You got… Just like you have no idea how, what… So, like how much of this have you heard? Like, you know- Right.

It’s just like- You don’t, you don’t know who’s zoning out or whatever. You just kind of-

Jason Roberts: Yeah …

Justin Skycak: manage

Jason Roberts: it all the time. So

Justin Skycak: it’s, um- Yeah …

Jason Roberts: which makes it, [00:14:00] raises the sort of the, the amount of energy you have to put out to keep the energy, uh, up and- Mm-hmm … keep people engaged and checking and, you know, people are interrupting with weird questions ‘cause they don’t really even have the baseline of information you’d expect them to have, or maybe they missed the beginning of the call.

And like- Yeah … “Wait a minute, I’m sorry, I gotta like… Can you explain this again?” They’re just like, “Okay.” Anyway, that, this stuff is exhausting. And so, but nevertheless, it’s important. And, you know, you’re not, you’re not gonna get a school to sign up if you don’t… I, I, I mean, at least at this stage, until we have a lot more information on the website, demos, and videos, and onboarding stuff, and maybe you could, maybe you could kind of skip some of that or it would be streamlined if we had a lot of the stuff that we need to do.

Believe me- Mm-hmm … we, I know we need to do that. So, um, but right now it’s absolutely critical, and um, we have to do it. And you know, it’s interesting. I remember this one, um, [00:15:00] one guy who’s a venture capitalist, uh, who was kind of an independent little indie firm, and he’s, you know, so a parent uses it, and he’s a, he’s been a big supporter and big fan.

He’s like, “Jason,” he’s like, “You don’t even… Just do homeschool. You don’t even need to worry about schools. Like there’s… Florida alone,” he’s like, “Just, you can build a business just on that, a really, really good business.” Like, don’t… And I’m just like, I’m like, “Listen, that sounds great, but the thing is the schools are signing up anyway.”

Yeah. I

Jason Roberts: mean, ‘cause so, so you have schools that are just like, all of a sudden they’ll say, she’ll be like, “Well, I just had 30… Some, some adult came up and added 10 students and created a second account and added 10 more students.”

Justin Skycak: They will sign up in some way regardless of… Yeah, it is like there’s no question they’re gonna sign up.

It’s whether like are you gonna give them a way that’s frictionless for you and like actually has them signing up the right way, or are they gonna sign up as like individual accounts, and then you have to unwind all this and whatever. So it’s like, well-

Jason Roberts: That’s right Because, you know, ‘cause [00:16:00] right, you won’t- You know, there are certain schools who won’t, unless you give the demo and the hand-holding and really streamline it, they’re not gonna sign up.

But there are a lot of schools that are just like, they, they, they’re like, they get, they’re like, “Oh yeah, we need Math Academy. Like, we’re, we’re doing this.” Yeah. Like, “I’ve, I’ve done my research, I’ve read this, I heard this person talk. I, I, I, my, I’m using it at home with my- myself or my daughter or whatever,” and they’re like, “It’s been amazing, so I’m gonna, like, sign up.”

And since there’s no information on the website, they sign up as a parent, and they just add a bunch of students as if they were their own kids, right? Yeah. It’s not really built for that. And so then what happens is you have a lot of customer support head- headache ‘Cause it’s not-

Yep … ‘

Jason Roberts: cause now, now, now they’re like, “Well, how do I do this?”

Or, “I want to put a cu-…” So this, so now, now Sandy is dealing with all this customer support load because their, their account is configured in a way that’s not, um, that’s, that has a lot of friction and doesn’t really make sense ‘cause it’s, why, why would it? Is, but you’re using it as a parent, you know, not as a [00:17:00] teacher- Yeah

or as a school admin- admin. So anyway, I’m like, look-

Justin Skycak: It’s like these levels, these levels of insection- of inception of trying to buy your time back. It’s like, well, okay, you got all these school calls and stuff, and then schools are also signing up. And so it’s, it’s not just that you’re spending all this time on calls, is that you’re also having to spend time unwinding stuff from, from schools that, that sign up in some weird way.

So it’s like, okay, let’s get, let’s get scripts and sign-up flows just directed so they don’t sign up in a weird way. And then once that’s done, then, then buys back some time to like, okay, now we focus on just automating, you know, just stuff on the website that you would otherwise be talking about in your calls.

Just get that information where you don’t have to sit in front of every single school and do a demo, where the information’s there. And then, and then it’s like, and then you can return to the stuff that, that you were, um, planning to do three months ago or whatever. Yeah, that makes- Like back to the ta-

Jason Roberts: When is- Yeah.

When is the machine learning course gonna be done? When is the this gonna be done? I was [00:18:00] like, man.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: Like, believe me, I wanna finish up some of that stuff, but if you look at my calendar and you look at all the stuff I gotta do, you know, you, you just get caught up in all that. So you’re right. Like- Yeah

for, for a longest time, like, we didn’t… We had so few schools that I, you know, Sandy would be like, “Okay, we’re at this school in Pennsylvania or in Hong Kong, and they got like 10, 20 stu- I mean, it’s like, wasn’t a big deal, 30 students. And-

Mm-hmm …

Jason Roberts: can you s- And I didn’t have like a… There wasn’t a sign-up flow, so they would like send me a spreadsheet of students or something, and then I would like, “And here’s her, her, you know, here are the instructors, and here’s the this.”

And I had a bunch of scripts that I would just kinda import some of, and I would have to run all these scripts and do some stuff manually in the database ‘cause I didn’t have a real… The scripts were pretty basic, so I would be sitting there in the, in the database, “Oh, I need to add some links to this students to this class,” and whatever.

And so it could eat up half a day because you have to be so careful you don’t screw it up ‘cause the scripts have not been battle [00:19:00] tested. You’re like, “Okay. Is this all right?” If I screw this up- Yeah … this could be a problem. And so- Anyway, the whole day goes by and you’re like, “Okay, I got this school set.”

So finally I was like, “All right, this is… I c- I cannot do another. I cannot s- spend another Saturday afternoon setting up a school. Like this is, I’m so tired of it and it’s so exhausting and it’s such a, a waste of time.” But n- but when you only have one, it doesn’t seem like in our schools it’s like, “Well, hey, I’m gonna spend a w- two weeks creating this whole flow and this UI and all this stuff.”

Yeah. You’re like, “That seems dumb. Can you just get a bunch of these students up?” You’re like, “Yeah, that seems like the thing, to just get them into the system and we need to set up classes and set up this and set up that.” And then you do that, and by, after so many, you have to do this 20 or 30 times, you’re like, “Okay, all right.

All right.” And so it’s like when do you, when do you bite the bullet and create the, the, the, the… So what we do have now, we have like an admin tools that Sandy can use, and she can go and set things up really quickly. And then, then th- [00:20:00] they can go and add students in on their end through the admin- their own admin UI.

Now the next step of course is that somebody can go up and apply to be a school through our website, and Sandy can just s- approve it or whatever, and then they can set everything up and their trials and stuff.

Justin Skycak: Yeah, yeah.

Jason Roberts: So you go through these sort of phases, um-

Justin Skycak: That’s a good point. You have to apply to be a school ‘cause it’s not just…

Y- you can’t just sign up and now you’re a Math Academy using-

Jason Roberts: 500 kids or whatever

Justin Skycak: … the school. Like you have to… ‘Cause you, we, we need to make sure that you’re actually using the system correctly, that you actually know what you’re doing, and you’re not gonna do this whole big program on the system and then not use the system and then go like badmouth us because you didn’t use the system and didn’t get the results or something, right?

Jason Roberts: Yeah, they don’t, they don’t know how, they don’t understand how it works. It’s like, you know, so and you just gotta make sure that… Well, first of all, you wanna make sure when you allow someone to set up hun- you know, hundreds of students or something, it could be abused by some bad actors to say, “I’m just gonna…”

You know, you don’t wanna allow that. Mm. Yeah, right. But you also don’t wanna allow… More, more, probably more likely, more f- bigger problem would be you just wanna [00:21:00] make sure- people understand how to get the best out of the system, make sure it’s a success for them, right? Yeah. You know, it’s like, “Oh, we just have them use it once a week for 15 minutes.”

You’re like, “That’s not gonna work.” They’re like, “Really?” I’m like, “I know.” Like, this is… You know? Right. So it’s like, okay, how to think about the system the right way. What, how is it to be used? What, you know, all these sorts of things. So, um, yeah, so you do an a- a- you know, we’ll, we’ll have them appl- uh, apply, but apply be really relatively quickly and probably- Mm-hmm

schedule an onboarding thing, and we need to create some, send them a bunch of, you know, PDFs and videos, like, here’s the onboarding for the admins, the teachers, here’s a, you know… But probably also need to do an onboarding. Us probably still have to do one just to really guarantee success.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: But, um-

Justin Skycak: Yeah, you don’t wanna transfer it over to full automation right away.

It’s like a gradually gradual rollout, as we learned from everything in software, right? It’s like, don’t just roll the feature out to everybody all at once, unless you wanna spend the next two weeks fixing all the shit that broke that you didn’t anticipate.

Jason Roberts: Yeah. Y- y- you, [00:22:00] typically, you wanna do things manually at first so that you understand what the heck is even going on.

Justin Skycak: Mm-hmm. ‘

Jason Roberts: Cause if you don’t, you’re automating the wrong things. You’re like, “Oh, well this, they’re gonna want this, they’re gonna do this.” And so you create, you prevent this whole… You construct this whole reality that might be- Mm-hmm … completely inaccurate. And so you build all the wrong stuff. Things are overcomplicated, or overcomplicate the wrong things, and you don’t provide the right flexibility in other areas, whatever.

So you gotta do some manually first, and then you kinda semi… You build some tools, some scripts maybe to make it a little less painful, and then you, it’s more automated- Yeah … and eventually it’s fully automated, or as automated as it can be. But yeah, um, but it’s sort of, um, and it’s something we talk about.

It’s like you, you know, we always talk about like earn, earn the right to solve that problem.

Justin Skycak: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause you can’t skip to the end, ‘cause y- if you skip to the end, you’re not gonna end up at the correct end that you actually need to be at. Part of it is just- Yeah, you got the

Jason Roberts: software, but-

Justin Skycak: Is it gonna do what, what you need?

No, ‘cause you don’t know what you need. So- Yeah … yeah, you just have- Yeah … [00:23:00] to kinda suffer through the… It’s just a, there’s no way around the, the suffering of the manual repetitions and- I think … and gradual-

Jason Roberts: I, that’s my opinion- Yeah … is just, just suffer a little bit, really understand it, then you understand at a very intrinsic level-

Mm-hmm

Jason Roberts: all the nuances of the problem. Yeah. So you can write, build the, the exact right pro- the right solution. ‘Cause here’s the thing, like when you, when you increase the surface area of the product by cre- by adding more flexibility, more functionality that’s not really used, well, now you have to support that.

And so if you ever have to roll that back or unwind it ‘cause it’s creating more confusion than it, than, you know- Yeah … creating more problems than it’s solving, then that’s, that creates problems for other people, ‘cause they’re like, “I like this. Why’d you do that?” You know? And anytime you pull stuff back, it’s, it’s, there’s pain.

And not only that, the more software is, the more bugs. And the more software, the more complexity, more, more, more flexibility means more complexity. More complexity means more potential for there to be [00:24:00] problems, but also means it come- uh, it increases the complexity of the rest of the system. It’s not like, well, it’s just this one feature that’s just more complex.

It’s like this one feature interacts with all these other things, the data structures and the-

Justin Skycak: Yep …

Jason Roberts: flows and the stuff. And so it’s like, you know, you just have to be really careful about introducing things, uh, that anything more than you need, because it’s gonna come at a cost. And a lot of times it comes at a much bigger cost than you originally anticipated because software’s always 99% of the time it’s gonna be a lot more complicated than you initially anticipated, even when you anticipate it to be more complicated, right?

It’s still gonna be a problem. You

Justin Skycak: underestimated, yeah, how complex

Jason Roberts: it’s gonna be. Every time. And, um,

Justin Skycak: so you just- Especially when you, you start solving, like, a problem for a user segment, right? And you think you solved the problem, then they… Of course, there’s follow-ups. Like, “Oh, but can you also…” Like, “What about this?

Oh, well, since you did that, what if you did this, that, and blah, blah, blah?” And there’s, like, all this, uh, this cascading of requests and [00:25:00] stuff. Like, you think you’re just serving the first request. You think you’ve… That, that it’s like, uh, they’re out for dinner, you, you’ve brought them their meal, and, and really what you thought was the entrée is actually the appetizer.

They’re expecting, like, an even bigger dish afterwards.

Jason Roberts: Exactly. Yeah. So anyway, you, you… That’s… You, you want, you wanna reduce the surface area of the product down to make it as small as possible such that it fully solves the problem, or at least solves the problem for the, for the vast majority of people.

And there’s always gonna be somebody who’s like, “Well, I really wish it would do this one extra thing.”

Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: And you can find 100 people to say that, so now it does 100 extra things that make the thing wildly complex and confuses everybody else. And ma- you know, so you always… And it’s all trade-offs.

You’re never gonna s- you know, say, “Can’t make, you can’t make every, you know, happy.” What is it? You can’t, uh… I don’t know what the word is. You can’t, you, you can’t solve everyone’s problem, right? You… And so all you have to do is you have to figure out what’s the solution, what’s the category of people that we’re actually gonna solve.

And there’ll be a few people [00:26:00] who are kinda like, “Well, I’m annoyed that you didn’t do this.” You’re like, “I understand. I, I understand- Yeah … you’re annoyed. Unfortunately, this is where we’re drawing the line.” Wherever we draw that line- Yeah.

Justin Skycak: Yeah …

Jason Roberts: there’s going to be someone on other side of it, right? And there might be multiple people, and they might be really loud.

And they might come up with really good, um, explanations for their particular case why it’s so important. But that’s part of building software and running companies. You just have to make those decisions. It’s like, “Well, I’m just gonna have to live with whatever pushback we get, ‘cause this is the ch- this is the maximal trade-off that we can find in terms of customer support, solving a s- solving customer problems, complexity, you know, et cetera.”

Justin Skycak: Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: So yeah.

Justin Skycak: So I wanna know- Yeah … since you’ve gone through so many repetitions on this school onboarding stuff, say there’s any, uh… Say there’s a s- teacher or an administrator listening right now who’s like, “Well, I’m kinda interested in Math Academy.” What- W- what, what are [00:27:00] the just, I know there’s, there’s probably a very, very long list of things that you talk about in these demos, but what are, what are the things that, that keep on coming up over and over that maybe, you know, people come in a little confused about and you have to kind of explain this or that?

Or what’s… If, if, if, if you, uh, if you had like a SparkNotes cheat sheet for how to, you know, use Math Academy successfully, what would be the top few items on there? Is it, is it kinda like there’s just a, a, a top few that kinda recurring over and, and, and over again, or?

Jason Roberts: Well, the, the– When people come in and they’re the least informed-

Justin Skycak: Mm-hmm

Jason Roberts: ‘cause sometimes, you know, it’ll be like head of school or somebody who’s really the, they’re really interested, and they bring on these other head of the math department or some- Yeah … head math teacher, chief academic, or whatever it is. And these people come in and they’ve, and they’ve spent all of five to 10 minutes trying to understand Math Academy, i-if that.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: And they’re like, “So is this just like Khan Academy?”

Justin Skycak: Yeah. [00:28:00] So that’s where he was starting.

Jason Roberts: But we use Khan Academy. So it’s like Khan Academy? And you’re just like, “No.” Oh, so we use IXL-

Justin Skycak: Mm-hmm …

Jason Roberts: and like Khan Academy. Is it like that? You know? And you’re just like, okay, so they really have no, no idea. They think…

I’m like, “Okay, like IXL.” So I’m like, “So how do you use IXL?” And they said, “Well, we, well, we have to spend a lot of time. We figure out what they’re doing, and okay, the system handles all that. You don’t have to ever think about any of that again. Who’s doing what? Did they do a good job? What should they do next?

They did this yesterday and last week, and these kids are doing this and this.” All that imp- that impossibility of managing all that, well, that’s all gone. Yeah. Math Academy handles that optimally for every student. They’re like, “Oh, wait. What?” You know, you have to go through that whole thing, right?

Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: And then they’re like, you know, “Well, we use Khan Academy, and can they… You know, but, you know, we found like sometimes it doesn’t wor- that doesn’t always, it doesn’t really solve the problem. We’ve seen a little bit of, you know, how it can be helpful in this.” I’m like, “Yeah. I mean, it’s, can be helpful,” and I said, “You know, Khan Academy is great for what it is.”

Um, but I said, “You’re not gonna say go sign up for Khan Academy and then expect the kid to ace the AP Calculus exam,” for instance. [00:29:00] Like, that’s just not a realistic expectation. And, and they’re like, “Well, why?” I’m like, “Well, first of all, you’re not getting enough practice. It’s not gonna be building over time and managing what the student should do, and I mean, there’s just a lot of things it’s not, doesn’t do.”

And so you kind of have to like explain all that. Yeah. And then you have to… Then one thing I always just say, I say, “Listen, the thing what Math Academy does, first thing the student does is take an adaptive diagnostic that finds everything the student i- all foundational gaps from the, the prerequisite course.”

So if you’re going into, you know, Algebra 2, it’s all the Algebra 1 that they didn’t really master or they forgot, right? Which is usually considerable.

Justin Skycak: Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: You know? I mean, my few cases, you might miss five or 10 topics. A lot of times it’s 70, 80, 90 topics, which is, creates a huge amount of friction, which is what causes, um, so many learning problems at the next level.

So whether that’s fourth grade to fifth grade, or fifth grade to pra- you know, whatever the level is, they have all these… Unless the students were all getting A+s in the [00:30:00] previous course, they have accumulating foundational gaps. So we consider it like it’s almost like drag that they’re accumulating, and they get a certain amount of friction, and then at a certain point they just can’t make any more progress in math.

Yeah.

Jason Roberts: And the teacher at that, whatever level it is, if you’re in, you know, let’s say Algebra 2 and you’re, and you’re like, “I either have to just ig- ignore the fact that a lot of these kids are not really understanding this because they don’t, they, they didn’t learn their Algebra 1 very well. They forgot it or something.”

And it’s like, I, I g- I’m here to teach Algebra 2. I, there’s only so much I can do. I do some review days, and I hand some packets of extra work for kids but, you know, parents come in and they say, I say, you know, complain that their student is struggling. I say, “Well, maybe you should get a tutor.” Okay, that’s about as best as you’re gonna get.

But most teachers won’t even do that. And because it’s a lot of work and they teach five, six classes a day, and, and honestly is, you know, how much of it is really their problem, you know? And so, um, I said, “But Math Academy will identify all those problems, those missing gaps, and will remediate them while they’re taking their current course.”

[00:31:00] And so it creates a custom course for the student that says, okay, we’re in algebra two. The student luckily already knows 15% of algebra two, but they’re missing 47 prerequisites from algebra one that are critical in functions and equations and rules of exponents or whatever, and it’s gonna clean those up, build those up while my student’s making progress in algebra two, so they don’t have to say, “Well, we have to go back to algebra one for two months,” and the student’s like, “Wait, what?

I’m in 10th grade. I’m not going back to algebra one like that. Yeah, I did in eighth grade.” You know? And it’s like kids get kind of offended, annoyed and by that, which understandable.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: You say, “Look, we’re gonna clean this up and build…” So then, then so it’s a custom fit course. Imagine you go in to a, uh…

I said, “It’s kinda like if you went into a tailor and you bought this $1,000 suit and you just tried to walk out the door with it, the, the, the, the tailor would be, ‘Whoa, whoa, what are you doing? What are you doing? Wait, whoa, whoa.’” You’re like, “What? I love the suit,” but like l- let, let’s get it fitted to you ‘Cause we want, I want, that way it’ll look good on you, and it’ll reflect well on us.

You need to get it fit. This is not to be meant to be [00:32:00] bought off the rack. It doesn’t, it’s too, the pant legs are too long. The, the, s- things need to be taken in. Like, let’s get this… And you’re like, “Oh, okay.” And that’s what this system does, is creates a custom fit course to the student, and then it continually ad- optimizes and adapts to fit that student perfectly.

Yeah. So having, basically getting through that, and they’re like… And then afterwards, there’s more depth to it and nuance, but just getting that. ‘

Justin Skycak: Cause they don’t even know, like, y- you have to start from just the, like, let me explain the anatomy of the problem of, of math education, ‘cause like just getting at that fundamental level in order for the, you know, solution and sol- or solution techniques.

Like they just… What’s, what’s the problem? That’s not the problem. What’s the problem? That’s not the problem. What’s the problem, right, from, from “Moneyball” and, uh- Yeah … you know, you get down to the fundament- like, let’s drill. You gotta get them to buy in on the first principles of what this problem is. The problem is not the, the lack of engagement or whatever.

That’s a symptom. That’s not a problem. The [00:33:00] problem is the foundational knowledge gaps and the, you know, being asked to, to do things that you’re not prepared to do, all that sort of stuff, and, uh, lack of review, you know. Yeah, that thing. And so you have to, step one, I guess, is communicate that to them, get them really understanding that, and once they understand it, then you can kinda talk about what a solution to that even looks like.

What are– If this problem is gonna be solved, what are the requirements of the solution? Well, it has to be a diagnostic at the beginning, it has to be a review, it has to blah, blah, blah. And then I guess you get them, like, bought in on like, okay, yeah, that’s, that’s really what the solution has to look like.

And then you can probably, that’s when you make the step to like, “Okay, well, here’s how we do it. Like, this is, this is how it’s actually implemented on the system. This is how the, what the student sees.” Is that kinda how it, how it goes? You’re kinda building up this world from first principles for them?

Jason Roberts: Yeah,

sometimes they’ll jump in and they’ll be like, “Well, how, what do they do every day?” First of all, they’re like, “Well, what does this look like?” They, they wanna see it, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like what, what they don’t even under- you know. And so l- like ‘cause you’re [00:34:00] explaining this thing, and they ha- they can’t even picture what you’re talking about.

And then you go in and you’re like, “Okay.” And then you have to say, you talk about XP and how we assign an XP value to every learning task, and there’s so much XP there in a day and, you know, the, you know, the w- you know, all that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. You go through all that stuff. Um, but yeah, some of it’s just visual and, and, and, and sort of the, the mechanics of it they need to understand.

Some of it you have to understand the, well, how do we know how, when they’re done or how much they’ve done or what they… So the whole XP system and all that, really explaining through that. And then the assessment stuff. They’re like, “Well, what about, do we have like our assessments?” It’s just, I’m like, “No, no, we have quizzes and, and the quizzes are timed, and then anything they miss, they get assigned remediation tasks to clean it up, and they have opportunity to do a retake with a new set of questions.”

And they’re like, “Oh, that’s really cool.” So you kinda, you have to walk through it. So- A lot of times what I have to do is I, is I kinda do the initial thing about the adaptive diagnostic and optimal learn- personalized learning and, you know, the filling in gaps and, and then I go, “Okay, does, does, does [00:35:00] everybody understand this?”

And, ‘cause sometimes I’ll go into the knowledge graph a little bit, and then I’ll show them. They’re like, “Whoa, what’s a knowledge?” That’s a lot of information.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: Yeah. And then I’ll just hit step back, go, “Okay, have any questions?” And then I let them kind of drive a little bit, take a breath, ‘cause I just gave them so much.

And then, and I’m like, “Okay, well, how do they know what to do?” And like, well, we have a thing called a knowledge graph, and all the courses are kinda overlaid on a knowledge graph. There are thousands of topics. And algebra II or pre-algebra, there might be 200, 250, 300 topics, and da, da, da, da. You know, kinda go through all that.

So, um, there’s a lot of that sort of-

Justin Skycak: Yeah, right. I mean, that’s a whole… Like, just the idea that there’s a knowledge graph, a latent knowledge graph behind everything, and courses are just kind of arbitrary sectioned off pieces of it in some coherent way that- Yeah … that people are used to thinking about.

Yeah. There’s a lot-

Jason Roberts: Yeah, and then, but then, so it’s, then you have to get into, like, s- the space rep- They’re like, “Well, is, how do you guys measure mastery? Like, how do you know when they’ve- Mm-hmm … mastered a topic?” And I say, “Well, it’s mastery over time. You know, we, [00:36:00] we, we leverage the power of space repetition, distributed practice, and Ebbinghaus forgetting curve,” and have to go through a whole explanation of that, you know.

And then, you know, I said, “Well, but if you had to review every single topic, if you had, you know, say 250 topics, and you want seven repetitions spaced out over time, now what are we talking about?” You know? 1,500-

Yeah …

Jason Roberts: 1,700 review tasks. That that’s completely untenable. I said, “But with a hierarchical kno- knowledge structure, and we have encompassing relationships which allows you to kill two birds, three birds with one stone.”

It’s like, you know, you review a more advanced, you, you learn a more advanced task, then you’re essentially in- implicitly reviewing the component skills of the, of the prerequisite task. And you have to go through all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Jason Roberts: And they’re like… It’s a lot to take in. So you see, I’m trying to get a lot of information across, and a lot of things they hadn’t really thought about it, thought about.

You know, some of them have thought about, and they’re like, “Oh, man.” You know, you can see the light up. They’re like, “Oh, yeah. That makes- Mm-hmm … total sense,” or I, that, you know. They, it’s, it was something [00:37:00] similar to how they thought about things, but, um, but not always, and y- and they’re just kinda have a You know, it, it just takes a while to get, get everything through to them.

But, you know, typically by the end everybody’s like, “Oh, that’s cool. Got it, yeah.”

Yeah.

Jason Roberts: You know?

Yeah.

Jason Roberts: But I really, um, my, I, I, I… The one reason we don’t, like, try and s- and we don’t s- we don’t have a sales team, we don’t go sell to schools, it’s like I’d rather them come to us and say, “We have a problem. We are way underperforming.

We have a ton of kids who are way… are below standards. We have, you know, all these kind of things.” And it’s like, okay, I can… We can solve your problem. But if they’re like, they’re not willing to acknowledge that they have a problem, and they’re just sort of like, they’re sort of immune from the, the outcomes or the substandard outcomes from their schools, and they’re like, you know, I don’t know, “Whatever, we do X, Y, Z curriculum, we do this and,” you know, whatever, right?

You know? Then it’s like they don’t really [00:38:00] wanna solve the problem, ‘cause as far as they’re concerned, it’s not a problem for them.

Justin Skycak: Yeah. Yeah. It- So they’re just gonna kinda sandbag the whole time. Like-

Jason Roberts: It’s like whatever …

Justin Skycak: not use it, really. Yeah.

Jason Roberts: Yeah, they’re not motivated to use it or use it correctly. And, you know, like, hey, if you don’t wanna solve a problem, I can’t help you.

So you really want people… It’s like imagine this, like if you went to someone, and let’s say, let’s say, you know, a friend of yours, they’re not in great shape, you know, or whatever, and you say, “Hey, man, I got this amazing workout. You’ll lose 20, 30 pounds. You can shape.” And they’re like… They’re like, “Oh, I, I guess I, I mean, I could probably get in better shape.”

And they’re like, “Well, how many days a week do I have to do it? Can I do it once a week?” Because they’re not really motivated. You’re like, “Well-“ Yeah. “… you can probably do more once a week.” They’re like, “Twice?” And like, “Do I have to sweat?” I mean, you’re like, you’re like, okay. Yeah. Like, this is, this is a waste of time.

You want the person to come to you and be like, “Okay. Went to the doctor, kinda got their riot act read to me. My d- my wife is like, ‘You need to [00:39:00] lose some weight. You’re… You have… There’s some health problems that are accumulating because we… you need to… this needs to be dealt with.’” Whatever. Or maybe you signed up for…

You’ve signed a, a movie role, Mar-Marvel superhero, and you’re like, “You gotta get in shape.” Like, you have a problem to solve. You’re like, “I need this solved. This is non-negotiable. I’m motivated. I under- I recognize that I’m here and that I need to be here, and I don’t really know how to get there, and I am willing to do what it takes, you know, within reason, but I’m willing to put in a solid effort to get there.

Can you help me?” And I’m like, “Yes, we can, 100%.” But if you come to me and you’re like, “Well, I don’t know. You know? I mean, you know, we might be able to do it once a week for Come to come back when you’re actually serious about solving. When you, when you acknowledge that you have a problem, you know, and solve.

Now, hey, if you don’t have a problem, if every kid’s above stan- is at or above standards, and you have kids who, many kids are two, three years ahead, and you’re getting kids are going to MIT, it’s okay, great. You don’t have a [00:40:00] problem. Carry on. That’s awesome. Reality is that 99% or more of schools don’t have, aren’t out of that place.

So it’s like, but a lot of, but a lot of schools, for whatever reason, have either decided that it’s not their problem, or the problem is unsolvable, or everybody has the same problem, so what am I supposed to do about it? Or I just… For a reason, they’re just not, they’re just, they, they’re not, not motivated, or don’t believe it can be solved, so they’re just not really engaging with it, and they’re just gonna do what they’ve been doing.

And, um, or the cost of changing is higher than the cost that they wanna pay, ‘cause I don’t wanna, you know- The effort, yeah … my teachers are difficult to deal with, and they’re unions, and so I can’t tell them certain things, and the district has set certain stan- you know, we use a curriculum, and what do you want me to do?

It’s like, okay, well then just keep doing what you’re doing, I guess.

Justin Skycak: Mm-hmm. ‘

Jason Roberts: Cause that’s, you know, if that, if

Justin Skycak: that’s-

It’s up to you

Jason Roberts: … if that gets results. Yeah. You can sleep at night, and you can sleep at night. Like I’m, [00:41:00] I’m, I’m fine with the fact that most of our kids can’t do basic algebra in high school and, or in elementary level.

I mean, that, you know, I-

Justin Skycak: Yeah …

Jason Roberts: I can’t, I, but I can’t, I can’t, we can’t help people who aren’t willing, who, who don’t realize that they need to be helped, are willing to put in some effort and, and engage with a solution. Um, so that’s why, at least at this stage of our company I, I’d rather they come to us.

And right now, because we don’t have anything on our website about it, they’re kinda have to go in and they’re like knocking on the back door. They’re like, “Do you guys, do you guys have… Do you sell software?” I mean, they’re like, they don’t even- Yeah. Yeah … you know, it’s like the club that doesn’t have the front.

You have to know somebody who knows how to get in the back door of the club or the f- you know. Mm-hmm. And, um, you know, at some point may- you know, we’ll probably change that, you know. We’ll have more information and… But, but this does serve as sort of a filtering mechanism for people who are mostly serious.

Occasionally get a few people, “Well, somebody told me I [00:42:00] should look at this,” and you can tell they’re kind- but they’re kinda putting resistance. It’s like, “Somebody told me I should get in shape, but I don’t know if I really wanna get in shape.” You’re like, “Oh.” So you’re kinda like, “Okay.”

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: You know?

Justin Skycak: So, okay.

So th- there’s, there’s a lot going on in these calls basically- Yeah … ‘cause you’re re- reconstructing this whole world for them. That sound- I mean, the way you’re describing it sounds almost like a knowledge graph itself, where you kinda gotta drop to the bottom of these fundamental principles and build all this stuff back, like the whole theory of Math Academy, basically.

And you got a single call to do it during. And oh, by the way, like this is not just one person that you’re kind of building this all up for. This is like five different people, 10 different people. The… Some of them don’t– are not really sure they even wanna be there. They got dragged along by their, their coworker or whatever.

Um, and, and you also have to like… I mean, you can kinda s- speed run some sections when they’re [00:43:00] like, “Oh, I get that. Yeah, that makes sense.” But then there’s other… You, you have to also identify when, like, something’s not making sense and go back or remediate those prerequisites for them. So-

Jason Roberts: Yeah …

Justin Skycak: how, how do you, how do you envision Having kind of just, you know, self-service onboarding for this kind of thing.

‘Cause it seems like such a, um, like this is a mons- Like, how do you communicate this on a, on the website? Um, I’m just thi- Like, all this information, if you’re, if you’re giving, just building everything from the ground up, like how long is this webpage or how many webpages is this of, of information? And-

Jason Roberts: I think…

Well, first of all, I think it needs to be a video.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: And I think it has to have, you know, with some screen share, and I think it needs to be really well done, ‘cause you need to speed run this thing. Um, because a lot of people aren’t gonna have the patience for it. So if it’s like [00:44:00] 15, 20 minutes long, people are gonna be like…

You know, but it’s, it’s like when you see these, um, you know, movies and they’ll have like, you know, like it was two hours and 30 minutes, but they got to edit it and they finally got it down to an hour and-

Mm-hmm …

Jason Roberts: 35 minutes ‘cause they cut out all their stuff. Or you’ve seen movies where you’re like, “Wow, this could’ve, this movie could’ve used an editor.”

You know, like- Yeah … I c- we could have gotten the point. Like this- Yeah … scene did not have to last seven minutes. A minute and a half would’ve done it justice with a really good editor. And, um, I think we’d have to take a similar approach, like how can we speed run and get a lot of these ideas down? But when you have visualizations and you have stuff shown, it’d be way, way faster than even when I was describing it and, and, and more informative.

So I think we’d have to really spend some time Creating that concept, probably working with someone who’s a, who’s, you know, uh, specializes in doing these kinds of things.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: Um, you know, we probably have some follow-up videos that kind of [00:45:00] dig her deeper into certain aspects of it, but you’d probably want something like a, I don’t know, five or seven-minute, like, speed run, what is Math Academy and how’s it, how does it work?

You know, something like this. Yeah. And so they understand all that stuff, and they go, “Oh, okay.” And the outcomes you’re gonna see, and da, da, da. And then it kinda comes out. And then, then once you hook ‘em, they’re like, “Oh, that’s cool.” And then you can say, “Okay, follow up,” digging deeper in, you know, into different aspects of it.

Said, “Okay, I got… I’m interested now.” Like, “Okay, explain to me again, like, how do I do…” You know, and they kinda go more into the nuances and stuff like that. And then you probably have companion or, or, you know, PDFs, the, in addition to videos, ‘cause PDFs are more like, okay, or webpages where they can go on and follow on step, you gotta do these things.

Whereas a video, you’re not really doing stuff, you’re just kinda sitting back watching. Yeah. But then you want something that’s, okay, now I need to… Okay, so I’m thinking about how do I wanna arrange my classes. What do they, what do they say here on the PDF? Like, okay. It’s probably s- [00:46:00] probably something like…

I’m imagining, but we’ll see.

Justin Skycak: Yeah. That’s interesting.

Jason Roberts: We definitely need it.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: We definitely need it because I cannot do another 200 of these.

Justin Skycak: How many would… How, how many do you think you’ve been, like, um, in, in terms of onboard… So however many, uh, hundreds of individual families, customers, you, you, you onboarded at the beginning, what, what percentage of the way through would you say you are with, with the school onboarding?

Jason Roberts: Well, not as many. How far? Maybe 50. Yeah.

Justin Skycak: Okay.

Jason Roberts: But they’re exhausting.

Justin Skycak: Yeah. You know? More so than the, than the family onboarding- Uh- … ‘cause you had more

Jason Roberts: people and stuff … maybe the same. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just ‘cause I’ve done so many, I’m just so like, uh, I mean, having worries every week.

Justin Skycak: Yeah. You’re kind of in the thick of it right now.

With the, with the family onboarding you can kind of talk back to like back several years ago when you were, you know, going through those, those weeds. But, uh, right now you’re like literally- Yeah … [00:47:00] next week you have like tons. Last week you had tons. You … Yeah.

Jason Roberts: And it may be more than 50. I mean, it may be more, ‘cause at times you’ll have like a follow-up calls or, and they’re

But there’s also like tangential things or foundations or-

Justin Skycak: Yeah …

Jason Roberts: I mean, maybe I’ve done 70 or 80. I don’t know. It feels like a lot.

Justin Skycak: Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: It feels like I do it a lot. It may not– It probably happens less than I feel like it happens, you know? Um- Yeah … but it, um, it’s still a lot. But y- you know, the time it takes to create these things is, is, is non-trivial.

This is gonna take time. It might take money, but, uh, the real ef- the real problem is time. How much time, how much my time is it gonna take? Find somebody to work with who’s really great at doing these things and getting all the visualization, the screenshots, and figuring out the, you know, the, the script for it.

I mean, that, this stuff is very, ve- it’s gonna be a big distraction to create all this stuff. Yep. And it’s just like, well, if I’m doing that, then I’m not doing other things. Like, well Jason, why can’t you [00:48:00] just build this, this, and this? ‘Cause like I’m building these … I’m working with an editor and film director who does this stuff, and we’re building all this stuff.

Or I’m trying to do it myself, and it’s, you know what I mean? It’s just-

Justin Skycak: Mm-hmm …

Jason Roberts: you know, there’s only so many things you can do. And the problem is that I really have to do it because I’m the one who’s-

Justin Skycak: Yeah … gonna- You’re the one who’s doing the reps, so you have to be the one– I mean, you got the, the most, by far the most granular domain knowledge of what exactly is this task.

Jason Roberts: Exactly. I can tell you when they’re gonna lose focus on the, you know, when it’s too much information or what they need know, need to know, when they need to know it, ‘cause I’ve just, I, I’m monitoring their reactions and when their confusion happens and whatever. So I would need to be very, very involved in this, and probably be the one r- doing the bulk of the work, even if I was working with some professional, you know, film, or not film, but you know, video production- Yeah

people who, who do these kinds of things. And, you know, they, I would have to be very much at the center of that. And so this would be time, [00:49:00] it’s a time commitment. So, you know, Sandy’s like, well… She was sort of pushing me, she’s like, “Why don’t you just record your calls, and then we can use that?” I’m like, “That’s just not gonna be good enough.”

It’s, it’s just gonna be too discombobulated and too… I mean, you can use that as like- Um, inspiration. Like if we need something where I explain this kind of stuff, but I know it all on here. I mean, I’ve done this so many times.

Justin Skycak: Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: You know, and I, and I have all these variations, and sometimes I do it different ways just ‘cause I get bored of doing it one way.

I’m like, “Well, I’ll just kind of do it this way,” you know, or whatever.

Justin Skycak: Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Roberts: You know, and, you know, when anybody’s told the same story over and over again, it’s like even if it’s a good story, you’re just like, “Okay,” you know? Um, that reminds me of like, I remember when I went to my first, uh, high school reunion, and the first person you run into, they’re like, “Oh man, what are you doing?”

And you’re like, “Oh, I went, you know, to college and the this, and I went to this in California,” you know. And then you go, you go, it’s this 20-minute story.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: And the second story, second time it’s 10, 15 minutes. The third, it’s five minutes. [00:50:00] By, by the seventh or eighth person, you can summarize your entire life in three sentences, and you’re like, “And that’s what happened.”

You know? ‘Cause you’re just like, “Can’t do it.” Go

Justin Skycak: through the rounds of compression, yeah.

Jason Roberts: You know? Yeah. And so, but it does allow, you know, like what are the, what are the important beats? Like what do you really, what does this person really need to, to know? What are they really asking? You know. And, um, yeah, so w-we’ll, but this is something we need to do.

We need to do it soon. Um, I think this fall we’re gonna, we’re gonna have a fair number of, um, well, we will have a fair number of schools. You know, but they’re more, they’re smaller. It’s more like, you know, micro schools. There are some public schools for sure, some private schools, but it’s, it’s, um, you know, there’s, they’re sort of at a, at um, at a…

They’re beyond a… I mean, some of them we call pilot. They’re, they’re, they’re, they’re less, they’re more beyond an experiment, but they’re not at scale.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Roberts: But that’s what you wanna do too. I was like, “I don’t, [00:51:00] don’t put 500 people on it. Don’t even put 150.” Like start with like one teacher who has one or two, you know, maybe it’s a dozen kids or maybe have two classes of 20 kid, whatever, but the teacher needs to be like really fully bought in, really wanna make this thing work, serious about getting results, you know, all that kind of stuff ‘cause that’s what’s gonna make…

So if you have a teacher who’s like, say, “Oh, you know, they’re making me use this thing. I hate it. I wish I could just, you know, go back and do things some other way, and I’m just gonna not take it seriously. And if kids aren’t using it or you’re cheating with ChatGPT or whatever, I mean, whatever, that’s not my problem.”

Then like that’s a fail.

Justin Skycak: Yeah. So you need this kind of almost like this relationship founding teacher at each, each school who’s like really serious about making this happen the right way, using the system the

Jason Roberts: right way- And usually there is. Usually there is- … setting example … at least one teacher who’s like, “We had a serious problem, and I wanna solve it.

I’m tired of-“ Mm. “… this is terrible. We need to s-“ And so, [00:52:00] you know, of- oftentimes there, there can be more, but there’s at least one, you know, even at a s- you know, smaller school. And the principal, whoever the lead person is on this thing, they’ve, they’ve kind of recruited this one person, you know, maybe be like the head of math for the middle school or for the high school, this one lead math teacher, and the prin- you know, it could be something like that, right?

Mm. Who are the main people I’m talking to. And I’m like, “Okay, get this lead teacher, and she can You know, make it a success for a smaller group of students, like a big success. And they can go, and they can look at the, look at the MAP scores before and after, whatever, and then they can go, “Wow. Okay.” And so then another teacher can come in and say, “Okay, we have someone who’s already succeeded with it.

She can sit down and talk with you about her experience and best practices, how she integrates it with her classroom, how, how she tells, talks to students about it, [00:53:00] how she holds them accountable, the results they’re gonna see,” you know, whatever. And, and then of course the second– ‘cause the second one, the second teacher is, like, kinda she’s like, “Well, I’ve used ed tech stuff, and I think all ed tech stuff is garbage, and a lot of it doesn’t work, and I think it gets in the way, and I think kids have too much screen time, and I just want them…”

And these are all reasonable, based on the stuff that’s come out and what’s happening, these are all reasonable positions to take. And I’m like, “There is a huge ran- well, ed tech can mean, like, almost anything. Majority of it I, I agree with you, is not gonna be very useful.” I say, “Math academy is exceptionally, um, effective, so you can just ignore your previous experiences.

And, and I’m, and I’m not saying that all other ed tech is bad, but I’m telling you, a math academy will solve your problem and, um, if you wanna solve it.” And so if you can get that second teacher who can go, and they can go– They know that they can’t totally flop around, ‘cause the first one had success.

Then they can [00:54:00] tell, “Okay, well what’s your problem?”

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: They had no problem

Justin Skycak: at all. There’s precedent. This, that, this thing works if you, if you operate it well. “

Jason Roberts: Well, I can’t get my kids to use it.” I’d be like, “What are you talking about? It’s part of their grade.” You know what I mean? You can’t get kids to do your homework.

Just ask

Justin Skycak: so and so what they did, ‘cause clearly it worked out for them, so

Jason Roberts: Yeah.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: Yeah. ‘Cause, ‘cause if, ‘cause if they, you start getting these really great results, then the principal or chief academic or whatever, it’s like they get really excited, like, “Oh, man, this is amazing. Well, what if we do it for the seventh graders as well?”

Or, “What if we do it for these kids and what?” How… You know? And they start, like, going, “Wow, this is, this is great.” And so then– But so that’s what you wanna build from that. But if you brought on, you say, “Well, okay, five teachers involved, and we’re gonna use it at three different, you know, elementary, the middle, and the high.”

And you, you can tell that there’s sort of mixed level of buy-in and mixed level of seriousness, and they’re gonna try and make it contort around some other things they wanna do. And you’re like, “Okay, well then the results are gonna be mixed.” You know, because it’s like, you know, it’s like, let’s say you had these, you know, like, I don’t know, like a, like a, a diet, and you have these great [00:55:00] diet, and you’re like, well, some people, “Well, I only use the diet on Thursdays.”

Like- Well, I do Thur- Yeah … no, I do it Thursdays and Mondays. Not, like, that’s not how it works.

Justin Skycak: That’s, yeah,

Jason Roberts: that’s not a thing. You can’t eat pizza and donuts every other day, and then you eat your Mediterranean diet on Wednesday and Thursday, and just a Mediterranean diet is, doesn’t work. It’s like, come on.

Yeah. Like-

Justin Skycak: It’s not a, it’s not a habit if you habitually skip it. That’s- It’s not a thing. Yeah.

Jason Roberts: So, so you wanna, you wanna build from success. And so I always say, you know, and as, as a, as a business owner, I’m like, well, yeah, you know, tons of people, your instinct is to wanna go big. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And get to sign up 1,000 kids, like, that’s g- like, that is a mistake.

Your, your, it’s your, your, your short, your short term, your, your, your greed, your ambition is gonna get in the way of your long-term success. Just, like, create value for the customer. Make sure it’s a success, and then the, the, the, the, [00:56:00] the, the, the financial success, the business of the co- it’ll take care of itself.

Like, just don’t worry about that. So I always like trying to like, let’s just, let’s not be in a rush to scale, and let’s, and you know, that kinda thing. So, and I, I, that’s, I think is gonna be the recipe for success, you know? Um, also, we just don’t… Here’s the thing is, is we talked about earlier, it’s like in terms of software, it’s like, well, what, what software, what needs to be in this?

in the system for, to allow these people to be successful. What do the admins need to see, the s- school administrators? What do the instructors need to see? What needs to be there for the kids or for the parents? There’s always, you know, different stakeholders. Not even stakeholders, the people who, who need to interface with this thing, and it needs to be clear and effective and all these things.

And if you go big too soon and you don’t have the right things, then it just is not working for a lot of people, [00:57:00] and that’s creating a lot of… Not only are they not getting the value out, and that can create downstream negative consequences. It’s like, “Ah, we tried Math Academy,” and blah, blah, blah, and this didn’t work because we haven’t really solved some of the problems that need to be solved.

Which, you know, which is key, but also it could create a lot of customer support load.

Justin Skycak: Yeah. You got enough- You know … of that already. You don’t need, you don’t need more, more of that. Yeah.

Jason Roberts: So here’s an example. Exams. So we’ve had exams built in since the start of the school year, right? Midterms and final exams are sometime in the fall, maybe it was middle of fall.

Justin Skycak: Final exams, yeah.

Jason Roberts: Final exams, but then, and do we have midterm?

Justin Skycak: We have the infrastructure for f- for midterms, um, but there was a specific sort of way… Well, we implemented it originally where each student would get, like, N number of midterms evenly spaced out. But it turns out, uh, schools need kinda different, framed a little differently, where all the kids kinda take midterms at particular progress markers within the course

Jason Roberts: yeah, I [00:58:00] guess I remember I was talk- Yeah … I did, I guess, I thought I… You know, maybe that isn’t fully implemented. But so, so that has to be fully implemented. But here’s the other thing, too, is, so for exams, now what happens is exams need to be proctored, really. Mm-hmm. Kids, students, you know, you shouldn’t be having an 11-year-old or a 13 or even a 15-year-old taking a final exam at home That’s the recipe for the kids cheating and using ChatGPT or solvers or whatever.

It’s just, just not how you want it. That’s not, uh, the right thing to do. Um, and so, but a lot of times you can’t ch- but where the, where quizzes and stuff, we come and say, “Hey, you can take the quiz now, but you have a 30 XP window to take it,” and that’s, quizzes are relatively low stake, so it’s not a problem.

Okay, so if you have a final exam show up, and it’s like, well, the student can only take it today, well, as the teacher might be like, “Well, listen, today is an assembly. We’re not having [00:59:00] class,” you know, or ha- or whatever. Like, we’re o- we’re, we’re on a field trip or, you know, s- we c- I need to schedule… That needs to happen on Wednesday, not on Monday, not today, ‘cause today’s a holiday and tomorrow’s assembly and Wednesday.

And it should ha- and it has to happen w- during class from, you know, our class is from 10:00 to 11:00 AM. So we, so it needs to be scheduled. The teacher needs to know ahead of time that this is coming up and can say, “Okay, we’re gonna schedule that.” I don’t mind them working. It’s supposed to be taking the final exam or like a midterm.

It’s a 50% mark. Well, they can take it to the 53rd perc- you know, percent, which is fine. We’ll move it a few days, you know, forward or a few days back because that’s gonna fit in the schedule when I can, I’m, where he’s, he’s in the room taking it and whatever. Mm-hmm. So, um, well, that whole scheduling mechanism, alerting teachers that this is coming up, and then we’ll set the time- Yeah

and then change it, that’s non-trivial. That’s a lot of moving parts and a lot of communication, ‘cause if it, you don’t explain things really well, teachers are like, “Well, I don’t, I didn’t know when the, [01:00:00] I didn’t know I could change it,” or, “Well, they took it at home.” And you know, it’s like all kind of problems can go wrong if you don’t get the, the, the communication and interface just right.

And until you have that, and if we just say, “Well, we’ll just roll out the exams,” now you just have, could be craziness. And then, and, and the teacher would be like, “Oh, well, you know, I told my students we’re doing fine,” but they, I told them they had to take it in class, but some kids started it and they didn’t realize they could, and then they finished half one.

Can you reset the exam? It’s just endless- Yeah,

Justin Skycak: yeah …

Jason Roberts: customer support headache to unwind these problems. So you gotta get that stuff really cleaned up and, and done right so that, um, if you go to scale, okay, it’s fine, you do that. There’s a, there’s a school in Bangladesh with 15, 20 students and that happens once or twice and you can just, okay, let me just go in the admin tool, reset.

Okay, it’s, it’s a little bit annoying to have to do that, but [01:01:00] not a big deal. If you have a kid that has, they have 500 kids and it’s like you spend half your day doing stuff like that, you know? And it’s like-

Yeah …

Jason Roberts: so it’s like, don’t roll that stuff out until- Ends up really fast … you have these pieces in place.

So if you have– So it kind of works to our advan- it, it, it worked… It’s better for us to go slowly and, and, and not only educate The customer on how to get the most value out of it, but then build in additional tools and communication and stuff to give them flexibility and stuff they need to make it a success for them.

Justin Skycak: Yeah.

Jason Roberts: And that just takes time because once we’re figuring out with schools, I mean, these are things that like, well, in 2020 you go, “Oh, obviously you’d wanna schedule exam.” But when we first started, we never even think about that. That wasn’t the first thing that popped in our head. We’re like, “Oh, we need final exams and should we really quiz?”

You know. And then, y- you know, had we thought a little more about it or we’re sitting… You know, you might go, “Oh, yeah, you’re gonna wanna schedule that,” or, “Yeah, the teacher’s gonna wanna ma- He’s gonna be able to say this, this, [01:02:00] this, the thing won’t even be able to start the exam until 10:00 AM on Tuesday.”

Mm-hmm. Anyway, so that’s kind of- Yeah …

Justin Skycak: that’s a lot of process. There’s a lot of stuff like that.

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