Markets with Madison
00:21:15 · Jamie Beaton, Madison
[00:21:15] S1: Oh, where it nice. [00:21:16] S0: But also one of the earliest acquisitions you made, which was Medview and also Numberworks and Words. Funny story, my first ever job was as an English tutor at Numberworks and Words. [00:21:24] S1: Oh, I love it. I was a student there when I was five to eight. Amazing place. [00:21:28] S0: And look at you now. It obviously worked. [00:21:30] S1: Look at you now. [00:21:30] S0: But I'm interested in these acquisitions that you've made from the more online space into the physical schooling space. What's the long term play? And I'm interested as to why you're getting into the physical aspect of it when everything seems to be going into sort of like the online course AI domain at the moment.
00:21:48 · Jamie Beaton
[00:21:48] S1: So in general, Crimson's a heavily online ecosystem. So we've got these offices in 20 countries, but the core delivery model is when you sign up for Crimson, most of your sessions are online through our app with live coaches around the world, different content, AI tutors, things like this. So the flagship is online, but there are some experiences where physical is really beneficial. Take a student who's eight who wants to rebuild their passion for math. A number works physical academy where they can sit next to their tutor and have that experience when they get a bit stuck or bored, have that tutor support them physically gets much better results in online in that kind of context. Where online is very powerful is typically for older students in high school or even an intermediate school that are quite motivated. That's where online is really great because it's flexible, it's convenient and of course you can tap into experts from anywhere in the world. You know, just before this I was coaching a boy who's at a boarding school in The US over in North Carolina. And so, you know, that access is much better than someone you can find, for example, within that local community. So online is the heart of Crimson, but take for example our new physical school in Takapuna. If you're a student who wants a personalized learning experience, which also is going to use Crimson's online learning too, but also you've got that physical community, which is great for a school as well in those formative years, you know, year one to year eight. That's where I think physical is still in its element.
00:22:59 · Madison, Jamie Beaton
[00:22:59] S0: So you think there's still gains, in fact, more gains to be had in the bricks and mortar of education as opposed to online, because all of the progress has been online to Yeah, [00:23:09] S1: mean, I think online will keep ripping and online will be the majority, but I think blended will become very powerful where, you know, you'll have a student say sitting in Takapuna, they'll be taking their math class in person, then they'll be doing an online research project with a professor who's currently at Columbia. And they'll be learning what it's like to, for example, do their first literature review or use a JSTOR database. And that experience couldn't be easily facilitated in just a physical school. And, you know, I think that will ultimately be the future, hybrid learning models around the world. [00:23:34] S0: You are a lifelong learner. You're also now becoming a professor at the Auckland University through their entrepreneurialism degree. Do you feel like you also want to educate when you have enough on your plate running a unicorn business?
00:23:34 · Madison, Jamie Beaton
[00:23:34] S0: You are a lifelong learner. You're also now becoming a professor at the Auckland University through their entrepreneurialism degree. Do you feel like you also want to educate when you have enough on your plate running a unicorn business? [00:23:49] S1: You know, I'm really passionate about helping more young Kiwis launch companies. When I went through high school, the idea of entrepreneurship really never even entered my lexicon as something that I could do. I always thought actually entrepreneurship was what you said if you were unemployed. And my mom... I mean it is, isn't it? Yeah, until it gets cold. But, you know, I saw this and I thought, you know, want more young Kiwis launching companies. And I actually think in New Zealand right now, we're not capital constrained anymore. We're actually entrepreneur constrained. How many folks want to go out there and swing big and eat the glass and build these great companies? And so the idea is I'm going to teach these 18 year olds with Fengzhou as soon as they come into the university about what it's like to build these companies and hopefully change their career direction from say going off to a big four, which I love, but building more companies. So that's really the ambition. [00:24:35] S0: Given Jamie and I both talk at 2x speed, in the hours we spend together in New York, we covered a lot. But there's one topic that seems to occupy a significant segment of his brain. Is that your long term play, politics?
00:24:35 · Madison, Jamie Beaton
[00:24:35] S0: Given Jamie and I both talk at 2x speed, in the hours we spend together in New York, we covered a lot. But there's one topic that seems to occupy a significant segment of his brain. Is that your long term play, politics? [00:24:47] S1: I think I'll be building for a long time to come. Yeah. I think nothing is quite as fun as entrepreneurship where you can, you know, see an opportunity in the world and go build it, rally a team behind it. And, you know, I guess education's always really fueled my fires. [00:25:01] S0: In America, the line between education and politics can be blurry and is especially so under this administration. I'm interested in if you have a view on the, some would say, ideological hijacking of these education institutions like Ivy League, Harvard, Stanford. Is that something you've personally experienced being at these institutions? And if so, what's your view on what that means to education?
00:25:25 · Jamie Beaton, Madison
[00:25:25] S1: So I guess, I think about my time at, say, Harvard undergrad, I took all these classes in areas from math to stats to finance to business to entrepreneurship. Very few of them have any kind of political exposure in general, and so I think for the typical student, you don't really see politics into the classroom almost at all. Even in international relations or government style class, still not that much. I think where you see it sometimes is in debates or in campus protests or if you go and join political clubs like the Republicans on campus. At Yale Law, they have things like, for example, the Federalist Society. And if you join that, you sort of yell to the campus that you're a Republican and you're really proud of that, and that will trigger a bit of animosity sometimes, but on the whole I would say it's quite exaggerated. From an ideological standpoint, about 92% of undergrads at Harvard are Democratic voters, and so you do, of course, have that skew, but also international students tend to have a pretty balanced, you know, neutral view as well. And so on the whole, I wouldn't say it's as highly charged as it seems. A lot of the protests are about, certain issues like Israel Palestine. But if you're just a Republican guy rolling around or girl, you can have a pretty chill four years. [00:26:28] S0: What about that from the top down, though? Have you noticed or witnessed at all any ideological views stemming from educators