NZ Business Podcast - Paul Spain
00:12:50 · Jamie Beaton, Paul Spain
So although we do a lot of acquisitions, it doesn't it doesn't tend to be a huge share of our revenue relative to just the organic build out of Crimson Education's core college admissions business. [00:13:01] S1: And Number Works, that one's, you know, quite some time back. Tell us a little bit about, you know, that, how that how that's gone, and how that sort of fits into the overall picture.
00:13:01 · Paul Spain, Jamie Beaton
[00:13:01] S1: And Number Works, that one's, you know, quite some time back. Tell us a little bit about, you know, that, how that how that's gone, and how that sort of fits into the overall picture. [00:13:09] S0: Totally. Well, first of all, I'm eternally grateful for Numberworks. I I went along when I was, I think, 3.5 with my Numberworks coach, Lloyd. Mom would take me out there, and when I finished my Numberworks math and English, I'd go get a doughnut afterwards and some Papa Jack's, so that was good fun. And that was really one of the things that sparked my initial passion for math and English. So when the Numberworks team was interested in a partner to help them grow the business, we thought it was a great opportunity for us. And Numberworks caters to five to 14 year olds, and it's actually quite a world leader when it comes to using computer learning where students have typically one teacher supervising three or four students, and the results are really fantastic and has been for now going on nearly forty years. So we've seen Numberworks grow fantastic, really well under the Crimson banner, and they've got great traction in Australia, and they've got really a lot of popularity in places like Sydney and Melbourne, and then it's continued to do very well in New Zealand. So very proud of the Numberworks team. They've also rebuilt the platform and, you know, incorporated a whole variety of new tools and student experiences. So it's been fantastic, and it's been nearly ten years under Crimson now.
00:14:12 · Paul Spain
[00:14:12] S1: Yeah. Fantastic. Now, you've talked about The US market being your number one market now, and that's your biggest base. Walk us through that journey because it's not necessarily a predictable journey when you when you get into The US market. Right? And, yeah, it it can it can be pretty brutal too.
00:14:34 · Jamie Beaton
[00:14:34] S0: 100%. And, you know, it's funny. Last year, was teaching a class at the University of Auckland with my co founder, Feng Zhou, and we studied many of New Zealand's unicorn companies. And the recurring pattern in these companies, whether it be, you know, businesses like Halter or Rocket Lab or Pushpay, Xero, etcetera, is they typically have had to get, you know, quite massive US traction. And I think the thing about The US market is when you crack into it, there's high willingness to pay. It's a big market. And each state's almost like its own country, so there's a lot of depth there. But, of course, it requires a lot of, you know, nuance to adjust your go to market, your product to make it work. In our case, the good thing about what we have already built before we entered America is we built this training engine to get a 14 year old who's somewhat ambitious, make them really ambitious, help them find where they wanna go in their future, build all their core skills, and then get them into these top schools. And the same passion that a Singaporean mom has to get their child into Yale is very similar to an Upper East Side mom trying get their kid into Columbia. And so when we rolled into America, you know, we focused on some of the key states that have, you know, pretty fantastic universities. California's got schools like Stanford and UC Berkeley. You know, the East Coast got all the Ivy League schools. And so we focused on a couple of key states and used our city launcher model, began to get traction on the ground. We did all kinds of things from live event. Like, example, this summer, I'm doing about 30 live events across North America. I just came from one on Friday in Silicon Valley. There was 300 moms that turned up and dads, and they were pumped to hear about how to get into Stanford. We just had about 6% of the world's Stanford emits in the early round through Crimson. And so the families are really curious about that process. And as you can imagine, Silicon Valley families are very tech savvy, so they like Crimson's data driven, technology first approach to college admissions, and it really matches their intensity in terms of the ambitions they have for their child as well.
00:16:21 · Jamie Beaton, Paul Spain
So I think, overall, when we first entered America, The US market wasn't yet so focused on these really competitive colleges as as a primary goal for all of these families, but it's evolved now where that's really nationwide. And so we're able to get early traction in New York and California that really snowballed, and then we took that to more places like Chicago, Texas, etcetera, Florida, and we've really kept that growing. And then we're we're actually been quite fortunate to get some good, you know, marketing coverage in The US in places like The Wall Street Journal or Fox or, you know, CNBC and stuff. And that's helped to build Crimson as sort of the national brand for college admissions. But it all began, you know, I think our first thing was a... We had an ice cream social with about 20 kids in Palo Alto, California. You've gotta start somewhere. [00:17:03] S1: Yeah. Oh, that's that's good. And how how has your relationship sort of developed with the the universities them... Themselves?
00:17:13 · Jamie Beaton
[00:17:13] S0: Well, really good. I mean, I've... First of all, I've kept studying at more of them, so I've been making my way around. You know, recently, I won't say what university it was, but I received an email from one of my professors, or rather one of the deans, and I was a bit nervous because I had been traveling for Crimson and had missed, you know, a couple of classes, they wanted to meet me. And so I rolled into the office, you know, slight butterflies, and I sat down. The dean looked at me and said, Jamie, I'm actually going to be leaving the university soon, and I'd love to come work for Crimson if there's any spots available. This particular fellow wanted to move to Europe and do some, you know, more flexible work. And Crimson, of course, has a lot of remote work options for our college admissions counselors. I thought that was that was pretty funny. But I guess, in short, you know, what we've been able to do is build Crimson as a fantastic employer of choice for many of these graduates. So whether it be, you know, at education schools like UPenn all the way to Harvard undergrad, a lot of graduates are really excited to work for Crimson, both in college admissions roles, teaching roles, tutoring roles, some full time, some part time. And it's a really good way for someone to convert their passion for academics into an earnings stream and also a way to inspire students. So it's definitely become very mainstream. We also hire a lot of former admissions officers that used to work in admissions that then join Crimson and provide advice to a next wave. And it's quite impactful work because when you're in the admissions office, you're often declining people and accepting some. But when you're working on the Crimson side, you're actually making every student you interact with a stronger profile, a better applicant, helping them get more career direction. So it often can feel quite fulfilling. So, yeah, that's been very exciting. And I think we've continued to, you know, build relationships with more and more institutions, and it's, you know, it's been key to our success.