NZ Business Podcast - Paul Spain
00:04:53 · Paul Spain, Jamie Beaton
[00:04:53] S1: Right. Now, last time last time we spoke, India was you'd kind of figured out India probably, you know, wasn't a useful market for you at that point. Is that still the case, or has that changed? [00:05:04] S0: It's actually funny. So back when we spoke, we'd gone into India, and it was very difficult. It was almost like a needle in the haystack. Because while there's more than a billion people, the share of families that are excited to send their kids abroad to The US for undergrad and pay for that process is fairly low. At that time, we're talking about less than 50,000 people out of a country for billion. What's happened in the last six years is India's gone through a pretty massive economic growth wave, have seen a lot of growth and willingness to spend and also desire to go to some of these different countries for education. And so Crimson actually relaunched in India about four... About... Probably just after I spoke to you, actually, about five years ago, led by a talented guy called Kanal who used to run the College Board, which administers the SAT in India. So he joined our team, and we've been able to now make India a a top six global market for Crimson, one of our fastest growing markets too. And that's an interesting example of how quickly some of these big markets can can shift. India still has a lot of unique dynamics where only a small portion of the country can afford to pay for, you know, US college tuition, but there's also been a huge growth in financial aid. And so more of those talented applicants from rural parts of the country can apply.
00:06:09 · Paul Spain
[00:06:09] S1: You know, you've shared in the past around, you know, chance meetings with people and, you know, new information comes in, and you make a quick change and you go for it. How did that play out in India from, you know, us chatting and just like, oh, yeah, India, you know, that's that's probably not... You know, it doesn't make sense for us at the moment, and now it's it's, you know, one of your one of your big markets.
00:06:33 · Jamie Beaton
[00:06:33] S0: Yeah. It's a classic example of this iteration process where I first hired a fantastic guy, but he was a Indian American from Michigan. And, you know, I naively thought, okay, he's got a lot of cultural connectivity back to India. A lot of his relatives are in India. So he and I thought we'll be able to figure it out. When he got on the ground in India, we quickly realized that actually that local connectivity is so critical, knowing how to get into the schools, knowing how to find the different parent communities, building that network out. So, you know, we tried, you know, we just weren't weren't getting that product cut through, and so we we got out of there. I think what changed is a couple of things. First of all, the market got more savvy when it came to college missions, and there was more willingness to pay for a high quality service. But also, the right leader came along. We found someone who had spent the last ten years of their career leading a college board and also a Coursera in India. And so he had taken a foreign company into India successfully. We thought he was, you know, good local knowledge, and he had a pretty clear game plan and actually sought us out and said, hey. I wanna expand Crimson to India. So, actually, we had a bit of an exec team discussion about this. And given we'd all burnt our fingers off in India the last time, there wasn't much appetite for it. But, you know, a couple of us said, hey. Let's do it. And, you know, we we sent in our man, Kanal, and we've been able to build now a great practice. The interesting thing about many of these markets, not just in Crimson, but in general, is that they can evolve in three or four years quite dramatically. And your go to market strategies, you know, with one team, it can be a total disaster. And in another team with different approach can be very successful, which is why entrepreneurship is messy and fun.
00:08:00 · Paul Spain
[00:08:00] S1: That's interesting, you know, that you were approached on on, you know, on that occasion. Have you had many of those situations arise where, you know, great great talent has come knocking knocking on your door and you you weren't, you know, may... Maybe aware of the the individual or the opportunity?
00:08:17 · Jamie Beaton
[00:08:17] S0: Totally. I mean, I'll tell you a a funny one. I was actually visiting a campus called Yale in US in Singapore, and I was meeting a Kiwi guy that I knew in high school called Andy Chen. This is back when I was 19. And I was in this cafeteria with him, and he... And we're talking about Crimson and what he was up to. And he looked across the room and he said, hey. That guy over there, Andrew, he's actually one of the best in entrepreneurship I've come across. He loves computer science. You go chat with him. So I went and had a a chat with him, and turns out Andrew was half Russian, half American. And, you know, we were thinking about different markets. And then, you know, he began to ask, well, what do you think about Russia? And he described some of the dynamics in Russia at the time. And, you know, I thought, actually, this could be very, very compelling. And so Andrew took a gap year from Yale in US, went to Russia, and began building the market out. And, actually, Russia, for a part of Crimson's early days, was our fourth biggest market. And then Andrew, super talented guy, he ended up becoming our chief revenue officer, and he built Crimson through an enormous wave of growth. You know, really interesting. And, you know, we found him when he was kind of 19 in college, and seeing that growth trajectory is, you know, is very inspiring. To answer your question, we've had a lot of opportunities of folks come to us, but we're always also reaching out, finding new people, you know, thinking of new, you know, new people that could fit in a certain area. Great example is Kevin Park, you know, legendary Kiwi entrepreneur. He helped us take Crimson Global, and he also helped us launch Crimson Global Academy. And then we thought, actually, Concord Visa in the immigration space could be really interesting for him as well, and he's just, you know, hit the ground running, and that business has grown really well.
00:09:44 · Paul Spain, Jamie Beaton, Paul Spain
[00:09:44] S1: Great. Tell us about some of these new things. Maybe start with over this period that sort of, you know, stands out. [00:09:50] S0: We acquired a business called Revision Village, which is the leading provider of international baccalaureate study resources. So if you're a student at Kristin or you're a student, for example, you know, St. Cuthbert's, and you wanna boost your score on the IB, our platform is the most popular for helping you study for those exams. We initially bought this when it was just a math product, and then we expanded it to all the key IB subjects. And then the leader is called Tim Vaughan. Tim used to be one on the exec team and one of the founding hires at Education Perfect, which sold to KKR. And then he joined as CEO of Revision Village. Now over the last several years, I think two and a half, we've taken that from being in zero schools to more than 430 of key IB schools around the world. And so we love Revision Village because it's a really good bang for buck for the students. Revision Village has been a major new part of Crimson and our first major b to b software division of the business. [00:10:40] S1: Yeah. Great. So maybe you [00:10:43] S2: can walk us through a little bit of the [00:10:44] S1: sort of history on the acquisition front because that's not the the only acquisition that you've done. This seems to have been, you know, actually a really important part of the journey so far.