#17: Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator)

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:00:00]:

There is nothing more than a certificate of completion that comes from Tech Elevator. There's no fancy degree. It is a certificate of completion. And what's been astounding is hearing from our graduates land saying, I'm prouder of this piece of paper than I am of my diploma. And so the shifting mindset about learning is that when you align learning with the things that the world needs, like magical things happen. Land that's been just so fun to see.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:31]:

Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs land those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I am Jeffrey Stern, your resident cartographer here, and today we are mapping the future of education land of job placement. Our guest is Anthony Hughes, who may actually have been one of the first Clevelanders I met in the midst of figuring out if I'd be moving to Cleveland. Land with that tangent aside, anthony is the CEO and co founder of Tech Elevator, which was recently acquired by Stride back in November of 2000. Land 20 tech Elevator is an educational platform designed to support the rapid acquisition of software development skills that can lead to meaningful careers in the world of technology. Proverbially a coding boot camp. This was truly one of my favorite conversations so far. Anthony's passion for helping people realize their potential is infectious and I hope you all take away from it as much as I have. Enjoy. Before we kind of dive into Tech Elevator, I'd love if you could just provide a little perspective on if you look back on your career and the thread that kind of ties it together and you pull on that a little. What is the essence of that thread and what kind of brought you to the world of education and entrepreneurship?

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:01:59]:

I think the thread that ties my career together or the thread that I think is most evident is the desire to help people fulfill their potential. So where I felt most engaged is when I'm helping other people and when I'm seeing people who I see enormous potential in and maybe the world hasn't rewarded them yet, that I can act as an inflection point in their lives and some cases build programs around it, and in other cases build businesses around it. And that's where I find myself today.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:34]:

That's probably a good segue to talk about Tech Elevator, which maybe is the embodiment of helping people realize their potential. But I'd love if you could just start with what is Tech Elevator?

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:02:46]:

So tech elevator. Tech Elevator is an intensive technology training program which identifies people who have kind of the natural cognitive ability that aligns with the field of software development. We identify them, we take them through an intensive 14 week full time reskilling program teaching them technology skills, and then we place them into companies to work as junior software developers. And those companies range from tech companies all the way through to Fortune 500, Fortune 50 financial companies as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:22]:

What was ultimately the inspiration for Tech Elevator? How did you come to found this business?

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:03:28]:

I've been in Cleveland since 2004. A couple of different opportunities led me to work at an organization in town that everybody knows on this podcast called Jumpstart. And at Jumpstart, I was hired to run an entrepreneurial mentoring program. I was hired to start an entrepreneurial mentoring program, Land. The whole premise of this program was to take promising up and coming entrepreneurs and connect them with serially successful entrepreneurs. Today. It's known as the Burton D. Morgan Mentoring Program. And I had the great honor and privilege to found that company at Jumpstar. And so while I was there, it was a wonderful opportunity to understand and to dig into what makes an ecosystem work. What are the components of an ecosystem? The financial components, the entrepreneurial components, the intellectual property components. And in our case, we were very much focused on the talent component. And so these entrepreneurs would come to us, they would say, look, I've got this idea. It's really nascent. Can you connect me with people that can guide me through the process? And so we built the entrepreneurial mentoring program, and we would help these folks build their team and get product market fit and raise capital. But when they went to scale, they stumbled because there wasn't the technology talent in the Cleveland ecosystem that they needed to grow their startups. And so that was intensely frustrating for me to see that happen. The lack of digital literacy in Northeast Ohio was pretty extreme. I mean, at the time we started Tech Elevator, there were 6500 software developer positions advertised in the region, and less than 500 computer science degree degrees conferred in the whole of Northeast Ohio. So there was just this massive supply demand mismatch. And what's well known in kind of the tech world is that about 50% of the output of our computer science degrees in the region are actually leaving the region. So, I mean, just really paltry numbers in terms of, like, tech talent and computer science capabilities in the region. And so that was the problem that I saw. I'd been at Jumpstart for about three years. At that time, I was just really oriented towards kind of solving that problem. I had one of my mentors, a favorite of mine, Jenny Zamberlin, who's the CEO of a company called Avantia, which is in Valley View. Jenny had just made an early seed stage investment in a company down in Akron called the Software Craftsmanship Guild. And Jenny said to me, look, I think there's something really special happening here. They've just got their first class started. We need somebody who can kind of run the business and build the business. Would you be willing to do that? And so I looked at the business. It looked really interesting to me, it definitely looked like it was solving the problem that I'd identified. And so I left Jumpstart to join the Software Craftsmanship Guild and to lead that as president. We grew up for about a year, and then we ended up getting an offer, and it was a fine offer, but we were really early on, and there was so much potential in the business land I tried to persuade the founder, look, trust me, stick with it. There's so much more opportunity here. But unfortunately, I couldn't persuade him. Well, unfortunately, at the time, fortunately for me, later, I couldn't persuade him. And so we ended up selling the Software Craftsmanship Guild business, which was my first foray into the world of coding boot camps. So in many ways, that was the genesis for Tech Elevator because I loved it. I mean, it was just so fun to be in this intersection of economic recovery, of workforce, of the demand for tech workers, of the startup ecosystem, of growing technology companies and frankly, of people that just wanted to do better and be better in their lives. And being able to say, if you're willing to put in the energy and the hustle and the hard work, we can help you with that transformation. And so even though at that time there were now 68 coding boot Camps operating in the country, I said, Damn it, I don't care if it's unoriginal. I just want to do that, because it was just so fun. And so I just sort of went back and started Tech Elevator, and so glad I did. And there's a lot that happened in the starting story, but that's the high level.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:52]:

Yeah. I'm curious, as you began to start Tech Elevator, how much of the playbook from the Software Craftsmanship Guild did you kind of leverage Land carry with you? And how much was it ultimately a different path from that company before?

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:08:10]:

Yeah, I mean, the playbook of the Software Craftsmanship Guild wasn't that different to the playbook of the Coding Boot Camp industry, which is anywhere between a ten and 16 week intensive, full time program designed to take people with no skills and get them into a job in technology. So our playbook at the Software Craftsmanship Guild was based on other practices that were taking place around the country that had started maybe three years before. And when I went to start Tech Elevator, we had the framework of that playbook. Now, that playbook was good for maybe the first eight months, and then we had to start writing it, writing it on our own. But I think the thing that we did really well when we started Tech Elevator land this is an opportunity to bring up my co founders. We founded Tech Elevator. There were three of us who founded Tech Elevator. So you may know Aaron Cornell.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:04]:

He's a good friend of mine, CFO at actual.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:09:06]:

There you go. So he's a good pre COVID drinking buddy Aaron has just exited from Exploris and so he was kind of the financial guy and then David Wintrick was the architect at Pay Gov. Land he built a system that processed at the time $150,000,000,000 for the US treasury. And so when he agreed to join me I had the technical founder that I needed to start Tech Elevator and I've been the business development marketing guy really since the start. And so the things that we did really well were that we just took the caliber of instructors to another level. David with his chops, there really wasn't anybody really in the coding bootcamp industry that could claim to have built a system as significant as Pay Gov, right? And that's been our blueprint for instructors. Our instructors average 20 years experience. They are phenomenal human beings that take enormous pleasure guiding and mentoring and helping people kind of flourish. And David was the first of those to come in and that was sort of one sort of major thing that we said we're just not going to compromise. And so while really most of the industry was sort of trying to find ways to lower the cost of their instruction by having people with less experience, we just said look, learning to code is the sort of cognitive equivalent of climbing a mountain and it really matters who your trail guide is. And so at the core of Tech Elevator has to be a phenomenal technical education. The other thing that we did, which a lot of programs have now followed us, but I don't think have done to the extent or as well, was we said, look, the essence of what we're doing here is not just to teach people to code. It's to teach people to code so that they can get a job in technology as a software developer. And if you fundamentally recognize that the goal is getting a job as a software developer then teaching people to code is just one part of that component. The other part or the other component I should say is the soft skills, career readiness and connections to industry that's so critical. And so we came out of the gate with really sort of two parallel programs a coding education and a career education or a career placement program. Land that has been just game changing for Tech Elevator. That's been the genesis of our outcomes and has really helped us sort of take the lead in the industry from a performance standpoint.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:43]:

Speaking of outcomes, what are the kinds of results that you see of people going through the platform and on the flip side of that, when you talk about realizing potential and a certain aptitude, who are the people that are coming to Tech Elevator and going through the program?

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:11:58]:

So from an outcome standpoint we've got a 95% graduation rate. It's on time. So in 14 weeks we have a 92% job placement rate. Slipped a little bit. It was 94% before COVID But it's a pretty spectacular number considering kind of the job market that we're in. And we have an average days to hire of 24 days to hire, and the average Tech Elevator student sees a $23,000 salary increase as a result of going through our program. So I'm incredibly proud of those numbers. It is like the essence of accountability. It's the essence of giving people a return on their investment and making education paid. And those numbers are published and audited, published twice a year. And we're really proud of the role that we lay in trying to drive greater transparency in the industry so that consumers can actually make a choice. We're the only coding boot camp in the state of Ohio that publishes with the industry standards group sir. So those are like, I'll stop banging that drum. But it's so that's extraordinary. The other thing is really, like, I got back into this industry after the first run with the Software Guild because I really, truly believe in the transformational power of this industry, but it also has the risk of kind of bad actors slipping in, making claims about outcomes that just aren't published or audited. And so that's been a big thing for me, is just sort of standards and transparency and various other things. In terms of the profile of our students, it's delightful how varied their backgrounds are. So we've got students who come to us straight out of high school. We've got a student who was 65 when she graduated from the program by way of educational background, people with a GED all the way through to people with PhDs. We even had an MD come through the program. So it's so eclectic. The sweet spot, I would say, is probably in that sort of 20 to 40 age range, maybe even tighter the 25 to 35 kind of age range. These are people who are really smart. They're curious. They're people that really enjoy learning. They found themselves in a career, typically, where they're just not feeling challenged, and they know that they're smarter than the work they're doing. They know they can do better, they can be better, and they just feel like they're just they're churning. They're they're treading water. And so, you know, they start to see, you know, maybe they have friends who did a computer science degree or, you know, some buddies that they meet at work who are in the It department and they just sort of kind of say, hey, that looks fun. And they start to dig in, and somehow or another, they come to find Tech Elevator land, come through our program land. Lo and behold, they get to plug into a career in tech.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:52]:

You've introduced a few topics here that I want to kind of explore more at a macro level and maybe I'll start with accountability, which is something that you mentioned as kind of the crux of what you're doing at Tech Elevator. And I'm not going to blanket throw the whole traditional college and university system under the rug here, but a little bit in that when you look at it's, not particularly outcome driven in terms of job placement. And one of the things that I keep coming back to when I think about higher education is how it seems these days. There's an unbundling of it, where in the same way that you had newspapers and the sports section became Twitter and dating became Bumble, and everything has its new part in very much the same way, education is kind of having that unbundling moment. And the goal of education, my brother is in college right now. Part of it is learning and critical thinking, and part of it is social and part of it is signaling, and part of it is supposed to be job placement. But the paradigm of go to college and get a good job, the story of that is, I think, fading a bit. And so I'd love to get your perspective on that idea of the unbundling of the university and how you think about Tech Elevator in the context of really owning a specific value proposition of that.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:16:12]:

Yeah, it's really hard right now to justify the value of a university degree, right? I mean, there are some universities and there are some MBAs, but in aggregate, it's really hard to justify the cost of a university degree and the debt burden that higher education has put on individuals and on the nation overall. Right? So when you think that I believe that the cost of education has risen eight times faster than wage growth in the US since, like, the late 80s, right? And so education is a privilege, right. Enlightenment is a privilege. Right. So there's a big argument around enlightenment. And I will say, and I would never trade my experience, I got to go to university for free, by the way, so that it's easy. It's an easier cost equation from the University of Edinburgh. But I think if you can afford it, if you can afford to send your kids, if you can take the cost and afford it, then you should do it. Like, if my daughter was 16 and thinking about what she wanted to do next, go to college, work out what you want to be, you have the luxury and the privilege to do that. For so many people, they don't. Right? And they're coming out of universities with honestly, like, worthless degrees, and those degrees don't have any translation to the needs of the workforce. Right. Land so I think we just have kind of a moment of reckoning right now around just the value of a college degree. That doesn't mean that there isn't a place, I mean, I think, like, critical thinking, the ability to sort of determine what's a fact and what's not, like, God, we need that so badly right now. But what we do is we're not trying to displace university. I think our outcomes and our return on investment beg questions of the value and the return on investment of a university degree. But really what we're trying to do is be that sort of last mile training that actually acts as that on ramp into the workforce. I graduated with a degree in American Studies. It was fascinating, it was hard, it was a really enjoyable experience, but it was absolutely economically useless. Like, no employer has ever said in the history of the world that I'm not hiring them unless they have a degree in American Studies, unless it's a Department of American Studies. I don't know. Right. So for me, I graduated from college and bumped around for six years. Land if we're okay with that as a society that you have to bump around for six years before you finally find your place, then okay, but I don't think we should be. And particularly when you're coming from maybe you're going first generation into college and your family doesn't have the means or can't support you, you need to plug in and stern earning right away. And that's where the Jeff Weiner sort of skills, not degrees mantra is really important. And so, yeah, I think Unbundling is important. That's going to be a challenge for universities because, you know, the bundling is what makes them, you know, has made them survive and justify those those costs. And and tied to that in some ways with that, unbundling is also the OPM industry. And these are just massive middlemen organizations whose life is designed to sort of mark up university. Right. I mean, the cost of a credit hour online is more expensive than the cost of a brick and mortar credit hour. And that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. But it makes sense if you understand there's somebody in the middle who's marking it up, and that's the OPM industry. Anyway, I think it's an interesting conundrum. I'm happy at the place that I'm in in the education spectrum.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:07]:

Yeah. One thing I want to double down on there is this idea that with what you're doing at Tech Elevator, it's not just about learning to code, but it's learning to code to get a job as a software developer. Land I think what I want to explore there is my background was in computer science from an academic institution. And what you learn in that is very different than what I would learn going to Tech Elevator. So from that perspective, I'm curious, your thoughts on trade schools and apprenticeship type, like these alternative approaches to education that we don't really have, at least here in the US. Land how you think about maybe Tech Elevator from that perspective as well?

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:20:52]:

Yeah, I think there's a need for more of it, to be honest with you. The perspective I think the Germans have done apprenticeships really well. The UK is not too bad at it either. And certainly I think it's like there are professions HVAC, technician, plumbers, various other pretty nicely well compensated professions that don't require clearly don't require a college degree, but they do require sort of technical skills. And so I think electricians as well. There's a lot of opportunity essentially to work backwards from the opportunity and the skills and knowledge that's required to do that. And so I think we would do well to have more sort of formalities around the in our particular industry. I think what we're proving is that you don't actually necessarily need any kind of formalized apprenticeship. There are some partners that we have that we train for that do it, and they do a wonderful job. Some of it just comes down to the acceptance of employers as well. So oftentimes we found ourselves in early conversations when we're first meeting a company where they really feel they need that computer science degree, and that's the comfort that they can take like that there's some kind of quality check involved, and it takes us a while to sort of break down that barrier. Listen, just hire one of our graduates. Just see what they're capable of. But very quickly, we see that breakdown fast to the point where I've had some employers tell us that they have a strong preference for a Tech Elevator graduate over a computer science graduate. Some of it's just really about like an entry level hire is hard work to hire. Right? They need time to get up to speed. They take training six months before they're productive. What we try land do at Tech Elevator is produce somebody that's valuable to their employer from day one. They're code ready. They're familiar with the tools. They're familiar with the development methodologies. They've got familiarity with scrum and agile practices so that they can make their new boss's life easier, not harder for some period. And so we've sort of taken a different we teach concepts of computer science that are relevant in their careers, but we don't dig into some really esoteric principles. But we very much focus on the practical skills that are going to see people be successful from day one. The other thing we teach our students is we teach them how to learn. So fundamentally recognizing that what we teach you in 14 weeks pales in comparison to the enormity of the information that you don't know. But your career trajectory will be defined by your appetite for learning. And let us give you some of the tools to support that appetite to continue to sort of grow your knowledge base and your skill sets.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:47]:

Yeah. When you brought up big companies, this came to me. Why is it that more of these large tech companies don't have their own internal, very targeted and specific software development programs that kind of parallel or it would even be competitive to what you're doing at Tech Elevator, but I don't really see those, and I'm curious why that's the case.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:24:11]:

I think it's not the case that they don't. So one of the things that's been really interesting for us is we always thought that we would be a pure consumer education business and we're now a consumer land, an enterprise education business. So we have clients that are individuals who are reskilling themselves and now we have clients who are companies who are reskilling their employees en masse. And so that's been a really exciting development over the past couple of years that's been building momentum. And the genesis of it was that we had one very large financial institution that just said to us, look, you guys are graduating people who four months beforehand were baristas or Uber drivers or low level sort of administrators and they are keeping up with our computer science grads, in some cases eclipsing them. If you can do that with sort of Joe and Jane Public, what can you do with our employees who are part of our organization and we don't have a place to take them in their careers? Could you run a test and could you reskill five people? And so we took five people and we reskilled them. They gave us non technical people and we gave them back software developers. And now in that particular instance, we've reskilled a few hundred employees for them. And we're seeing more and more of that happen. And what's been really exciting for us because we're a very mission driven company. So the mission of Tech Elevator is to elevate people, companies and communities land as it pertains to communities. We really don't want to exacerbate the inequities that already exist in Tech, that it is an overwhelmingly white male field. And so what we've said is that the output of Tech Elevator should represent the communities that we serve. And we're doing better and better at that. But when we get to work with enterprise, with big companies, land their priorities around more inclusive paths to opportunity, we also get to drive that. And so we've seen companies who are really focused on driving diversity in their technology ranks give us diverse employees to reskill. And that's been super exciting for us to advance. That part of our mission as well. So it's happening more and more. There's some well known case studies. Like Home Depot has this program called The Orange Method where they're taking associates who are working in their stores and reskilling them into software developers. There's a program that Disney did called Code Rosie, taking female employees, I think, from their theme parks and teaching them software development. So the companies that are really ahead of the curve, they're doing some cool things. We hope to be making some announcements with some Cleveland companies coming up soon. If there are other companies listening, like we're all about it. I think this is a skill set that unlike a lot of kind of corporate education, this skill set pays dividends like really fast, right? So you can make an investment in somebody who might be a $40,000 sort of administrative assistant or whatever, and you can spend $10,000 to reskill that person into a software developer, and you're still ahead at a market cost of a software developer with the skill set that that person has. Now, of course, you have to give them a raise because now they've got a more valuable skill set. But in the case of, like, Home Depot, essentially what the do with their employees is they say, we'll pay for your training, and then we're going to pay you kind of an apprenticeship wage until we recoup the cost of our training, and then you're going to get the salary. So in some ways, they're just floating the training money to these employees anyway. So I think there's a lot of things that companies can do to be more creative, and there's a lot of things that our policymakers can do to incent companies. I think the American economy has really been built on if a company doesn't have the skill set that they need, they tend to jettison people and try land hire them from outside. So when you talked about kind of European apprenticeship models, the German economy as an example, they very much sort of focus on developing their own employees. So we started to see that happening with a really tight labor market. And then obviously the pandemic hit, but the companies that sort of saw the fruits of those reskilling initiatives and upskilling initiatives, they've kept going with it. And that should be commended as well. So, yeah, hopefully we'll have some fun announcements to share with you guys soon.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:40]:

Yeah, stay tuned, everyone. I'll be tuning in myself. I want to build on the financial creativity for a moment. There's definitely been a well, I'd like to get your perspective on this trend fad, but certainly growing interest in Isas, in these income share agreements, which represent really kind of a flip in terms of incentives and structure to traditional loan and upfront payment paradigm. And I'd love if you could just kind of take us through what's the case at Tech Elevator and how you are thinking about different financial vehicles that participants in Tech Elevator have available to them.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:29:21]:

Yeah, I think the Isa is a hot topic right now, good and bad. Before I talk about the Isa, a big part of Tech Elevator when we started the program was how do we make this program as accessible as possible? How do we make sure that cognitive ability is the gating element and not the means to afford the program? And so we've gone through what is a fairly onerous and laborious process to get every Tech Elevator location registered with workforce training boards so that we can get access to government funds, workforce training funds to lower the barrier of entry for Tech Elevators. So we're really proud that we've been able to secure hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in support. Of our students to lower the barrier of entry. We launched a program called Represent Tech last summer, which was a million dollar commitment that we made for the next three years to give scholarships to historically underrepresented people. But at the end of the day, there's a lot more that there's a lot of other people that need to find ways to get into our program. And the cost of our program is not inexpensive. It's $15,500. We believe it justifies the return on investment, but people don't have that money sitting around. And so we're the only program in the country that has a partnership with Sally May that we're really proud of because they vetted a ton of boot camps and chose to pilot with Tech Elevator, little Tech Elevator in Cleveland, Ohio. And that's on the back of our outcomes. We have other sort of private lending partners. And then we've thought long and hard about this Isa stuff. Yeah, I'm sure Isas for everyone here simply say, you don't pay us now, you pay us when you get a job. The small print is a little bit more complicated than that. So in many cases, the Isa is still alone. You are going to pay us when you are above a certain income threshold. There are cases you would have to be under a certain income threshold for an extraordinarily long period of time that would be very sad to be able to dodge repaying an Isa. It is still essentially a loan. And so for those who have Isas, they've had to sort of navigate the waters of regulatory because it's essentially considered to be a loan product. We have a partner now in stride, a parent company and a sibling boot camp in Galvanized that offers an Isa that I actually believe is very student friendly. You only pay 10% of your income for 48 months, and I think it's got a cap of, like, 1.4 times tuition. So that's a relatively I think that's the methodology that you want to take as a student to fund. I think that's a fair one. It's not as good a deal as Sally May, but for some people, that's what they're more comfortable taking, and that gives them the courage to take the first step. So I think for everybody, there's a funding mechanism that makes the most sense. And I feel like it's our responsibility to sort of educate them about the particular directions, land the total cost of those things. What we're seeing with the Isa is there are some bad actors out there, right? So they're representing I mean, the messaging is like, if you're not somebody who's inclined to look at small print and increasingly, as consumers, we just accept small print all the time because it's a user agreement on every app we sign up. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:52]:

Click rest.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:32:54]:

Okay, I accept. But the practical reality is, like, there are programs that have been whacked by regulators because they're essentially giving people the impression that if this doesn't work out for you, you don't have to pay, and that is not the case. If you don't get $100,000 job, then you walk away scot free, that is absolutely not the case. And so it's leading people down a path, and it's under a false pretense. And at Tech Elevator, we fundamentally believe that you got to be honest with the consumer. Upfront transparent. Here's what you're getting into. I mean, sometimes we actively sell against ourselves, right? Like, if somebody thinks that all they have to do is show up land, get on the Tech Elevator train, kick their feet up, read a paper, order a snack, and then be taken to the Shangrila destination of a job at Highland Software, it ain't happening. Like you are in the engine room shoveling coal. You're going to work your tail off, and we're going to let you know that right, because it's hard and you don't just show up. You're going to work every day and you're going to earn it. Nothing great isn't earned land. So we sell against ourselves so people know what they're getting into. And we just believe from a financial standpoint that's a moral obligation. You shouldn't be signing off on these things or accepting people's money if they're not a good fit for the program. And you certainly shouldn't be connecting them with products that could be damaging to them if the don't understand what that product looks like going in. That's just who we are as a company.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:30]:

Yeah, I think it ties into your philosophy on accountability and transparency. But yeah, the financial vehicles are interesting because I just think about it from the perspective of colleges, and if you take a very outside glance at the student debt problem, I don't think we've cracked the right financial vehicle yet. That everyone really just understands. And it's definitely interesting to see how Isas are developing and just alternative financial vehicles for education.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:35:03]:

It's fascinating. I'll give you some perspective on that. So Mitch Daniels of Purdue is a very progressive president, does some really interesting things, and Purdue adopted an Isa and got a lot of press for the Isa, if you dig into that. The Isa is only offered, I believe, to juniors and seniors in the engineering department. Right. Like, if you go to Purdue and you decide to study American Studies, there ain't no Isa for you. You're not going to be able to pay it back.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:34]:

It's a matter of, you want to.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:35:36]:

Do a computer science degree and you can make it through those first two years of fucking around. We'll back you, baby. That's it. People are expecting it's a return on investment.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:49]:

Sure.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:35:50]:

Some of the boot camps in California were literally saying to people, we're backing you. We're with you all the way. And then they were signing people up for an Isa and turning around and selling it for $0.60 on the dollar. And they'd raised their prices to accommodate that. $0.60 on the dollar would be the old sticker price of the boot camp before the Isa. I mean, where is your moral compass? That's the thing that we have to navigate. We might do an Isa, but we'll only do it when it's good for students and we feel like it is like the bare and appropriate thing to do. It's just going to be one option.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:26]:

Yeah, and the proof is in the pudding. That's why the outcomes are important when you think about these things. So you mentioned Stride pretty recently. There's been some big developments for Tech Elevator. Tell us about the acquisition.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:36:39]:

Yeah, so at the end of November, we announced that we will be part of the Stride family of companies. Stride, formerly K. Twelve Education rebranded itself at the same time as the acquisition because they're really about the full educational journey. Not K through twelve, but K through grave, I guess. And so Tech Elevator and Med Certs, a medical training company out of Michigan, were bought at the same time. US in like It skills, med sets in healthcare, and part of the changing the shift in the focus of the company. So, yeah, we were acquired end of November, we're joining Galvanize, which is the Galvanize and Hack Reactor brands. Hack Reactor has a great brand in the industry around software engineering as well, and we're just really excited to be part of it. It's fun to be working with people that have been in the space for a lot longer than ours, I tell you. Hack Reactor was one of the brands that we really followed when we got started. They started the company in 2012. And so it was really cool for David and I and the team to have our work sort of recognized by people that have been in the space and just knew what it took to build what we built and the outcomes that we've had. David and I have been talking about this gosh kind of at the end of 2019, heading into 2020, we were launching our location in Philadelphia and we were thinking, a big part of us when we should actually back up. We had never intended when we started the company, to do anything but a coding boot camp in Cleveland, Ohio. We didn't have global aspirations. We wanted to solve the problem we saw here. And so our expansion had been sort of fairly organic. Well, let's just see what happens in Columbus and let's make sure that we don't forever regret not expanding into Columbus because somebody else did. And then let's get on to Sensei. And we like Pittsburgh, and so it's been this fairly organic expansion. As we've grown and we've built momentum, we're really convinced that the way that we approach this, the accountability we have towards the students, the commitment towards outcomes, that we're one of the good guys and there are some other really outstanding players in the industry, but there are also some fairly shady profiteering opportunists. And so we were thinking about this and saying like, look, how are we really going to take Tech Elevator and do this at scale, right? And so you're having these conversations and one pathway to do that is, okay, we got to raise a bunch of money. And so that was one thought process, okay, let's think about that. And with that comes dilution and changes of control and various other things. And we were exploring that idea and then we were actually approached by Harsh Patel, the CEO of Galvanize, who David sits on the board of the standards group with. And he just said, hey, we've just been bought by Stride and I've always really admired what you guys have been doing. Is there any chance you'd have any interest in joining forces with us? Land honestly, initially we were not particularly interested and we were like, yeah, we'll talk, but we're a really steady company. We've been growing at 40% year on year. This year we were on the Inc 5000 as the 16th fastest growing education company in the nation and the fourth fastest growing company in Cleveland, Ohio and 19th in the state. And we felt pretty good. But the more we thought about it, particularly as COVID was happening, by the way, we were fined during COVID But the more we thought about it, it really felt to us like, look, if we want to amplify our impact and we want to have a meaningful, make a meaningful dent in the recovery of this country, not just educate and transform hundreds of lives, but thousands of lives, we can't do this alone with our current capabilities. We either have to raise capital, we have to partner to get bigger and the stripe partnership just made a ton of sense. They love our business, the respect, what we've achieved. They said, look, we're not interested in interfering with what you're doing or changing your brand. We want you just to do that at greater scale. And so for us and for the team, that's really compelling, that's really exciting because we're just totally bought into this. Land the opportunity to make impact on a national level is so exciting. Land it's so compelling that it felt like the right thing to do and it's been great so far.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:20]:

Yeah, it's very exciting. From humble beginnings just here in Cleveland, I guess when you think about the future and the longer term vision and the implications of the scale that you have access to now through partnerships with Stride and just the growth that you're on ten years from now, what is it that you would like to accomplish ten years? Looking back?

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:41:45]:

Yeah, definitely. I mean, what would Tech Elevator look like ten years from now? I'd love to be driving through a town and I'd love to see a Tech Elevator sign illuminated on a cool old warehouse that isn't near a bus stop and accessible to people. I think we have the opportunity. We're in eight communities now. We're about to announce a 9th community that we're supporting. I'd love to see us in 50 communities around the country. I'd love to see international, you know, international locations. I'd love to have a tech elevator in Edinburgh, Scotland. That would be a personal joy for me to go back to my alma mater. So that's one thing. So graduating thousands and thousands of people a year, changing thousands and thousands of lives, and when you look at that and you think about that vision, the economic impact of that is huge. We started in 2015 in Cleveland. We have over 400 software developers working in the field of technology who knew no code before tech elevator, one of.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:53]:

Whom is that actual yeah, I know.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:42:55]:

How's he doing?

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:56]:

Yeah. No, Annie, she's fantastic.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:42:59]:

Sorry. Yeah. And these individuals have they've got $23 million of near term earnings more than they were making before. They collectively will make 500 land, $50 billion rather, in lifetime earnings. They will see a $1.3 million increase from where they were before. And so the opportunity to be that inflection point, to change that trajectory in so many lives, is so exciting. So that's a personal thing for me. It's very personal land. As an immigrant, that's a cool thing to feel like I and my team have been able to make that dent. And then the other thing is, we have essentially one product right now, but I think there's an opportunity, there's tons of opportunities in the field of technology that we can build on and support people. Software development isn't necessarily the right field for everybody, but there are other fields in technology and growth industries that could be a really great fit, and I'm excited to explore what those could be and diversify the portfolio of our products as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:10]:

That's an exciting vision. So as we kind of wrap down here, I am curious, in the business of helping people learn how to learn, what is in your reflections on the last few years, what have you learned about learning?

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:44:25]:

It doesn't stop land. The more you enjoy it, the more effective it is. Right. So you got to make learning fun. I think we have this there have been moments in my educational career which have been pure drudgery and moments that have just felt like I wasn't learning. It was fun. And so I think there is nothing more than a certificate of completion that comes from tech elevator. There's no fancy degree. It is a certificate of completion. And what's been astounding is hearing from our graduates and saying, I'm prouder of this piece of paper than I am of my diploma. And so the shifting mindset about learning is that when you align learning with the things that the world needs, magical things happen. And that's been just so fun to see. The other thing that I would say that has been just the big kind of, like, eye opener. And this happened. There was an incredible couple, Laurie and Kevin. She was both brilliant. She worked as a massive therapist and just wasn't getting paid enough. And he was a truck driver. And they loved their kids, and they were literally doing shifts like parenting. They didn't even see each the. And she came to Tech Elevator first and got a job at a local insurance company. And once she got settled, he was able to quit his job and come to Tech Elevator, and he ended up getting a job at the same insurance company. And so for the first time in years, they got to spend time together. They commuted into work together. They got to take their kids on paid vacations. And she's just been a wonderful person, and I see her at all the right times. You know, it's just a wonderful reaffirmation. But, you know, the realization that come from came from that was what we do is we we sell control. We sell we sell to people the ability to take control of their lives, that there are so many people in our economy that can get laid off or thrown on the trash sheep. And we just saw this in the massive, massive, just avalanche of job losses. Because of the pandemic, 13 million Americans lost their jobs in the hospitality field in the month of April last year, and less than 100,000 software developers lost their jobs, and they bounced right back, right? And so when you have a skill set that has the value that software development has, you don't have to put up with bullshit because you can just move, right? And so many workers are just caught in this rat race. They're on the hamster wheel, just taking bullshit. And when you have a skill set as valuable as software development, you're in control. And I love that because I love our students. I love to see them, and I love to watch how they've taken control of their lives. And that just gives me so much pleasure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:32]:

Yeah. That's powerful and inspiring. To wrap up, I'll bring it back here to Cleveland. Question we're asking everyone is, as we paint a collective collage of people's experience here in Cleveland, is what is your favorite hidden gem in the city?

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:47:50]:

My favorite hidden gem in the city is a place that's near and dear to me called the Glass Bubble. The Glass Bubble is a little glass blowing studio just by the West Side Market, and it's run by a guy called Mike Kaplan. And I used to live on Market Avenue. And so my Saturday mornings would usually involve me waking up with a hangover, going to the West Side Market, grabbing it, negotiating for a bunch of vegetables, and taking my bags over to the Glass Bubble and hanging out with Mike and Dave. And they have a chicken called Morty. I think they've had like, ten of these chickens at this point, but this chicken walks around this glass blowing studio. Land they are wonderful human beings. They're so interested in everyone and everything. Land so welcoming and it really is just, I think, a wonderful symbol of the generous spirit of Cleveland and the creativity and the characters that we have in this great town. So that's my hidden gem. Hopefully it doesn't get there's. About room for six people to hang out in NASA, so don't storm it, but it's a great place to visit.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:01]:

Yeah, well, I really appreciate you coming on, Anthony, and sharing your story and your passion for Tech Elevator is infectious. So thank you for coming on.

Anthony Hughes (Tech Elevator) [00:49:11]:

Hey, thanks for having me. It's a joy and I'm looking forward to listening to more of these. I appreciate you doing it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:17]:

That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so shoot us an email at layoftheland.fm or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or at sternjefe. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. You or someone you know would make a good guest for our show. Please email us or find us on Twitter and let us know.