#53: David Boone Jr. (BlendED)

-- AI-Generated --

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:00:00]:
How do I create the the base learning experience? Given what I have today, how do I create that baseline experience? That's our foundation. That's where we start. But then how do I improve the content and the technologies that I'm using that help to move that learning experience forward, to help and make it more engaging and to deliver better learning for my students. Right? How do I do that? We really wanna be the answer. We wanna be what like, when when a professor asks that question of how do I make my course better? We want them to turn to BlendEd.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:29]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I'm your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with David Boone. David is a Cleveland native who recently boomeranged back to Cleveland from Seattle to found and and grow his company BlendEd, which recently closed on over 1,000,000 in funding from Jumpstart here in Cleveland and leading education technology investors like Reach Capital and others. Lended is an instructor experience platform making building and delivering hybrid learning experiences more accessible for instructors. And David himself brings his experience leading data teams at Microsoft and is currently building a team of mission driven innovators to grow BlendED.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:30]:
David experienced firsthand the discrepancies and available resources of college instructors between Ivy League Schools and Community Colleges, which account for 0.4 percent and 46 percent of US undergraduates, respectively. So he set out to create an all in one solution for multimodal digital resources with a very specific focus on community colleges. Based here in Cleveland. The company will be launching in the spring semester of 2022 with Lorraine County and Wake Technical Community Colleges. I know I've said this a few times, but this genuinely is one of my favorite conversations so far hearing David's story and the work he's doing with blended. We are very lucky to have him back here in Cleveland, and I look forward to collaborating with him going forward. I hope you all enjoy my conversation with David Boone. I would love if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and your entrepreneurial journey.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:34]:
Kind of take us through it from from the beginning.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:02:37]:
Yeah, that sounds good. 1st, thanks Jeffrey for having me on the show. I'm very excited to be here. A little bit about myself. My name is David Boone. I am a Cleveland native, born and raised, grew up on the east side for a long time. I would say most of my educational experience, I was someone who was very bright, labeled as gifted, but oftentimes did not live up to its potential. Especially in middle school.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:03:02]:
I had a bunch of trouble with honestly just paying attention and being a good student. I thought homework was a conspiracy and it wasn't until adulthood.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:10]:
Maybe it was.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:03:12]:
I mean, I'm, you know, I'm still not convinced. But in adulthood, I realized I was just bored. I was bored with learning. You know, I got really fortunate that I got into a high school that that still exists today called MC Square STEM High School, and I was in the first graduating class there. It is a public school focused on science, technology, engineering, and math. And it was the first time I was doing project based learning. And that's when I kinda knew that I had a knack for, you know, understanding systems, building systems, fixing systems, and sort of got the the sort of, engineering bug. But in that, what I I sort of always told people is that I like engineering because it's problem solving, but not in the way that sort of scientists solve problems where there's, like, infinite time, infinite money, infinite resource.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:03:58]:
Right? Engineers are like, we have duct tape, bubble gum, maybe a paper clip, and we need to make this thing fly. Right? It's, like, very real world. And so I got obsessed with just learning how to solve problems in that way. And that kinda led me to be wanting to be an entrepreneur because after sort of getting a taste of studying computer science, working as a software engineer, I realized that, you know, solving the, the minute technical details was like fun and interesting, but what's more interesting was how those technical details even came to be. Right? And so while I was interning at Microsoft, I sort of said to them, hey, look, it's really cool that I get to work on hard problems and real products, but who decides what's the problem? Right? And I asked them that question. They said, oh, it comes from this department. It comes from that department. I said, well, I wanna go work with them because that's where, like, the the genesis of all the problems at Microsoft starts.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:04:48]:
And that landed me in data science and and later on working on the elearning platform. And in all of that, again, it was just, how do I solve problems, right? With the resources that are available? How do I take on problems? And I just decided that entrepreneurship was the way to do that, in a way that could scale. Right? And like I said, I had the, the pleasure and the privilege of working on really hard problems on really great products like Windows and Office and so forth. And that was cool, but it didn't quite fulfill me in the sense that, you know, they were just like these minute technical problems. Where should this button be? How should this feature work? But, you know, I was like, is is this gonna help, you know, someone do their job better or or change workflows? And and it just wasn't that big for me. So entrepreneurship became my way to solve problems that were bigger.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:36]:
When you balance problems and entrepreneurship coming out of the Microsoft experience? Was it really, like, I want to do entrepreneurship in search of a problem? Or I have a problem, and I wanna solve it by building something myself?

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:05:52]:
Yeah. That that's actually, a good point. The whole time I was at Microsoft, and I think sometimes my managers were very, very aware of this, I was looking for my way out. Like, it was like I was like, hey. Look. I'm gonna come here and do an exceptional job because I wanna get paid well. But don't be under any illusions that I'm gonna stick around forever because I'm not. And I think that when it came to starting blended, and we'll get to sort of how that came to be, it was a matter of wanting to solve a problem in a particular space and knowing that the time just couldn't be better to be operating in a space.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:06:28]:
And so I knew for many years that I wanted to start a company. I think after my 2nd internship at Microsoft, I kinda decided, I was like, you know, this is great. I need to come here and make some money. You know, I grew up pretty, you know, humble, let's say. And so, you know, it'd be nice to to not have to worry financially for a period. But once I get to that point, it is my duty to to get out of here and go after something that I think can be bigger.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:56]:
Yeah. So so tell us about the space that you chose to focus on and and, you know, what was kind of the the founding insight that that you had for for what Blended has become?

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:07:07]:
So, you know, the way BlendAD sort of came to be is is intricate, but but quite simple. I was working at Microsoft, and and the last project that I was on was an elearning platform where the the pitch was that anyone in the world who wants to learn how to code should be able to. Right? There's enough content in the world to teach anyone how to code. The problem is they're not great learning paths. And so we, you know, were trying to create this assessment driven platform where we could aggregate a learning path with all the content across various sources for someone to learn. So if you are someone who has a math degree and just wants to, like, transition, then, like, you know, here's some very technical, tactical things that you can do. Or if you're someone who, like, has a GED and, like, doesn't know, you know, calculus or advanced math or any of these concepts of of how to model things or the language needs to change. And so here's some materials that'll help you to understand that language so that you can then learn how to code.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:08:04]:
And while working on that, I mean, I really enjoyed it. And and, honestly, it was the one project that could have made me stay at Microsoft. But honestly, it was the one project that could have made me stay at Microsoft. But Microsoft did me a favor, and they killed the project. Right? So when they killed the project, I was like, well, hey. You know, I I sort of stayed here thinking that I found something worth working on and and that changed. So what am I gonna do next? And so at that point, I decided to join a startup to learn more about startups and how they work while at the same time, just investigating spaces and, you know, really feeling a strong pull to the e learning space, but feeling a strong pull to the ed technology space, but not really tied to it just yet. And then what something happened that all of us will remember, March of 2020, every school in the country said, don't come back.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:08:54]:
And all of a sudden, you know, at every level in our educational system, you know, educators are being faced with really difficult transitions, right? Going from being subject matter experts to having to be technical whizzes. And so I spent some time in that semester while still working at that startup, working with educators, K through 16, learning about their problems, trying to see what was, you know, the most difficult about this transition, and I learned a couple of things. The the one thing I learned is that this transition has been in effect. It's been happening, but at a very, very slow rate for decades, especially in higher education. Right? The the push to learning management systems has taken professors a long time to uptake. And particularly in k 12, there's more movement, but there's also a lot of churn on tools, and there are a lot of reasons for that. But it wasn't that this was a new entirely new thing. It was just that now it was not optional.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:09:50]:
It wasn't just for the sum. It was like, hey. Everyone needs to figure this out. And so, you know, that gave me some insight about, okay. Well, if this is something that's been there and and folks still haven't really adopted it, you know, how do we make it so that it's worth adopting? How do we make it easier to adopt? And so that was part of the insight. The other part of the insight centered around the actual experience of curating. Right? Because for a professor, particularly because that's the space that we occupy with with blended, and I'll tell you more about it. But for a professor, you know, so long, you just went and you picked a textbook, and that textbook came with a bunch of auxiliary things.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:10:26]:
It came with a digital homework, platform. It came with an exam and proctoring system. All of that sort of came for free to you as a professor, and then you had your students going out spending $300 to get to get licenses to these things. And and then seeing that, we realized that, you know, that model of the textbook in itself is not the business model isn't broken. It's just the the asset is dated. Right? Like the business model of, hey. You know, how the students pay for it isn't broken. I think what's broken about it is that the supply chain makes it so that this thing has to be way more expensive than what the actual material is worth.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:11:02]:
Right? Because, like, most of the stuff can be found somewhere else, but the professor chooses this textbook because they need the digital assessments. They need the the quizzes and so forth, and that's why they go with it. And so the other insight was, how do we empower these educators to modernize their courses while also bringing the cost of materials down for students? And that became sort of a problem to solve and sort of helped us to think about a vision for our company where we're helping professors to modernize their courses by helping them integrate all the great technologies that are available, but we're also helping them to integrate really great digital learning materials that, again, bring down the cost for students. So instead of going out and spending a 100 plus dollars on a textbook for each course, you can get access to a library of really rich digital materials that we've licensed from some of the great online course providers. You know? And that's what we've been working on. It's it's a course authoring solution. We call it an instructor experience platform where we focus on helping the professors for courses that are taught at colleges. I for courses that are taught at colleges.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:12:14]:
I think that's one of the things that we have to make very clear is we say, well, how's it different in Coursera or some other places? We're all about the actual experience of going on campus and meeting people. Right? We're not saying that this online thing completely replaces in person. We're saying that they need to coexist. And so how do we help educators, facilitate that happening in real time?

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:36]:
So it's a pretty ambitious problem space that you're working in and trying to solve. Like, when you were starting this idea, you were having those conversations with, you know, the professors and and the folks involved on the ground. What was the idea for the MVP for what you could try and, like, first validate? How did you even approach trying to solution in this space?

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:13:01]:
This is one of those things where, I wish I had this, like, you know, it just went smooth. We we were so focused. We were so dedicated. We made a bunch of of errors in our initial sort of, you know, deployment in the sense of we did try to do too much. So we do have this grand vision for the future where we're able to bring really engaging content to a professor as they're building a course and say, hey. Look. Your students will love this. You know, you should give it a try.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:13:29]:
Right? And have that be, again, a transaction that they're comfortable with because it's so low cost for students. Well, there's a lot that goes into even though we get rid of the supply chain of producing that content, there's a lot that goes into licensing that content, getting it from some place else, or, you know, sort of protecting the rights around it. And we started to investigate that. And very quickly, we were able to sort of start to focus on what we would do first. And really what we decided to do first is to help professors with the courses they already have, with the content that they already have. Right? And so it was this idea of, you know, a lot of professors made the shift due to COVID, right, and now they're using their learning management system. But if you talk to the students, the majority of them didn't make that shift very elegantly. Right? And so, you ended up with this situation where 70% of students were saying that, you know, they hated it after the 1st semester, right, that they were struggling.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:14:23]:
And when you look at the leading indicators, it indicated that most of them, it was simply because professors didn't organize the course well in the learning management system. And so what we've decided to do is to focus on that flow in particular. You bring your existing syllabus to Blendtec, and you convert it into a Blendtec syllabus. And what Blendet does on the background is automatically build an easy to navigate course inside a learning management system for you. And so in the case of a professor who is not that comfortable with the learning management system or simply not that comfortable with teaching online, we're able to take what they have existing, so they're not starting from scratch, and just make it a little bit easier for their students to interact with. And so that's the problem that that we focus on today. That's what the product is really doing, and that's what we've been able to use to sign on some early adopters as well to get some community colleges in Ohio as well as not in North Carolina to look at, us as a solution to a problem they know they have. They've seen it in their course reviews every semester.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:15:24]:
Like, this professor, like, we're disorganized. I can't ever find my homework. I can't I don't know how to navigate the course. We're looking to solve that problem. And in solving that, we hope to, you know, demonstrate to these professors that, we create value for them. Right? And I think that that is how we can move the needle on some of the more ambitious parts of our plan.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:45]:
Yeah. Just diving a little deeper on that. I'd love to understand, like, when you ingest the curriculum from the professor and and translate it, you know, what what is it that you're actually doing in the background to make it easier and facilitate that that transition?

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:15:59]:
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I I like to just say to people, we are, you know, word, but for syllabi. Right? Like, the whole idea is that we, you know, are a specialized tool for this workflow that looks and feels like something you're comfortable with. And so for a professor who already has a syllabus, they're able to just copy in the the things that they have, but they're doing so in our structured format. Right? And in doing that in our structured format, we're able to then leverage it to build a course. And so to be very specific, you know, dive in deeper, when you have to build a course inside of Canvas, every assignment is a separate page. Right? And so if you have 5 essays, 3 quizzes, and 2, you know, exams, right, then what is that? A test 10 different assignment pages that you have to produce.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:16:50]:
Most professors just upload the assignment, don't put anything else on there, no instructions, no directions because it's too much to manage. Right? We take care of making sure that that context lands up inside of the learning management system for them in addition to uploading that file on their behalf. Same thing for anything else, the home page. Right? Making sure the home page links to all of those other pages so that for the student, when it comes to the home page of your course, they not only see your name and and the course description and the course objectives, the the stuff that's standardly there, but also they can click in and go to week 2, week 3, week 4, and not have to dig around in the LMS native menus to try and find that stuff. Again, these are all of the patterns that we saw in the feedback from students on courses consistently, which is that professors used it like it was some sort of file system, but then they didn't even have folders. And so it was just like mess of files, and I'm supposed to figure out where things are and what they belong to. And so what we do is we just we we take care of that for you. And when we talk to professors about why they don't do that, they dread it.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:17:54]:
You know? The professors that's the ones that we talk to is, like, hey. Do you think you do this well? They would say, yeah. I think I do it well. And I actually have course reviews. They say I do well, and I ask them, well, how long does it take you? They See, I locked myself in my office for 2 weeks to get this stuff right. That's a lot of time. And we're talking about an industry where we we heard it before, but these folks aren't getting paid very much either. And so, you know, this additional prep time is really hard to motivate someone to take those extra steps, But we know it has such a huge impact on the student performance and student attainment.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:28]:
From a a business perspective, how is it that you've kind of taken this idea? And it sounds like you have some pilots and some traction, but how are you thinking about who is the customer here? How does that whole process work?

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:18:42]:
We think of the customer as being the the professor. And again, you know, we call ourselves the instructor experience platform. Right? That's a new term. There's learner experience platforms. There's learning management systems, but who focuses on the instructor? And that's really where Blendette at slots in. And so in that, you know, there are a lot of different things for us to figure out, but the one other keyword beyond instructor is platform. And so the way that we look at what we're building is it really is a platform that, you know, multiple businesses can can live on top of. And so, you know, I talk about this content story and how we can license content.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:19:18]:
I think there's a story around how we can, leverage, you know, distributed content like now distributed licensing for technologies too. Right? And so you think about in the case of a professor that wants to leverage a particular student engagement platform or discussion board. Right? Right now, oftentimes, they have to wait until their institution decides to make that purchase. Right? They can't just decide, hey, I'm gonna use this in my course. And the the flip side of that is the institution needs to make sure there's a critical mass of professors that want it before they'll make the purchase. And so you end up in a scenario where oftentimes professors don't have the autonomy over how their courses deliver that they'd want. Right? But we can actually give some of that autonomy back. Again, we talk about connecting them with great content.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:20:00]:
You also connect them with great technology and say, hey. Look. You wanna use a student engagement platform? We've worked out a deal with this company because they won't have to come out and sell to your college, which which cost them tons of money, which is why they have to charge their college 6 figures to to deploy. Instead, they're gonna be able to distribute via a student fee to you directly. And so that, you know, scenario is another one. Right? And and really, again, what it goes back to is how do we make the experience for the professor as quick and painless as possible? In doing that, what do what opportunities do we open up? Right? And so from a business perspective, you know, signing on these pilots, that's the story we're sharing. We're saying, hey, look right now, the way that all of this works is broken and you know it, right. And when we talk to these folks, they agree.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:20:45]:
You know, they say, look, we we go out, we make these decisions, and then our faculty are pissed off at us because that's not what they wanted. But it was a decision that we had to make through some process or whatever. We want our faculty to be empowered to build great courses. And really, it's hard for us to do that, right? When you have 1,000 plus faculty members, 70% of them being part time or adjunct.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:06]:
So it's kind of like fill in the timeline here a bit in and Mhmm. Working towards the current state of of blended. Like, how what what does that look like?

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:21:17]:
Yeah. Oh, man. It's been it's been quite quite the journey. You know, I quit my job in May of 2020. So I guess that sort of as COVID happened, I started working with educators, just learning about their problems. And it was in May where I had to kind of, you know, pull my go then girlfriend, now fiance, to the side and say, hey, babe. I I know this is gonna sound crazy. I know we're in the middle of a pandemic, but I really wanna quit my job and work on something cool.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:21:46]:
And, and fortunately, she she was very supportive. And in that, you know, I sort of just said, hey. I need 5 months. I won't make any money for 5 months. And if I can't figure out how to make some money doing this in 5 months, then I'll go back and get a job. That was the deal. And in that 5 months, what I did was just, like, start on talking to more professors specifically in the higher education space because, again, I was talking k 16, through then, just focusing on in a professor space and started to understand their problems and understand sort of, like, the the intricacies of what they were dealing with. And in July is when we sort of said, alright.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:22:26]:
We have a good sense of this. Let's focus on this syllabus building flow. And at that point, we were gonna be Zapier for, professors. Right? We're gonna connect people, connects automate connecting, services together so that professors didn't have to deal with all of these different services. That was sort of our pitch then. And things, you know, evolved as we learned more. And, you know, we dug in with professors. We created, small, you know, sort of minimal viable products.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:22:54]:
They weren't even really products. They were just like mini experiences. Right? Like, I was just like kind of hacking away in my house in Cleveland. And so, you know, that kind of became, you know, the way that we started to learn and evolve. But it was probably about the same time in July when I sort of started reaching out to some friends of mine, some mentors of mine in the business space. And, you know, on one of those first calls, I was just sort of, reaching out to to Laura Butler, who are who was a VP at Microsoft, was one of the very first engineers at Microsoft and, you know, is a very good friend of mine. And I just said, hey, Laura. I'm working on this thing, and I and I sort of wanted to hear your thoughts about how we should go forward with this and, you know, should we raise or whatever.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:23:38]:
Not expecting much, just honestly getting some some advice. And she said, well, you know, I have a $25,000 check that I wanted to write to some company this year. Do you want it? And it was like, sure. I mean, I can't turn out money. I don't know what it takes to take your money, so I need to work on some things, formalize a company, and so forth, but but we'd love to to have you involved. And that was the first angel check. And that was again, I wasn't looking to raise any money. I think I just kind of was fortunate in that I had someone who believed in me enough even when it was early stages when we didn't really know what we were doing, who said, hey.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:24:12]:
I'll write you a check to kinda help you get this thing going. And then, you know, a few checks started coming in that way until we raised it about, you know, $230,000 from different angels in Cleveland and in Seattle where I've been working before. You know, I think we have a couple from New York. Right? It was just sort of all over the place. And what we did was we took that money to build what would then become the MVP that we showed to these community colleges that was able to get us these pilot relationships and help us to sort of move things along. In that same time frame of raising at 2:30, we also, you know, did a pre accelerator in Cleveland called g Beta. And what they really helped us to do is just, like, you know, a lot of those formal things that I had no idea what to do, first time founder. G Beta helped to, you know, explain them out and and make sure that we had all of our, paperwork, you know, sort of the way that it needed to be, as well as create a pitch deck.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:25:04]:
Right? Because, again, these first checks, I I was fortunate in the sense that, like, I didn't even have a pitch deck because I wasn't trying to raise money. Right? It was sort of, hey. I need some help. And thankfully, I got, you know, the money and I got advice and I got help. So it was, like, the best of both worlds. But, you know, that became sort of what g Beta was able to do. And coming out of g Beta, we also ended up doing an equity based accelerator, and that was ERA, in New York City. It was all remote.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:25:30]:
Again, we we started a COVID company. I tell people, like, you know, building Blended has been like that middle school, business simulation project that we had to do. Right? Because it's like half the people that I work with, I've actually never sat in a room with. Right? They could be a bot. Who knows? You may be in a matrix. So but, you know, to get to to make a long story short, we did a ERA. And at that point, I sort of, you know, it was like founder school. I mean, the learning just accelerated in terms of just, like, all things and how start ups function and work.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:26:03]:
But then also what was nice about doing ERA is it was sort of getting the company out of the Cleveland bubble a little bit, which I think was really helpful, because I think that, you know, one of the things about starting a company in Cleveland is that they're just really strong major players who have their way of doing things and their opinions, and they don't necessarily reflect how the rest of the world works. And sometimes I think that they can get in the way of a founder or or just a business person generally being able to build the most creative and robust solutions to their problems because they're trying to fit within a model that may not make sense for their business. Right? And I think that there was a little bit of that in the early days of blended and and, doing ERA sort of helped us to break the mold a bit on maybe how we would have progressed had we just sort of stuck to the Cleveland market. Yeah. And since then, you know, getting to today after ERA, we focused on again serving these pilot customers, really strengthening the relationship there, getting ready for launch in the spring and raising a pre seed round. And so, we've been able to secure about $1,000,000 in you know, beefing up the product development, right. Taking it to a point where we were able to raise you know, beefing up the product development, right, taking it to a point where we are able to say, hey, we have product market fit, right, we see some some good headroom here, and we just need some more gas to accelerate beyond that product market fit. Today, I would say we're pre product market fit, right, we have a story, and that story is resonating with customers.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:27:40]:
But until we have more users using a product, I would say that we we have a lot more work to do in that regard and that's what we're focused on right now.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:48]:
Yeah. And it's exciting development so far for sure. So in in this present moment, you know, tell us about some of these pilots you're working on and and how it's kinda where the rubber hits the road, how it's going.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:28:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were we've been chatting, you know, over the last couple of weeks, and and just anyone I talked to, I'm like, now the real work begins. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:09]:
Yes. Yes.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:28:10]:
It took me a couple I'll I'll I'll share this. For for all founders that's listening or people thinking about becoming a founder, I am someone who naturally gravitate towards being the the pitcher, right, to to pitch the business and and sort of, provide the story. But I also, am technical. Right? And my background is really in product and building solutions. I mean, going back to how I got in entrepreneurship to begin with, I like finding solutions to problems. It's hard to to do both of those things at the same time. And and the reason for that and and someone likened it to sort of like the telescope versus the microscope, right, which is when you're dealing with, you know, investors, you're really kind of telescope, here's the moon. Right? Here's here's what we're heading towards.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:28:54]:
This is gonna be this magical place. But when you're working with your your team, you really have to be focused on what is the now and really making sure that the team stays focused. You have, again, limited time, limited resources. Right? Duct tape, Bogdan, paper clip, and somehow you need to get to the moon. That's the situation. And so since raising the money, I think the first thing I had to do is is get back to microscope. Right? Get back to scrappy engineering, problem solving brain. And since doing that, you know, really what what we are most focused on right now is just getting to our first hundred syllabi.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:29:29]:
Right? And that's sort of the, internally, what's guiding us is, you know, we want to onboard our first hundred syllabi so that we can learn from that experience from professors. And the way that we're doing it, and this is an offer to anyone listening who is a professor, is we're offering a TA as a service, right? Which is we will help you onboard your syllabus and we will help you to design your course in exchange for you piloting our product and helping us to learn over the next semester. It's a completely free service. That's the advantage of raising a little bit of money, is that you can do those things that maybe won't be scalable in the future. But the the real ambition here is, again, to to get more engagement with the product so that we can learn how to make it better. That's one of the big problems is just how to get people engaged even with these pilot programs. Getting administration to be happy and excited, doesn't necessarily mean that faculty want to join and sign on, right? There's still work, there's still marketing, there's still efforts, that we need to work through. And in addition to that, improving a product.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:30:29]:
Right? You know, I mentioned this before, but when we started building, we were just like building small experiences. Right? And and sort of where the product is today is a bunch of small experiences cobbled together to look like it's a cohesive experience. We need to actually make it more cohesive. And so that's, you know, sort of the the other piece of all of this is just like really focusing a product team on making sure that there's 0 friction for, someone who wants to use Blendet, who wants to build a better course for their students, right, who wants to make sure that their digital learning experiences is a one, and can compete with the best of them.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:05]:
So you mentioned earlier this transition to digital learning in this post COVID world we we find ourselves in was really kind of always happening. It's really just been accelerated as a consequence of that. Have you found that there is increased competition in the space? Or, like, are a lot of people thinking about these kinds of problems now in a way they weren't before? And just kind of your perspective on how you are thinking about competition or, like, what the competition even is.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:31:38]:
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it it was a space, honestly, that was already pretty crowded. And I would say that there are some major players that everyone can sort of, like, you know, if they think back to their experience, particularly people who are in school recently, they can, like, oh, yeah. Of course, that company exists. Right? So the the Instructure, which makes Canvas or Blackboard, which I think just went through a big merger. Moodle is another that that folks are aware of. They're they're really big players in that space, and that's, you know, you know, really the the area of serving campuses.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:32:10]:
But then there's all of these big movers that are outside of serving campuses. Right? Like, the folks like Coursera and Udemy and edX. They're like, you know, screw campus. You can learn anything you need to right here online. Right? You can do it from from the comfort of your own home and your fuzzy slippers. Right? That's, you know, also been happening over the last decade. And so there's always been, you know, this crowded market for what does the future look like and how do we basically accelerate to that future. What I would say in terms of how we think about this space is, you know, I think that this online learning push, this sort of self-service model, I want to learn a specific thing or I want to transition, I'm already in a career and I want to transition.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:32:55]:
All of those things are really important, and I'm glad that they exist. So Coursera is is, you know, a good example of like, hey, I am a software engineer. I wanna become a product manager. I'll take a Coursera course, and then that will be enough for me to move internally. And then once I move internally, I have the title for a while, I can hop out to a different company and do that career. It services that market extremely well. But what about the people who don't have a career yet? Right? Like, and I think that that is where we still have a very compelling solution in community colleges, specifically community colleges. Right? Now.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:33:33]:
Can they be performing better? Absolutely. But they serve as a segment of the market that's different than that. I'm a career hopper or, you know, I just wanna make a small transition or I wanna learn something to be better at the job that I already have. I think that's really where these MOOCs and so forth have been most effective, and and I think that they should continue to exist for those reasons. But what we see from students saying like what they're sharing, right, is that they like the connectedness of a course, right? They like the connectedness of a course that has real people in a real space, right. You know, when we look at the data, you know, students are saying that they want more blended experiences where there is still this digital component because they also love the value of the content. Right? It's nice to be able to have a simulation to understand physics versus trying to understand it from drawings that your professor who can't draw has put together. Right? So so they like that, but they also want to be in class every once in a while.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:34:32]:
And that's why even in Coursera's latest report, they're saying that 85% of colleges plan to increase blended learning experiences. Right? The ones where there is both online and in person. And that's, again, coming from the folks who are saying do away with the classroom. Yeah. It's just not the direction that educators and students are interested in. Like, the the students really have voted for this more blended future where they can still have that learning from each other and the collaboration, but also have the really rich experiences that online and digital have to offer. And so that's where we slot in. We say for every professor who, you know, wants to be a part of this future, right, wants to be able to teach in this new paradigm, we wanna be the platform that helps you to do that.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:35:16]:
We want to help you make those blended courses that your institution, without question, is gonna ask you to produce in the next 5 years because all of them have said that that's a a part of their new mission.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:28]:
I'm gonna ask you to take back out the telescope for a sec here. Put the microscope away. But when you think about, you know, what the moon, right? Like, what what is the broader vision that that you have for the company and and the impact that you hope to to make with it?

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:35:46]:
Absolutely. You know, fortunately, I haven't been able to put the telescope completely away. It's not too deep in the closet. Because it I mean, one thing is is helpful is for motivating your team. Now what I tell people, and and this is really what what why in May of 2020, I just I felt this nagging urge to leave my job is that I wanna change learning for all learners in all learning environments. I am extremely fortunate. Right? And people will mix up when I say fortunate because my background doesn't seem fortunate, you know, given that, you know, homeless to Harvard, the whole story that came with, you know, me getting into Harvard. But to have attended an institution like Harvard, I am extremely fortunate because all of my professors had incredible support staff around them, every last one of them.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:36:37]:
When I started working in this space, I went and spoke to some of my professors at Harvard and said, hey. Look. I'm thinking about this space, and I'm hearing all these trends. And they said, oh, yeah. Everything you're talking about, a 100%, those are really tough problems. But here's the thing. I take those problems and I put them into a job description for my head TA because that's how I solve that problem. And so, you know, there's the this very small set of institutions where, you know, money's not an issue, support is not an issue, and they can build really incredible learning experiences.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:37:11]:
But that small set of institutions services less than a percent of the general population who are in an undergraduate program across the country. Right? Community colleges service 40% of undergraduates. 40%. None of them have TAs. Right? Even at the best community colleges, none of them have the support to make their course rich and flexible and so forth. And so my big vision is that our platform becomes that support. Right? The things that it they don't have the time, they don't have the resource, the things that are just hard. Right? Fundamentally difficult.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:37:46]:
Right? To to to do and then teach. Right? To do and then deliver incredible learning experiences our platform is able to do. There's a long list of things, and so we have to prioritize what those things are. Right? But a big part of them, you know, again, it goes back to how do I create the the base learning experience? Given what I have today, how do I create that baseline experience? That's our foundation. That's where we start. But then how do I improve the content and the technologies that I'm using that help to move that learning experience forward, to help and make it more engaging and to deliver better learning for my students. Right? How do I do that? We really wanna be the answer. We wanna be what like, when when a professor asks that question of how do I make my course better? We want them to turn to Blendtec.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:35]:
Mhmm. What are the things that are keeping you up at night these days?

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:38:40]:
Oh, man. So many things. But let me just think about last night. What was I thinking about last night? Because it changes, man. This is a high paced, high energy, you know, position to be in, and and I I'm excited about it. I love it. The things that that really keep me up right now is, again, we have these great deals with the administrators at these institutions, and I am really excited about them. And, like, I sort of look at them as like, you know, we have permission.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:39:10]:
But I also know that we need to get to a point where we don't need their permission to do the work that we think is important. And and so what keeps me up at night right now is how do we move away from the partnership model? Not to say that the partnerships aren't important and that we won't pursue them, but how do we make it so that any professor that wants to make their course better can. Right? Like, that's the thing that, like, if we can figure that out, if we can get to a point where, you know, we don't need to to go through the IT department to get, you know, situated with their LMS provider, any we if we don't need to do any of that stuff, then we've created something that I think can really expand beyond these partnerships into classrooms we haven't even thought about yet. Right? I think that, you know, there's value for for really any educator who, again, just, like, wants to create a consistent, easy to use experience for their students. And right now, we just we can't service all of them, and I want to be able to. So that's what's keeping me up.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:12]:
Well, I know one of the things that may have been keeping you up before was was getting through this kind of funding process.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:40:20]:
Oh, yeah. Good to be done with that. It's good to be yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:25]:
What tell tell us about the the that whole experience and the struggles and learnings.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:40:32]:
You know, everyone wants to see more than you have no matter how much you have. That's what I'm learning because I have I have now made friends who are in all stages of their company. And unless you have some, like, breakaway company like Facebook, right, where, like, you know, investors are literally crawling over each other to invest in your company. Everyone's gonna be like, oh, you have revenue? That's great. But why aren't you at this amount of revenue? Oh, you have adoption. That's great. Why aren't you at this level of adoption? Oh, you have, you know, MOUs is great. Why don't you have more MOUs or more LOIs? Right? There's always this, you know, more and more and more and more and I get it.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:41:11]:
Right? I get it to the extent that you just wanna make sure you're investing in the best deal as possible, But it also makes it really hard for someone to get started to get to that point, because and and even then, it makes them hard to it makes it hard to know what point they need to be at if the target is always kinda moving. You know, what what what do you actually need from me? You know, don't don't be nice and tell me, oh, if you just have this, you know, we'll invest. Like, because if I get that, I wanna come back to you and say, hey. I have this now. Will you invest? And you go, oh, no. No. No. I meant it this way or there's just a there's this I think there's a disconnect between what's actually good for the business, what what's proof, of things working versus, you know, what sort of becomes vanity things that that investors wanna see.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:41:57]:
And I think in my experience, I ran into a few folks who are kind of vanity chasers. I also know that, you know, I'm in a segment of the market where folks aren't really that excited to write checks. I mean, the number of funds that, you know, even some that were like, hey, we're focused on black and diverse founders that are mission driven, and they had this whole spiel. Right? And I come in and say, hey, look, I'm David Boone. I've boomerated back to Cleveland to start a company and provide high-tech jobs in my region. And that's you know, you can see their ears sort of perk up then. And then I say and it's an education technology company, and they're like, oh, we don't do EdTech. And you're like, what? Okay.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:42:41]:
So can I tell you why I'm doing Ad Tech? Because that's part of my mission too. Right? And not just don't do it. And so, you know, I think that was another factor in in raising this capital is is no. It's not InsurTech. It's not FinTech. It's not any of the hot items. You think EdTech would be high after the year we've had, but, like, much later stage deals. Even the EdTech investors that I spoke with, they were very clear.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:43:04]:
Like, our bar for a pre seed and seed round is higher than most pre seed and seed funds in other sectors. And some of it is just driven by, you know, knowing the market, knowing how tough it is to crack. But, you know, and and I appreciate that. But also the market shifts and it evolves and it changes. And so, you know, you still gotta take bets. And so I'm extremely fortunate that, you know, I was able to get an EdTech investor who knows the space really well to to sign on this year as a, you know, in this pre seed round and as a mentor and sort of helping me to figure out what the next steps are with Blended with Reach Capital, because I think that completely changed how the fundraising happened from there. Right? Their endorsement helped me to close some of those angels that were just on the fence. Right? That that maybe you were gonna write a check.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:43:52]:
It also helped me to get the the last fund, you know, that the sort of investing this round to to finally say yes and and make that move.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:00]:
Yeah. This everyone all comes in at once. It seems to always be the

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:44:06]:
No one wants to be first, but they don't wanna be last either. That's what I'm finding. Right? Like yeah. So you know. We were yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:13]:
We were talking about catch 20 twos before we we turned on the mic here. And I I think that resonates a lot. It is a lot of catch 22s building a company and bringing people together through these.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:44:25]:
Yeah. And just

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:26]:
trying to figure out possible things.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:44:28]:
Right. To to take, you know, something from idea to to to a business that has, you know, revenue and and a sustainable business model is hard work. And so, you know, we I get why people wanna make sure that you back the right people and in the right spaces. But, yeah, there's challenges when you pick a space that people are kinda like, nah. I'm okay. I'll pass.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:51]:
Yeah. So I wanna tie it back to to Cleveland, as we kinda work towards the the end of our conversation here. But you're you are here in Cleveland and and you're you're building a company here and that's like, you didn't have to do it here. And

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:45:04]:
Yeah. I made an active choice not to go back to Seattle. Right? To stay right here in Cleveland and and build.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:11]:
Yeah. So maybe we can just expand upon that a little. Tell

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:45:15]:
tell me

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:15]:
a little bit more.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:45:16]:
Here here's here's, you know, two reasons why, and there are others. I have his good friend, Robert Jackson, who when I was maybe a sophomore in college, gave me some really great perspective. And, I mean, these guys, let's call them eclectic, but I love them to death. But one of the things he said that really resonated with me, and I haven't been able to let it go, is that it is our job to venture out into the world, learn what we can, but then it's also our job to bring it back to the nest. And so I've been stuck with that since he said it. And I mean, we say it to each other all the time now. Right? When we talk, bring it back to the nest. And he since moved back to Houston where he's from.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:45:58]:
He's doing incredible work there. And so it was my turn. Right? It was my turn to say, hey, look, I believe, in my city. I believe in its potential, and its capacity, even when the rest of the world, you know, thinks us 2nd tier. I know that we're 1st rate and I want to demonstrate that by building a company that, you know, stands the test of time, that creates opportunity for people right here in my city. Right? And so in that, when it was a question of Seattle versus Cleveland, I just had to sort of at least give it a try. Right? It was like I couldn't abandon the thought because it it is something that really means a lot to me as part of my mission. The other thing, and I know you always ask people about hidden gems.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:46:46]:
You know, I I actually and I say this to you all the time. I think one of the hidden gems about Cleveland is that there is capital in Cleveland. And in particular, I would call out, you know, jump start as a hidden gem. They were the 1st institution to invest in blended. Right? They They, created a validation fund, basically, and they wrote us a $100,000 check pre product, pre MOUs, LOIs. That went a very long way to making a lot of what we've accomplished since possible. Right? If we didn't have that $100, we wouldn't have been able to hire the engineers that we hired to be able to build that for those first experiences that we've now cobbled together to something that, you know, has led to the MOUs, and those MOUs have allowed us to raise more capital. Right? The flywheel, in a lot of ways started with jump start.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:47:34]:
And, you know, that doesn't mean Jumpstart can't be better. I am someone who, after interacting with Jumpstart, really, I just I think, you know, people give them a hard time, but I've and I've said this to other folks, but at the end of the day, they write checks. Right? They've invested more than $65,000,000, I believe is the number, into the region, you know, since their founding. And, you know, very, very few institutions can make a similar statement. And so, you know, as founders, as sort of company builders, the 2 things you need more than anything else is like, you know, to be able to hire great people and to not run out of money. Right? Like, those are if you can do those things, you can keep it going until you find that product market fit, till you find that tearaway hockey stick moment that everyone's searching for. But if we didn't have the capital available, we didn't have the the funds like jump start that were making it possible, you know, this would be a much harder region to be starting a company in. I wouldn't be able to sit up here and say, hey.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:48:35]:
I made the choice to come to Cleveland, and it worked out if it weren't for Jumpstart taking a bet. So I challenge everyone listening to think about how you can help make jump start better because I heard a lot of people talk about how it could be better. Like, actually, like, let's make it better. Right? Let's make it better because, you know, for me, it it's a superpower that we need to figure out how to leverage to the best of our ability as a region. Right? And and we need to figure out how we can influence it to be better, instead of just, like, complaining and nagging about how it could be better. Right? Cleveland's done a lot of coulda, shoulda, woulda's for a long time, but it's that time we actually did.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:14]:
Yeah. I know. I I appreciate that perspective. I think there's there's a lot of merit to that. But you you kinda mentioned the where we're going here at the end with with hidden gems, and I'll I'll push you for, for another one if if you have one on mind.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:49:31]:
You know, this one's gonna sound weird because it's not hidden. It's huge if you look at a map, but Lake Erie is a hidden gem. I I mean, seriously, I I have my friends from college come visit, and I took them to, Euclid Beach, which I don't even think most people will say is their favorite beach to take people to. Right? But we do at the Euclid Park Beach, and they were like, wow, this is nice. The water's warm. Like, you know, it's not that crowded. It was just like incredible experience. And these folks are coming here from California, and they were like, I actually kinda like this better.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:50:02]:
And so, you know, I think, you know, when we talk about the region and and some of the things that that people find attractive, I don't I don't know if we give Erie enough credit for what it offers us in all this glory.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:13]:
I I'm with you there. It's, it's pretty extraordinary.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:50:17]:
Absolutely.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:18]:
Yeah. Well, David, I really appreciate you coming on and and sharing your story and and the whole journey so far. It's is a pretty incredible one and definitely excited to to have you on and and that you're building it here in Cleveland.

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:50:33]:
Thank you. Thank you, Jeffrey. I really appreciate you having me and and just the opportunity to speak to founders and and business people and just listeners in the region and outside of the region to say that, Cleveland is a great place, you know, and it has its troubles. But like any region, any place, there's always a way. And I think that, the more we tell these stories and share them, we empower people to find their way in Cleveland.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:00]:
Well, if if folks have anything they would like to to follow-up with you about Blend Ed or Cleveland or otherwise? What what is the the best place for them to do so?

David Boone Jr. (BlendED) [00:51:11]:
Yeah. I am, not quite, of the social media age even though I'm not very old either. So the best place to reach me the best way to reach me is to email me at it's david@blendedcourse.com. And if you email me there and say, hey. You heard me on the the lay of the land podcast, I'll be more than happy to chat sometime.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:35]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.f m, or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or @sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show.