2025report.com thanks sir fazle abed- sustainability's greatest hero in 60 years since my family first reported at The Economist critical impacts of asia's majority of our human race

welcome to college year 2021-22 aka 37/40 of 2025report.com major talking points & Diary of
last best chance to design world where next girl born -or child of any skin color has nature's greatest chance of a good life
.
my father norman and lifelong journalist at the economist was last journalist to interview von neumann- whose biography of industrial revolutions IR3 and IR4 he later wrote- our core belief :

we 7.5 human beings have all the tech and abundance of nature to design good life opportunities for all if we unite/collaborate in doing so

BUT unlike IR1 sharing machine energy which rolled out slowly and partially, IR2-4 completely changed human potential in under a generation; we made a mess of ir2 communications tech, and the UN was born to resolve, and by 1957's death of von neumann kennedy and others were uniting the world in hope of soon no mission impossible
round any dynamics unique to human being

.transparency questions we seek to mediate in 21-22 our 37th year of updating 2025 report's countdown to sustainability generations-
  • what is the most entrepreneurial way teachers need to explore 4 industrial revolutions if today's younger half of the world especially poorest or colored halves are to celebrate their communal contributions to sustainability?
  • can leaders of entrepreneurial revolution learn systematically from what chances have we so far missed between 2021 and 1945 and 1760 when the machine age started to be webbed around the world out of Glasgow University thanks to brothers James and Adam ie through systems connecting alumni of engineering and social-economic mapmaking
  • welcome to abedmooc.com - 30 collaboration networks -a billion village women app'd to end poverty -2021 TOP 100 ways to change education and prevent species extinction - special thanks economistdiary.com and economistUN.com
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    chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk writes from washington dc and glasgow summer 2021: dear 7.5 billion human brains and beings - valuing youth's futures was easier ack in 1984 our book 2025 report, lead editor the economist's norman macrae, and biographer of von neumann's legacy of 100 fold more tech each decade 2020 back to 1960 -...

    valuetrue.com- help profile ten wizard tricks for ESG-Environment Social Governance-positive cashflow business models interest me- they are both the only way to scale sustainability of all our children and how to extinguish our species
    the difference is to be found in a purposeful and transparent model that is multiwin including society's need that the business is preventing the greatest risks it sectors experts know most about versus a short-term model where owners are taking from every other stakeholder every quarter
    even more interesting is a partnership network of business models; unfortunately if even one core partner is not sustainable the whole network may collapse on society
    as a statistician i have spent 50 years searching for most purposelful networks in the world- i don't expect to find one more purposeful than that built over 50 years by fazle abed and a billion poorest village women - goal 5 100% livesmatter communities 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6; 4 livelihood edu for all 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 ref Safiqul Islam 3 last mile health services 3.1 3,2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 last mile nutrition 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2,6 banking for all workers 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6

    ABED & - help map who advises younger half of world to connect friends and alumni of late sir fazle abed founder of BRA-Coop = Bangladesh Rural Advancement and Cooperation with billion Asian poorest women sdgs and community building enterprises

    Scots are about 1/400 of human species, 80% living around the world. Over two thirds of the world's mothers are Asian. In 1760 we Scota started up age of humans & machines: naturally what we have discovered about chances of human sustainability have come mostly from servant leaders of billion asian village mothers and a few euro-american maths wizards, notably von neumann, einstein
    chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk writes: Dad, Norman Macrae, end poverty sub-editor of the economist during most first 45 years of the united nations died in 2010, the 250th year of humans and machines started up by Glasgow University's Watt & Smith: soon afterwards Japan's Ambassador to Dhaka arranged for a dinner party to celebrate Sir Fazle Abed as humanity's greatest entrepreneurial revolutionary - can you help us share the knowhow abed empowered a billion asian women to network? it could just save our species..EconomistDiary.com Xglasgow.com

    Tuesday, December 31, 1985

    help update 2025 report and dictionary of AI (Artificial Intelligence since von neumann 1957)

     

    related ref entrepreneyr dictionary


    1984littlesister.JPG

     

    there are different ways of looking at how did we get to the 2020s; 2 exponential races to improve the human lot that help to cross check each other are

    • quarter century countdowns from 1945 (birth of un ) 1970 post moon race world, 1995 the clash of commerce anf knowledge as purpose of 7.5 billion peoples being more connected than separated in mother narure's ride- this brings us to each year of the 2020s - best or worst of times- will we by 2030 have united on sustainability goals maps on mother earth?
    • decade transformations since moore's law 100 times more comp capaciity per decade - roughly speaking 5g 2020s,..0g 1970s

    2 of the immediate legacies of the father of computing john von neumann who died 1957 were the moon race and the setting up of twin ai (artificial inteliigence) labs - atlantic coast facing at mit boston, pacific coast facing at stanford..when the association of ai practioners the future of life says 2020s tech has reached the stage where all live can thrive or self-destruct, its using ai to mean the converence of all technologies and data analyses- you can search terms that have popped up expoentially rising in the 21st century . blockchain , smart devices building internet of things, 5g about 100 times moore communications connectivity than 4g used in 2010s..... so humanising ai integrates all of these new capacities to innovate as well as subject domains eg boitech, energytech...

    as recently as the 1960s the statistic students most powerful tool was slide rulr or log tables; since then computational exponentials have been rising 100 fold per decade (moores law)  , and while the telecoms impacts in space of satellite tech may have leapt forward at a slighltly different rate- we can think of 2020s innovation edges connecting 5g, 2010s 4g, 2000s 3g. 1990s 2g - eg text mobile times personal computer webs, 1980s 1g modem connected email and personal computer software, 0g 1970s computed aided design - eg engineering prototyping or word procesing on mini computers and first questions on what was to come with networking instead of stand alone computers

    not everyone agrees but until 1995 most of these leaps in comp and coms were imagined across ameruca's labs but much of the innovation in making/humanising smart production was connected out of far east initially japan, far east islands, s korea, from 1978 mainland china too; this also integrated new city transporation and designs for 20+ million populations  or 5 million superports whose density is even more due to land constraints of a singapore or hong kong; if von neumann was the start of the computing age, deming was the architect of smarter production; also critical to asian continent where two thirds of people live were village tech- where village means without access to electricity- to understand systemic scaling of ending starvation, increasing life expectancy even while thee is no aceess to electricity we would recommend benchmarking cases collaboratively scaled out of bangladesh's brac 1 2

     

    ...................................................................................................... Some Online Resources:

    Artificial Intelligence. A Modern Approach, 3rd edition Stuart J. Russell ..

    Artificial Intelligence (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

    Logic and Artificial Intelligence (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

    Non-monotonic Logic (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

    Stanford University Symbolic Systems Program

    Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

    Transformers as Soft Reasoners over Language, 2020 Aristo  Allen Institute

    The Logic Theorist (Wikipedia) Logic Programming (Wikipedia)

    Logic Programming (Robert Kowalski)

    8A: Logic Programming, Part 1 (Abelson and Sussman)

    8B: Logic Programming, Part 2 (Abelson and Sussman)

    Formal Semantics, Lecture 2 (Barbara Partee)

    SWI Prolog Learn Prolog Now!

    Noam Chomsky On Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong

    Peter Norvig On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning

    Deep Learning Tutorials

    Neural Networks and Deep Learning

    Eliza, Computer Therapist


    as humans and technology accelrated their race to 2025- as you scroll down you can upload all chapters of the original report as well as debate updates most urgently needed if youth are to celebrate being the first sdg generation- sample chapters chapter 6 fintech to end poverty chapter;; 7 AI JOBS half a century on from telecommuting debates in the economist chapter 8 AI education  chapter 9 virtual productivity ai maps welcome to the 2025 report- first published 1984 by norman and chris macrae- would could go exponentially right

     

    chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk temporarily in washington dc region dec 2019 -- +1 240 316 8157

     AI case studies 25+ practice webs of united nations   mulilateral ai      WEALTH AI

    poverty ai----In Remembrance Sir Fazle Abed died 20 December 2019- we were privileged to visit bangladesh 15 times between 2007 and 2018- of 50 amazing ai human developmemt stories of this new nation in 1971, the japan ambassador to dhaka asked sir faze abed to chair a dinner roundtabe on how his intended legacy zoomed far above my father's at the economist- sir fazle went into an extraordinary tour of the need for a new university coalition- distributed within reach of 20 million youth everywhere- a month after sir fazle's death george soros announced open society university networking at world economic form- decemcer 1-14 sees thefirst pitching competition hosted by 50 colleges 

    2021 is also the 60th year of alumni networking around the greatest poverty alleviation networker i have been privileged to help graduate journalists interview. After himself graduating in naval engineering from Glasgow U, Sir Fazle spent a decade rising to be East Pakistan's regional CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, before a cyclone killed one million people all around him. This life changing moment caused him to spend the rest of his life turning Bangladesh and co-leadership partnerships into labs empowering village women and their daughters to  end rural poverty and play a full part in nation building. Brac's brand architecture evolved into the world's largest NGO partnership as well as the first one amplifying both a girls world and South Asian cultural joy

     

    .2020 UN REPORTS...

    un2.0 top 19 innovations for global governance

    UN sec general report :ROADMAP ON DIGITAL COOPERATION 

    LEAD PARTNERS OF UN DIGITAL AND AI OPPORTUNITIES

     Champions
    2.The Government of France  1
    3.Future of Life Institute (FLI)  1
    4.UN Global Pulse  1

     

    Key Constituents

    1.The Government of Brazil
    2.The Government of Canada
    3.The Government of Ghana
    4.The Government of Italy
    5.The Government of the Republic of Korea
    6.The Government of Malaysia
    7.The Government of Singapore
    8.The Government of Slovenia
    9.The Government of Switzerland
    10.European Union
    11.ARM
    12.Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
    13.Article 19
    14.Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence
    15.Centre for Artificial Research Intelligence (CAIR)
    16.Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR)
    17.Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER)
    18.Council of Europe
    19.DATACTIVE
    20.Data Protection Commission of Ghana
    1.DeepMind
    2.Element AI
    3.Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
    4.Future Society
    5.Graduate Institute Geneva
    6.GSMA
    7.ICT4Peace Foundation
    8.Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
    9.International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
    10.Jozef Stefan Institute
    11.Makerere University
    12.Microsoft
    13.OECD
    14.OpenAI
    15.Oxford Internet Institute
    16.Partnership on AI (PAI)
    17.Tsinghua University
    18.Wadhwani Institute AI
    19.Counter-Terrorism (CTED)
    20.ISO
    21.Office of President of General Assembly
    22. UNODA
    23.UNICRI
    24.United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, International Trade Law Division
    25.UNESCO
    26.UN Secretary-General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals (DFTF)
    27.World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)..
    .....UNAI.jpg

     

      in 1984 dad and I started a 10 year debate with economist readers and some national leaders who wanted 2025 report translated- what will happen if every livesmatter use of ai wins out from big brother ai?if you need a free half hour zoom tour to 2025 sustainability community ai - rsvp chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk - from 1994 we spent a decade debating readers of biography of john von neumann as well as all euro countries connected by 21st c knowledgeboard and collaboration smart cities

    001 intro by 2025 science fiction will no longer exist- any goal you assign youth and ai brains to will be possible - for better or worse- we hope teachers and parents without borders will empower millennials to linkin blossoming communities everywhere - this book reviews the approximate timelines and media and financial innovations to map

    001

    tckey.JPG 

     

    .

      

    009 

    .leaps forward in finance ai will be critical for peoples everywhere

    9chap6.JPG 

    ..

     

     010 work ai smart devices - telecommuters

    10cem2.JPG.

     

    011 education ai

    11ed1.JPG
    11ed2.JPG

     

     Matt Ridley --economics ai fieldbook of The Rational Optimist

    Jun 15, 2010 — When I joined the Economist in 1983, Norman Macrae was the deputy editor. He died last week at the age of 86. Soon after I joined the staff, ... a fieldbook of optimism for humansai appeared on every journalist's desk









    to associates & prospective associates

    38th annual update 2025 report - 2021 ai year of sustainability

     my father - the economist's norman macrae and i authored the 2025 report in 1984 providing media debates on exponential timelines as what von neumann started up exponentially accelerated to 2025- further i helped dad research his first retirement project in the 1990s - the biography of von neumann -soon to be retranslated in japan

    although von neumann's immediate legacy at the end of the 50s was the launch of the moon race decade and twin AI labs on pacific west coast stanford, atlantic east coast mit, AI is not popularly imagined as tech's convergence on achieving or destroying sustainability goals to 2030

    thus we are applying for small grants simply to publish the first annual compendium of 1000 optimistic mini AI case studies - we see this as offering storytelling ingredients for journalists and hopefully educators  of the sdg generation-  but its not really the grant that matters to us- far more important is collaboration  through an alumni search for volunteer twenty something correspondents who vote for maximising diversity of cases included as well as a few elder mentors

    i live in bethesda though my family roots are glasgow- so health willing i aim to help adam smith scholars co-launch this first ai annual either at cop26 if live or in various zoom partnerships- while i am not expecting tokyo olympics to happen in july, if they do we will aim ro offer a pre-half annual at that time; because my maternal grandfather sir kenneth kemp wrote up the legalese of india's independence after 25 years as mumbai's chief justice- doing what can be resolved across old world borders spun by british empires is a concern of my diaspora family

    to the extent that usa chooses to lead 2021 collaboration leaps to climate, vaccine distribution and digital health passports etc i would of course love to maximise good news across my media connections in uk

    georgetown has previously provided joint spaces for debriefing past work such as my guest editing of triple specious issue of journal of marketing management 1999 on conflicts between rise of fake media and the purpose of the world's biggest leadership platforms

    would you or someone you might recommend at georgetown be interested in discussing above further?

    thanks
    chris macrae +1 240 316 8157 norman macrae foundation- annual projects of 2025report.com
      

    001 -footnote how to imagine 2025's totally different world

    2 contents

    9 chapter 6 fintech to end poverty

    chapter 7 AI JOBS

    chapter 8 AI education

    chapter 9 virtual productivity ai maps

    INTRO AI – WHY, WHAT, HOW IS ARTIFICIAL INTELligence

     

    TECHNOLOGY HAS REACHED STAGE WHERE ALL LIFE CAN FLOURISH OR SELF-DESTRUCT – DECLARATION SIGNED BY MEMBERS OF FUTUREOFLIFE.ORG –

     

    Not a religious group- leading members have practice ai at world class labs or challenges to human sustainability

     

    AI IS THE NEW ELECTRICITY Andrew Ng, cofounder of massive open online courses – coursera ; what Andrew means: just as few people would willingly choose to live without access to electricity grids, so too lets design ai for all

     

    To explore ai we propose the first annual story book of leadership cases of ai for sustainability generation

     

    In structuring this survey we seek every lives matter viewpoint especially those whom technology/infrastructure historically divided; we will aim to maximise openness in classification of ai as a way of touring maximum diversity of societies on mother earth. We also prpose a dictionar in which ai is a noun and any professional skiil is and adjective – finance ai = financial service , nintech, efinance and all technologies and community inputs to what the secretary general of un cals the 75th birthday wish- the peoples money

     

     

    WHAT GRAVITIES DO SUSTAINABILITY GOALS COMPOSE

     

    SUSTAINABILITY IS ONE OF THOSE ENGLISH WORDS WITH MULTIPLE MEANINGS

     

    It questions whether humans are cooperating or competing with mothe natures system rules

     

    Mathematically therefore it must be audited in exponential form not separated short term numbers; it demans internalization not externalization at borders

     

    Since 2015 urgency has been proposed in gravitatinf 17 www sustianabity development goals>This can bring whole truth to  mediating the purpose of uniting nations- however 17 directions are not something human behaviors in real time can work with – so its logical to ask whether humanizing ai in 2020s =AIforSDGs. Lets just do it. AS the bard would say to be or not to be - that is now the core question connecting worldwide youth and elders of the 2020s – everyone’s role as lifelong student and mentor

     

    Sustainability is also conflict reolution with past legal practices- perfect laws when thehorse was the fastest communications power may be worst imaginable when apps mobilise life saving knowhow to 7.5 billion simultanesous. We have seen something terribly wrong where academic publishing is stuck in paer based journals. By march 202, 30 thousand separate avademib papers on covid had been written- ai easily provide a communal guide to all this knowhow but only after all copyrights had been waived for this application

    AI WHOSE TERMINOLOGY IS THIS

    TERM WAS FOUNDED AT START OF MOON RACE DECADE 1960S BY John McCarthu who set up twin labs on america’s Atlantic coat at mit boston and pacific coat at Stanford in the gay area south of san Francisco,. MIT -world leading r&d college founded by a railways entrepreneur; Stanford founded when 5th governor’s teen died of an infection while on a tour of Europe; mr & mrs Stanford declared every child of California to be part of their family founding the university to advance that promise

     

    WARS & TECHOLOGY -how openly do older generation value/trust children

    The fitst 18 decades of humans and machines started by two members of glasgow u in 1760s (first engineer hames watt, first mapaker of local and transnational trade ada smith had not ended well. World war 2 brought humans to the verge of extinction. Constitutionally the united nations was formed to change that broken system; the mathematician john von neumann at john von neumann at america’s epicentre of new technologies both of nuclear science and computer programming worked tirelessly for 12 years so his legacy connected humans sustainable exponential not the opposite exponential of species distinction. AI can be explored as his legacy of hope, trust and love of human intel. Indeed it seemed that jfk understood this like no national leade before od since in declaring no human mission impossible if moon landing’s goal was achieved in the 1960d

     

    Mapping as a bottom-up and open architecture – opposite from top down amastery of dministrative professions?

    chap 10 transforming government -AI GOV

    CHAP 11 - AI HEALTH

    aihealth.JPG

    CHAP 11 bis AI health part 2

    16 ai biotech

    17 ai population

    18 ai food

    19 ai green

    20 ai green part 2

    dictionary ai :  conversational ai  : language translation ai: literature review ai: new uni ai;  linguistics ai :  natural language programing - 

     astronaut ai : weather ai: insurance ai: climate ai : earth ai: green ai ; infrastructure ai ; trade ai  ; water ai

    sports ai: livesmatter ai: community safety ai ; gender ai; race ai; imagenet ai ;fashion ai ; wearable ai

    health ai   1: dataset ai:  trust ai: banking ai; opengov ai  :: food ai  (sd goal 2)   agri ai

    education ai: skills-dashboard ai ; mynextlesson ai; my nextservice ai; coder ai

    robot ai type 1 : 5 senses ai : augment-human ai ; augment machine a1

    robot ai type 2 - moving robot-ai;  

    city ai: coalition smart city ai: operational-platform ai; cultural ai;  resilience ai ; media ai 

    tolols of ai - eg ocr 

    21 ai drugs

    22 ai mind

    23 ai home

    24

    25

    in 1984 there's one chance to replace berlin wall with peace replacing superpower- here's how 3  4   5  6 7 8

    We intend to Charter the first annual guide to humanise  ai  (artificial intel) and all 2020s technologies preferentially applied to the core sdgs- poverty-tech, food-tech, health-tech, education-tech, equality-tech and so forth

     

    We aim to open source version 0 of this by September 2021 in time to host fringe debates/zooms at cop26 Glasgow Nov 2021 on integrating core sd goals as well as climate blueprints. AI will also be pivotal to vaccine logistics for 7.5 billion people and communities leaping forward from covid making the 2020s the most exciting time to be in -or value - the younger half of the world. This will be the 260th year of humans and machines due to what James Watt and Adam Smith started up at Glasgow University.

     

    In Remembrance Sir Fazle Abed died 20 December 2019

    2021 is also the 60th year of alumni networking around the greatest poverty alleviation networker i have been privileged to help graduate journalists interview. After himself graduating in naval engineering from Glasgow U, Sir Fazle spent a decade rising to be East Pakistan's regional CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, before a cyclone killed one million people all around him. This life changing moment caused him to spend the rest of his life turning Bangladesh and co-leadership partnerships into labs empowering village women and their daughters to  end rural poverty and play a full part in nation building. Brac's brand architecture evolved into the world's largest NGO partnership as well as the first one amplifying both a girls world and South Asian cultural joy

     

    I first heard of the idea that the sdg world needed new university coalitions at a remembrance dinner roundtable to my father's life work hosted by the Japanese ambassador to Bangladesh in which Sir Fazle Abed was invited as chief guest. Soon most Asian ambassadors were joining in  a two pronged debate: Brac university was to be Fazle Abed's legacy and Sir Fazle advocated a map for sustainable Asia : for every 40 million Asians a new university needed to be linked in to help mediate both the deepest data relevant to open society and those tech wizards who find their greatest life changing moment in ai for sdgs..

     

    Key sources for the first annual will be any educator in open society education networking who seeks to unite lives matter or liberate youth empowered solutions to our species most urgent coalition challenge : to be or not to be.

     

    chris.macrae

     co-author with The Economist's Norman Macrae of  2025report.com  

    research associate of Brac University President and Vice-Chancellor’s office

     

    chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk , Washington DC region, whatsapp and text +1 240 316 8157

    all reporting errors are mine alone

    ==============

     

    jargon watch

    Scottish schools of entrepreneurship are particularly picky about which English words to apply. bottom-up, locally & globally

     

    For example we are comfy with "charter" in the sense of royal families giving entrepreneurial permission to network partners around a sustainable purpose - eg Royal Geo Soc, Royal Soc of Arts, Royal Society of Medicine .. and the society of societies - Royal Society  https://www.youtube.com/royalsociety

     

    Back in 1843 Smithian and Diaspora Scot James Wilson started THE Royal Society news letter -aka The Economist -facilitating debates of whether empire processes could change from eg slavemaking to commonwealth; unfortunately for James, Queen Victoria and Albert the Prince Concert liked his idea and dispatched him to Calcutta with her permission "the charter bank for designing economics South Asians needed"; there James died of diarrhea within 9 months of landing. It wasn't until 120 years later that  Fazle Abed and Unicefs James Grant made the intel of oral rehydration a primary school practice and soon epidemiologists became core to Brac's village networking intel as well as the genesis of Brac University's first college James Grant School of Public Health   MELINDA %22JAMES https://www.google.com/search?q=MELINDA+%22JAMES+GRANT+SCHOOL+OF+PUBLIC+HEALTH%22&oq=MELINDA+%22JAMES+GRANT+SCHOOL+OF+PUBLIC+HEALTH

     

    Back in 1860 James Wilson's son-in-law Walter Bagehot took up the double challenge of editing The Economist and Mediating transformation of the English Constitution.                                               My special interest as a statistician is in transparency of partnerships auditing exponential multipliers,  intangibles and deep trust partnerships My 1995 book with The Economist Intel Unit "Brand Chartering Handbook" mapped a way to mediate sustainability local and global partnerships. Today I  am hopeful that I have learnt from which professions suppressed our attempt to value the most purposeful brand leaders worldwide; therefore we urgently hope ai will now  prove to be a smarter subject to charter how and why the younger half of the world open up society's maps to being the first sdg generation

     

    On Norman Macrae

    My father had a series of life changing viewpoints which he used as optimistic mediation lenses

    1930s  grew up in British embassies most impacted by Stalin and Hitler,

    1940s survived his last days as teenager in world war 2 navigating planes in allied bomber command over modernday Myanmar surrounded by the great Bay of Bengal, Asean and continent of South China; joined up to Keynes last class on theeconomics profession Hippocratic oath to systematically  end poverty

    1950s was the only journalist in Messina 1955 at birth of EU,  one of the last people to interview John von Neumann inspiring curiosity about the future of ai labs launched by the Irish American John McCarthy to twin Atlantic smart  studies out of MIT Boston and Pacific smart studies out of Stanford

    1962 in his 15th year as Economist sub editor was permitted to sign one annual survey- chose FIRST the future rising of Japan and hopefully the two thirds of the world who are Asian and whose continental needs had not historically been valued by the mercantile empire era in general-particularly the systemic administration of Britannia and Japan...

    by the 1970s Norman was inviting the likes of Romano Prodi to translate surveys of entrepreneurial revolution into the romance languages; his next intent was to linkin Von Neumann's central euro languages through the 1980s but what happened next is still debated by the friends of The 2025 Report now in its 37th round of re-editing

    sample some ai 4 hemisphere smithian tours

    tour 1 changing education 1984-2025 glasgow new zealnd barcelona beijing america- south west

     The Learning Web - Home Page 


    if a member of team barcelona could have a quick look some time - you will see how new zealanders practised with flipping some schools as the web emerged - a 3 decade action network learning curve

    one of their big ideas was to turn every student into a journalist - interviewing rather than being  examined
    by around 2000 they also used the local radio station for a 12 days of christmas game- whats the next billion dollar market that new zealanders can invent precisely because we are not usa

    something tragic happened around 2005- gordon dryden founder in nz was interviewed on chinese tv- his book was published in chinese- 10 million families read it- he got zero revenue and in trying the case in chinese courts he ended negative 30000 dollars for his trouble; i have a similar problem in kenya

    now in his late 80s i am told gordon is very sick- he always had an american co-researcher jeanette vos
    Dr. Jeannette Vos is the co-founder of the National Institute for Teaching ... She earned her doctorate from Northern Arizona University in Curriculum and ...

    but unlike gordon who was an entrepreneur and brand architect  first and connected schools in his region second, jeanette is in the middle of usa south west teaching profession and previously she and i hadn't found a win-win to chat about over last 15 years- however jeanette is now feeling responsible for the future of all of thelearningweb wider possibilities

    maybe you could do a quick search of her and decide whether there is any intersection between your win-win and hers

    no worries if not - every channel is different
    gordon was the only person in education to take my father and my 1984 book 2025 report seriously from the getgo
    it was also through gordon that i first got to touring tsingua university on all 8 visits to beijing - the new university of all universities imo


     
    in new zealand i also knew from 1990s christine arden who lead a design agency for 15 years before becoming a ceo of something that looks not completely different from spanx of billionnairess sara blakely with a bit of help from richard branson reality tv show 

    and i know helen baxter in the days we helped host the pan-eu knowledgeboard which voted barcelona number 1 knowledge collaboration city before that annoyed luxembourg's biggest investors in dehumanising ai

    then we can see that if new zealnd forms an ai education unicorn it will be due to the force multipliers of the youth at crimson but as far as i can see they havent yet recognised the 50 college coalition of osun as pivotal to linkin OSUN Call for Concepts






    in new zealand i have also known for 20 years now jack yan- inter alia he runs a fashion magazine edited by young people and creating local fashion idols- it could be that eg your student team going beyond fast fashion might connect; i expect he would be fascinated to hear of the case of high school creating superstar out of a female afghan refugee- on and off several of us have dreamed of a university of stars - before someone becomes famous on a tv stage can we establish one trusted mentor of whatever meaning in life /lives matter they could contribute- this was supposed to be tokyo's olympics turning point but i dont believe tokyo will happen in 2021- if naomi osaka isnt offered the opportunity to be japans ambassador to the un when she's finished with tennis it will be a disastrous mistake for japans common sense rising

    i think the japanese also need to boldly go expose the (womens) olympics committee as bankrupt unless they are offered summer 2022 assuming they want that- alternatively if having prime property rotting in tokyo for 2 years is not good why not turn it into the university of stars within the new university coalition of bard

    i dont know how to pitch  economistsports.net & kobe.mba  politely within the bard portal -its a pity because soros best friends on last mile healt paul farmer and jim kim are mainly funded my the mccormack son of the sports agency billionnaire






    chris macrae +1 2403168157

    update npv 2020 ai computer usability from twimlai

     

     Today we’re joined by Adina Trufinescu, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, to discuss some of the computer vision updates announced at Ignite 2020.

    We focus on the technical innovations that went into their recently announced spatial analysis software, and the software’s use cases including the movement of people within spaces, distance measurements (social distancing), and more.

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    “More On That Later” by Lee Rosevere licensed under CC By 4.0

    latest edtech transcript ggv podcast with jenny lee - next billion

    questions on edtech since 1995 

    -why wasnt the web -its metrucs - segmented by ed and commerce

    - why dis=d usa leave edteck k-12 to one charity instewadof eg 1% of edu budget

    - lee howdo we define edtech when tabling biggest-  eg is YouTube an EdTech company, given how many people watching the tutorials online. And also do you benchmark DingTalk, Zoom became the infrastructure

    but truly you cant value deep edutech without context - so eg   in china edtech for one fifth of the workd- if you are targeting language learning, say for English, then it’s about, can they innovate on content, can they make this content, part AI and part avatar, and then with the right teachers to come in, during that learning process, along that learning process, they have coaches or builders, who’s helping the student to review the course material after class. And that’s the surface element that needs to come in as well. And in some companies, they have discovered a way to have a free tool in the case of Zuoyebang, for example, a tool as a homework assistant, they’re able to acquire users.

     

     What is interesting is over the years, people would think, is it education first, or is it tech first. And in the first wave, there were a lot of startups started by kind of teachers, be negative here, what we’ve found is that those hasn’t worked that well. I think if you come at it as more of a teaching, the emphasis tends to be more just curriculum, over time, it’s not a long-term advantage. So, the ones that have actually worked very well are cross vertical CEOs, the companies that we have seen, for example, Zuoyebang CEO came from Baidu, more tech background, Huohua’s CEO was the CTO of his previous startup. So, these are internet entrepreneurs, they understand what it means to use tools and services and software to attract a huge user base, the freemium model works for them, the product centric feature rich app works for them. So they think internet and through that they are able to then destruct the traditional sector allows themselves to get a head start to create that first, batch of users. And then of course, because they are still education go back to the service part where you have to make sure your operation, your service is growth in line to support the users as they go from free to pay users. The other angle that we’ve seen is technology enhanced, latest investment in Europe, that one completely takes the lab out of the school. And in that sense, it’s using innovative technology to recreate the entire classroom, the entire lab. It’s something that traditional teachers or educators may not think of, because they are so used to saying, Okay, I need to kind of feel in touch. And so, I think that’s the other angle, the first angle is more of the product sense, the feature sense, the acquisition part. The second part is, we have seen founders who commented, they are not, in the education sectors, they are technologies. And they are the ones who’s coming out with very interesting products. With that they can build early competitive moat.

    hans tung

     I think, by the time this podcast is released, we would have announced our investment in Europe, the first one EdTech in Europe, the company called Labster, it leverages a Unity game engine based approach to build a kind of VR enhanced learning environment, like Jenny said to replicate in power lab, it’s not experience without the cost of building a new science building on campus, so that a lot of students can have a very good lab experience across all science subjects, then the power of technologies utilized as a way to make the learning even more interactive, and become even better.

    lee  hile we are talking about two groups of people, traditional educators, and  the tech entrepreneurs, actually this world is colliding and converging as well, I think in today’s virus world, the educators are forced to learn very quickly, right, where they may be averse to assimilated labs, or a after school AI tutor for the student. Today, it’s all about tech, because when schools are close, when the infrastructure that cannot support continuing to educate their kids. They are moving faster as well. So I actually think that on that front, the adoption of a lot of this new technology and service model in the schools it’s gonna go up. Countries governments are pushing forward with this budgets are being recast. And I think traditional educators just like parents, when you don’t want to send your kids to online class, you now have to. So that’s a habit change. I think similarly, as well in traditional public schools, that system is also being pushed forward, maybe, you know, a celebrated as much as you know, three to five years. So, I think that’s why this topic, or the sector is now getting its day in the sun, which is good.

    jenny lee - examples   Vedantu in India, that’s a classic example of how the China experience has actually drawn the CEO to come talk to investors in China at tech startup as well, I think potential is actually a very good case.

     Vedantu or Ruangguru in Indonesia, 

    jenny lee-  he holy grail in education when we started saying it’s their two biggest pain point. One is relying on school’s physical location, and to relying on teachers. I think relying on school you can address with current technology, bring It online, mobile live streaming, asynchronous recorded, all that stuff. The second biggest thing how do you replicate high quality learning experience consistently, and make it available to the masses, right and also have this customized because learning is a very customized experience. Some people learn faster, slower, some are more graphical, some are born number driven. So, the holy grail here is general AI. Which startup can create elaboration of AI technology, so that you have the super learning teacher who can answer all question in the universe.

     

     

    Jenny Lee of GGV: Why EdTech is not a ‘Winners Take All’ Sector

    SEASON 2

    EPISODE 30

    Episode Notes
    Transcript

    Interviewed by Hans Tung and Rita Yang

    For the last episode of our EdTech series, we have GGV managing partner Jenny Lee. Jenny has been investing in the space for almost a decade now. So we thought a conversation with her would be the best way to conclude this series. If you or your friend is in the EdTech space, this is an episode that you don’t want to miss.

    Jenny shared how she started to invest in EdTech, getting to a product-market fit, growth with different business models, and one big bet she is currently making in the space.

    For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com
    Join our listeners’ community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/engage.

    Rita Yang  

    Hi, Jenny, welcome to the show.

    Jenny Lee 

    Hi, it’s good to be back.

    Hans Tung

    It’s always good to have you back.

    Rita Yang  

    How did you become interested in EdTech in the first place?

    Jenny Lee 

    This is a sector that we have been investing and looking at since 2014. I think the sector it’s called EdTech, but it does have a lot wider definition. At GGV, we look at it as leveraging technology, new product innovation to change the world learning, but it’s hard to call it learning tech, it doesn’t sound quite nice. So, we lump it under EdTech. And so if you look at this sector, the key underlying change or driver here that we are trying to capture is that,  humans, whether they are kids or adults will continue to seek for additional information for learning, so it’s a broader learning category that we are looking at. So as tech investors, we don’t want to invest in just first generation, going to classes, finding great teachers listening to some podcasts. I think we are looking for a potentially new destructive way of bringing this learning to different demographic, different age groups in different countries. And this is a very long-term sector for us. We started looking at this almost six years ago. And now today, across GGV, we have about 15 portfolio companies in China, US, Indonesia, and India, and we can talk about it. But underlying this is really about how can we now bring learning in different formats, in different modules, and whether it’s real time or asynchronous, so anytime, anywhere learning versus kind of together learning. So, the different formats, and the different business models, different content delivery methods are where we focus on. I think, on top of this, we also pay attention to underlying technology. So they may not look like education company or learning companies, they may look like software companies. But to enable all that we talked about innovation in this whole learning sphere, we do need tech, the tech could be in the form of natural language processing, could be in the form of AI, could be in the form of AR, 3D rendering. And that also allows content and service to be delivered in a new way, to different client devices, whether it’s laptop, mobile, or new, engaging products, like AR glasses, for example. So, we would put that also under the whole EdTech landscape.

    Hans Tung 

    I want to add that Jenny’s timing in looking at EdTech is very good, especially in hindsight. In the mid 2000s, there was a wave of offline education companies growing up in China. And that was happening during the ADSL expansion, PC, desktop internet era. And most of those companies did not end up being very big, because they don’t know how to embrace tech to help them. And it was too early to do tech without smartphones. So the two big companies that made it from that era was obviously New Oriental and TAL, they have done well, that many more did not make it then and then by 2014, six, seven years after iPhone started, China had enough smartphone penetration. So, all the technology that Jenny mentioned, could happen on a much bigger base across these users, and that really changed the dynamics of this category as a startup and investment category. So a lot of time, timing infrastructure are key to making good investments and starting good successful startups.

    Jenny Lee

    No, absolutely. And I’ll just add that I think the fundamentals to kind of education 1.0, which is still the prevalent mode of education today, is that, you know, you have a school, right, you have a physical location, and then you have teachers, the teachers could be celebrity teachers, or they could be tutorial teachers. But by and large, those were the main piece of the business model, being able to find good teachers, and then having the right location, I think that would still be one mode of delivering this learning, basically, when you talk about younger children, elementary, middle school, and high school and even colleges. But I think with technology as a key disruption, it’s allowing this new bunch of startups to not think about how do you disrupt, how do you have fewer teachers so that you have more consistent, reliable service education content that can be delivered to a wider audience. And then in the kind of virus landscape, it’s even more relevant. How do we now get away from over reliant on the offline vocation? It’s a skill issue, it’s also an access issue over time, do we want to be kind of stuck to that. So a lot of the companies today work to resolve or lower the reliance on this tool, and therefore,  having the right devices proliferation out there, where everybody has kind of internet, in their hand, becomes a great enabler to the growth of the sector generally. Yeah,

    Rita Yang  

    The COVID situation, definitely have helped EdTech companies to increase adoption, lower their CAC. So what are some of the trends you think will stay after this blows over? I know, it’s gonna be a long time before it actually blows over. So, what are the long-term consumer behaviors that you think will come out of this? And how can companies leverage that?

    Jenny Lee 

    Yeah, so I think that the trend has started, this few years in terms of, you know, can I get online? Can I get better content online? Can I get better service? Can I get better teaching service online, that’s been going on for a while. What the virus situation did is actually not to reverse this but to accelerate this, where you are ready a parent who’s using online apps and services for your kids, this will not change, I think it would just reinforce the ease and flexibility on how you can continue to have the services for themselves and for their kids. I think the biggest change is for users or parents who’s been resistant initially, they may still want to have their kid at the childcare, they may still want to have their kid away in school, so they have some free time. I think that type of behavior would be now complemented with the fact that if they had the chance to try online, then that habit change may result in them buying more services. So maybe beyond core classes, tutorial classes, we have seen that it will spread to more categories. Can you do art and craft online? Can you learn music online? So, areas where you feel like you have to bring the kid to a community and learn drawing together. Now it’s moved online. So, I think the happy change is a little bit more subtle, definitely long term. But I think it’s going to extend into more of this learning categories. Can you do belly dancing at home by yourself, versus saying have a bunch of kids at the studio. So, I think that’s where the change is happening, it’s zero to one type of change a bit more gradual, and then crossing into more verticals.

    Rita Yang  

    A follow up question on that is that when a lot of EdTech company got started, they’re actually surviving between a lot of giants who are also entering the space. One of the arguments I’ve heard people making is that YouTube is actually an EdTech company, given how many people watching the tutorials online. And also with DingTalk, Zoom became the infrastructure or the tool that a lot of schools are adopting. How do EdTech company startups think about the space that they are in, how do they know that they have a product market fit so they can grow as an independent business?

    Jenny Lee

    For EdTech companies, based on what we have seen today, they don’t win because of one area. They don’t win because they have content. They don’t win because they have technology to bring content online. Actually, that’s the most important. They also don’t win because they have the best teachers that they can recruit online. I think they win because it’s a holistic model, The ones that we have seen in China, it tends to go towards more service oriented. So the tech companies, they don’t just do one piece, they do everything. So for example, if they are targeting language learning, say for English, then it’s about, can they innovate on content, can they make this content, part AI and part avatar, and then with the right teachers to come in, during that learning process, along that learning process, they have coaches or builders, who’s helping the student to review the course material after class. And that’s the surface element that needs to come in as well. And in some companies, they have discovered a way to have a free tool in the case of Zuoyebang, for example, a tool as a homework assistant, they’re able to acquire users. So in that sense, it’s not a single point, barrier, that if you have this, that’s the home run, where you’re going to be the largest education company, where we’ve seen is that it does require cross functional capabilities and abilities across content, across service, across operations. And then of course, in the front end, customer acquisition. So, can the large companies come in? I think they can, and they will try because this is a category, if you think about YouTube, it’s just one format, so YouTube’s format is mostly recorded video, where you can asynchronously download the video on a one to one basis to learn. So, it’s a self-learning mode, is asynchronous mode. But whether adults or kids, they learn in different formats, so maybe in that category, it will fulfill one piece of that learning requirement. But if you’re looking for life, live classes, live streaming, where you’re seeing the speakers that may require different types of ability to get the celebrity speakers, to coordinate time and then have  X number of people online to consume the classes. So again, then that’s where you have tech coming in, you have celebrity speakers coming in, and different webinar format. And then again, as we mentioned,  when you start to get into verticals, beyond language, you have math, you have physics, you have art and craft, and then you have music, that’s where the domain expertise needs to be there as well. And so it’s not just about internet company, or huge internet giant saying, Oh, I can also offer art and craft, it’s a little different. So, the curriculum is different. The class format is different. If a company only does one large class format, that may work for a particular area, but it may not work for all areas. For example, for kids, it’s hard for three to six years old to see through an hour of one to 1000,  but they may work better in a one to one format, they may work better in a one to four format, where there’s some interaction with the computer avatars, but then there’s also handholding where the teachers can come and say, Hey, come back to the screen. So again, it’s actually a very complicated business model that cuts into quite a lot of abilities. And is this a winner take all? I would say no, just because of what we talked about different age group, different requirements, different curriculum, and then different types of delivery format. And so, we do feel that in each of these potential categories, there could be leaders, just like in the real world. When you have a kind of offline well, when you have all the different schools, in China, you’re Tsinghua and Peking University, and you have Jiaoda, why not all called one school? There’s just different focus, different specialties. It’s also different culture, different kind of service element as well. So I think that would also extend into this new world of startups where I think it’s a huge market. You look at China, K 12, goes to 200 million addressable students. If you look at India, it’s like 300 million, right. So, you are talking about a big market with very diverse needs. And therefore, I think the sector can sustain and hold several 10 to 20 billion market cap companies.

    Hans Tung 

    Right. I think that’s a very important point, because it could be divided with different format for different usage cases, the home market has to be big enough for these individually focused format to really take off and be big, so only maybe US, Europe, India, or China, maybe in parallel Latin, and Southeast Asia, either have regional or national place where addressable market is big enough. Otherwise, in smaller markets, you got to be able to have ability to execute and have different formats within one holding company in order to build a sizable outcome. So, when someone just want to be inspired by the model from China or US, this has to be put in context as well.

    Rita Yang  

    So, you basically need to have enough children that taking classes for the market to make sense, right?

    Hans Tung 

    And the parents’ willingness to spend that kind of money. So even India, which GDP per capita is lower. But they decide to spend money on education so strong that we were very bullish on EdTech in India, and also in Indonesia as well.

    Jenny Lee 

    Yeah, I think when you talk about children, they definitely will be bounded a little bit by geography, and also regulation. So, education is actually one of the very important initiative in any government. And so regulation would also means that curriculum may be more tailored to each country. And so you know, companies that can offer the services may need to be licensed. And so it does have a bit of that moat as well, from a geographic perspective, especially when it comes to young adults or children, when it comes to like adults, when you think about that learning, and we talked about your YouTube learning, in that sense, when it’s a bit more generic, or even specialized content, topical content, but for the adults, I think, then those models potentially has a better chance of globalizing because if you are trying to learn sales techniques, I think, it’s the technique itself. That’s like, presentation skills, right. So I think those are more scalable, kind of across geography, language, you can just do different language localization. So I would also break that into different kind of age group and target profile as well in terms of their ability to either be a global company, or super big, local company in that sense.

    Rita Yang  

    So GGV actually has a really diverse set of EdTech portfolio. As you mentioned, Jenny, there’s software solutions for childcare in the US, we also have K12 learning apps in India. And when you evaluate new startups that you’re looking at in that space, how do you think about the end game? Because as you mentioned, there’s the total addressable market versus the ability to go global. How do you think about that?

    Jenny Lee 

    The end game, obviously, super unicorn that has great brand awareness and excellent service, because it’s education. So, you do want to do good. This is a great sector because at the end, you make money and you do good. And the better you do, the better you do, so I think that’s kind of the end game, where we do look at companies in terms of evaluating them. This is all about disruption. So, as I mentioned, I think the traditional model still works. New Oriental and TAL will continue to be strong, because that need is still there, whether it’s after school tutoring, or English learning, where there’s a need for that human interaction. So, what we’re looking for in companies is founders’ ability to create new products, so  they have to think out of the box. What is interesting is over the years, people would think, is it education first, or is it tech first. And in the first wave, there were a lot of startups started by kind of teachers, be negative here, what we’ve found is that those hasn’t worked that well. I think if you come at it as more of a teaching, the emphasis tends to be more just curriculum, over time, it’s not a long-term advantage. So, the ones that have actually worked very well are cross vertical CEOs, the companies that we have seen, for example, Zuoyebang CEO came from Baidu, more tech background, Huohua’s CEO was the CTO of his previous startup. So, these are internet entrepreneurs, they understand what it means to use tools and services and software to attract a huge user base, the freemium model works for them, the product centric feature rich app works for them. So they think internet and through that they are able to then destruct the traditional sector allows themselves to get a head start to create that first, batch of users. And then of course, because they are still education go back to the service part where you have to make sure your operation, your service is growth in line to support the users as they go from free to pay users. The other angle that we’ve seen is technology enhanced, latest investment in Europe, that one completely takes the lab out of the school. And in that sense, it’s using innovative technology to recreate the entire classroom, the entire lab. It’s something that traditional teachers or educators may not think of, because they are so used to saying, Okay, I need to kind of feel in touch. And so, I think that’s the other angle, the first angle is more of the product sense, the feature sense, the acquisition part. The second part is, we have seen founders who commented, they are not, in the education sectors, they are technologies. And they are the ones who’s coming out with very interesting products. With that they can build early competitive moat. So when the model starts to churn and run around, the bigger guys will take some time, and traditional companies may not have the DNA, even if they want to copy the product. So, I think that’s what we have seen over the last couple of years, is that the evolution of even those early startups, you can start to see kind of that profile of a winning team or winning company.

    Hans Tung 

    What genius products are very, very important points. Traditional education companies tend to focus on user experience at the local level, because you’re bounded by the teacher at specific locations. So, they care about how to scale and maximize the utilization rate of those teachers there. There may be some learning between teachers but tend to happen in a local environment. So it favors big cities where you have more teachers, good teachers to draw upon the pool you’re drawing from, and when a company is started by founders who have internet background, they understand how the distributed resource online on a broad level, so that a good teacher have a chance to teach thousands of students across the country or across a region. And the impact of the teachers is really heightened. So we democratize the access to quality of good teachers. And internet companies understand how to build a product that iterate fast to listen to students, and parent feedback to make that experience better and faster than a traditional education company without an internet background. So it’s complete different clock speed of how these companies would innovate at a certain point and what Jenny’s mentioning, I think, by the time this podcast is released, we would have announced our investment in Europe, the first one EdTech in Europe, the company called Labster, it leverages a Unity game engine based approach to build a kind of VR enhanced learning environment, like Jenny said to replicate in power lab, it’s not experience without the cost of building a new science building on campus, so that a lot of students can have a very good lab experience across all science subjects, then the power of technologies utilized as a way to make the learning even more interactive, and become even better. And suitable questions can give more feedback in more variety of ways to make sure that their learning quality is higher and quantifiable, it’s replicable. So, it’s just amazing to continue to see technology being used in a way that it’s beyond the imagination of traditional educators, because we’re not exposed to that technology, you don’t know what’s possible. So, we’ve seen disruption caused by people who love education, but come from a technology or internet background to do this in a way that’s going to be quite interesting and disruptive.

    Jenny Lee  

    But just one more point. I think the interesting thing is that while we are talking about two groups of people, traditional educators, and  the tech entrepreneurs, actually this world is colliding and converging as well, I think in today’s virus world, the educators are forced to learn very quickly, right, where they may be averse to assimilated labs, or a after school AI tutor for the student. Today, it’s all about tech, because when schools are close, when the infrastructure that cannot support continuing to educate their kids. They are moving faster as well. So I actually think that on that front, the adoption of a lot of this new technology and service model in the schools it’s gonna go up. Countries governments are pushing forward with this budgets are being recast. And I think traditional educators just like parents, when you don’t want to send your kids to online class, you now have to. So that’s a habit change. I think similarly, as well in traditional public schools, that system is also being pushed forward, maybe, you know, a celebrated as much as you know, three to five years. So, I think that’s why this topic, or the sector is now getting its day in the sun, which is good.

    Rita Yang  

    Yeah, I think one of the observations that I’ve made by looking through our different EdTech portfolio is that it’s not just moving traditional education from offline to online, it’s more about leveraging technology to disrupt the education experience itself. So, as an EdTech startup founder, how do I know that what the problem I’m solving is a painkiller versus a vitamin? I guess that’s a question a lot of product manager have to ask as well.

    Jenny Lee 

    I think with any adults, you take both painkillers and you take vitamins. So, I wouldn’t discriminate between the two, though I think it’s important that founders do need to identify, I think painkiller be one where they are grades involved. If I were to define it, they’ll be grades involved. That’s a tangible, measurable outcome that the consumer or the end user wants, if the end user is a kid, they want to improve their grades, if the end user is an adult,  they want to make sure after taking this, they know how to program or they can get a job. So I would say that, if you’re creating a product that can address a very measurable and direct result, then it’s like a painkiller. Because it’s a pain that needs to be solved. Typically, this pain point is very structured, it’s getting through your grade six or nine, or getting into college, it’s getting better scores as TOEFL scores? So, I think that’s one. But on the other hand, I think that we started talking about this as learning, learning is lifelong learning is in small bits and pieces over time. And it could be likened to playing little mobile games when you have time, right, like when you’re on the subway, maybe you should listen to a podcast, listen to GGV podcast, you can learn about the entrepreneurs world. So that’s the other part, those are vitamins. But the business model is different So typically painkiller type of a product has a defined time frame, you need to get this result delivered within the quarter, within the year because they’re taking exams, they’re taking tests. The vitamins once are the frequency of usage may be high, but the bite size may be smaller. And if we convert that into business, economics, that’s the difference between the two that we look at, so the vitamin type of model may be lower ARPU for user but longer LTV over time, higher frequency of use, higher frequency of payment, then the time spent may be three minutes, two minute smaller in terms of time duration. I think the painkiller type tends to be course, right, like a classroom courses, fixed format, that you have to go online at a fixed time. If it’s live streaming, you have to be guided through a series of courses to elevate your skills. So slightly different, I wouldn’t say any is bad. I think that for founders, they need to go in understanding what type of needs they are trying to address. And with that, what we look at is, does the matrix look make sense. If you know that you’re delivering a long lifetime vitamin type, then it’s about widening the funnel, your acquisition cost method has more efficient than other startups, and we will look beyond into the operating matrix to see if in this case, then the product market fit and the model fit is fine. So, we welcome all startups either trying to create the next painkiller or the next new vitamins to come talk to us.

    Rita Yang  

    As long as they have the right set of business model fitting into that.

    Jenny Lee 

    We’re willing to work with you, I think we have seen a lot with the team and the vantage point that we have, not just from one region, right China, US, Southeast Asia, India and now Europe, we realized that the front end is not that much different,  but the back end model, how to deliver can be quite different because of what we mentioned, low localize consumption, regulation and things like that and channels. We are  also happy to work with companies which have the want to expand beyond their current scope,

    Rita Yang  

    Can you actually give us some examples of how our global footprint in EdTech that have helped us either identifying the right startup for new market, or helped our existing portfolio grow beyond their current market? Maybe we can start with hands on that.

    Jenny Lee 

    So actually, what do you think about Vedantu in India, that’s a classic example of how the China experience has actually drawn the CEO to come talk to investors in China at tech startup as well, I think potential is actually a very good case.

    Hans Tung 

    Yeah, I will take a different twist on Rita’s question. I think it’s helping companies of scale, it’s not just helping them to expand geographically, a lot of times it’s helping them to learn from other people’s experiences, both positive and negative. China obviously had a benefit of the US internet space in the 90s, and 2000s. And now we’re seeing other emerging markets like Latin America, Southeast Asia, and India, in particular, learning from Chinese investors and Chinese startups in a variety of spaces. EdTech is definitely one where China has the biggest education market in the world, it has the biggest market cap of education companies listed publicly traded in the world. And therefore, this becomes very natural for founders from these regions, emerging markets come, in the case of Vedantu, they’re extremely impressive to us as how fast and hungry they’re learning from China. So we’re just extremely impressed with Indian founders, their willingness to learn in the speed that they’re learning. And we’re happy to help because we think that when ideas can be more global and shared, everybody gain appreciation of each other more in the process.

    Jenny Lee 

    I think it’s a little bit more about other companies in other regions learning from China. I think, as Hans mentioned, when we look at our portfolio companies, I think Chinese EdTech startups are the most innovative, It’s a Chinese culture that learning is the most important thing you can ever do for your kid if it’s the one thing you could do. So, I think that the willingness to spend, the willingness to experiment is very, very high. So, over the years, with the convergence of internet, founders are moving on to the second startup, they also come in with a lot of ideas from gamification to enterprise sales, content management, and they are leveraging all that in converging EdTech. And so, the models, the technology in China has just been forerunners out there. It’s not about Chinese companies going out of China, today, the market is very big. If you’re doing English learning, you can go into Chinese learning, you can go into math, like there’s a lot of categories they could expand, then they can go up down the age group. So, I think there’s still a lot in China for a lot of companies to digest. And at the adult level, they may have some apps that they distribute globally, but by and large, I would say 80, 90% the focus is how do I become number one in China, because that is like the golden goose, the big market. And in Indonesia and India, they are in that learning mode. So, whether it’s Vedantu or Ruangguru in Indonesia, the founders have all traveled many times, maybe not recently, but past to China to learn from what’s going on there. Then they go home, and they localize it for their model. So it’s a bit more at that stage that we see versus Chinese companies now want to take on the wall, I think this is one way if they take on China alone, it would be very, very interesting. And we’re starting to see US companies also having that dialogue. And of course, you know, the Europe startup as well is selling their products internationally. So I think in that sense, that’s the rest of the world is more global sort of perspective, China itself is just tackling the China question. But the model expertise, I think it’s being learned overseas.

    Hans Tung   

    It’s very important that a lot of people also have this misconception, especially in the EdTech space, that China is a big market. And it blocks US companies from entering, and therefore, Chinese companies end up doing very well. People from outside tend not to know that when you have third fourth generation of founders doing this for the second or third time, the learnings that they have from interdisciplinary environment from other sectors proven successful, whether it is in gaming or as in the internet space, how to scale a consumer business, and then learn how to leverage tech and enterprise SaaS to build a product that’s more robust and can be more focused and targeted in delivering value to a specific set of users. All of that gets compacted in building new things into the tech space. Other countries simply haven’t had that chance to have so many iterations of experiences from different sector, all happening at the same time. And it takes time to comes up with innovations, other founders are seeing other emerging markets are benefiting from the fruits of the wisdom. But sometimes people don’t understand nor appreciate how actually this happened in the first place. And hopefully, through podcasts like this, people can know more about it. And I think that it will also inspire other founders to learn how to do this interdisciplinary approach of building better product and give more value to users.

    Rita Yang  

    Thank you. So maybe one last question to wrap this up. What is one thing that you hope that EdTech founders have already knew before they came to you? Second question is, what is the big bet you’re currently making in the EdTech space?

    Jenny Lee

    Well, so I think when founders comes to us, it’s not very different from other deals, We do want them to really be able to articulate precisely, what pain point they are trying to solve. And to your earlier question, it’s your product a painkiller type of product, or is it a vitamin type of products, and then come to us with the right numbers. If they are only in seed, and it’s just idea, final numbers. But I think if they are starting to monetize, then, as I mentioned, this is a pretty complex sector. It cuts into so many different areas of operations services, we want to understand the model. And it’d be great if the founders comes in, with the right model. What’s the unit economics? What’s the cost retention? What’s the renewal rate? What’s the referral rate? What’s your ARPU? So this is a sector that also very numbers driven. And it’s all about that finesse of it. If the model is not perfect yet, we can help it understand it. But coming in and not knowing the numbers, I think would set a very bad impression. For us, we’ve seen a lot we can help. But we don’t think the first thing is that the CEOs need to understand their own business well when they comes to talk to us.

    Hans Tung   

    Like Jenny said earlier, if you’re in the EdTech space, you’re doing good. So if you know your numbers, your model, you want advice to help you to scale, we’re happy to help. So ultimately if you’re delivering a deficient user experience, and users are benefiting from being smarter, wiser, more prepared, then over time, when you’re doing good and country building in the right way, the outcome will always be much bigger than you anticipate. I will always remember our example of investing in Alibaba, before SARS in $180 million valuation and see them launching Powerball dominance, ours ends up becoming a $600 billion company 14, 15 years later. It’s just amazing to see that kind of good and impact one could make if you have the right product market fit and you aim to do good.

    Jenny Lee 

    Your other question is the next big thing. So, the holy grail in education when we started saying it’s their two biggest pain point. One is relying on school’s physical location, and to relying on teachers. I think relying on school you can address with current technology, bring It online, mobile live streaming, asynchronous recorded, all that stuff. The second biggest thing how do you replicate high quality learning experience consistently, and make it available to the masses, right and also have this customized because learning is a very customized experience. Some people learn faster, slower, some are more graphical, some are born number driven. So, the holy grail here is general AI. Which startup can create elaboration of AI technology, so that you have the super learning teacher who can answer all question in the universe.

    Rita Yang 

    It can be everyone’s best teacher who knows exactly where they are.

    Jenny Lee

    It’s like Skynet for learning. I think of all bots and space and everything. But that’s why I love this space. Because it has this do good, current value creation. And then he has this forward looking what’s out in in the next EdTech sphere. So I think that’s the holy grail, but it’s gonna take a while, because general AI applied like that, basically creating a superhuman that has all the intelligence combined. So I think that’s the ultimate where we are looking for, we’re willing to break that dream into different parcels, maybe in curated space, like math, and like physics, chemistry, we start there first, because we can scope those answers. So the psychological, philosophical questions, maybe it has to take kind of line up for the next. That’s the ultimate. And so that’s where we are spending time, we actually have a new deal in the discovery fund, that’s starting initial step, to kind of do that within the math space. So, I think a little step, hopefully, the whole picture can be drawn in our lifetime.

    Rita Yang  

    Thank you for being on the show, Jenny!