Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Building Bridges to Employment with Real World Learning featuring Sara Leoni and Jeff Sample of Ziplines Education
Sara Leoni is the Founder and CEO of Ziplines Education, a career accelerator that partners with universities to deliver industry-recognized certificate courses that prepare professionals with the in-demand skills, knowledge and confidence for today’s tech-driven world.
Jeff Sample was the Founder and CEO of Clicked, now the VP of Product for Ziplines Education. His background and unique perspectives as a transitioning Management Consultant and Adtech Executive led him to develop experiential learning products via work simulations to help close the work experience gap, and upskill tens of thousands of learners in tech adjacent career paths.
💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- How Ziplines Education and Clicked are addressing the experience gap in career readiness.
- Why experiential learning and real-world simulations are key to workforce preparation.
- The importance of industry-recognized credentials and their integration with academic institutions.
- Insights into the acquisition process and how it aligns two learner-focused companies.
- The role of confidence and real-world artifacts in empowering learners to succeed in interviews and careers.
✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:07:39] How Ziplines Education partners with universities to integrate industry certifications for learners.
[00:15:08] Jeff on bridging the experience gap.
[00:28:44] The role of real-world tools like Salesforce, Tableau, and Google Analytics in preparing learners for jobs.
[00:37:08] Measuring learner success with confidence metrics and employer feedback.
[00:41:34] Sara and Jeff reflect on the acquisition process and lessons learned about aligning values and strategy.
😎 Stay updated with Edtech Insiders!
- Follow our Podcast on:
- Sign up for the Edtech Insiders newsletter.
- Follow Edtech Insiders on LinkedIn!
🎉 Presenting Sponsor:
This season of Edtech Insiders is once again brought to you by Tuck Advisors, the M&A firm for EdTech companies. Run by serial entrepreneurs with over 25 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work as hard as you do.
[00:00:00] Sara Leoni: We have to understand the challenges that these institutions face. We really need to understand what's important to our partners on the other side of the table who are, you know, building and delivering these continuing education programs and making sure that we are really aligning the way that we approach really student outcomes to what their expectations are.
[00:00:21] Jeff Sample: Because when you think about work as well, and this was also something I reflected on when somebody does work in a work setting, it kind of simulates a game. Right? It kind of simulates like you're going through a scenario, you're going through a real life situation and there's twists and turns. So what was unique about somebody coming into this experience is we really wanted to embrace that, right?
We wanted to embrace the idea that you're going to go through a scenario that may feel real. You're going to be working in team environments. It's going to be really enriching. And we also had kind of this guiding principle really early on that we felt like we really babied adults in some instances when it came to career development and we wanted to make it hard.
[00:01:03] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry. From funding rounds to impact to AI developments across early childhood, K 12, higher ed, and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar.
And to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus, where you can get premium content, access to our WhatsApp channel, and more. Early access to events and back channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoyed today's pod.
Today on EdTech Insiders, we're talking about credentialing, industry certifications, closing the experience gap, and mergers and acquisitions. Because we are talking to Sarah Leone, the CEO of Ziplines Education, And Jeff sample, the former CEO of clicked, which was just acquired by zip lines. It's a really interesting conversation.
So by way of introduction
Sarah Leone is the founder and CEO of Zipline's Education, a career accelerator that partners with universities to deliver industry recognized certificate courses that prepare professionals with the in demand skills, knowledge, and confidence for today's tech driven world. The career spanning 20 years.
Sarah's honed her expertise in management, marketing operations, and building innovative online brands for major corporations, as well as startups. As a lifelong learner, Sarah thrives on tackling big challenges. And passionate about building, motivating, and leading high performing teams to solve problems through innovative solutions, all while delivering a positive social impact.
She's an inspirational leader and sought after speaker at industry leading conferences. Last year, the company announced it's 6. 4 million series a funding to help close the skills gap and acquired clicked. An on demand active learning career network. Today, Zipline's education is a rapidly growing company partnering with 30 universities and serving tens of thousands, professional learners to confidently navigate and take charge of their career trajectories in the evolving workforce.
Jeff sample was the founder and CEO of clicked and is now the VP of product for Zipline's education, his background and unique perspectives as a transitioning management consultant and advertising tech executive led him to develop experiential learning products via work simulations.
We talk about a lot in this conversation, work simulations designed to help close the work experience gap and to upskill tens of thousands of learners in technology adjacent career paths. Let's talk to Sarah Leone, founder and CEO of Ziplines and Jeff Sample, now the VP of product at Ziplines. Sarah Leone and Jeff Sample.
Welcome to EdTech Insiders.
[00:04:07] Sara Leoni: Thanks, Alex. I appreciate you having us. It's very nice to be here. Thanks for having
[00:04:11] Jeff Sample: us, Alex.
[00:04:12] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, this is such a fun conversation to have. I think this is unique in the history of EdTech Insiders where we're talking about two really interesting companies who have just come together.
And I think a lot of our listeners would be really curious about what that process looked like as well as what you're doing at Zipline. So let's start with you, Sarah. Tell us about Zipline. How you got into the education technology industry, what you're doing at zip lines and what you're doing for the upskilling and reskilling space.
[00:04:39] Sara Leoni: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks Alex. So how I got into education, I grew up in the world of digital marketing. So I worked at big box brands, organizations like Visa, E Trade, Yahoo, and over time recognized, I really enjoyed more of the facets of a fast paced entrepreneurial career. Startup organization. So I went to a company called cafe press, where frankly, I hawked a lot of mugs and t shirts learned a lot, grew a lot as a professional, but also knew that I wanted more and through some relationships that I formed at that organization, I was brought in to really spearhead the efforts around building our direct consumer business in a textbook rental business called book renter.
And through that experience, I just, I learned so much about the challenges Students face today as they look to not only get into college and that stressful process, but how do they persist through college and what are the expenses they face and the challenges they face? And frankly, at that organization, we worked with a lot of adult learners that, you know, it was a decision between.
Do I get my textbooks or do I put food on the table for my kids? And so, you know, really got connected to this idea that how powerful obviously education can be in people's lives, but also the challenges that folks face in terms of that affordability factor. So that's really what drove my passion around education.
I think the connective tissue between that experience and zip lines is. I learned very quickly, you know, you, you read any of the data that came out of burning glass, now light cast around the percentage of students that graduate into underemployment. And, you know, you look at those numbers, they're staggering.
They, at the time it was 43 percent for women, it was 50%. And the fact of the matter is, if you fall into underemployment, you Continue in underemployment. And so, you know, it was really tied into this idea of how do we help bring more industry focused skill sets into the institution so that folks that are looking to pursue a career, right.
Or continue to really thrive in their career, have an opportunity to do so. And I can go into more detail, but that gives you a little bit of background in terms of my journey here to this point.
[00:06:54] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, but let's do a little bit more background because I think this is such an important space and that gap that you're mentioning, that incredible sort of underemployment issue that people face, whether they do a higher education or not, there is this often missing piece that doesn't allow them to really get that sort of first meaningful job.
And we know that so many students pursue higher education specifically for the career outcomes, But higher education has really not fully responded over time to meet those career outcomes and ensure that their students get that. So I'd actually love to hear you talk a little bit more about it. And then Jeff, I know you think a lot about this as well, so I'll pass it to you, but tell us about, you know, zip lines.
I picture somebody zipping over that gap, right. Going right from education to industry. Tell us about what exactly you do.
[00:07:39] Sara Leoni: Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting, right? Cause I talk about underemployment and helping the students really graduate with skills. I think when I stepped into this opportunity, Alex and founded the idea behind zip lines, we did a lot of tests around, um, You know, what are hypotheses we have in the market in terms of how we can integrate into higher education institutions?
And, you know, one was, how do we work directly with the institution to help students who can take our programs, earn credit and actually graduate with those skill sets? We ran some other tests working with continuing and professional education, helping adult learners, right? Helping, I won't say seasoned professionals, but individual contributors, mid level managers.
develop skill sets so that they could feel really confident or pursue new opportunities within their existing career. And I will tell you, I mean, it's not going to surprise you because, you know, education very, very well. Getting into the space where we were working on the academic side and the four credit side, it was really, really challenging, very sticky.
Um, I think presidents and provosts were really excited about how do we integrate these skills? We know that our students need these both, not just the skills, but also the credentials. We integrate certifications, technology certifications into our learning experiences. But once it got down to say the faculty Senate, right, it was a really challenging, slow process.
And what we recognized on the continuing and professional education side, Was that one just from a general market perspective, huge opportunity for us as we know that the vast majority of adult learners, the vast majority of professionals need to continue to develop skill sets in order to stay relevant in the workplace.
And we also found that, you know, it was really important. It was a big gap from an institutional perspective to be able to develop these very industry focused credentials, these industry focused skills. Programming's curriculum in order to really help those learners move their careers forward. And so it was really this great synergistic opportunity for us to bring intense value to these institutions while also really delivering phenomenal student outcomes.
And when I talk about students, I'll talk about really, we'll say, you'll hear me say learners or adult learners. I try to stay away from students mainly. I mean, they are students, But, you know, when we think about students, often we think about students that are, you know, participating in say a four year degree program.
[00:10:02] Alex Sarlin: Yep. I struggle with that as well. I try to use learners when I'm talking about adult learners, even if they're students, but I know some people love the idea of being a student. Others say, no, I'm, you know, I'm not a student. I'm an adult. I'm a professional, but I'm continuing to upscale and learn. The semantics are kind of funny here.
So. I totally agree. And I think you're talking about something incredibly important. I hear you talking about, you know, the two sort of different languages, right? The academic world talks in credits and faculty, Senate and majors and industries talks about skills and talks about positions and salaries and needs.
And, you know, often those are just not talking to one another. So Jeff, I know that, you know, you've been thinking about this for quite a while. How do you feel like traditional education models fall short in helping learners prepare for those? You know, lucrative or fast moving careers that will make them feel successful.
And what have you been doing over the last few years to close that gap?
[00:10:57] Jeff Sample: Yeah, I think it's really interesting talking about some of the careers that me and Sarah are kind of focused on, right? Like some of these tech enable tech adjacent careers, where when you think about just the pathways, like. For example, we've had some high school students come into our programs, right?
Who typically couldn't even afford a four year university degree, right? And going through these programs, they're able to, you know, get some certifications, get some experience and really then enable and get a job outcome, right? So when we actually started Clicked, it all was started on the idea of A connected thesis, right?
I came from a very different background, right? It came from advertising technology before I realized how much I did not want to be a part of that ecosystem anymore. It was really passionate about this space and we had the connected thesis that how would anyone really know if a career was right for them?
If they couldn't experience it in the first place, right? Why would anybody at the age of 16 say, I'm going to commit to being a psychologist and then, you know, try to get into a good psychology program. Four years later, try to get a psychology degree. So inherently that felt a little bit off for us, but the connected side of this and where we really leaned in on clicked is how do you get the experience you need?
To land that first job, right? It was that experience gap that was so wide from the outcomes perspective. Right. And in 2020, we were essentially a COVID initiative when, you know, I was really helped on kind of solving this problem. And we were listening to all of these learners. All I want us to experience, right.
The internship. That they wanted to land was not accessible, not just because of COVID, but even that process was so hard, right? We had people who they came into our programs as a COVID initiative who had lost their internship. And I was like, they're applying for internships and may for something that's going to start the next year.
Right. And we're like, how do we speed this up? Right. Like, how do we actually bring experience to the forefront? And we really honed in on some of the little pieces of what that actually meant. Right. Like what it actually meant for our learners is they needed signals to employers, right? They needed signals to employers that it wasn't necessarily that they got paid for work and they had that, but that they had those skills that we're talking about, right?
Like that me and Sarah talk about, they had like those tangible skills, not just the foundational instructional components, but the proof of ability that they could tackle, say, Context in the project, right? Like context in a work environment, work together directly in teams. And those were all the things that as we were trying to develop what it is and how we were going to solve it, that we really honed in on is solving those particular things, giving them relatable assets that they could then show to an employer, right?
Because something I think we forget about in terms of readiness coming out of these programs. And then on the employer side is Employers care about things. When you go into the interview process, a learner needs to showcase that they can do the job, right? In the end, it's, I have practical experience that shows I can solve these problems for your company.
And when they're in the interview process, they just need to be really confident, right? And we really click. What we really want to do is try to focus. How do we solve those two components? Knowing internships are Pretty inaccessible for a lot of people. And also when we were talking with employers, which is a huge piece of this, right?
Like this isn't just, how do we think about different education models? It's also employers. How do we rethink what skills are required, right? Like a lot of the skills based stuff I know we're talking about, but for employers, how can these new people really signal, right? Like, how can they actually commit to this?
And, you know, another example for me and Sarah, we were working on Salesforce administrator stuff, right? Like I will still see. Job posts for entry level positions that say two plus years of experience, right? Computer science degree required. That's a bad signal, right? Because those things actually aren't required.
So I think as we were creating clicked, it was really, we had this really interesting connected thesis, but we were really focused on, okay, what do employers really need to see? Right. Like how do we really showcase that particular stuff and reduce like the cost friction point, which we really felt was a barrier, honestly, for learners, but also for employers, right.
As we were talking to them, like internships are expensive. They're operational heavy. How can we kind of reduce that friction point and be really creative with some learning to help our learners be more confident and get some of the practical experience that they need to land roles.
[00:15:08] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, this concept of the experience gap is, I think, so vital and it's something that so many young people especially experience it, but they don't really have a name for it.
They don't realize that this is a systematic error. I would call it a systematic issue in our society. It's not their fault. They consider it their own fault. This I can't get an internship or, you know, I applied to all these jobs and I couldn't get it because they want experience and they don't step back.
They're not able to because they're young and they, you know, they're not able to step back and say, well, how would I possibly get two years of experience if nobody would hire me to do the work or nobody, I can't get an internship. And I think, you know, you've been on that for a while. When I hear both of you talk about this, I sort of picture that the classic signals on a traditional resume or CV and write, you have your experiences, all your, Job experiences.
If you're underemployed or new to the workforce, that might be pretty short. Then you have your skills that is been this sort of hand wavy thing for a long time, but it's getting much more serious now. And then you have your education, right? The degrees or certifications or any of the different things you've had.
And, you know, as I hear both of you talking about the future of this space, it feels like. The separation of these hasn't really worked very well, I think. I think there should be a lot more options for people to build a holistic signal of what they can do without having to sort of, you know, name the skills without any evidence and then have the education which carries its own strange signal and many people don't have that bachelor's degree.
It's just been such a mess. I want to ask you, Sarah, you know, when you're Working with these universities on one side and these companies on the other, you mentioned it can be difficult. How do you build these partnerships and what do they look like when you're actually trying to bridge this gap and talking to both sides of this equation?
What do you bring to the table and what do they sort of respond most actively to?
[00:16:57] Sara Leoni: Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think one of the things I talked about in the past, when I worked in the textbook rental space, we also had an opportunity to build that capability for institutions. So we partnered with some of the largest universities around the country to power, not just the physical components, but also some of the digital infrastructure at those institutions, big schools like UT Austin, right, that were running.
Huge volumes of materials through our platform. And, you know, you learn very quickly how an institution works versus how a company works, right. And how very differently their objectives and their mission aligns to what they need to accomplish. And so for, you know, I think straight from the beginning, it was, We have to understand the challenges that these institutions face.
We really need to understand what's important to our partners on the other side of the table who are, you know, building and delivering these continuing education programs and making sure that we are really aligning the way that we approach um, really student outcomes to what their expectations are and actually beyond probably what their expectations are.
And so, you know, for us, a lot of our focus is not, I mean, I think when people think, Oh, you're partnered with universities, how are their faculty integrated into your learning experience? Or, you know, how do you think about ensuring that this lines up to some Separate check boxes on the higher education side.
And the reality is look, all of the curriculum is developed in house by zip lines. We partner with some of the leading practitioners around the world to develop content material that we know is going to be incredibly pragmatic, right? Practical, approachable. Right. We also know that learning as an adult is incredibly intimidating.
So how do we bring those intimidation factors down? I, Jeff, you talked about confidence. It's totally spot on, right? I mean, we are serving a very diverse audience of. Individuals that, you know, some come to us with very little experience in the professional world. And some have over a decade of experience in the professional world.
I think the general theme with all these folks is the same, which is how do I. Improve the outcomes, right? How do I create value for myself and my family in my career? And how do I do it and actually enjoy it? You know, I think sometimes we forget that it's not just about getting that job or getting a pay raise.
It's I want to enjoy what I do. I want to feel confident. I want to feel like I have a seat at the table, right? And so those are the things I think we bring a pretty different journey. Vantage point into the institution that is very much from the perspective of the learner, right? And who these folks are and how do we meet them where they're at and thinking about, you know, the employer and what are the skills that employers are looking for?
And how do we make sure that we are truly focused on ensuring that these students aren't just picking up, say, the theory, right? Or, you know, some tidbits kind of reading a textbook, you know, on what digital marketing is. But how do we Make them feel like they're infused in that experience and really understanding what is the hiring manager thinking about?
You know, what am I actually going to be doing on the job? Who are the types of people that I'm going to be working with? How do I integrate that full experience into what I'm doing? And so, you know, for us, you can tell we're pretty passionate about it. And, you know, I mean, I think this is where, you know, the connection with click came is there's the components of how do we just develop You know, a learning product, which is what I think we've done exceptionally well, how do we align that learning product to recognizable, trusted credentials, right?
Part of that is from the higher education institution and partnering with leading four year public institutions around the country, where we know that sends an incredibly strong signal to employers. How do we integrate technology certifications into that mix as well? And When I talk about technology certifications, it's with, you know, Jeff mentioned Salesforce, might be Tableau, might be Google analytics, Atlassian Jira.
I mean, you name it. We know that those credentials also send signals to employers, but the next leg of the stool, if you will, is. That experience gap for the individuals that are really trying to parlay this learning into something completely new. How do we make sure that not only do they have the know how, right, which is the digital skills and know how, but how do we give them more time in the clicked playground to put those skills to use in real world work simulations?
So we're pretty excited about, you know, what that value add can be from an outcomes perspective.
[00:21:43] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I'm very passionate about this space. And, you know, a little bit of disclosure, you know, I have worked with you, Jeff, at Clicked to help build out some of these types of sort of micro internship experiences.
I've also worked at Trilogy Education, which, you know, news breaking just recently that, you know, Trilogy was acquired for a pretty large sum by 2U. 2U declared bankruptcy a couple of years later. And just this years ago. Week when you're listening to this, probably maybe a couple of weeks ago, it basically decided to shut down their, you know, quote unquote bootcamp business, which is basically the trilogy business until then trilogy had been one of the fastest growing ed tech companies of all time.
Literally, I think maybe the fastest growing ed tech company of all time. And they shared in some ways, some of the DNA of what you're both talking about with zip lines, this gap where both sides, the universities, And the employers both realized there's something very mismatched here, the certificates, the signal of the skills, the, you know, there's just, there's two pieces that are just not fitting together.
And the result is you have. Everybody suffers, right? Universities are seeing lower enrollment in their degree programs. Students are seeing underemployment or learners are seeing underemployment and corporations are having hiring problems. It sort of serves no one. So, Jeff, let me pass it to you here. You know, I think we've gotten this far in the conversation.
It might not be clear to listeners exactly what a student's experience is in clicked or in one of these zip line programs, which, as far as I know, you don't call boot camps their career acceleration, right? Right.
[00:23:12] Sara Leoni: Yeah, we don't call them boot camps, Alex. They're shorter form. You know, they're meant to be programs that people can take as they're working.
Right. And the price point is, I would say, dramatically different from a traditional boot camp.
[00:23:24] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. Yeah. So it's a career acceleration, 10 week programs, much lower cost. So Jeff, talk us through a student's experience, a learner's experience. Sort of joining one of these zip line programs and how it would work in line with any existing work they're doing to bridge that experience gap.
[00:23:43] Jeff Sample: Yeah. So I think, you know, now that we've integrated or starting to integrate with zip lines, the learner journey is a little bit different, right? Whereas before, and Sarah kind of alluded to this, the playground environment that we've really tried to emplace here at click is learners can come through, you know, some course or some instruction before coming into click, but I think even taking a step back.
Is how we kind of designed for product to really kind of show what this playground, what this experience kind of looks like. Right. So I'd kind of mentioned, I had a non traditional background. I came from advertising, but before I actually came from advertising, I came from gaming. I worked in competitive gaming and was a competitive gamer.
And I always really looked back on that time as really influential. In my career, honestly, I always thought in some cases, that time was a little bit more helpful than actually my time at college, where I was looking at communication, teamwork, critical thinking, adaptability, you know, being under pressure.
And a lot of that really set in the foundation of what I'm doing now. I'm going to talk about with what we try to create a click because we took in a lot of the models that I had from gaming and saying, we really want to embrace these durable skills, right? Communication, critical thinking, teamwork and adaptability.
Because when you think about work as well, and this was also something I reflected on when somebody does work in a work setting, it kind of simulates a game. Right? It kind of simulates like you're going through a scenario, you're going through a real life situation and there's twists and turns. So what was unique about somebody coming into this experience is we really wanted to embrace that, right?
We wanted to embrace the idea that you're going to go through a scenario that may feel real. You're going to be working in team environments. It's going to be really enriching. And we also had kind of this guiding principle really early on. That we felt like we really babied adults in some instances when it came to career development, and we wanted to learn.
So how do you do all those things? And it was kind of this idea of the playground environment, right? So coming back to what a journey might happen is when somebody's coming in through one of those zip lines courses, if they want to come through one of our work simulations, they'll complete the course and they'll come into our program.
But the program Is very different, right? Like one of the unique things about what we did here at clicked wasn't just the learning design, which is you'll go through what's essentially a six month project in four weeks, right? Doing multiple deliverables and going back to one of our guiding principles.
We wanted to make it hard, right? We wanted to make it really challenging for adults so that they could learn as much as possible. In the short period of time, and the way that we did that was through this collaborative learning environment, right? Like Sarah, again, going back to the playground component, what was unique about our design is we wanted to put people in teams, we wanted them to go through the simulation where over multiple weeks you're working on real deliverables, you're working on real things that people do, you're getting all these twists and turns of working with the team in a project, we introduce these stakeholder components and it really brings it to life.
But the way that we were able to make people go so fast is, you know, we really, really focused on the environment, right? Like, I think one of our big aha moments was when we were going through testing and working with these interns that I was talking about is we had all these interns and they weren't engaging as much as we wanted to.
It was too challenging. We're like, we don't think this is too challenging. So what else can we do? And we introduced, Music. And I'm not saying music was the solution. What I'm saying is it actually changed the environment. So when we started doing this, and that was a really easy thing. So when somebody comes into a clipped experience, they're going to see small things in our design that really make the environment welcoming, right?
Really make the, you know, you can go back to hackathons and how challenging those can be, but they're really vibrant. So we took a lot of those principles. We'll have small things like coaches being really authentic, sharing times that they fail. And all of those small things. Really makes a learner feel like they can go through it, right?
And those were the things that really made what we did unique is we really focused on these really small things that can build out of this rich environment so that we can really pressure people. By the end of it, you know, we always say our learners coming out of this program is they have these actual work deliverables that we talked about, right?
They have this actual context to a real life scenario, and they've been through. Right. They've been through this marathon where we've made it so challenging that they feel exhausted. But they just learned all of this information from all of these different teams that are collaborating together from this real life scenario.
And when they go into an interview, they're confident, right? And not only are they confident, but if they don't have any, say, paid experience in that, they have these artifacts in this work experiences. That they can then show to an employer, right? So it was like the Mary of this bridges, like, how do we do that?
And it was a lot of nuance in the environment that really was kind of our breakthrough moments of saying, Hey, you know, we, we need a partner with somebody who can do the instruction, right? Which is why this was such a great fit with zip lines. It's like, we're not going to do instruction. Again, don't come from that background, but how do we really kind of embrace that environment and really push them to the boundaries, which is how this kind of married together.
So at the end of this, they've got credentials, you know, both from university partners. They've got credentials from say, Salesforce, they've got work artifacts, prototypes, and they can go into that interview room and just
[00:28:44] Alex Sarlin: Sarah fill in some of the subject matter here. You know, you've both mentioned some tools like Tableau and Salesforce and HubSpot, and you've also mentioned some sort of tech.
Careers like digital marketing and project management, product management, analytics. And I think, you know, help our listeners sort of put the pieces together. Cause it's really interesting that combination of focusing on directly on a work field using real world tools. And then as you're saying, Jeff, having a, you know, Team based collaborative experience that, you know, sort of beats you up, but also builds your confidence and gives you an artifact that you can actually show at least one artifact that you can actually show that combination of factors feels very rich.
Talk us through what that, you know, what that looks like for an individual learner.
[00:29:29] Sara Leoni: Hmm. Yeah. Just the experience that they would go through if they were to raise their hand. Yeah. So as Jeff talked about, I mean, I think we, our core focus from the onset was really around both like thinking about skills and thinking about how do we help people who have You know, again, like some, if you, if you step back and think about the makeup of the individual that we're serving, okay.
88 percent have traditionally been employed about 80 percent have a four year degree or even a master's degree, which is a little surprising, right? Some of those statistics, the average age of our learners, 37, 65 percent are women, right. And like, and when we think about like, what are the goals that they're trying to accomplish, right.
And we spend a lot of time Both thinking about outcomes, but in order to really understand outcomes, you have to understand goals, right? We're not establishing what people are trying to accomplish. What's interesting is about half the folks that are coming into our programs are looking to. Completely reskill and do something new.
They've been in a job, maybe it's a professional job, maybe it's not, but they need something new and they recognize that they've hit a dead end. And they're really excited about jumping in and, you know, putting on a different hat, if you will, and seeing if that's something that's interesting to them. The second half is.
Hey, look, I'm asked to do more in my job, right? We live in a virtual world. I need project management skills. I'm in a role where digital marketing would be incredibly helpful. Everybody needs AI skills. Everybody needs analytical skills, right? Business analytics, data analytics skills. And so, you know, our goal was, Hey, how do we really a understand who we're serving and then B design an experience that aligns directly to what they're looking for and so.
You know, we spent a lot of time very early on in our development process, Alex, doing a lot of research and just asking, right, doing a lot of customer interviews, doing quantitative qualitative. The thing that we learned is everybody told us, Hey, I really want to have a learning experience. Where I can learn on my own time and I can do it over whatever time horizon I want and which was interesting, right?
We could have built that. I mean, I think you have a lot of I think that by definition is a almost like a MOOC, right? But, you know, especially from your time, a trilogy that You can even if you build that, it doesn't mean that you're going to have great outcomes. It doesn't mean you're going to have people complete.
And so we step back and said, look, we want to build a learning experience that integrates people because we think community based learning is really important. That integrates the ability for people to build networks because we know 85 90 percent of jobs are found through somebody's Community through somebody's network.
And we wanted the learning experience to be very practical and we wanted it to, to include hands on learning. So, you know, in our courses, what you're going to find is it's a hybrid learning experience. So 80 percent roughly of the learning is going to happen asynchronous asynchronously. 20 percent is going to happen synchronously.
So, you know, we, we made sure that we level set just in terms of tying to what people want it, right. Which is we all live busy lives, whether I study on the weekend or late at night, we want you to have that flexibility, but we also know that you need the motivation of, you know, the component due dates, time horizons.
And so everything we do is cohort based. You enter a cohort, everything is paced. I want to keep you on track. We have a live instructor who facilitates lessons on a weekly basis. We use a flip classroom approach. So somebody is going to dive into a bunch of curriculum. They're going to, you know, learn, try it on the way we've designed.
Our programs is incredibly interactive. We've always used like, you know, shorter form videos, really engaging. Very authentic, right? So it's going to feel more like I'm learning from a podcast than it is. I mean, I say that with, right, but then it is me standing up and being a talking head and talking at you, right?
We wanted it to really feel like it was more of a mentored approach to learning. And at the end of each of those weeks, you also have a hands on. Activity. So we, we always believed in experiential learning, right? We always believed that you can't just learn. You have to apply it in as much of a real world setting as you, as you can.
And, and those components are really important to us. The other piece that is really important is, you know, we have to teach. The skills and the strategies, right? I mean, at the end of the day, if you don't understand strategy and digital marketing, you're gonna be challenged. But then how do we contextualize that against the technology?
Right? And so bringing in, I think, where there are learning companies that really rely on, say, Salesforce Trailhead for the learning, and then they wrap services around it, or they'll use it. Yeah. Google Analytics for the learning. That's not what we do. We actually do the opposite. So we create all the learning content and then we integrate those platforms so that people can learn and then actually go do right and go do directly in those platforms.
And so we find again, like it helps them. It breaks down. That intimidation factor and helps them build the confidence that they actually can use these tools and that they can get comfortable with these tools. And, you know, I think similar to what Jeff was talking, I mean, those breakthrough moments, they happen in different parts of the learning cycle, right?
And so we're really looking to get those baseline components. And again, for some people, they may not need to go on to a clicked. Work simulation, right? Some are just going to go back into their job and they're going to apply it in their job. And it's like that works. But for those folks that are looking to parlay everything they just learned in those 10 weeks into a completely new career, they need more support, right?
They need more of those artifacts and that hands on experience. And it's not, you know, it's not everybody, but our whole thing is we spend a lot of time telling people, look, go, you know, yeah. We don't have a direct conduit to internships. Think about how you can do pro bono work. Think about how you can pick up a project.
Think about, you know, we give them ideas. Now we can give them solutions, right? We can actually bring to them a direct, right? Process where they can get in and they can take on something that is really challenging, but also something that can help drive ideally much better results for them in the long run.
[00:35:59] Alex Sarlin: Knowing the tools, technologies and techniques is a lot, but if you don't have work experience for some people, especially if they're changing careers, they want to get their hands dirty, do something that builds their confidence, builds their collaborative skill and comes out with a meaningful artifact so that it just superpowers that employability.
It's a really exciting time for this space because I think that skills have been this very soft idea for a long time. People have talked about skills and durable skills and soft skills and tech skills for decades. And I think we're finally, you mentioned Lightcast, Sarah, you know, I think we're finally getting to a place where as a field, as an educational technology field and as an education field, we're starting to say, wait, Skills really are at the core of this connection between education and employment.
So, Jeff, let's talk about the skills measurement, because this is something that is really tricky for a lot of people. Somebody goes through a work simulation, they do something with a group, they, you mentioned sort of that competitive gaming metaphor, they do all sorts of things, how can they then show a potential employer, look, I really have these skills, you know, you can actually trust me on that.
[00:37:08] Jeff Sample: It's a great question because when you think about the things that we looked at for signals, we go back to kind of our thesis of the two things we really wanted to solve, which was when somebody goes into an interview room, how are they able to articulate their capability, right? Like, how are they actually able not to just be like, yes, I can do these things, but how do you articulate it?
Right. And it boiled down to a thing that, you know, me and Sarah and the entire team really relied on, which was confidence. What is the confidence meter for our learners that when they're going to go into that interview room, they're going to knock out the park, right? Because we would hear all the time that our learners would go into an interview room and they actually didn't have the language, right?
They said they actually didn't have the language to use in that interview room and because they didn't have that language, they didn't have that confidence, right? And the thing that we always kind of circled back to is these real life scenarios where say we were using a real company. That our learners could gravitate towards really provided context, right?
And the context was actually the piece that was really the connective thread that was missing, right? It was like all the weaves and in and outs of a project, right? We have, you know, this concept of, you know, when you're going through a project and when I worked in advertising, I worked on hundreds of clients.
None of them are the same, right? There's no single way to go about something. And you can kind of free up that idea that it kind of depends on the situation. That our learners are going through when they're going through this, right? Like that's kind of the gameplay as well. And we really wanted to embrace that because when our learners have then that context, they realize how the things that they've learned and say, one of the disciplines courses now going into our Sims, they apply all of that.
They then have the language, right? They then have the language. And then of course, as we mentioned, the artifact, right. And as coming out of this, one of the things that we were most excited about is we looked at that confidence and we measured that, Right. As our learners were completing these and 99 percent of our learners who went through our experiences felt more confident.
And we shared this with Sarah. She's like, I actually don't believe this, but that was the reality of what we were kind of pushing. It was so challenging. And because it was so challenging, they felt confident. And the other pieces then, Alex, as we mentioned, they actually do have these real life artifacts, right?
We partnered with other employers like Deloitte where Deloitte would co create these scenarios. So this is real work. Right. Like this is real work that people at Deloitte would be doing. And then they would share these artifacts with other employers and the employers would be like, Oh my gosh, this is incredible.
Right. And the other piece that we always measured was when we did take job placement intake, we said, did these experiences and artifacts help you land that role? And 96 percent of our learners said, And those were some of the overwhelming signals where outside of the qualitative, when we get all these heartfelt stories of saying, I didn't have the language, then I had it right.
Like those were some of the real analytics that we kind of measured say, okay, is this really solving it? And it was pretty clear early on. It was like, we'd kind of knocked it out of the park. We were definitely solving those two problems that we really focused on.
[00:40:04] Alex Sarlin: That's a very compelling statistics, and it strikes me that that confidence is a sort of sub measure of some of these different pieces, right?
You mentioned that people don't feel like they have the language to succeed in an interview. They don't have the sort of ability to present themselves in the context of the job that they want. I think this is something people have struggled with for a long time is how to sort of give learners the ability to present themselves to employers in a way that they can truly stand behind.
They feel like they can talk the talk and walk the walk and showcase their experience and artifacts and it feels like you're both really, really good at that. Very serious about experiential learning and have been dedicated to it for a long time. So I want to close for a few minutes by talking about the acquisition.
I mean, one of the things that's so interesting about the two of you is you, Jeff, you were the CEO of Clicked. Clicked was just acquired by ZipLines as this sort of last mile work simulation solution. And Sarah, you are the CEO of ZipLines, just acquired Clicked. I'd love to hear from both of your perspectives, sort of what It has been the most exciting and what has been one of the most challenging things about that sort of acquisition scenario.
We have many entrepreneurs who listen to this podcast, many of whom want to be acquired, and I think acquisitions can be amazing. They also always have, you know, they can be a minefield. And we've seen many in the past that have worked and many that have not worked. Sarah, let me start with you. What has been something really exciting about the acquisition?
What have been something you've had to sort of work through?
[00:41:34] Sara Leoni: Yeah, I mean, I think the exciting stuff is all that we've talked about, right, is being able to harness the power of what Jeff and his team have built and to be able to integrate it and see the value. I think that is by far, you know, we continue to remain really excited about that opportunity.
I think, you know, acquisitions are challenging. And when I went to my board and said, Hey, This is something that I'm considering. I went to a bunch of advisors and, you know, everybody tells you the same thing, but I, it's also, you don't really know until, you know, right. And I think one of the things, and Jeff can talk about how this is probably a challenge for him is, you know, we also said, look, we are an incredibly focused organization.
Like that's part of the reason we have had such great success is we've been really focused. Bring this in. We don't know exactly how it's going to work, right? How we're going to integrate the team. And so we're very much going to treat this like a pilot and make sure and this is how we do everything in zip lines.
It's, you know, get it out, test, learn, iterate, test, learn, iterate. And let's do that. In a sandbox so that we can, right. And then we can begin to amplify that across our business. And that's not easy, right? It's not easy coming in into an organization like that. So I think, look, I'm happy anytime I could talk all day about the, you know, some of the things that you need to consider and some of the things like what was surprising, what wasn't surprising, what were my learnings?
Happy to anytime talk to any of your listeners about that. I think it's, it's a fascinating, and I've been on both sides, right? I've been on the. On the founder side, like Jeff doing this and I've, and now I've been on the acquisition side and yeah, it's, it's exciting and it's also. It's also scary, you know, I mean, you just, you don't know what the end result is going to be.
And so all you can do is really set it up as strategically as possible and make sure you're aligned from a values perspective. And I think that from, for me, that was one of the most important things in just getting to know Jeff.
[00:43:31] Alex Sarlin: That's a fantastic insights, and I know that there are lots of listeners who are thinking about both sides of the acquisition, especially at this time with this so much, you know, frothy, interesting things happening in ed tech, there are small companies, this big rounds, the smaller round, it's just it's it's a tricky time.
And I think people are looking at mergers and acquisitions as a possible growth strategy. So I'm sure people will be reaching out to you and asking a little bit about your experience on both sides of that. I appreciate the honesty there. Jeff, how about for you? What have been some of the highlights and lowlights of this whole acquisition journey?
[00:44:02] Jeff Sample: Going back to like some of the things that Sarah was talking about, just in terms of like values, I think when me and Sarah were talking through this, right, like this took a long time for us to kind of like figure out, but at the core of it. It was so clear that the pieces fit, right? Like it was so clear that going back to like where they had a particular gap and they needed help, like where we were actually, you know, they're expert led.
We were expert led community on cohorts was a huge piece of what they did. It was literally everything about what it was that we were doing, right? Everything was such a clear fit. That, you know, going back to even values, company cultures, right? Like where our team could come in and support where they had all of these things.
It was so clear. It's like, we have to try to figure out how to make this work because at the end, like Sarah and the team were completely learned focused and we were also. Always just learner focused, like learner obsessed with outcomes as well. And we're like, well, this is very clever, but there may be some small things in terms of some pieces of technology that don't fit, you know, we have to make some changes to our learning product, right.
To think about the customer journey, as we mentioned, right. The learner journey, right. How do we transfer them from a course to a playground, right. How do we make those transitions smooth? So you make some modifications to your product. But at the end, you're like, well, those would be small, but then you get inside.
Right. You never know until you try it. And there's small things, right? There's just small things that you have to navigate and go through. And I think both for me and Sarah is like, I think it's going slower than we'd like, but I think the plan exists and at its core, the thing I think that I always lean back and I think Sarah does as well is.
The fit is so good that you just know it's going to work, right? You just know at the end it's going to work and it will work in some capacity. And you can kind of lean on that to really kind of like, right. And then go through the minefields as you've kind of talked about, go through the small things, because the small details is actually the things that really kept the hiccups, right?
Like Sarah is the team's growing a ton, right? There's a lot of new people and you don't want to come in here. Do this bolt on, which is a completely new product, right? It's a completely new product to really everyone. And I think that's been the hard context shift, right? As somebody who's been doing this, we got all this and it's going to be easy, but the reality is you just need to slow down.
Right. And I think that's been probably the biggest learning piece for me is, is just to slow down. Right. Like really relish on the idea that we'll get there because there is so much alignment and just kind of let the pieces fall. Wow. You don't disrupt the business too much because at the end, this is additive and it's going to add a lot of value, but we need to get there at the time that we need to get there.
[00:46:27] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. I really appreciate hearing you both talk about this. I think I'm maybe bringing. a little of my own personal take to this because I was at Trilogy when 2U acquired it, and I saw some of the sort of highlights and lowlights up close, and I frankly think that, not to throw too much shade, but I think they didn't do the work of working through the tough parts.
I really think that, you know, this natural, you Tensions and tricky difficulties when you're combining two teams, two companies, two technologies, as you both mentioned, from my perspective, I think to you really just didn't, they spent 750 million to buy trilogy. And then I just don't think they spent almost virtually any time or money internally to actually figure out how to work through some of the differences or the personnel combinations or all the things that you would have needed to do that would have been difficult, but that could have made it work together.
I just think they avoided it. And that. And now we've seen that that is now, I think, pretty comfortably a failed acquisition. It also creates an incredible lane for incredibly important work that you're both doing to bridge that gap between education and employment, something that I think is one of the most important things in all of education.
Of the education space. This has been a really interesting conversation. I really appreciate both of you being here. This is Sarah Leone, founder and CEO of Zipline's education and Jeff Sample, founder and CEO of Clicked, now the VP of product for Zipline's education. Thank you so much, both of you, for being here with us on EdTech Insiders.
[00:47:55] Sara Leoni: Alex, thanks for having us. It was great.
[00:47:58] Alex Sarlin: Thanks Alex. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ed Tech Insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the Ed Tech community. For those who want even more Ed Tech Insider, subscribe to the free Ed Tech Insiders newsletter on Substack.
