Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Sal Khan (of Kahn Academy) on Fundraising 101 and Free Education

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Originally aired 03.02.23 On Money Rehab, you’ve heard from the smartest business minds running profitable businesses (and you’re welcome for that). You’ve heard from executives at Lyft, FICO, The Carlyle Group and many more… but today, Nicole is doing something different. She's sitting down with one of the smartest minds running a nonprofit business: Sal Khan of Khan Academy— the hugely popular, and free, online learning platform. If there’s a cause you’re passionate about and are thinking about starting a nonprofit, Sal’s story is the best masterclass. Want the kiddos in your life to become money masters? Check out Greenlight, the best money app and debit card for families (and get one month free!): http://greenlight.com/moneyrehab Investors: want to get a 1% bonus on your investments? Check out our sweet deal with Robinhood at http://robinhood.com/mnn  Is mental health a resolution for 2024? Get 10% off your first month of therapy with BetterHelp at: http://betterhelp.com/moneyrehab  Want one-on-one money coaching from Nicole? Book a meeting with her here: intro.co/moneynewsnetwork 

One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that

I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details.

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your

reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. On the show, you've heard from the smartest business minds running profitable businesses,

and you're welcome for that. You've heard from the C-suite at Lyft, FICO, the Carlisle Group, and many, many more. But today we're going to be doing something different. You're going to hear from one of the smartest minds in the non-profit business world, Sal Khan of Khan Academy, the hugely popular and free online learning platform. If there's a cause you're passionate about and you're thinking about starting a non-profit, Sal's story is the best masterclass. Here's our conversation. Sal Khan, welcome to Money Rehab. Great to be here. Your organization, Khan Academy, of course, has helped millions of people educate themselves on topics from math to social studies to financial literacy. Yay, thank you very much,

and everything in between. Can you give us the quick origin story of Khan Academy? Oh, back in 2004, I was a year out of business school. I was working my day job. I was an analyst at a hedge fund out in Boston. I had just gotten married and my family from New Orleans was visiting me in Boston. And it just came out of conversation that my 12-year-old cousin, Nadia, was having trouble with math. I offered to tutor her when she went back to New Orleans. She agreed. Long story short, I started working with her. She got caught up with her class. She even got a little ahead of her class. At that point, I became a little bit of what I call a tiger cousin. I called up her school. I said, you know, I really think Nadia should be able to retake that placement exam from last year, which was putting her on a slower math track. They said,

who are you? I said, I'm her cousin. And they let her. And the same Nadia that was being put into a slower math track was then put into an advanced math track. So then I was hooked. I started tutoring her younger brothers, word spreads in my family, free tutoring is going on. And before I know it, 10, 15 cousins, family, friends all over the country, I'm tutoring every day after the markets close. And I started writing software for them just because I saw a common pattern that they had gaps in their knowledge, they needed more practice and it was just fun for me to write the software. And then a friend in 2006 said,

well, this is all cool, Sal, but how are you scaling your lessons? And I said, it is hard to scale with 15 cousins. And he said, well, why don't you record your lessons as videos and upload them onto YouTube for your family? My initial reaction was skeptical. I said, YouTube is for cats playing piano. That too. It is that for that too. That's not a false statement.

And I gave it a shot and then that took on a life of its own. And by 2008, 2009, there were several hundred thousands of folks using it. And I frankly had trouble focusing on my day job. I set it up as a not-for-profit Khan Academy mission-free world-class education for anyone anywhere. And by 2009, I jumped in. In 2010, we had our first funding. And now, I think we're over 150 or 160 million registered users. And just as an aside, I love the fact, of course, that you're expanding into financial

literacy because it's a topic that isn't even taught in schools. I mean, other subjects that you're covering from chemistry to calculus are taught in school and your classes are really additive to what people can find in schools. But financial literacy courses could be people's introduction to financial literacy. So it's so important and I'm so thrilled to see your work in this space. That's not a question. It's just a statement. Full stop. Appreciate it. So talk to It's just a statement, full stop. Appreciate it.

So talk to me about as you were scaling the business, I read that before you met with Bill Gates, who ended up supporting Khan Academy, you had 10 months of, quote, living off your savings and doubting yourself and wondering if you had made a huge mistake. Can you take us back to that time? And did you give yourself a certain amount of time to make your dream a reality? Like, you know, if it didn't work in, say, two years, you'd shut down the organization? Or was that just not an option? Yeah, it was 2008. I was really on the fence. I had a great job with the hedge fund. It wasn't like a job that I disliked. And I was being paid very, very well at that job. And we, at this point, the firm I was working for was out here in

Silicon Valley. My wife was a medical resident, so she was still in training. But as I mentioned, more and more, I felt that this Khan Academy thing could be a real thing. I was getting letters from folks all over the world saying how it was helping them out in different ways, in some cases, transforming their lives. And we had saved enough for, let's call it a down payment on a house in Silicon Valley, which even back in 2008, 2009 was not a small proposition. Not cheap. Not cheap. But when I set up as a not-for-profit and then a year later, I was like, I think I'm ready to take the plunge and really focus on this full time. And I was already talking to a few philanthropists. Now, not all of that stuff kind of pittered out, but my wife and I, we looked at our finances

and said, listen, maybe give me a year to do this. And I think anytime you do anything entrepreneurial, whether it's for-profit or not-for-profit, you always have that delusional optimism that surely a year will be more than enough time. I'm already talking to some philanthropists. They might fund it. And then you take the plunge and then you quickly realize that you were a little bit delusionally optimistic. And all of those conversations start to pitter out. You get a lot of no's. This isn't what we exactly fund. We don't quite get it. Our budget has already been allocated. And so you can imagine about six months into that,

our first child had just been born in 2009. We had to rent a larger house. My mother-in-law moved in as well. We were digging into our savings, about $5,000 a month, which very quickly will turn that down payment on a house into not a down payment on a house. And so about six, seven months into it, yeah, it was incredibly, incredibly stressful. I had such a good job. And now I was digging into savings. There was no clear end in sight by even spring of 2010 that this would work out. And then when did you realize that it would work out,

right? There are only two options. It works out or it doesn't. Yeah. And I was having insecure moments where I'd wake up in the middle of the night and I'd review my resume. I don't know if the hedge fund industry would even take me back after I do this, but I was getting donations. It was a couple of hundred dollars a month, people donating five, $10 for me to do this work. And then in May of 2010, I got a $10,000 donation. So I immediately see who it is. Her name's Ann Doerr.

She's based in Palo Alto. I was in Mountain View, their adjacent towns. And I said, dear Ann, thank you so much for this incredibly generous donation. If we were a physical school, you would now have a building named after you. And Anne immediately emailed back. She's like, well, you know, I love what you're doing.

I'm surprised this is the largest donation you've ever gotten. I see you're local. I'd love to meet up. I think it was the next week. We go have lunch at an Indian buffet restaurant. And over lunch, Anne says, well, what's your goal? And I said, well, with the IRS, when you fill out to be a nonprofit, I filled out free world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Ann said, that's ambitious. And I said, yeah, you know, it's a mission statement. I'm not just going to be able to

check it off this weekend and then move on to healthcare or something, but that is the goal. And I showed her how the usage was growing exponentially. I showed her, I used to have a huge binder of testimonial letters from folks all over the world. I said, I want to translate this into the language of the world. I want a whole interactive platform where students can work at their own time and pace across subjects and grades. Teachers and parents can see what they're up to. And Anne said, well, you've made a surprising amount of progress. I only have one question. How are you supporting yourself? And in as proud of a way as possible, I said, I'm not. And Anne kind of processes that, we pay the bill and about 20 or 30 minutes later, I'm driving into my driveway

and I get a text message from Anne and it says, you really need to be supporting yourself. I've just wired you $100,000. So that was a good day. And this is Dorr, D-O-R-R, right? As in John Dorr's wife. That's right, that's right that's right uh you know john is one of the i guess most legendary venture capitalists in silicon valley kleiner perkins kleiner perkins amazon google you name it you know obviously the hundred thousand dollars

helped but what was even more important about that was the show of trust and belief that it wasn't just the money, but Anne and John, they're not gullible people. They are pretty savvy. I think they have a sense of scale and what can have impact. And so it was a huge shot in the arm of my confidence that they were supporting it in this way. And then about a month later, I get, I started getting text messages from Anne, which you can imagine I now take very seriously. Yeah, of course. And Anne's writing from the Aspen Ideas Festival. She's like, I'm in the main pavilion, Bill Gates on stage, last five minutes talking about Khan Academy. And I have no idea what she's

talking about. I was actually running a little summer camp for kids because I always imagined that Khan Academy doesn't make offline learning irrelevant. It actually liberates offline learning or in-person learning to do more interesting things. So I was actually running a simulation of a bunch of seventh graders in a stock market simulation. And so I boot the nearest seventh grader off of a computer and I start looking it up. And yeah, it was Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Ideas Festival interviewing Bill Gates. And I start looking it up. And yeah, it was Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Ideas Festival interviewing Bill Gates. And he just asks Bill a random question. What are you excited about right now? And he's like, well, there's this one guy, Sal Khan. He's been doing these videos and I've been watching them. My kids have been watching them. I showed it to my wife that night

and I was like, what do I do now? Do I call him? How do I call him? How do I get his number? I do now? Do I call him? How do I call him? How do I get his number? 411, Bill Gates, please. Exactly. And about two weeks later, I didn't know how to process. So I just went back to, you know, writing the software and making more videos. And two weeks later, I was about to record a video in my walk-in closet, which was the worldwide headquarters of Khan Academy. And my cell phone rings. It's a Seattle number. I answer it. Hello. Hi, I'm Larry Cohen. I'm Bill Gates, chief of staff. You might've heard that Bill's a fan. Yeah, I heard that. And if you're free over the next couple of weeks, we'd love to fly you up to Seattle and learn more about maybe ways that we can work together. And I was looking at my calendar for the month,

completely blank. I said, you know, I got to do some laundry and cut my nails, but I can meet with Bill. But we had that meeting and it was very similar actually to the meeting with Anne. And what would you do with more resources? I told them. And then they're like, well, what would it take to do this for real? And I told them and, you know, it was eerie right around that same time for folks from Google had reached out as well. And they were asking very similar questions. So by fall of 2010, both Google and the Gates Foundation became the first major philanthropic supporters, each on the order of about $2 million for a two-year grant to become a real organization, start hiring up a team, get office space, et cetera. Wow. Well, the organization is structured as a nonprofit. As you mentioned, you could have

gone through a paid subscription model. You could have raised money for the organization through ads on the website. You could have monetized in a bunch of different ways, but you didn't. So why did you choose the nonprofit route? Yeah, there's a lot of ironies here. When I was in business school, when I went there at Harvard Business School, they didn't really grade you, but they would give you a one, two or three in a class. And a three essentially meant you were in the bottom 10% of the students in that class. And the one class that I got a three in was called social enterprise. got a three is I was very cynical about it. I remember the final exam was analyzing some type of a walk or bicycle race to, you know, cure cancer. And I remember writing in the exam, like, this isn't going to cure cancer. This is just a bunch of, you know, people feeling good about themselves, but it's not going to cure cancer. No, I actually, I actually see the importance of things like that, of just bringing awareness, et cetera.

I was a hard-nosed capitalist. Obviously, right after that, I go work at a hedge fund, which arguably is only for profit. There's not much else that it's doing. It's helping allocate resources in the world. That's what I used to argue as how I was contributing. It was a good hedge fund. But when Khan Academy really started to get off the ground, to your point, at this point, I was living in Silicon Valley. A lot of my friends are venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

People came out of the woodwork, said, hey, I'll write $100,000, $200,000 check right now. And this was like 2007, 2008. You can quit your day job, work on it. And it was very tempting initially. But meeting two or meeting three, OK, how are we going to monetize? What's the freemium model? What are we going to put behind a paywall? And I was just thinking about all of those. I was

getting tens to hundreds of letters a week from folks all over the world, people deployed in Iraq who are using it to give them confidence to come back to college, parents whose kids have learning disabilities. It was the only way that their kids were keeping up with school. Young girls in places like Afghanistan saying that this is my lifeline to school. I'm not allowed to go to school. And I thought, wow, if we put a paywall, none of those people are going to be able to access this. And then I just did kind of the hypothetical in my mind. We can all imagine a home run in the for-profit.

Oh, you're the next Facebook or Google or whatever. But then I imagine, well, what if this could be a home run in the not-for-profit? Maybe it could be the next Oxford or Harvard or whatever. But then I imagine, well, what if this could be a home run in the not-for-profit? Maybe it could be the next Oxford or Harvard or Smithsonian. It's an institution in the internet. But maybe it could scale well beyond any of those. Even back then when I was trying to fundraise, when I was just one guy in a walk-in closet, I would show the data that Khan Academy on a monthly basis was already serving more students than Harvard had in its history.

And we were growing 30% a month or something like that. I think now, you know, Khan Academy does that in a few hours. And so I said, well, you know, why not swing for the fences? Why not try to create something bigger than any of us? Something that can stand the test of time. The other thing I saw in my hedge fund world is how much, even if you, especially if you become a success in the for-profit, you go public, you become beholden to the tyranny of obnoxious hedge fund analysts like myself, who are just trying to figure out what your next quarter's earnings are. And that makes you a very short-term thinker as a management team. And I really dreamt, I read a lot of science fiction books, that Khan Academy could be one of these things that could last for generations and stay laser focused on this mission of a free world class education and reach billions across the planet.

Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to

$200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A.

Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you.

Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host, so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host.

And now for some more money rehab. You have said that you organized the company around the belief that education is a human right. Let's talk about college tuition. Harvard Business School, not free. Oxford, you mentioned, not free. How does the student loan crisis and rising tuition costs inform your mission? The cost of college and tuition for me is very, very front of mind. of college and tuition for me is very, very front of mind. Obviously, one of the reasons why we said free world-class education for anyone anywhere is so that there aren't any hurdles for people to be able to do this. I think education and healthcare are two of these places where I think market forces either break down or they don't lead to the outcomes that we traditionally want. I'm a diehard capitalist, but when the decision maker, the beneficiary and the payer are all different people,

you don't always have the markets work. Or when they do work, I think we have a common principle that if someone is bleeding on the footsteps of the hospital, you're not gonna check their insurance first, you're going to treat them. Similarly, if there's anyone on the planet

who wants to learn, I think we have the value as a civilization that we should educate them. What's going on in higher education, I think, is a problem on a lot of levels. One, it's exorbitantly expensive. Not only is it exorbitantly expensive, and when the students are getting into debt, I think colleges sometimes intentionally, maybe not intentionally, but they're definitely not trying hard to be transparent about what the return on that investment is going to be. Then these young people are making these decisions at 17, 18, 19 years old to go into sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.

If I start a casino and run into the ground, I can declare bankruptcy and it's canceled. You cannot do that with student loan debt. And so it just is an overhang the rest of your life. And I know there's a lot of conversations about, oh, you could cancel it. I think that has all sorts of moral hazard problems around you cancel it for one group. There's a group right behind them that's going to accumulate debt again. It creates a disincentive for people to pay that debt in the future. The real issue is solve the underlying problem.

Make college education or something as good as a college education free or at least a lot more accessible. So at Khan Academy, I've always said pre-K through the core college. We're already working on ways to give college credit for work done on Khan Academy for close to free. next five, 10 years, we can help address this cost issue and this debt issue by going to the root cause, which is making the opportunities that college has traditionally afforded you far more accessible. So you talked about your impressive list of donors from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Andor to General Motors to AT&T. I read a piece about you from August of 2020 that you said you have a $60 million budget. I'm not sure if that's changed. That's a lot of fundraising that you've done. For

those who haven't fundraised before, it's really, really hard. What would you say the first steps somebody could take to start fundraising from the very beginning? If they want to start their own nonprofit, are there any fundraising resources that you've used? Crowdfunding, platforms, philanthropist organizations, et cetera. Yeah, and our budget now is about $65 million a year,

which, you know, I get a little bit of spike of cortisol all every time I say it because it's not always obvious at the beginning of the year where that money is going to come in. And sometimes we spend a little bit more than we bring in,

or sometimes we bring in a little bit more, but it's been working out so far. I think different advice for where you are in different stages. I think at the very early stages, when I was just a person with an idea, and I really didn't have a lot of credibility in the education space, I think my path and everyone's path is going to be different was tangibly showing impact and eventually people will notice. Now, not in fact, not only not every nonprofit, but it's very unusual to have a nonprofit like Khan Academy that creates a resource that scales in that way and that the donors themselves can benefit from.

One of the benefits we got with Andor and Bill Gates and other people who donated is they were able to benefit from the site themselves. And then they were able to extrapolate like, wow, if this is good for my kids, imagine what it could do for a kid in a village in India someplace or a village in Nigeria someplace. But any way that you can really show the impact, I think is great. I think the other thing is try to make it relatively unkillable. And what do I mean by that? Sometimes, whether it's for-profit or non-profit, a lot of times people are like, I have a great idea. I'm going to quit my job tomorrow and try my idea and write a business plan, whatever, try to get funding, either investors or philanthropists. And it's

hard and you could easily go two, three, four, five, six months and not get it. And then people just quit and they move on to something else. I think the other possibility is like, okay, I'm going to be doing this. Maybe start doing it while you have a day job. That's what I was doing it. Remember, I started the nascent Khan Academy or the precursors to Khan Academy in 2004 while I was actually just starting my hedge fund job. And I didn't quit my job until 2009. So there was five years that Khan Academy was a heavy hobby for me, but it allowed me to pay my bills. It allowed me to build a lot of traction and some notoriety, some credibility in the space.

And even at that point, it was difficult, but at least I had some savings to live off of. And even on the unkillability, if I didn't get funding in that first year, I didn't say I was just going to quit. I was going to go, I was going to try to get my old job back or get a job like it back and then keep working on it and then wait another year or two. Maybe I'll save up more money. Maybe some philanthropists will finally realize that this is a valuable thing and eventually it'll work out. So, you know, my advice is build it, you know, try to build it in ways that you don't have to ask other people's permission, save as much money as you can and never stop working on it, even if you have to

go back to work. But you can pay yourself a salary. It's not like all charity, right? No, no, absolutely. Well, you can pay yourself a salary once you have, once there's money, once someone's giving you, I mean, I definitely take a salary from Khan Academy, but it only can happen, you know, that's out of that 65 million budget, 70% of that are making very competitive Silicon Valley salaries. So that's where most of the funding goes. But you're not going to be able to pay anyone a salary, including yourself, until someone's giving money or you have some other revenue stream. So if you have 70% going to salaries, where does the 30% go? We pay, depending on the year, $5 to $10 million just in server costs. If you have 150 million registered users, you have someplace between 10, 20, 30 million coming every month.

We have, at the peak of the pandemic, we had 90 million learning minutes on Khan Academy per day. That costs real money. And then there's other things. There's real estate, et cetera, et cetera. It's benefits. It's another thing. But it's mostly humans. Have you found that it's been easier to raise in the valley where a lot of these venture capitalists can just write off the contribution?

Yeah. I mean, I think the reason if I were to stereotype our typical donor, we get hundreds of thousands of folks donate on average of $20, $30 type donations. But if I were to say some of our major donations, it is disproportionately folks from tech and from finance, kind of the two backgrounds where I got my early career. Before I was a hedge fund analyst, I worked in tech. And I think the reason why we appeal to those two groups is one, most people in those industries benefited themselves from education. That's how they got into tech or finance. So they see the benefit of that. And also, both of those industries really like return on investment and scale. And so when they see

something like Khan Academy, they're like, oh, this is going to scale. For every dollar I put in, it's not going to be $1.20 of social impact. It's going to be $500, $5,000 of social impact. So they like that story. I think, honestly, a lot of people in tech, especially folks who've made it, they actually aren't investing to make it even more in a lot of cases. Famously, people say LA is a bunch of middle-class or poor people trying. Famously, people say LA is a bunch of middle-class or poor people trying to look rich and Silicon Valley is a bunch of rich people trying to look poor. You don't see, even though it's the highest density of billionaires, I think anywhere in the world, you don't see Ferraris, you'll see Teslas, but once again, they're not driving that to show off. They're driving it because they care about the environment or they just think it's

cool. So I don't think people's motivations to donate or invest are necessarily monetary. They just want to be part of something cool that can change the world, I think, in an interesting way. On the write-off, you know, I always remind folks when folks are a little bit more cynical, like, oh, they're just donating to write it off. I'm like, they're still donating because if you donate $100, yes, you can deduct, you can reduce your income by $100, which means you'll probably save about $40 in taxes. But that's still net donation of $60. You know, if you didn't donate, you would still have 60 more dollars. So there's this really interesting thread that people in order to scale a business or have an

idea, you have to show others that they can make money. You know, you hear this all the time with climate change, that as long as environmentalism is framed like a charity, the private sector is not going to take it seriously because they're capitalists and charity doesn't pay for Ferraris or kids' education or whatever. Do you think there's some truth to that, that more people would invest in bettering the education system if there was money to be made from it? Well, the simple answer is yes, which I have mixed feelings about. In 2010, ed tech was considered a bad word in the venture capital community. People had tried to invest in ed tech for many decades, and there weren't really any great exits. Khan Academy comes on the scene as a not-for-profit, but it started to awaken Silicon Valley to the potential of ed tech,

because we were scaling in ways that, frankly, no other ed tech platform had scaled, I think ever. And so I think we did help bring about a little bit of a boom cycle in ed tech investing. And there's been a lot of really great things that came out of it. And I think this cycle has seen a lot more successes. I think there are some really great companies like Clever and things like that, that used the for-profit vehicle to create something of strong utility. I think market forces for the most part are working in that part of the edtech sector, and that's great. I think there's other elements of edtech where, because the incentive structures aren't aligned, the commercial companies,

they start acting a lot like the legacy textbook publishers where they're really catering to the buyer at the district. And so they're checking their boxes, but the student really, you know, I mean, how many times when you were growing up, did you look at the textbook like this? They must've done user research because I find this textbook to be so good. I find it to be so engaging. It just connects with me. It helps me learn. No, I mean, it's clearly that they were checking someone else's box, not the students. So I think in domains where the markets fail a little bit, where you have some of that

complexity, it can be a bit of a mixed bag. But yeah, there's definitely a lot more ed tech investment today than there was 15 years ago. I end the episodes by asking our guests for a money tip you could take straight to the bank. So can you give us a tip from your financial literacy courses that listeners can use today? Oh, my biggest tip, and I remind, you know, be grateful for what you have. You know, possessions on you, you don't own them. A lot of folks say, why didn't I do this as a for profit?

I'm like, look, I've got, you know, two Hondas in the driveway, healthy, happy family. I have everything that I would ever want. And I think as long as you live reasonably within your means, you're going to do fine. Is it within your means or under your means? To be honest, live dramatically under your means as much as possible. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network.

I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at Money News and TikTok at Money News Network for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.