An Abundant, Dynamic Future: Part 2

• up & up | Nostalgia continues to have a moment

• deep dive | Exploring American abundance & dynamism (Part 2: Education)

• odds & ends | New year, new side hustle

• snooze | Build an identity outside of work

y2k Fashion 👢: It's back! And obtaining authentic y2k branded clothes is easier than ever with the rise of resale platforms. Savvy, fashion-forward entrepreneurs are opening stores on Fleek, Vinted, and Depop (acquired by Etsy for $1.6b) where they can curate collections of vintage clothes in bundles, so you can get your head-to-toe Juicy ensemble in one quick purchase. Also, you can make a lot of money doing this 🤑

Whatnot 📱: The era of social shopping & live commerce is upon us, and Whatnot sits at the nexus. Sellers livestream auction-style and they sell just about everything, from original Pokemon cards (finally nab that holographic Charizard) to vintage watches to NFTs.  It raised a $260m Series D co-led by DST Global and CapitalG in July 2022, with repeat investments from a16z and Y Combinator. 

That 90s Show 📺: Netflix recently dropped the trailer for the That 70s Show sequel. Reviving and rebooting legacy shows is nothing new, but it serves as a continual reminder of the importance of familiar IP to streaming giants. The sense of nostalgia it creates is a powerful incentive to tune in and continue subscribing, which is essential in this new age of the streaming wars where the library shelves appear limitless no longer. 

An Abundant, Dynamic Future ⚛️ Part 2

As a quick refresher from a week two weeks ago (😪), we're mashing up two approaches to solve a common goal: build an abundant, dynamic America with reinvigorated institutions and future-fit sectors. Derek Thompson takes a top-down policy-focused approach to build a more abundant America without excessive levels of manufactured scarcity. Meanwhile, Katherine Boyle takes a bottoms-up entrepreneurial approach that calls on bold startups to solve the things our faltering institutions cannot. Both approaches are needed and complement each other. 

Our analysis looks at Thompson's 5 critical areas suffering from scarcity - Healthcare, Education, Housing, Transporation, and Energy & Climate Change - and then flips to Boyle's approach by identifying established and up-and-coming startups that are beginning to solve these issues. We started with healthcare; this week we're moving on to education. 

Time for a field trip. 

Part 2: Education 🎓

In his analysis, Thompson focuses on collegiate education with good reason.  The below infographic uses Bureau of Labor Statistics data to show the change in price of various goods and services over 20 years. Fun things like new cars, clothing, cell phones, and TVs have become more affordable, falling in well below overall inflation of 74.4%. Less fun but critical things like hospital services, college tuition, and childcare have become even more expensive, outpacing overall inflation. College tuition is good for about a ~170% increase.

At the same time as rapidly rising tuition, the average acceptance rate at the top 50 U.S. colleges has dropped. In 2006 it was 35.9%. By 2018 it was 22.6%. The Ivy League is even worse. In other words, access to quality education is dropping. Decreasing access plus rising costs compound the eliteness v. equality problem. Few families, besides previously wealthy and well-connected ones, can afford to send their children to the best schools where they can receive a top-tier education, land the best jobs, and so on and so forth.

Given all this, it's no surprise college enrollment rates were down and to the right between 2011 and 2019. The chart stops before 2020 when enrollment was in free fall due to the pandemic (though it has since eased).

But college isn't the only educational domain facing a scarcity problem. The childcare and early education sector has seen a ~115% increase in cost since 2000 and was significantly harmed during the pandemic: an estimated 16,000 childcare centers closed between 2020 and 2021. This is...obviously bad. Bad for parents who need to work (which in aggregate supports all economic sectors), bad for children who experience learning and social skills development loss, and bad for our nation whose future talent pipeline diminishes. 

So what do we do in the face of diminishing access to quality education, waning interest in attending a traditional college, and a hamstringed early education system? We build optionality. Optionality for physical and digital modalities, curriculums, learning styles, and career paths. And the winning start-ups and organizations during this second boom of EdTech will provide optionality to power the next generation of education. Let's explore some of them across Childcare & Early Education and College & Adult Education. 

Childcare & Early Education 👨‍👩‍👦

This slice of the broader education segment is an excellent example of atoms powered by bits. New atoms-based institutions are including technology as a core part of their DNA from the beginning, and along with a slew of complementary bits-based startups, provide a new level of customization and optionality for students, parents, and educators. 

• Wonderschool helps individuals work with state and local governments to stand up new childcare and early education programs in their communities to eliminate childcare deserts. (Series B, $25m, Goldman Sachs & a16z, Jan 2022)

• To Higher Ground is building a network of Montessori schools supported by a custom, tech-enabled learning platform for more customized in-person, virtual, and remote modalities. (Series D, $30m, Learn Capital, April 2021)

• Primer builds microschools with low teacher-to-student ratios and a blend of online/offline instruction for access to best-in-class instructors. (Series A, $15m, Founders Fund & Khosla Ventures, April 2022)

• Synthesis provides virtual, team-based thinking games with accredited teachers for after-school sessions from 3-5 pm to bridge the gap between the end of school and the workday. (Early funding round, $12m, Balaji Srinivasan, April 2022)

• Paper uses a custom streaming platform to partner with school districts to provide virtual & tailored 1:1 tutoring and college readiness sessions, available 24/7. (Series D, $270m, SoftBank Vision Fund, Feb 2022)

• Agora's platform makes it easy for parents to discover K-12 education vendors, easily purchase services, and access microgrants and education savings accounts (ESAs). (Pre-seed/seed, undisclosed, Red House Ventures & Village Global)

College & Adult Education 🏫

There's less focus on atoms here, but the following companies are using technology to solve the issue of access to traditional colleges or provide new options in place of the traditional college experience. 

• Multiverse is a marketplace that provides an alternative option to traditional college through placing talent at established companies like Microsoft and KPMG for professional apprenticeships, no college degree (or debt) required. (Series D, $220m, Lightspeed Ventures, June 2022)

• Guild Education allows employees to avoid going back to traditional college and incurring debt loads to upskill and advance by providing access to an employer-sponsored marketplace of accredited certificate and degree programs. (Series F, $175m, Bessemer Venture Partners and a16z, June 2022)

• Maven allows experts and creators to offer cohort-based, live learning programs at a fraction of the cost of similar traditional offerings. (Series B, $25m, a16z, Sep 2022)

• Ocelot uses an AI-enabled platform to engage and connect with prospective students to drive up enrollment and maintain engagement during their educational experience. (First outside round, $117m, K1 Investment Management, Sep 2022)

• Empowerly also uses an AI-enabled platform to counsel prospective students during the college search process. (Series A, $12m, Goodwater Capital, Dec 2021)

Similar to healthcare, education is an incredibly complex and emotional facet of American life, but also mission-critical: today's students are tomorrow's leaders. The above lists are an incomplete representation of the bootstrapping approach to solving wicked problems in this sector. Again, we will need both bottom-up bootstrapping and top-down policy approaches to create more educational abundance. On this last piece, it is up to us as a society to choose leaders who will prioritize educational agendas which increase access to quality education while reducing the burden of a basic right. 

Next week: Housing.

Find your Side 🤑

Hustle culture is out (and take cringey LinkedIn posts with it). Supplementary income and creative outlets are in. It can be overwhelming to think about where to start, but Side Hustle Stack from Li Jin can guide you in the right direction. 

Building Identity 👤

Arthur Brooke's article A Profession is Not a Personality is an excellent reminder to build identity capital outside of work and to not define your worth solely by your job. 

Thanks for reading 😬