Specialized EdTech accelerator organizations and events play a special role within the EdTech ecosystem. It is where professionals learn, share, develop relationships, and grow themselves and their businesses. This got me thinking… What if these events or organizations did not exist? How would that impact the future of education and workforce and the pace of transformation? Would problems go unsolved for longer, or indefinite, periods of time? Would capital resources become scarce or harder to allocate? And, where would that leave the stakeholders and learners, in general?

StartEd is one such organization that has been committed to EdTech since 2015. As a startup entrepreneur, I participated in one of their first accelerator programs, spending a full week learning, pitching and networking, along with a cohort of seven other global EdTech founders. One investor meeting I had during that pivotal week led to a Series A capital raise within 90 days! In addition, I have participated in several StartEd events – speaking, mentoring and learning. Needless to say, I have a deep appreciation for the opportunities and access to professional resources that StartEd provides for building the EdTech community. Unlike other organizations that focus on later stage companies, StartEd supports those mostly in the early or growth stage, and not-for-profits, with many of them founded by unrepresented entrepreneurs. It is these entrepreneurs and companies that usually need the most support to understand the landscape, fine tune their pitch, as well as test, fund, and bring to market, the “next big innovation.”

After investing in over 100 education technology companies, I realized there was a real need to support entrepreneurs in this space with the right mix of patient funding, expert mentoring and long-term community.

Ash: I am hopeful we’ll see more integration of post-secondary and workforce learning programs. In addition, I see a focus on serving non-traditional learners who have been most impacted by the pandemic and other inequities. Supporting these groups needs to be a priority. We’re also seeing alternate funding sources growing as an opportunity to help start, grow and sustain innovative EdTech companies.

Ash: With AI being such a transformative technology now and into the future, we are paying particular attention to how it impacts every aspect of the learning and workforce development process – from content creation to teacher assistance to corporate talent enrollment and everything in between. With so much innovation happening in this area, equal access to understanding and implementing AI’s potential is needed more than ever. We are particularly excited to serve as the resource for training and assessing EdTech innovators and educators enabling and expediting all the benefits that AI has to offer.

Ash: We are a fixed point for innovators – we provide a map and a compass, connecting entrepreneurs to the right mix of incentives, expertise, and advice to survive and move forward, forward, even when things feel chaotic. There’s so much potential, and we are honored to support the innovators making a difference.

Ash: Thank you Angelo, it was a pleasure!

My takeaway from this interview is simple. There’s never been a greater need than now for the EdTech ecosystem to ignite, foster, and support solutions to big problems. Not only does the future of education depend on it but so to, does our future workforce. Thanks to organizations like StartEd, we, the collective ecosystem and individual stakeholders, can navigate and manage this change – learning, failing, iterating, succeeding, and growing, each step of the way.