How important is impact investing to you?

Back in 2012, while managing what became the 12th most successful technology accelerator in America, I got married and my wife had two daughters from a prior. I ignorantly assumed U.S. Education was the best because I thought we had the best economy, knowing the correlation between the two. One day, I asked on of my girls what she was working on and she said her cursive homework, I chuckled and asked if she was learning to write code too, since it is the universal language of the now global economy. She looked back at me like, what's code? I occured to me then that since I was her age, fundamentally our schools haven't adapted to globalization or the digital revolution and their basically the same as they were when designed 198-yrs ago, during a different era, serving a different economy, workforce and a wildly different, now digital native child, Light Bulb.

Education is a $1.5T US Market, K-12 is an $853.1B US Market and one of the last to adopt technology but if any industry needs to be tech enabled, Education needs to be tech enables or there's going to be some sad days ahead for America. It's common sense, EdTech is a massive and a critical opportunity for all of our future. I did some research and learned that US Education was #1, 4-decades ago but it has fallen to as low as #36 of 46 developed nations and despite endless reform efforts, exponential cost and employee growth, we're still dead last for improvement in Math, 2nd to dead last in Literacy improvement. Flashing Red Light Bulb.

I don't believe many Americans have actually thought through what this means. There's limited natural resources on this planet that supply our living standards, America consumes 25% of them but only accounts for 6% of the population, we have to COMPETE for them and this is especially the case post-globalization. We've never needed to be able to compete more but we've also never before done such a horrific disgrace of a job at preparing the core infrastructure of America, its people, its human capital, to compete. Our economy, our productivity, our living standards, our national security, everything is highly dependent on Education and it's being neglected. That means the value of nearly every asset, asset class, company, commodity, etc. will be determined by the performance of our Education System and that means our asset values are going to vaporize as they reach parity with Education's performance, unless we WAKE UP immediately and start being a little more responsible and committed to the preservation of America. Productivity will also reach parity, so it'll fall to as low as #36, Mexico's productivity is around 35th. We've been able to coast for a very long time from the momentum that was created when we had the finest education system on earth, which happened to be when the other global leaders were recovering from the World Wars, giving us the ability to surge ahead in the Digital Revolution but we got greedy, forcing globalization, plowing hundreds of billions into other people's wars, problems and economies at the cost of our own future because now we have to compete against them,

In 2008, Obama said, "Nations that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow." Well in 2008, 97% of all $1B+ private companies aka Unicorns, were based in America, creating wealth, prosperity and the disruptive innovation that defines the future of humanity. China had 1 Unicorn back then but they had the #1 Education System. Fast forward 10-yrs and America's share of Unicorns has fallen to 40%, of which just .3% were EdTech Unicorns. China's has grown to 42% and 25% of their Unicorns are EdTech. They've eclipsed our dominance and now have more billionaires, the NY Times wrote that your chances of living the "American Dream" in China far outweigh your chances here. Venture Capital, when not concentrated to a 50-mile radius of Sandhill Rd., is a major contributor to that "chance" but more venture capital was deployed in China than in America in 2018 for the 1st time in history. By 2025, China aims to be the dominant global power and they're well positioned to do so, as we've accrued deficit spending in 37 of the past 40-yrs. Of the 16-global powers that pre-dated America, all 16 collapsed as a result of deficit spending. Welfare is a massive portion of the deficit spending but how can we relieve it with a 14th century education system?

While we're on the Impact subject, not only does America's future depend on Education, but everything ties back to it, it's all connected. For instance, if Education works effectively, people can earn more, relieving poverty and welfare. Educated people are healthier, relieving our Healthcare mess. Educated people are more conscious of their environment and ecosystem, they pollute less and when talking about 100's of millions of people, it's meaningful. We can do all the climate saving we want but we're treading water until more are educated because they'll keep ignorantly trashing the place otherwise. Plus, Educated people have more skills and knowledge to solve all of the Impact issues, which would all be less severe. Also, when the markets correct due to our neglect of Education and the American people, the assets once allocated to impact won't exist anymore.

Now, instead of just ignoring the greatest threat America has ever seen or can possibly ever be threatened by, instead of just watching our future waste away and letting the systems that have repeatedly failed us and our children now for 40-yrs, the definition of insanity, I took the skills and knowledge I've accumulated from having cut my teeth at Goldman Sachs, been the founder of, early-investor in, sponsor of or executive for 13 companies and one technology accelerator, of which 10 have exited, including the accelerator via acquisition and 50% of my accelerator portfolio companies had exits in under four years and I went down into K-12 EdTech to figure out why investors are plowing 6x more capital into Uber alone in 1-yr than all K-12 EdTech investment for every school in America during the same year. It's simple, it comes down to ROI. If EdTech investments were generating sizable ROI, the capital would flow. So, I had to figure out a way to generate significantly higher returns with less risk and in less time. I've spent the better part of 6-yrs in the field doing research, gaining domain expertise, building a network of the industry's leaders and validating my thesis, which does exactly what I described earlier, it produces bigger, faster returns with less risk. I validated it on a company named GoReact three years ago when the founder came to me as a lone wolf, $0 revenue, no employees but a GTM ready product, today GoReact is the 4th fastest growing company in Utah, has raised gobs of capital, has an all-star team and will be a megastar in the coming short years. Oh and while doing the research, Utah, my home, became known as "EdTech's Home" everywhere in the world and BoomStartup, the tech accelerator I managed and wrote the playbook for, launched BoomStartup+EdTech, KKR launched Weld North, who has an office a few thousand feet from my home and now I'm raising capital for a venture fund focused on K-12 EdTech.

I'm open to investors, partners with an existing capital source, other venture firms, CVCs, LPs, high net worth individuals, etc. It doesn't matter as long as it gets started now because we're already coming to the game in the 7th inning and our children don't deserve our procrastination. nor does our country or the people who have sacrificed everything to protect it, to then have all of us who benefit be "too busy" on something else that won't matter if we don't do this one thing very well, right now and I can use any support I can get.