049 - AI, Education, and the Future of Work and College with Christopher Gray, CEO of Path

Speaker A: In the world where everyone can build things so fast, your distribution is remote because once you get customers and your product and they're using it all the time, the switching costs, that becomes what you're gonna do. And I think unfortunately a lot of companies pre2021 are probably gonna become dinosaurs and become obsolete, but I think we're gonna have a new generation of companies that are going to emerge.

Speaker B: That spark of innovation, it's just waiting for the perfect combination of tools and talent to bring it to life. Welcome to Pitch Build Scale. I'm your host, Chris Fanchi, a recovering startup founder, veteran SaaS marketer, turned dev tech enthusiast and growth specialist. Each episode we connect with the builders, the visionaries and the problem solvers who are redefining what's possible with today's technology and pioneering the websites, apps and software products of tomorrow. These are the conversations that transform how we build and how we sell and how we scale technology businesses in a world where the tech evolves by the minute. Ready to stay ahead of the curve. This is Pitch Build Scale.

Speaker C: Hello and welcome to today's episode. We have a very exciting guest. For those of you just joining the podcast, we are Big North Marketing and specialize in helping dev shops and SaaS companies scale their revenue. So if you want to learn how to take your SaaS or dev business to the next level, make sure to stick around. And if you're interested in a free growth consultation, just drop us the word growth in the DMs. We're really excited to have today's guest, Christopher Gray, CEO of Path. Christopher is an award winning entrepreneur, Shark Tank alumnus, and a passionate advocate for educational equity. After helping millions secure scholarships with Scolly, he's now tackling the affordability and accessibility of test prep through path, an AI powered platform helping students from all backgrounds prepare for college admissions and professional exams. Christopher, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me. Chris. Chris, Chris.

Speaker C: So I like to start with everyone's kind of origin story going back to the beginning. What first got you into technology and particularly ed tech.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I'm originally from Birmingham, Alabama. Um, I now live in New York. So far, far away from my roots. You know, I went, but I went to college in Philly and went to Drexel University, but backtracking back to Birmingham first, um, in my family to go to college. So I ended up, you know, being pretty good at school, ended up winning over a million dollars in scholarships to go to school. The other big cornerstone of the story. So I had a lot, a big Lived experience of, like, education and equity in education, a lack of access, um, particularly to financial aid, you know, quality education. Um, you know, even seeing things like test prep, you know, being completely out of reach for a lot of students in public education because it costs $1,200 to do that. And, you know, you can't do that if your parents trying to pay bills, right? So saw that through my lived experience, went to college, went to Drexel, went on the east coast, um, and then really got into the technology space actually through the university. Um, and I actually started volunteering in the Philly school district with a lot of other college access nonprofits, um, and started to realize, you know, this problem. You know, I was just young boy from Birmingham, Alabama at the time, so I'm like, oh, you know, you come from the insular environment, you go out to the real world, but okay, this is a huge thing that scales, right? So really been passionate about education, just helping people. And then, um, I decided to use technology to productize that. Right? It was become. Because I'm Chris Gray and I couldn't help thousands of people just near the one human. So I decided to create technology. And that was right after the Instagram got acquired and all these other organ, you know, this was just the, a, the, you know, the age of apps and all that stuff. So decided to create an app around, around, you know, this idea of helping students find all these scholarships that they qualify for. They could not, um, but they couldn't just find them. Right. You know, and therefore leaving all this money unclaimed every year because students don't know they exist. And that's how I created my first company, Sleep. Um, and I was actually in college, launched it on Shark T. Um, and then we started the biggest party Shark Tank history. Scaled up to 5 million users. Helped these students, ran all these scholarships and just grew and eventually sold the company Sallie Mae. But, you know, that's the origin story of my first company. Um, but, you know, ultimately it's through lived experience. Um, and I felt that I was trying to solve a problem that I was trying to solve as a human by myself and realized I can scale my humanity and my physical body. I decided to leverage technology, uh, particularly the mobile app space and as a medium to be able to create this product called Scaly, to help students find these scholarships for college. So that was kind of my origin story.

Speaker C: Okay, so did you always want to be an entrepreneur? Was that something that you thought about from a young age? Or was it just you saw this opportunity and couldn't pass it up.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that that was something, um, in high school I had a volunteer organization that uh, that, that brought, um, volunteer opportunities to my community because people didn't think students in my city wanted to do volunteer work. So I partnered with Ronald McDonald House, American Cancer Society and others to like coast volunteer products to help students get community service hours, which was important for them to get scholarships and go to college. So that was something that was really important. So, yeah, so always. But I think it's particularly social impact. Social enterprise is something I really like. I like to find ways to blend, um, a strong business model with something that you can actually impact a lot of people. And that's kind of what I did with scholarly, and that's also what I'm doing with Pathe. You know, we're still going to make a lot of money, but we also are going to help a lot of people because we're solving a huge pain point for, you know, a mass market opportunity around people that can't afford this level of test prep. So. So I think that yes, from a young age I just, I knew what that was, but I saw signals that I was, you know, an entrepreneur, um, and the things I wanted to do in terms of things I gravitated towards. I was part of the community entrepreneurship institute when I was in high school and all these things. So, you know, it was definitely something that I liked, that I gravitated towards. So it made sense when I decided to start a company because it's something, you know, that blend both my passions and, you know, and just the entrepreneurial interest from a very young age.

Speaker C: How did the technology play into this? When did that become a part of, of what you were planning to do? Like, uh, how did you work that into a business model?

Speaker A: I mean, originally I didn't. At first I was like, I'm make an app because I was just, I was just trying, I was stressed, stressed out, to be honest with you. Helping, trying to have a lot of kids. And then I was like, I should make an app then. Apps cost money, delves cost money and salaries cost some money. All these things, server cost, blah, blah, blah. They just all cost money. So I realized that I had to, you know, attie it to, you know, a product and create a business model around it because I had no choice. So it was kind of like a started to just make an impact. But then all you just download to people this free app and like, yeah, they're like, yeah, you got to pay people to make the app. You got to do all the other things, so you got to have a business model behind it. And so I think that it was figuring out a way to scale, um, leveraging technology and understanding the cost of technology and scaling. And actually, when I was in college, somebody reached out to me about Shark Tank, um, and, you know, they saw us in the press, and that's ultimately how that opportunity came around. Ah, yeah. But technology was kind of the forefront because I was solving a problem that wasn't being solved at scale. And I think technology presented an opportunity to solve that problem at scale. That's something that just as many humans like I as Chris Gre, can I have served 5 million people over 10 years? Um, couldn't have done it in a decade or in my entire lifetime. For a lifetime, actually. But with Scholar, I was able to, um, and I think that that was really important and I think that.

Speaker C: Yeah. So talk a little bit about path. What is PATH doing? How is it picking up where Scolly left off and continuing that journey for you?

Speaker A: So, um, PATH is. PATH is solving another problem in the college admissions process, which is test prep, something that's coming back. As you know, um, the new administration sent out a letter to pretty much any college that gets federal funding, which is almost every college in the US saying that test, um, optional policies are dei. So a lot of schools are starting to roll that back also because we are AI and all this other stuff where people are not starting to Trust Test Trust GPAs anymore. They're starting to need objective assessments to do that. So you're seeing that wave of coming back. And therefore there's a demand there on act, sat, psat, all that stuff, AP exams, everything. Right? And so the idea. And then also, so this idea that the thing that we're trying to prepare for is that when tests become mandated again, then test prep companies are going to. Oh, my God. Yay. Problem is all these test prep Companies are charging 1,200 plus dollars for test prep to take two practice exams. To do that, you take your GMAT, LSAT, GRE, even more. 2, $3,000. AI has presented a unique opportunity where you can build that same kind of test prep for barely anything. And you know, and so you destroyed the. Disrupting this entire industry that has literally been built on just serving very wealthy students to now making it accessible for everyone. Because these stakes are so high stakes, they determine what schools could be getting into, all the Ivy League schools require. So if you want to go to a prerequisite and if you don't do well on them, it can have a lot of consequences. Um, but because it's so expensive, a lot of students cannot afford it. So PATH solved that problem by leveraging AI, um, the new version of this technology. We're able to provide students with unlimited practice, not just two, three practice exams, et cetera. And they're able to do it for all under $100. Right. And so that allows us to service millions of students. There's organizations like Kaplan and Princeton Review, literally their entire business model are serving like over just 100,000 plus students a year. Right. And they make good money doing that. But only a certain segment of the population can afford that, probably 2 to 5%. And that leaves 95% of students in America or even internationally, this underserved market who cannot afford that. And that's what we're targeting. I wouldn't even say we're competing with Kaplan because. And those other. Because we are literally targeting an audience who could never even afford their product. Um, PATH also is expanding as of Monday. Um, we also launched the second phase. So my overall vision is not just around test prep, is around creating an overall AI agent around this whole college admissions process. Right. Which is a extension of Scholly. So we actually just launched our newest feature, which is our AI College and scholarship Essay Coach. Um, we found through a lot of our customers who were saying, we're taking all the acts, they were like, the next phase of this is really, um, spending most of our time in the college application process is actually essays. And then we did the research that showed income, the test scores and the quality of essays is directly correlated to income. Right. So students who have, you know, make m more money than before, essay consultants, test programs. So they kind of go hand in hand from a business perspective. We like to just kind of create a moat because if you're taking your acts in junior year, you need to apply for scholarships in college, senior year and throughout college. And that's kind of allowing us to start to build that. Right. So I give to my larger vision is, hey, agents. So that's kind of what PATH is. So think about PATH as an AI agent for college and career readiness as it expands. Because we don't just have, um, test prep for HT act, we also have it for, um, professional certifications like CompTIA, we have GED, we had NCLEX, um, and we're going to add other professional certifications, AI certification, et cetera. So we're going to really expand beyond that because to help people who don't want to Go to college, get these certifications. They need to get these new jobs.

Speaker C: Okay, so where is Path at as a company right now? What stage are you guys in and how large are you?

Speaker A: Um, yeah, so we actually been around just a year and a half. So I sold Scolly, um, and then I've actually took some time to relax, then jumped back into the game because AI is just this new wealth, this creation of wealth frontier that can pass up so just a year and a half years old. Like a lot of companies, the VC mandate states that you got to build this big company without a lot of people. So we're just sitting around a little under 12 people right now, um, that are working for the company and we are, are growing. So I would say we are in the seed stage. That hasn't been announced yet around the details around that, but I would say that's where we are. But, um, we got a lot of growth because I've been able to carry a lot of my relationships over from Scali to this new product. And also the credibility I have with Scali allowed a lot of SIS and deals to go through very quickly because people trust what I've built, um, in the past, um, and did that really well. So I think that that is something that has been a big thing. Um, but yeah, but we kind of growing paths, I would say, you know, I'm not gonna by now metrics, but we've kind of had a lot from our first year, for our first half of the year, um, that we're really, really excited about. Uh, it's been pretty exponential and mainly because, uh. But yeah, because I've been able to. I kind of know the blueprint of how to target students, how to do the whole affordability angle and all that stuff. So I've been able to bypass a lot of mistakes. I would have made a lot of mistakes. I did make my first venture. Uh, I tell a lot of my friends. I'm doing, I'm doing day one, what it took me four years to learn from being starting Scali when I was 21 years old, um, you know, and selling it when I was 31 years old. So I think, uh, it's. I learned a lot. Right. Um, you know, I realized, you know, there's so many founders or starting companies when I sold mine. So the internal age wise. So it was really cool, a cool process to figure that out.

Speaker C: So how do you go about reaching students that are specifically in those underserved areas? How do you, how do you identify them and get, get in Front of them.

Speaker A: Yeah. So a lot of our go to market have ironically been scholarships. We launched scholarships to be lead magnets. Um, they're very easy, promote costs, very little TPL cost per lead, super low. And we use that to go to market, store what best way to find students who need, who need to afford test prep or students who need to get a RS coach and then get the students upon a scholarship. So they also are greatly magnus to share them, they talk about them. So it's a very, very, very easy sell. Uh, people like it and it works really, really well for us also. You work directly with the schools, go through the college guidance counselors. These are the counselors who are generally are, you know, in charge of ensuring resources with students that they need for test prep, that they need for, uh, you know, to help with their essays and all that. A lot of them are overworked and stressed because oftentimes when a lot of students were served, there is like one high school counselor to 200 students. So a lot of times they can't help everyone not giving them the intensive support they need with their essays, test prep and all that. So we kind of be able to fill that void and help reduce that workload. We actually just got off a call literally 30 minutes ago with a school that was like, they literally are actually a boarding school that literally said, we spend so much time and headcount money on like essays. Like, it's just like if we can have these students that helps us move faster. And literally the next we left the call with a proposal sent, they're like, we need. Because you're like. They were like, yeah, they were like, if you look about the application process of college, it's really that essays take up about 70% of what you're going back for. The rest is just filling out a form. And we all know everyone AI to do that at this point. So like, um, the real hard part is like getting the essays right. So a lot of the kindness counselors in schools spend most of their time back and forth with students like, oh, and the students asking all this question, but if AI can do that. Because our AI guides them through that and basically is that it's a coach. It guides them through their ideas and then drafts it, but it actually guides them not just spitting something out like a chatgpt and things like that. So we solved a huge pain point for our users. And I think because of my background with Scolly, I'm um, uniquely positioned to solve these problems. And I know this audience. I know how to reach them. I got 5 million of them and I know how to really speak their language and uh, and do that. And I think in the age of AI, when it's so easy to build products, it's so easy to do things, I think it's important for founders to find a niche that they're uniquely in a domain, they're uniquely positioned to win and win an AI at not just I want to be the AI, uh, company, no one can do that. But if Chris Gray, the founder of Scholarly, who sold, who scaled and sold a company, is doing AI in the college agent space, that's going to help you raise money, have credibility with users because they have credit, you have credibility. What you're trusting investors, trust that. Um, and that's kind of how you play the VC game is you really are trying to build and have trust and de risk their investment by showing that you're building something that you know, that you have domain expertise in that you know better than anyone else or most people.

Speaker C: So how are you seeing your competitors like Kaplan adjust to the change in the landscape with AI?

Speaker A: They're a public company. They're not going to reduce. They're not about to go from charging you $1,400 to charge you. We charge you $60 and we give all the Tesla ones. They're not doing that. I think the reaction actually, how should I say this, but I ran into someone conn. Connected to Kaplan. I'll say this much. Uh, conference in April and they were kind of like a little flustered by it. I think that they recognize it's kind of like Grammarly. Right. You know, Grammarly is like, I don't know if grammar's gonna exist. I'm m. Like, when I. It's just, I'm like, they just raised a billion dollars. Acquire Super. I'm like, I really don't see how you're gonna really compete. You know, Gemini and all this stuff. I just don't, I just feel like. And Chegg, you know, so you see these companies getting disrupted and I think that's, I think that's what's gonna happen because even though we're not targeting those upper middle class students, they're gonna use our product. If I can get the same service for less than $100, I'm not going to pay 2,000. It's just, you know, rich people are actually good with money. That's kind of why they have it. Right? Like, you know, people like, oh, there's money. Yeah. Actually most people that have money are Good with money. And their goal is to keep that money. They can get the same quality of material for less than $100. I'm not going to pay $2,000 for it. Right. We have a lot of people, there's a whole program who their GMAT prep. GMAT prep, all $2,000. They're using Pav. People, my friends taking LSAT using Pav. Like why would they pay all this money when they have a cheap alternative and get the exact same content and you get unlimited practice. Not just, you know, this constrained stuff that that's kind of what we've seen. So we see them as dinosaurs, very legacy companies. I think those are kind of companies that will probably try to buy you before being actually structurally able to compete because they would have to gut and dismantle their entire organization just to compete with you. And um, you know, all that. And now we, and we have a model. We can add any test. We can just out beat them. We can add all AP exams, we can add, you know, um, you know, we got a state based exam they take in middle school. Our model is trained specifically on that. So we can just continue this whole catalog that they're not going to be able to compete with. Right. And we can do that because we're new. They can't. They would have to completely deconstruct their business model and revenue to even remotely try to compete with us.

Speaker C: Uh, how do you see AI disrupting higher education in general? Are you seeing any changes this early on or do you think they're, they're kind of slow watching and seeing what's happening?

Speaker A: I think higher ed is adapted to AI more faster than K12. Because the thing about AI is that AI colleges are getting judged whether they can help prepare you for the workforce. So in the workforce they're saying use AI. So colleges have to adapt. They also have more money and also they kind of have to do that. And I think that's the reality. I think The K through 12 market is struggling with it. One because let's be honest, a lot of teachers and educators are afraid they'll lose their jobs. They're afraid that they're not going to be as needed less. These are people that are not being paid a lot. So you're telling them that, you know that a lot of these teachers have side hustles that are tutors now saying so, you know, like we just launched the essay codes. What is that going to mean for English? Who are all these essay consultants who are trying that's going to disrupt that Business, which is good, but that's disruption. Um, so I think and then so there. Because you know, when you're In K through 12, you're focused on learning how to the fundamentals. When you're in higher ed, they're more like hey, we're trying to pipeline for a job. So I think they're really resistant. There's also private data privacy, but in terms of higher ed, I think it's disrupting it. Uh, I think they're going to be AI. I think they're going to be AI powered colleges. I think there's m. Someone's going to train someone can literally do that today. Take every course that a college offers, train an AI model and literally. And if it gets accredited they can literally give you the same. That's literally. They just take every professor, give me your curriculum that you do every course that's offered at university. I can train an AI model and literally I can have a whole AI college that you can go to with the same quality of material. And if you it gets accredited, kaboom. Right. The university's gonna be just hopefully living off their endowment. Right. Um, but I think that that's what's gonna happen, I think is going to force colleges to have to reduce their cost because they're gonna have to start competing with alternative forms of education that are just as, that are just as efficient where people are gonna start learning feeling like I'm not gonna pay $200,000 to get a piece of paper. I'm going to just learn this skill. And that's why we are definitely making sure that we're preparing for the workforce development space because we think certifications are going to be really, really important. We only touch comptia now because honestly what we're seeing in the market is that AI has disrupted the workforce so much that you probably need to sit back and wait until whatever the new certifications are going to be because honestly, like I don't know pmp, all this stuff. What is project management when you can use notion and motion for your, for your pmp. Like what, what does that mean? What does cybersecurity mean? I can automate that. What does. You know, there may be OpenAI may launch their own certification. So I think, I think we're trying to sit back and prepare for what the future of work is going to be like because I think that what you need to be certified in is going to completely change know now that these new AI models are now present where um, you're going to be like, I personally as an employer, I would love if I saw someone certified in Gemini, certified in Chat GPT, like certified, like they really, really know how to use it in depth. That would mean more to me than a degree at this point because I know, I know you can, I know you're certified in using these, all these major tools. That would be something that's important to me because I have, because right now I have. You know, when we interview certain people, oh, I know how to use channel chatting this, I use AI and they were like, what do you. I use ChatGPT. They really don't know how to use it. They're just kind of Q and A. Right. But that was a certification that said, oh, this person actually knows how to use this. That would mean a lot.

Speaker C: Yeah. How are you seeing parents and even like high school students that, that demographic. Look at higher education. Has their, has their perspective changed given what's going on? Are they a little more hesitant to commit to a four year degree?

Speaker A: I think parents are yes and no because parents usually have to fill the bill, uh, or help put their credit on the line for student loans. Um, I think Gen Z is really going to change everything because they are going to be AI native, they're growing up with the technology, it's going to be a part of their day to day lives. And I think they're going to force change because you're going to have all these boomers and even millennials and gen and Gen X saying oh, hey, and they're going to be like, I don't care if you tell me I can't use, I'm going to use it anyway. And they're going to force them to adapt. And I think that generation is going to force change because it's going to be unavoidable because what's happening in the market is that students who are not using AI are going to be competing with students who are using AI and so you can't tell one group to stop and they're going to be outperformed by the people that are. So think about scholarships, right? Imagine if you spend six months on all your different scholarship essays and all this stuff and then because you wanted to do the right thing, not use AI and then you lose. And then you lose the scholarship, found out the person that won the scholarship didn't use AI and they took them um, two days to write their paper, right? Like how are you going to feel? Right. Like it's going to. So, so, so I think that we're going to go and I think the same thing with academics. I think the world should move to. I think, I think the way academics are going to. I think there's going to be a bridge between AI grading AI or AI, because the thing about it, they're struggling because it's undetectable at this point. You really can't detect it. You saw the girl sued the school or something where they disqualified her, expelled her because they thought she was doing the AI, found out she wasn't. So it's becoming a thing where turnitin and these organs are trying to say we can detect it, but really you can't. And you're going to get into some ethical and legal issues when you start disqualifying people from jobs or discriminating or whatever and saying, oh, what if like you have an inner city student who's black who writes an amazing essay because they're m smart. But someone admission officer said, oh, well, this kid from a neighborhood, they can't write good. You know, then you got, uh, you got a racing mother, right? Like, you know, I think it creates, you know, it creates this thing. They can't write like that. How could this person from this school write like this? Right? Like. So I think you're gonna get into a lot of trouble. I think people are gonna have to really have to fall in line when they realize that it's here, it's happening. Uh, but what I will say for education is that it's happening so fast. In their defense, education has never been forced to move this fast, ever. Um, and I don't. And in their defense, I don't think it's fair. I think it's fair that they are hesitant, that they're resistant because they're being asked to move at the speed of light when they've been always asked to research, test pilot this thing and now in school. And then schools are going to start competing because we were talking this school, they're like, everyone's saying, try to use AI, but then you don't want to get left behind. And by the, your, your, your, the school, the other schools in the district outperforming your kids because they are using it. So it becomes, um, a whole thing. Yeah. So, so it creates competition. Right? Like, you know, we want our kids to be better. So.

Speaker C: Yeah, but. And it's, it's very difficult even from an employer standpoint, from a school standpoint, to discern between the what's built with AI or what's been work that's being done with AI versus work that's not. And I, uh, it's. It'll be interesting to see how businesses look at a degree when they realize that it's entirely possible to get through a degree program where AI is seemingly doing a significant proportion of the work. And what does that degree really mean anymore? How do you actually evaluate that, uh, potential employee's skills?

Speaker A: Yeah, because a lot of students are using AI throughout college. They're not even working right now. Like, if you are, if you're in school right now, these kids in Colorado are in the golden age. They are literally partying probably more than they are working. They, uh, like, literally. They are literally not writing paper. All the stuff that we spent crunching paint, like groups, study groups. They're not doing any of that. Like, literally they are on their computer doing, like, it's. Kids are taking online classes, any class. I think it's too hard online. And then using things like Clue. I mean, they are like. So I feel like they're in the golden age that we all wish. We all wish. I wish I got. I just got a full ride to college. I could just cruise through and, you know, and not be stressed about exams and all this other stuff and have unlimited practice and. Yeah, uh, it's gonna be a weird, uh, it's a weird thing. So they're lucky. They're in a little education bubble. But I think that. I think what's gonna happen is we have to. I think we're gonna have to start to reframe what we actually need to learn. And I think, AI reframe. Do you need to learn? Like, when we stop learning cursive, are we gonna need to learn all forms? Are we gonna need to learn fractions? I think it's time to actually reevaluate what is actually necessary for humans to learn. When you have these tools that can do so much. The workforce is. I think the workforce is adopting AI in a way that is probably going to be detrimental to society from a job inflation perspective. Because literally, I will say from my perspective, uh, I hope too many of this, but sometimes you actually are finding it hard to find stuff for people to do. They are. Now they're getting work done so quickly, which is great because using the tools, you're like, well, should you just be our employee? Right? Like, like really, like, should I be paying for 40 hours a week when, uh, everything's getting done, which is fine. Right? Or, you know, you have a lot of things that admit tasks that you would pay an assistant to do. I have one of my sisters. I'm like, I'm trying to find things for you to do because most of the things I do I use Gemini for right. Notes and tracking scheduling. Like so what is really left for like a lot of. So there's some skills that are just obsolete for a lot of people. And I think uh, and I think it's just the rug is being pulled from around the people. I um, just had a bunch of friends get laid off from Microsoft today. They just announced 9,000 jobs. Right. You know they're sales people and all that. Like what happened if you were in the sales. What happens when you have your. And I think who is going to be hurt the most are people in their mid level later careers who all are being paid based on 10 year. I have this much experience. I have this much. When you are mid M level manager making $250,000 a year for taking three means a week. I think those are the people that are getting gutted and not only they're getting gutted and laid off, they're finding hard times finding jobs that willing to pay to do the same thing. Like because the big, because the company that laying them off, the only company they're going to pay you the same are other big companies that just lay other people off of the same thing. So you have these people, these mid level executives who are kind of like stuck like in the limbo where they just, they need to be paid so much to where they're not considered desire. Like people don't want to hire. They're like. But in their mind I'm worth this, I know my worth. And I told one of them, I'm like you may have to reevaluate your worth right now. And I think a lot of workers are getting attitudes because they're being pouty because that's not how they've been trained to think. But I think they have to really ah. Re evaluate their worth to companies because I think so many AI agents can do so much. It's very different. Um, and I think some people are resistant. Um, you know one, one instance where a friend of mine um, found a tool that could do a lot of his work and he was hesitant to do it because he was afraid to show it to his boss because he was afraid his boss was going to replace him with it or say. Or make him a part time contractor.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And the, the popular response to that is that AI is replacing the monotonous work so that it frees you up to do all those other tasks that you never could get to. Right. Well what happens when the AI is better at those tasks too, at some point there's not going to be anything left to do that the AI can't handle. least as well, if not better and certainly cheaper than a human and faster.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah. I get done workshop done so fast. I make decisions so quickly. And I have an AI model that my AI engineers have trained that has every. It's like a brain of path. Like any email that we have, any marketing copy, any brand guideline, it knows product changes, refinement optimization. So anytime you want to ask about path internally, we can figure out about it. You want to onboard someone, anything you want to know about the company, you can instantly I can onboard you. You got any question, any question you want to know about who does what, we have a model for that. So it becomes like the nucleus of the company where it knows every decision, every history, how much, when did we change pricing, we changed the paywall. Did we, you know, hire this person? This person no longer here. Like, hey, what does this person do? Like what? You know, I, uh, need a deck for this client done. Like we have a model that does that. And Google Workspace with Gemini has been great at that because they do. I just go and prompt. I needed this. Send the calendar by, pull this, attached it done. It's scary. It's scary. As an entrepreneur, I love it, but I feel bad. I'm like, yeah, you know, it's like it's uh, a, it's a, it's, it's weird because I, I feel like we're in a pre, post pre apocalyptic thing from a workforce perspective where it's like, I think there's gonna be this concentration of people that are gonna make a lot of money and then there's going to be like this like desolate period where people are just not going to have jobs. People are going to revolt. Politicians are going to start regulating AI, banning it for certain uses and all this stuff because at the end of the day I can't vote for them. So I think that's what's going to happen. But I think there's this crunch for a lot of people to make a lot of money like uh, like these. That's why Silicon Valley, we're pouring money to everything because I think that there's going to be a reckoning, especially if we go from red to blue, where uh, they're going to be like, we have to do. People are going to be running on. What are we going to do to AI to make sure that AI can't take people that I'm sure that's going to be a talking point for our next election. Like that's our jobs. You all need to ban company. I think they're going to be like I think I see a future where regulators are going to say AI can't be used for certain things AI can't replace. They're going to, I mean because they're going to, that's going to be the only thing that they're going to have to do because otherwise they're not going to be. Companies are going to make a lot of profit, but they're going to be no job.

Speaker C: Well and you got to wonder if that's the reason why companies are trying to move ahead so quickly with AI is they, they want to beat the regulation, they want to beat the political motions because they, they know that at some point there will be pushback. So they gotta get as far as possible. It does really feel like the, the genie's kind of out of the bottle at this point and I don't know if there's a way to put it back in.

Speaker A: I agree with you. I, I, I think if you look at the economic cycles, that's literally what big companies do. It's like they, they're these, these companies have been around the block long enough to know that this shit is gonna have to be regulated at some point because if everyone doesn't have a job, people can't buy that, buy anything, disrupt the economy. Then we can't that just. And you have civil unrest and then you have all people getting, it's just eat the rich. It's gonna be a lot. We know the cycle but if you're smart, you get out, exit, make a lot of money. Kind of the dot com bubble thing, it's the cycle. Everything is regulated. It's a, it's, it's literally we have big wealth creating mode that lasts about three to five years. A lot of people, VCs pour a lot of money, founders and VCs make a lot of money. Then the next thing everything gets regulated, then everything goes back to normal. Then there's some other wave and that's, it's a cycle. Um, so I think you probably have five years to like really extract the most value before you're, before different forms of technology get banned. But there's also the angle that people that I uh, moved to, moved New York from D.C. people are like these companies already know this is coming. So they're already lobbying to like make sure like you really think Google and Open are going to let these pilots like out legends, legislate them out of business. They're not going to go quietly like that. Right?

Speaker B: Like, yeah.

Speaker A: So they're going to lobby them to make sure that they don't do something that just disrupts the um, you know, economy. And then someone brought up, yeah, like you just start taking. The government just regulates things. Just taking companies out of business, then that creates another ripple effect because now people are going to lose more people are going to lose job. Then companies can start suing the government saying you just disrupt it. You know the thing. So it's a. I don't think the world is prepared. I don't think that we are equipped to, you know the fact that Google is now, after 15 years, it's just getting antitrust regulations around it because for so many years politicians didn't know what to do or say and frankly probably being lobbied where they just, you know, they didn't want to poke the dragon. But you know, I wonder just how AI is going to do that because AI is moving so fast. But that's down the rabbit hole.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's hard to have conversations about AI without getting into these topics because it's moving so fast and this really feels like it's coming at us like a freight train.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: So getting back to company to path your goals, what are you looking at for say the next year? Do you have plans? Are you able to plan that far out given the environment?

Speaker A: Yeah, because you can build so quickly, I think, um. Yeah. So I think that my goal is using an AI agent for a college and career readiness. I think that, you know, I want to use, I mean test prep. Start with test prep, have the essay. I want to have an AI agent that can find and apply for scholarships for you. Like you don't take a step beyond scaly. You don't need to look for scholarships. We take the data we have about you and go start applying for you. Right. Um, so students can now apply to more scholars. We have your essays. So we can now help you apply to as many scholarships as possible. Right. So I think that's going to be something that's cool. And then we do that for you every year. So I think. And then. But I think the certifications piece are going to be a big thing. We paused on that again because we're trying to figure out what are going to be the next comptias and the next top certification of the world. But that's kind of what I see. Our vision is really having an AI agent Be this one stop shop but doing it in such an affordable way that it helps a ton of people but also has mass market and frankly high venture level returns as well. Because at the end of the day like still a for profit enterprise. But the way we see it is that if we serve Capital can serve 100,000 people, we ever serve 2 million. Like who can't, who can't afford to serve. That's just a big, that's ultimately a bigger business. Um and I think that that's kind of where we are um, kind of like where we come where we're excited about and uniquely about us. Our total address market increases every time we add a test test. We anytime we add a new certificate or test that's a new set, that's a new. We're constantly act. So there's no limit to our tab really in terms of what we're doing.

Speaker C: So what would a breakout year look like for you over the next year?

Speaker A: Getting a 5, 10 million AR that'll be great. Um, you know I think what. We're really excited we're profitable already. So that's really cool. Thanks to AI I literally this is. I would not have like we don't. You don't need a sense of many people to do things that I and I scaled the company right so I knew I have one person doing the work of five people. So you're able to be really, really profitable. You're able to adjust and also AI when you build stuff it's easy to, it's. It's more work to build it but maintaining once you're out in the world it's just, it's better and better over time. So it's like you then have to find work for your. You look at your developer be like what are y' all gonna do? You know, because now you're just doing maintenance. Like do I need all y'? All? It's a um, it's a total thing. And then now Cursor just launched yesterday. You can actually now it went from like the copilot to now you can launch the AI agents now to cold free. They just watch that. So it's a very much a. It's a problem. Yeah. So it's a very different. But you know, I really love what we're doing. So what we're doing at Path, we're going to help. We're going to either help you go to college or help you um, get certified so you can be prepared for the workforce and be qualified to get the jobs of the future. So we see ourselves as a future of learning and a future of work.

Speaker C: What would you say is the biggest bottleneck or the things standing in your way right now? What, what is your biggest struggle?

Speaker A: I think that what we're doing is right now what we're doing with. I uh, would say our biggest struggle right now is we just want to make sure that we are moving faster than anyone right now. We have first mover advantage in the test prep space because we're the legacy companies aren't going to compete. So we really want to be able to do that really, really, really well and help. So distribution is key. I think the idea of moat in the AI world I think is nebulous because anyone can really build what you're building. You just have to build it fast and get it out there and find a lane that you can do and move faster than everyone else. Because everyone's saying that people like uh, no one's building their own lms. Everything's mostly a rapper. Like people like everyone's building something on top of something, right? Like you know, everyone's, you can brand it how you want it, but everyone's building on top of something. So I think, you know, what we want to do is get distribution as quickly as possible so we can get our hands on a product. And because your moat becomes distributed, I think uh, you know, I think in the world where everyone can build things so fast, your distribution is remote because once you get customer then your product and they're using it all the time become the switching cost that becomes, you know, what, what you're going to do. And I think unfortunately a lot of companies pre2021 are probably going to become dinosaurs and become obsolete. I think we're going to have a new generation of companies that are going to, they're going to emerge, be display, um, and just, you know, just. And displace a lot of companies in ushering a new era of work and disruption that we haven't seen since 2000, since the age of the Internet. And I think this is bigger than, I think this is bigger than the age of the Internet.

Speaker C: Well Christopher, thank you so much for coming on. I think this was a fascinating conversation. I really enjoy it, enjoyed the discussion. Learning about PATH and where you're, you're going. So can you tell listeners where they can find you and learn more about you?

Speaker A: You can, you know, uh, I always want people to learn more about the company. So YourPath AI, um, YourPath AI learn more about Path, learn more about which is my company, which I'm really excited about. That's my baby. Or find me on LinkedIn. Christopher Jgray um, on LinkedIn, look up CEO path Christopher J. Gray, and you'll find me.

Speaker C: For everyone listening, thank you so much for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe, leave us a review, and as always, keep pitching, keep building, and keep scaling.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to this episode of Pitch Build Scale. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast provider so you never miss an episode, and we'll see you next time.