Ben Ward from StudyStash on building an EdTech startup, scaling across markets, and the importance of timing | The Dev is in the Details #18 | S02

We had a lot of expectations that were very different from reality. The only way I think you can find that out is just by trying. I like this saying we have internally where you make decisions as late as you possibly can when you have as many data points as you possibly can. We were always told there's no way you'd be able to stun the US if you're not American.

And that just wasn't true for us. People actually enjoyed having it almost a different perspective on what was going on in the UK and us bringing it to them and kind of being open-minded about that. Building an ad tech startup is hard. And doing so across two different education markets like US and UK adds even more complexity.

The US moves fast, is shaped by private founding, high tuition, and competitive Ed Tech scene. The UK is more regulated, publicly founded, slower in procurement, and more cautious with new technology. For founders, these differences influence product choices, pricing, compliance, and overall pace. More early state startups are now entering both markets at once.

The opportunity is significant, but so is the effort required to navigate two different environments. I'm Lukasz, and this is the Dev is in the Details, a podcast about the real challenges behind technology and business. My guest today is Ben Ward, founder of StudyStash, an EdTech company working across the UK and the US to help college students navigate and learn faster and more confidently. Today we'll discuss what it truly takes to build across both markets, the challenges that he expected, and the lessons he discovered along the way.

Ben, welcome to the show. T hank you, Lukasz. It's great to be on. Super.

So before we dive into transatlantic business, if you could tell us your story and how did the Study Stash came to be. Well, as with all great startups, I was living with my good friend Jonathan Graham, who's now our CTO. And we were sat there and I think we kind of realized that everyone's attention spans are just getting shorter and shorter in today's age. And so were us being uh 21 at the time.

And we were studying computer science at the University of Birmingham and had a huge amount of content to learn. There was PowerPoints, PDFs, Word documents, uh videos, and then you have to obviously go and do attend the lectures as well. It was extremely overwhelming, and that's really when we decided to build something. We didn't decide to set up a business, we decided to really solve our own problem.

And that's what we did. Ah, fantastic. We essentially created a solution, yeah, to take our own content and convert it into really engaging learning assets. Um so that's what we did.

And we built it for ourselves. All our friends started using it, and eventually it got the attention of our own university who ended up procuring it um for the rest of the college. Oh wow. So at what point did you know that you want to do this as a business idea and execute the company around this?

But what was the moment that you both, you and Jonathan, realized that? I remember the exact point, actually. It was really late at night, and we decided to do an update. And bearing in mind, at this point, no one was paying for it.

We had users, but it was there was no paid option. And we turned the software off temporarily to push this fix and update. And surprisingly, we actually had three or four emails of students, and bear in mind this was really late at night. We had like it was 2 a.

m. or half two, and students were emailing us like, please turn it back on. Like, I need all my notes, and I've been learning it, uh, using it to learn all the time. And we were like, oh damn, people are actually using this.

And we hadn't had any analytics or anything in the background yet. And that was the point we said, oh, we're actually adding value to real people, and let's do this. Yeah, certainly the traction initially helps, right? And and it's uh it's a boost of confidence, but also very rewarding feeling, right?

Yes, very. Super amazing. So you originated out of Birmingham, right? What was the moment when you realized you're gonna go bigger than than UK than EU and just uh go to US and try to establish like a base of operations or yeah, tell us more about this.

Like what's the transatlantic business like for you and uh what were the main reasons for pursuing that? I think there was lots of reasons, but uh there is one quite clear-cut reason why we did it. And I remember being sat there with Jonathan saying, you know, uh discussing the future of the business. And I said to him, I could probably list every single person's name by memory of who we're selling to in the UK, and because there genuinely is only 120 universities or so that could buy StudyS tash.

I think at that point we knew how limited the market was for us, and and although still a big market, um, I think it had kind of reached its own capacity in that sense. Not that it wouldn't be big for us in the future, but we just needed to expand. And you obviously have choices. You could go into Asia or somewhere, you know, out into Europe or Africa or South America or North America, as we ended up doing.

And that's really, you know, the start of the journey. Fantastic. And for you, was the like obviously if you would go with EU, um, other EU market, there were other aspects to it, like different legislation, uh, 28 different legislations, I guess. Um, also language barriers, right?

Because each country has its own language, even if you would do it in English, it would probably still be important. And US is in my, I presume I don't know anything about EdTech in the US or anywhere else, is much more unified, right? It's a more um standardized experience for a company like yours to enter and converse with you know clients slash you know students uh across the board, right? Is it or is it just wrong assumption?

Yes, it's definitely a well-trodden path of people you know expanding in the UK and then breaking out. But interestingly, that's maybe one difference between us and other companies that have done it. From all advice we were given, it was grow in the UK, form a really solid base, learn how to um, you know, sell and get that process in order, really understand your buyer and everything like that, and then breach into other markets. And we completely understood that advice, but then we received the counter from some slightly differently minded investors who are kind of suggesting okay, maybe it's a different position for you guys than it is everyone else.

And there was one real difference why that was applicable to us and maybe not other companies, and it's really about the um the life cycle, the sales cycle for these universities to sell to a university genuinely, it can take up to a year. So if you didn't start entering a different market early, actually, by the time you are ready, it could be too late. So that was one reason for us that we didn't want to uh miss on the opportunity and miss out on that. And uh the these like when you say it takes a year, is it the same in UK and the same in US, or or what do you mean it's shorter in US?

Like is it comparably shorter or is it significantly shorter? Yes. Well, that's obviously one thing we're testing, but what we've really found in the UK, you can't really um get away with anything less than a year trial of your software, and that's just the pace of the model. There's nothing you can do about that in particular, until you're a massively proven player, and which is fair enough.

In Europe, we're finding the same thing, but maybe even a little bit longer. So we have a university. Yeah. Um, so we have a university in Finland now on a year and a half trial, which is really quite long.

And then in the US, we're finding it to be significantly shorter. So from a year, it's dropped all the way back to one semester, one term, but even shorter than that. Like we're finding it can even be for a trial of a few months, which is significantly shorter. You know, you could uh decrease your sales cycle by six times almost.

That's crazy. And and the onboarding and um like maintaining and running it is the same cost for you, right? So at the end of the day, that's a massive uh leverage for for yeah, speeding up that process, I guess. There's an interesting question about can you do true zero touch onboarding?

And I guess we have the problem even in the UK, like if there's a university in London or East Anglia or Cumbria, they're still like four or five hours away. So we still have to work on a zero touch method anyway. So onboarding one in California, although 8,000 miles away, it's done actually in a very similar way. Fascinating.

And um from the procurement perspective, do you did you feel like there is a difference in mindset uh on both markets or all three markets? I don't know, like let's consider you a third market between UK and US as well. I think maybe breaking that down into two different bits. Like there's the actual procurement of the software, and then there's the budget of the software, but then there's also like maybe the key drivers of uh why they're actually buying it as well.

And I think they all influence each other in a different way. And for example, in the US, obviously the larger fees drive uh more budget for these organizations. They have maybe slightly less strict procurement rules and data, whereas Europe's got um very strict GDPR rules, so that adds blockers as well. So there's a hundred percent like some really important key differences here that we're finding.

And navigating all three at the same time, UK, Europe, and also North America, it's been very interesting for us, but manageable. So when you were flying over for the first time, uh you had some assumptions, right? Can you can you tell us about them and and did they come true? So imagine this: you're you're a student that's just graduated in the UK, and you've had two choices.

You either go with your startup or you take a corporate job somewhere else. So we were sat here kind of thinking, okay, what is this really going to be like? And we had all these expectations and perceptions of what it would be like. And I tried to kind of rule them out my head and just say, look, you'll only find out when we actually do it.

And that was one and well, another reason we decided to become a transatlantic business. I said, let's just do it. Let's just, you know, put all the bureaucracy and debate behind us and just go, Just like that. Just like that.

And in fact, and we had a lot of um, you know, expectations that were very different from reality. But the only way I think you can find that out is just by trying. So that's what we did. And uh myself, my co-founder, we went to New Jersey and New York, and here we are, it's been very successful for us.

Fantastic. And what were the biggest surprises on our over there? I think you understand by going there it'll be expensive. But I think what you don't understand is that basic things can be expensive.

So everyone knows about the rent and uh travel, you know, general things, but nobody expects uh you know toilet rolls to be nine pounds or grapes or oranges or very basic things. So that was a big shock for us, uh, which I think is fine. Okay, all right. So the general groceries and stuff.

But one one thing that was truly unexpected was we were always told there's no way you'd be able to sell in the US if you're not American. Right. Right? And it's a very common thing that people think this.

And they also said there's no way you can do this unless you're physically there. Or there's these kinds of you know, perceptions out there. And that just wasn't true for us. We landed and we were welcomed, and people actually enjoyed having it almost a different perspective on what was going on in the UK and us bringing it to them and kind of being open-minded about that.

In fact, we had the opposite. Yeah, people welcomed it almost. Super. Um okay, but your intent is to be on the ground, right?

Like to be in the US, to be constantly present, I don't know, have a sales office or some sort of um, let's call it customer success representatives, right? For your existing clients. How would you how would you describe this um expansion or or maybe even a complete move? Like where is it at now?

Tell us. Well, here's uh one thing that many people think would never work. Imagine having your CEO in America, in New York, and your co-founder, the CTO in England. Now you've got a five-hour time difference, and you've got 5,000 miles between you and literally an ocean.

Right? And this is the thing that we were constantly told never split up, never do this, never do that. And um, it won't work for these reasons, and the time difference, and and the like the cost, and the travel, and it just won't work. And yes, we are planning to um be there physically on the ground, but I think what we found was actually it's worked very, very well having some distance between us sometimes as well.

One thing we have struggled with is that we've lived together for the past four years, and then actually that stifles some of the progression because we're constantly asking each other opinions when actually you should learn to make decisions on your own. So, this physical space between the co-founders actually we found to be very good, at least in the beginning. So, yes, we're playing to be on the ground, but also the split team so far is working really, really well. It also unlocks deep work because you have five hours.

Both of you have five hours to really lock in and get deep work done. So I know at 5 p.m. no one's going to disturb me.

Or I can log on in the morning and I'd have a clear list of everything I need to do. That's yeah, that's so true. But it takes uh discipline. Uh plus you had the relationship earlier, and now you can basically maximize on each other's uh you know advantages and specialized roles, right?

Because you my understanding is you're taking care of fundraising and leading the organization, uh being the spokesperson for the organization, right? And potentially uh managing the entirety of the US expansion and sales, if if that's correct. That is. While Jonathan is taking care of the um UK part plus technology plus products, uh, feedback, um, an iteration of the feed uh of the product.

Um yeah, I'm I think that you you really complete each other, you know, in that regard, from my observation from observing your journey from sidelines. 100%. I think it's about like division of labor and responsibility as well. And actually physically being a part hasn't been a bad thing, especially it kind of like takes you to gives you gives you space to focus on what you're actually doing as well.

It's interesting what you said about that consensus. Uh do you think that could um like slow down some founders, or is it something that you would consider um it was a good thing initially, right? But eventually it might become uh uh a slowdown. It could.

I think it really depends on what kind of relationship you have with your co-founder. Uh and us having lived together for the past four years and uh being chronically online. Don't think there's almost a single hour in the day that one of us couldn't answer a question really means we're able to do that. And I think like the culture we're building is like that as well.

The communication is really, really strong. And um, yeah, in the long run, it could stifle some uh progression. But that's also why we spend time together. It won't be like we're always separated.

Actually, we we try and do 50-50 uh together or not. So, in terms of uh time commitments and and like how is the whole thing structured, the intent is, or how if you tell us how did you do it? Like you spent entire year 2025 in US and Jonathan spent entire year 2025 in in UK, or did you fly over to one another, or how how was it structured just for our audience? It was basically structured around events.

So in November I had four conferences to go to. Um, one started in New York, New York Ed Tech Week. I then flew to Connected, which is one of our partner events in Orlando. From Orlando, we went to Nashville in Tennessee for Halloween, but also a conference called EduCalls.

Um and then actually to Glasgow because there was a conference there um called the Association of Learning Technologies. So it was generally structured around a specific goal or target that we were going for. And for us, that was getting eight colleges in the US. So the whole driver, the whole reasons we were, you know, doing anything was really to push that.

So that's what we structured about. Um I was living there for the past uh three months or so, but then really dotting around anywhere as needed. Okay, and Jonathan joined you for some important meetings as well, or how did that work? Yeah, exactly.

And Jonathan came to me uh for the events, and then we had this really, really tough situation where every startup founder's dream is to like be in a room with one another on that bed, like Mark Zuckerberg had that photo, and like pretty much all famous founders had. And we tried that. He stayed in my room in New Jersey, and we had a blow-up mattress with a pillow. I remember him just like almost crying in the morning, like, I'm never doing this again.

My back hurts too much. And uh, we tried so for about a week, he was on my floor. Uh in some very small room, and we decided, yeah, that's that's not gonna work. Well, it's a very frugal approach, so so I get that super.

And um, like what else is different? Like uh for your business, do you intend to fundraise in US or would you continue fundraising in in Europe on European markets? Uh, do you think there is a massive advantage of being over in US also from fundraising perspective? Yeah, well, I think I I've been told quite a lot recently that we've had a very different funding journey to many other companies in England, just as a whole.

So we were pretty much pre-revenue and we had a product, we had some users. And those kind of companies don't really get funded in the UK that easily. They typically have grants or some kind of incubator is funding them or something like this. And we had a very different journey where we never really stopped building the products and focusing on customers.

We just ran the investment alongside it, which is really interesting and you know, really quite different. And one of the reasons we could do that was that none of the investors were particularly in the UK, and that meant things was just so much quicker. Super. Okay.

And uh for the next major round, do you would you imagine that the US is just your primary market for fundraising, or uh you were looking at other options as well? 100%. Um we're pretty much only going to be focusing on the US for this, and from everything we we've heard, that will be the place for us. Um, one other thing we did, which was really against a lot of people's uh direction, was we flipped our company.

We did something called a Delaware flip. So we had a UK entity, yeah, we had a StudyStash Limited, a UK company, and we decided to flip it, which basically means we've converted that company to be a US Inc. Okay. And yeah, so now we have this US Inc.

Yeah. And uh a UK subsidiary, StudySlash Limited. So we have two companies, and you might be wondering why we did this. It was very, very expensive, it was timely.

Um yeah, there was lots of reasons why it was difficult. And we did it for the funding, like to be honest, it just makes funding that much easier at the next round. It means investors can unlock something called QSBS in the US, which means they can get tax relief on their investment. And there's so many other reasons, like actually selling uh to US colleges, they needed that as well.

Got it. And you mentioned there is like a hundred colleges in UK versus how many in US? So on the East Coast, generally between New York, DC, and Pennsylvania, there's over 250. So within maybe a three or four hour drive of me now, I've doubled the number or tripled the number of of universities that we can speak to.

C razy. Which is unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah.

But then what is stopping you from moving their entire operation with Jonathan and everything and everyone and just building and and growing and you know. So focusing 100% on that market because it seems like it's significantly bigger if it's if just the West Coast, the sorry part of the East Coast is already two and a half the size of the entire country. Well, there's a few things. So I think it's about timing, predominantly.

It's about doing it at the right time. And we're just building a base of colleges there already to help us onboard even more. And we're really trying to understand all three markets at the same time. And I like this uh saying we have internally where you make decisions as late as you possibly can when you have as many data points as you possibly can.

I see. Yeah. So for us, this is understanding, okay, we're trying. So we're deploying some capital to try different things.

And for us, it was okay, try the US. And it seems to be very fruitful. But we're also trying Europe and we're trying the UK as well. So only at that last minute will we'll be able to make decisions really about where we base ourselves.

Um but there's a few other things we're doing very well in the UK market as well, and in Europe. We're actually just onboarding a university in Finland, but also um the University of Latvia is coming on board for a trial as well. So yeah, fantastic. And we're seeming to do this right now.

We're doing it very well from the UK. And between all of these markets, is the product much different? Uh, do you have to adjust heavily for specific, I don't know, regulatory reasons or educational process reasons or otherwise? Yeah.

Well, there's maybe the products itself, but more importantly, there's all the deployment and the data hosting and where the AI models are. And um, you know, so there's two different bits to it for sure, and the different legislation. So we actually have different accreditations for different regions now. So we have just onboarded a client in South Africa and they have the Poppy Act.

No idea what this is. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's very similar to GDPR, but um in South Africa someone. Got it, got it.

Like uh yeah, personal privacy protection laws. And yeah. Yeah, exactly. Uh and in the UK and Europe, we have uh ISO 2700.

But in the US, they have something called SOC2, which is practically a very, very similar thing, um, but it's a different accreditation. Uh so we're also working towards uh towards that. Yeah, so very, very different markets for sure. But in terms of the actual product, I mean it works in 121 languages.

Uh the actual interface is the same, but you can create content and everything like that in different languages. It makes it very appealing to the university in Finland when they finally have a product that works in Finnish. And that's what our pilot is. That that's that it's going to be comparing a thousand students using in Finnish and half uh the other thousand using it in English.

Yeah, that's that's pretty cool. I wonder about the complexities, because if you juggle that many markets, right? Like from uh even what you just mentioned, legal legal standpoint. Do you do you find yourself in having like multiple um legal advisors for each different market?

Or or how is that structure? Or am I or am I over-engineering it in my head currently? Is that a massive risk and expense? You're not.

It's actually a major problem. Um imagine this. So you're in the UK, you have a UK accountancy firm, you have a UK law firm that understands UK law. And now we have this transatlantic business um which trades in multiple regions in North America and in Europe, and it comes with massive complexities to do with legal and accounting.

So fortunately for us, we use um a law firm called Wilson Sonsini, and they are known to be a transatlantic law firm. So uh it's brilliant for us. They actually understand the different complexities. Where what they don't tell you will be difficult is the accounting, because we use Xero in the UK to do our uh UK accounting.

We have a different one for the US. So we actually had to build our own tech to integrate these two accounting platforms to understand our finances. No way. Wow.

Okay, that's pretty that's pretty cool. And and from the product standpoint, do you feel like are their features differently? You know, the interaction between um students who are using the product in US or UK in South Africa, are they any different or is it the same flow, the same experience? It's very, very similar for sure.

I would say the biggest difference is the uh the way they engage with the tools. So we're finding with US colleges, the faculty are really engaged and they almost want to use it in every class. Um it's not necessarily built for them, it's built for the students. Um but they love the tech and they're they're enthusiastic about trying new things.

So we're finding they're actually implementing it in the classroom a lot more than uh other markets. But the actual product itself is very similar. It's just how people choose to engage with it. I think we're finding it's different.

And then one thing that we definitely have found is different is the type of university. So in the US, you have public institutes, you have private institutes, they're funded differently. You also have community colleges, um, which are like pre-college. Uh yeah, very, very different.

And we have public universities in Europe and public in the UK, and they all have different procurement regulations and rules and timelines of how they spend things. But what we found so far is if they love the technology and they want it, it will happen. And so you find those advocates in the organization, and whatever type of organization it is, they push it through because they're they're really for it and they like what you're doing. Wow, I wasn't aware this is so complex with that many subtypes and groups and decision makers potentially.

And don't you have an urge to optimize and focus on one or two customer types in single market or two maximum? Like what how is your decision process for you know going broader and experimenting, like you said previously, versus hey, let's laser focus in UK, hey, let's laser focus on US. Even from language perspective, right? I mean, you you mentioned you support hundred over 100 languages, but you know, English is in South Africa as well, right?

You could you could potentially include that because it's English as a main language. What's your decision process? I'm really curious. Well, actually, no.

So in South Africa, they're using it in uh Zulu and also Afrikaans. So there's 12 different languages. Sorry, I'm an ignorant. I'm so sorry.

No, no, no. I mean, also in English. Also in English, but it is uh it's massively complicated to understand. Like 12 different languages they've asked for that we've uh baked into the product, so you're completely spot on.

In a single country? Yes. Oh wow. Wow, that's.

Factor smaller than that, but those are just the 12 that they asked for. Oh wow. Impressive. Yeah.

Well, again, I think it's about timing. Like the whole point of a pre-seed round is to understand data points, understand, you know, um, about the market and what's working and what's not working. So I think that's exactly why we're doing what we're doing. It's try everything, is understand where it's working very well, and also see chase the money.

Like cash is king. And for us, trying different markets is understand like letting us understand where the cash is. Uh so I think for the preseed round, we're doing exactly the right thing. And that's really why the decision-making process is like it is.

Um, it's understanding everything at this point for later down the line to really, really focus on one thing. Got it. But arguably, like the biggest market by far is gonna be the US, right? Because I I mean, I don't know what the total amount of colleges is there, but I I would bet it's bigger than the entirety of EU plus UK.

Yes, yeah, much, much larger. And it's a single regulation, right? Like what I'm what I mean by that is in you in different countries you're gonna have probably various different flavors of that GDPR or like you said, data hosting information uh stuff. Like I know for a fact that in Germany you need to host in Germany for or your students' data or AI processing and all of that.

In the US, it would be just a single place, right? Unfortunately not. If only it was that simple. But even within the US, it's uh it's not that simple.

Um on the East Coast, sure, it's a very similar regulation, but Texas has its own regulation, they have um their own compliance uh where you need a different certification called TX Ramp, for example. There's something called uh CCPA, which is the California um. No way. Yeah, So I always thought that's a massive advantage to have a unified market, and now they also do what we do in EU, which is substate.

Wow, I didn't know that. Yes. Well, it's a big thing. Uh it's a big place.

So you put all these different sub markets within the states. No, of course. I just I don't know. I was naively thinking that it's gonna be a single unified market, you know, happily ever after, you know.

Okay, but what does it what does that mean from a deployment perspective? Like when you deploy your tool for different local markets, uh, what does that mean? You know, you have multiple instances per state or per country, or walk me through it. Well, look, that was one thing we're trying to figure out, really.

When we set off, we said we're going to have to understand are we going to need multiple deployments? Uh are we going to need this or that or the other, or different certifications. And really what we're finding is different countries have different stances on GDPR and data. So, generally speaking, Europe and the UK need the data to be hosted in Europe.

Whereas in the States, they're actually happy if the data's hosted in the UK. So, as of so far, we've been fine with uh the data. Really? Yes.

And maybe that's because like uh Europe's got stricter policies than they do anyway. So they're happy if it's at a stricter, a higher level, but it's not true the other way around. Never thought of that, actually. Interesting.

Uh what about latency? Yeah, genuinely we haven't had an issue yet, uh, as of so far. But uh we know multiple companies that do it in the same way, just having one deployment. Typically the data's hosted in Frankfurt, it's very, very common.

Yeah, even the major players like Canvas, Blackboard, and Moodle. And Moodle's a little different because it's open source and they host it themselves. But yeah, even the large companies do this too. I wonder uh like to what point, you know, uh to what amount of students that can carry on before you know latency becomes a problem.

Really curious. But then again, the the tool is not real time, is it? Uh in what sense? Sorry.

Um when I go through the learning experience, like some small delays. Um I guess like when I use ChatGPT, for example, sure. And there is a delay in how it produces the answer, which I think it's artificially put in place. Um how does it work for you?

Is it is it immediate or or you also allow it for some few seconds, milliseconds of processing and then um providing the answer? Is it purely on a server response basis, or is it just also because you I don't know, nurture the experience towards this kind of conversational, um like a teacher as student uh situation? I think we find the latencies long enough to make that artificial uh airwall fine anyway. Yeah, exactly.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, what one thing we added in that exact respect to try and make it more conversational, we've added two things. So uh one of them is like an audio mode.

So you can actually just like this, you can turn any kind of content into a podcast and listen to it on the go. And then the second thing to plays into this is about teachback. So we've added this mode where the student becomes the teacher and they have to talk to the uh what we call study chat, the the tutor, and teach the tutor something. And we've got this whole like vision about okay, genuinely, how far can you take it that they become the teacher?

Maybe it nudges them in the morning or like text them, where's your homework kind of thing? And you have to uh create your own sets of questions to send to them. And so yeah, we're building out these modes now. I really like that gamification.

That's really that's really pretty cool. Um and um do you think like culture of where the people who are using the tool come from impacts uh features or engagement? Or is it more universal than I think? I think the cultural difference is really about the faculty and how they introduce it to the students.

But that doesn't necessarily um differ per region. That's differing per um what kind of people they are, that uh what kind of organization you're selling to. I'll give you an example. So we have some universities where they um are desperate to keep their students and they have really, really high dropout rates.

So they're really, really keen to push the tools and make positive change because they're desperate to survive almost. Whereas you kind of have this um older kind of public institute that has a huge number of students and they're more sluggish in their approach and they might buy software that never gets used. So I think it's about the type of organization more than uh the culture of the region, more of the culture of the organization. Interesting.

And uh, how does the faculty play a role in this? Did do you see similarities between the same faculty across different organizations, different unis, or um it's also dependent on I don't know who the teacher is. Yeah, generally we're seeing that you always dig out the faculty who are really engaged and want to try something new. And I think it's very similar at every university we've worked at, there's different categories of people.

Um, just like with any tech adoption, right? You have the people who are uh you know don't really want to adopt new technology and they're not used to it, and they're still writing with pen and paper, and they give out homework by hand. They do all their marks with paper and they check people in to the to the class on their little notebook. Even in US, you mean?

It still happens, you'd be surprised. Uh yeah. Okay, okay, because I always thought that there is so much progression there that uh you know there will be uh so much ahead in in terms of like maybe automation or or digitalization of certain. Yeah and there are 100% is but that doesn't mean everyone's adopting it, especially at universities when you have uh you know tenure and lecturers have been there maybe up to 50 years or so, and they're it's very, very stuck in that old ways.

So the tech is definitely there, but within these pockets of the university, uh another example, we have um learning management systems where that hold the content. And pretty much every university has one of these. Every course is running on it. It sounds sounds simple, like everyone needs one, so why don't we have it?

And we speak to some universities where, as you'd expect, everyone's using it, and then there's these really small courses where there are zero students engaging with it, and we say, why? Why is that? And that's because the faculty has just decided to boycott the software just because they're used to writing everything on hand or whatever it might be. No way.

Yeah, so yeah, dragging back. About that. So you integrate with the LMSs of the universities? Yes.

So however the current system is, we plug in and then the student can take any content that's on there and convert it to our engaging learning assets. And do you that LMS, is that as you like a universal standard across the board or per country, or how does it work? So pretty much globally, there's probably six or seven major LMS players. Um, the biggest ones are called Canvas Instructure.

Uh, you've got Blackboard, Moodle, and D2L Brightspace. And they're kind of all a slightly different purpose, but they're very, very similar. Essentially, a lot of universities use them as a file store, though. And it's where all the content is, it's where all the courses are run, and they don't really make use of all the functionality that they could.

Maybe there's some uh you know marking available or whatnot. And that's great for us because we can plug a Study Stash in and say the LMS is now truly adaptive, actually making the content match the level of the learner. So without changing or adding any pressure to the faculty, faculty don't have to do anything differently, but the students get better resources and a better experience at the other end. And I think you know, a lot of our conversation has been about cultural differences and about adoption.

And this is one reason we've built the way uh we built Study Stash the way we have, really having the lowest possible way of implementing it and the lowest friction for faculty has been really core to what we do. Maybe like a great example of this is in a sales pitch, I can say faculty don't have to do anything, they don't have to log in. There is no login, there's no there is no system for them to log into, there's no admin dashboards, there's there's nothing like this. They get an email once a week.

They genuinely just get one email uh with some updates and insights into where their clash is struggling, but they don't have to do anything. Um, so it's kind of hard for them not to love us. Got it. And uh they don't have an overview of what uh this is like fully um embracing the privacy of the students, right?

They they understand where uh their cohort has an issue with a specific topic, but not necessarily who, correct? Exactly. It's completely anonymized. That's one of the perks.

They don't have to do anything, but what are the primary reasons for unis to engage? Like, and also maybe more importantly, how do they differ between UK and US? I think the biggest difference we've seen in how they engage is uh down to one word and well, okay, technically it's three words summarized into an acronym, but it's DFWs. So I don't know if you've heard come across this term before.

No, please elaborate. Okay, so in the US is something called DFWs, and it's essentially dropouts, failures, and withdrawals. So they've collectively built this term to understand it's basically a metric of understanding uh how many students are dropping out on your courses. It's churn, basically.

Yeah, churn, churn. They're treated like businesses. This is the whole uh point of the difference. So when we speak to a college, they say, Oh, okay, here are our top 10 DFW courses, and we can genuinely understand where they're losing their revenue.

I don't know if you you've heard this, but in the US, the dropout rate on average is around six in ten in the first year. Sorry, six in ten to stay. So you lose about 40% of your revenue in year one. Wow, that's huge.

Does that mean that they take too many people in upfront, or what what does it mean? Like Yeah, there's there's lots of um reasons why this might be the case. Maybe uh the students can't afford it. Biggest difference.

The courses are way more expensive. Um, maybe students are swapping course because they picked the wrong one to begin with. Um maybe they're not engaging with the course content. This is where we come in.

Or maybe their faculty is not um coaching them as well as they should be. So there's this real difference about in the US understanding why students are dropping out and caring so much more about that because it's genuinely life or death for them. It's a business. A lot of them are privately funded, they need that cohort to stay where their revenue is.

And think about this: in the US, if one student drops out, just one, you could potentially lose $50k dollars for four years or five years. So you could have just lost a quarter of a million dollars just because of one student decided not to continue with their course. Now in the UK, yeah, you lose 9,000 pounds a year. And actually in the UK, every university makes a loss on home students.

So if you you're a UK student going to a UK university, that university won't profit off you. They make their money from international students. Whereas in the US, it's just. Okay.

But how is so my understanding is that um in Europe or in UK, um universities are public, which means government pays for them, right? So when you say they make money on international students which are from abroad, so how does it work like if the local individual joins the cohort there that they don't make money out of them? I don't I don't understand that bit. So in the UK you pay around I think it's 9,250 pounds.

It's 9,000 pounds per year to go to the house. Oh, so it's so it's not free? Yes. Yes, it's not free.

I I didn't know that. I I thought it's like in you where unis are free. Okay. I didn't know that.

It's not. Yeah, but even though you're paying almost £10,000, it's widely known that they make a loss on you because it costs more than that. Yeah, to actually educate you. They make their money on international students.

And like I said, in the US, when you're paying that high of a fee. Again, it's the same thing. If you're in your own state, it's not as so much. But many students don't go to their own state, they they go out of state.

Hold on. Just to understand, why would I make why would the uni UK make more money on internationals? Because the fees are just so much higher. So maybe the average fees for an international student is around 30k for them.

Got it . Okay. And then this group has to cover for also local students, right? So for them to be profitable.

Exactly. And that's the biggest problem in the UK and the US right now is immigration laws are changing. It means it's much harder to get a visa for international students, which is really impacting the universities. They've also changed the laws after graduation around employability.

And this is really important because if you can't stay in the UK for as long, less international students will get a job in the UK. But then they're ranked on that. They're ranked on employability. So if their employability drops because of these new visa rules, yeah, it actually massively impacts the revenue of the university in the long run.

Crazy. Crazy. So they're down in ranking, so to say, right? The international ranking is international, right?

Not just you on UK basis or Yeah, there's there's different rankings. So you have like the Times Higher Education, we have the NSS, the National Student Survey, and but there's also a global one that we were a finalist for, called QS. Mm-hmm. So sorry, I'm still being bothered by this financial stuff.

So there's no subsidies in UK of any sort by government or local authorities or to colleges? But the way you get, I mean, I guess the financial situation is quite tough here, that most people never pay back their loan. So you take a loan for this. Uh you take £9,250 every year.

I believe it's the age of 60, they write it off. The government writes it off if you've not paid it all back. And it's the main problem that most people never pay it back, and they're constantly paying back this loan that increases every year. In fact, you'll hear on the news all the time that students will pay back their loan, and because they're paying the minimum amount, they'll actually own more than when they started because of interest and inflation.

Yeah, I mean, certainly. And then what, they they just fold if they aren't able to pay it? Like banks chase them down or No, no, so it gets written off. Like the government writes this off as a loss at the age of, I think it's 60.

Wow. It's a major problem. And another reason it's an issue is imagine you're paying back your student loan. You're on uh 30k as a salary, so you're paying uh very little of it back.

The maximum you would pay is if you always stay at that level and always, always just pay back that little bit. But not many people can afford to pay back the whole thing. And the issue is it actually drives the the country down because some people say, Oh, I wouldn't want to earn more because I'll have to pay more back to my student loan, for example. And yeah, you can be at this the worst point where you're just at the threshold where you pay more back, but you never quite reach the higher salary that you ever pay all the back, and you pay a really large amount over the period.

Yeah, and I can imagine this compounds, right? Because um if you want to take a mortgage for a flat or a house as well, then yeah, two items. I don't know if you can actually even take mortgage if you have the student loan loan going for so long. I remember my brother paid paid almost £4,000 back off a student loan, and it had gone up a thousand pounds since he started, which was just unbelievable.

And he's not even that old. I mean, he'd only been out six or seven years. Wow. I only I somehow assume that that's the US model, but it seems, yeah.

Because in the US the tuition is even higher, right? The it's like in high two digits or mid-two digits in thousands, right? Tens of thousands. The only difference is that it's capped in the UK.

So no university can increase it past the same across the whole board. Oh, that's a that's a cost for losing money and then having the international students to pay for the rest, I get it. All right. So tell me about adjustments uh to your process or to your to your learnings or to the platform uh once again.

Uh now that we know there are the differences in the financial uh in how the finances for universities work on the both sides of Atlantic. I think the biggest difference was uh mentally adapting to living in a different country and and all the different cultural differences that that brings. And and team dynamic was really, really tricky to manage to begin with. So physically landing there, I think everyone should kind of prepare themselves for the unexpected.

There's only so much you can actually prepare for and think will be an issue, and get through that really, really quickly with strong communication. I think the the biggest issues we had were nothing to do with the market or legal or selling or anything to do with this. It's about getting the communication right from day one. One thing that made a big difference between me and uh C-suite was really about uh having a system to communicate with each other.

Um, one of the ways we did this was okay, every time you log off, you write a list of anything that's critical, P1, what we call it, for the next person to pick up in the morning. It means we actually had like a 24-hour running cycle. And before this, it was terrible. You'd log on, there'd be things everywhere, you'd never really know where you stood or what needed doing.

It's very overwhelming waking up to calls and massive lists and to-dos and you know, everything's like. But I meant even more from like perspective of, for example, your pitch deck. Would you say when you pitch in the UK, it's a different pitch deck that than when you pitch in the US or is it universal? Yeah, but there's definitely one core difference, and it's about how quickly you get to the point.

Uh, I think in the UK it's a very slow game, and they they really want to know the story on why you're doing what you're doing and how you got to the point you've got, and who else is doing it. They're they're very they act as a herd in a crowd. 100% sure in the UK and Europe. Everyone's just wondering who else is doing it and how do I not fall behind.

In the US, they're thinking about getting ahead. They're they want to try things, they back entrepreneurs, they um they're very forward thinking. So, in fact, our first US college, I won't name them because the press release hasn't come out yet, knew they were the first college and was like, this is brilliant, and they've moved very, very quickly, and we've got almost the senior leadership tip uh buy-in, right? Wow.

So, in terms of actual deck, filtering that down to a granular level, what that means, the first pitch we did in the US was terrible. Uh, I could just see they were bored, they really just wanted to get to a point. They wanted us to say, we're going to reduce DFWs, and this is how we're gonna do it. In the UK, they wanted the background, they wanted the data, they wanted a lot of different things first.

I think they're all going along a similar journey, it's just when they want certain things. In the US, it's very like, tell me how much that is, let me understand why I need it, and then like let's go back and do the due diligence. Whereas in the UK, it's like, okay, let's really understand what's going on here, and then let's talk in a month. We'll talk in you know six months in some cases.

I see. What's what was the fastest closing that you have had? The absolute fastest was probably just um an email. I sent uh I sent an email to a US college and they said this sounds great.

They I actually sent them a demo recording instead of jumping on a call, and that pretty much looks like a closer. Yeah. N o way. Um, and that's been the same with investment too.

Like um, I had one guy, I'd not met him, we jumped on a call, about 15 minutes in, he'd committed 75k. And that's the difference we're seeing in the UK and US. That just wouldn't happen in the UK. Uh yeah.

A different ball game. Okay. So when you have other young founders out of UK or out of Europe that are considering to do this, and I can tell you, in my side of Europe, in Eastern Europe, we have this challenge that, you know, we tend to build for local markets and they're too small to, you know, pay off the investment to, you know, um get enough traction to grow. Um, hence uh frequently I advise my colleagues and people surrounding me here in Central Europe uh to go to US outright, right?

To just start there, to move to New York or to move somewhere else in uh West Coast into the valley and start there. But that's me. What would what would you um what would you recommend why these individuals from your surrounding, from UK, from anywhere else in Europe, should consider US or consider building transatlantic startup like you did? I would say it's certainly not right for everyone.

And most people probably shouldn't do it, uh, given the state of their business and where they're at and who they're building with. I think we've been very fortunate that we've had the right investors, we're building the right team, and we've got the right mindset, products, and timing in the market to go and do it. Um, but in fact, I think most people are right that you probably should build a really strong base and understand your market before expanding. It's just that for us, this one time, it does make sense to go after almost everything and see where you land.

And that I guess my advice to you is you can't really go wrong by trying. As long as you don't uh you know see every shiny object and go after everything, you still have focus. You need to nail down what you're doing and why you're trying these experiments. You don't really have a reason to not try them, at least.

If it's for a small amount of budget, a small amount of time and diversion of focus, you don't know what's on the other side of the pond, like literally. So, yeah, you don't know what you don't know, and without trying, you're never gonna figure that out. I think the the final thing I would say is people are very cautious, and it depends even at what stage of your life you're at. But if you're young, there is almost an ambitious, there's no reason you shouldn't try.

And actually, just going, I think you spend more time thinking about whether it's a good idea that you could have actually gone and just tried and come back. And I think that's true for a lot of things. So people have a lot of talk and a lot of suggestions and ideas, but at the end of the day, it's all about execution and what you actually do. That's a very good advice.

Thank you, man. Really appreciate that. Um, on the shiny objects, really quick last questions. How do you filter out, how do you say no to the next shiny object in your decision-making process between you and Jonathan?

Whether it's a feature or a new market or a new direction for the organization. I think it's just experience. So maybe we've got it wrong when we do go after shiny objects when we shouldn't. Um, but I think already we've started to understand which of them are true distractions and which of them are worth chasing.

And I'll give an example of uh what we call like a whale. You can always go after a whale, and right now there's two um potential customers. One of them's got 2.1 million students in this group that we're talking to.

Wow. Yeah, they're massive. And then the other one within a single organization has 500,000 students as well, paying really yes, they're a whale, they're both whales. Yeah, perfect, perfect description, yes.

But do you go after them? They're very shiny, they might give you a lot of interest, they definitely have budget. But in reality, are you gonna get that across the line? Or should you focus on it?

And the answer is again, try it. If it doesn't take much effort or much time, then it should also, of course, run in the background. But from what we're learning, these things, you know, are much harder to pull off as well. And it's better to have a fish, lots of fish, understand how to catch a fish than how to go after a single whale.

And that's one example of a shiny object. There might be a huge grant to go after or something like this. But if you can't nail your single process of getting a university on board from start to finish, then you're doing something wrong. That's a very good point.

Well, Ben, thank you so much for sharing your story and your insights. Uh, what you have built and what you guys are building, where Jonathan is uh amazing. And given the complexity, the challenges, uh, I think it's a very rewarding transatlantic startup journey. And uh yeah, especially in such a nuanced space like uh higher education.

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