Hosted by Jeff Walter, Founder and CEO of LatitudeLearning
In this episode of the Training Impact Podcast, Jeff Walter sits down with Axhens Mara of StudySpaces to explore a topic that is becoming increasingly important across education, workforce development, and corporate learning: the role that physical and environmental design plays in learner success.
For years, learning and development conversations have centered almost entirely around content, technology, instructional design, and delivery methods. Organizations invest heavily in learning management systems, digital content libraries, certifications, and assessment frameworks. Yet one critical factor often remains overlooked: the environment in which learning actually takes place.
The discussion with Axhens Mara challenges traditional assumptions about learning environments and highlights why physical space design has a measurable impact on engagement, collaboration, retention, focus, and performance.
The episode presents a compelling case that learning spaces are not passive containers for education. They actively shape learner behavior, participation, emotional safety, communication, and cognitive effectiveness.
For training leaders, educators, and organizational development professionals, this conversation opens the door to a broader understanding of how learning ecosystems truly function.
One of the central themes throughout the discussion is the dramatic evolution of learning itself.
Traditional educational environments were designed for information transfer. Rows of desks, lecture-focused instruction, static classroom layouts, and rigid structures reflected a world where learning was primarily one-directional. The teacher or instructor delivered information, and learners absorbed it.
But today’s learning landscape looks very different.
Modern organizations increasingly depend on collaboration, adaptability, creativity, critical thinking, and communication. Learners are no longer passive recipients of information. They are active participants in the learning process.
As Axhens Mara explains, this shift fundamentally changes what learning environments need to accomplish.
Spaces must now support multiple learning modalities simultaneously. They must enable collaboration while also supporting focused individual work. They must encourage engagement without becoming distracting. They must create psychological comfort while still driving accountability and productivity.
This evolution mirrors larger changes occurring across workforce development and organizational learning.
Many organizations are moving beyond simple knowledge acquisition and toward performance-driven learning strategies that focus on behavior change, skill application, and measurable outcomes. The physical learning environment becomes part of that system.
The conversation aligns closely with broader themes explored throughout the Training Impact Podcast regarding the importance of treating training as strategic infrastructure rather than operational overhead.
A particularly valuable part of the discussion focuses on the relationship between environment and cognitive performance.
Axhens Mara explains that learning spaces influence far more than aesthetics. Environmental conditions affect concentration, emotional regulation, stress levels, collaboration dynamics, and learner confidence.
Lighting, acoustics, flexibility, layout, privacy, mobility, and social configuration all influence how people process information and interact with others.
Poorly designed spaces create friction. Learners become distracted, disengaged, fatigued, or hesitant to participate. Collaboration becomes awkward. Focus deteriorates. Retention suffers.
Well-designed spaces reduce cognitive friction and create conditions that support deeper engagement.
This perspective is increasingly important for organizations managing distributed learning populations, hybrid workforces, partner training networks, and modern workplace learning programs.
The discussion highlights how many organizations invest significant resources into curriculum development and technology platforms while underestimating the environmental variables that influence whether learners can actually absorb and apply the material effectively.
That insight has implications far beyond traditional classrooms.
Corporate onboarding programs, franchise training environments, customer education programs, higher education facilities, and collaborative workspaces all face similar challenges.
The environment either amplifies learning effectiveness or diminishes it.
Another major takeaway from the episode is the importance of designing environments that encourage meaningful interaction.
Modern learning increasingly depends on collaboration. Organizations expect employees and learners to share knowledge, solve problems together, communicate effectively, and contribute ideas across teams.
But collaboration does not happen automatically.
Axhens Mara explains that many environments unintentionally discourage interaction through rigid layouts, poor spatial flow, noise problems, or uncomfortable social dynamics.
Effective collaborative spaces balance openness with functionality. Learners need opportunities for communication without excessive distraction. They need flexible arrangements that adapt to different learning activities and group sizes.
This becomes especially important in hybrid learning environments where learners transition between digital and physical interaction throughout the day.
The conversation emphasizes that successful learning design must now account for human behavior patterns as much as instructional content itself.
That idea strongly connects with larger trends in learning and development, where organizations increasingly recognize that performance outcomes are shaped by systems, culture, environment, and workflow integration, not simply by course completion rates.
One of the most compelling aspects of the episode is its focus on the emotional and psychological dimensions of learning.
Axhens Mara discusses how learning spaces influence learner confidence, participation, inclusion, and emotional comfort.
People learn best when they feel psychologically safe. Environments that feel intimidating, rigid, chaotic, or disconnected can suppress engagement and participation.
This insight becomes especially important when organizations are trying to develop soft skills, leadership capabilities, communication skills, or collaborative behaviors.
The conversation echoes many themes found in broader discussions around emotional intelligence, communication, and self-awareness in professional development.
Learning is deeply human.
Technology matters. Content matters. Assessments matter. But emotional conditions also matter.
Organizations that ignore the human side of learning often struggle with engagement, retention, and long-term behavior change.
The discussion suggests that thoughtfully designed environments can help reduce learner anxiety, encourage participation, and create stronger interpersonal dynamics.
That creates a ripple effect across the entire learning ecosystem.
A recurring theme throughout the conversation is adaptability.
Modern learning environments cannot remain static because learning itself is changing too quickly.
Organizations now face rapidly evolving technologies, changing workforce expectations, hybrid work models, shifting collaboration patterns, and continuous skill development requirements.
Static environments built for one type of learning experience quickly become outdated.
Axhens Mara explains that flexibility must become a foundational principle in learning environment design.
Movable configurations, modular layouts, adaptable collaboration zones, and technology-enabled environments allow organizations to respond to changing needs more effectively.
This idea parallels broader changes occurring across organizational learning strategies, where rigid training systems are being replaced by more dynamic and learner-centered approaches.
The future of learning requires agility.
And agility applies to environments just as much as it applies to curriculum or technology.
Throughout the episode, Jeff Walter continually connects the discussion back to a larger strategic question: how organizations create systems that support scalable learning and performance.
The conversation reinforces the idea that learning infrastructure extends beyond LMS platforms and content libraries.
Infrastructure includes the environments where people learn, collaborate, communicate, and develop skills.
That perspective aligns closely with many of the themes explored throughout the Training Impact Podcast, including the evolution of training programs from simple knowledge delivery toward performance-centered organizational systems.
Organizations that treat learning strategically must think holistically.
Technology, instructional design, leadership support, analytics, culture, learner psychology, and physical environment all interact together.
StudySpaces presents an approach that recognizes these interconnected dynamics.
Rather than viewing learning spaces as facilities management concerns alone, the conversation positions them as strategic assets that directly influence learner outcomes and organizational performance.
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the episode is that the future of learning will require far more integration between disciplines.
Educational design, workplace strategy, organizational psychology, architecture, technology, and learning science are increasingly overlapping.
Axhens Mara presents a vision where learning environments become intentionally engineered systems that support cognitive performance, emotional engagement, collaboration, and long-term development.
For training leaders and learning professionals, that represents both a challenge and an opportunity.
The challenge is recognizing that effective learning involves more complexity than content delivery alone.
The opportunity is that organizations willing to rethink their environments may unlock significant gains in engagement, retention, productivity, and learner satisfaction.
As organizations continue adapting to hybrid work, distributed teams, evolving learner expectations, and rapid technological change, these conversations will only become more important.
This episode of the Training Impact Podcast delivers a thought-provoking exploration of how learning environments shape human performance.
Axhens Mara of StudySpaces provides valuable insights into why physical space design matters, how environments influence behavior and cognition, and why organizations should think more strategically about the systems that support learning.
The conversation challenges traditional assumptions about education and workplace development while offering a more holistic vision for the future of learning.
For learning leaders, educators, workforce development professionals, and organizational strategists, this episode offers practical insights into building environments that truly support human growth and performance.
To learn more about StudySpaces, visit:
StudySpaces Official Website
For more from the Training Impact Podcast, follow us on Social Media:
Training Impact Podcast Social Media Links
Jeff Walter (00:00)
It is recording a high def video on your device and streaming it in the back end. So in about two seconds, you’re gonna see a little purple box at the top of the screen that’s like 80% uploaded. And so ⁓ so so if we have any internet interference, if you know any fuzziness, any garbled or whatever, don’t worry about it. The final product is gonna be a nice high-def video and and all an audio.
Jesse (00:12)
Gotcha.
Perfect.
Jeff Walter (00:27)
As long as you and I can communicate with each other, just keep rocking and don’t worry about what the picture looks like or if there’s any any garbling.
Jesse (00:34)
It
sounds good. I was just about to wipe my camera ’cause it looks a little a little muddy on my end. But ⁓ yep, I can see the the purple box around now.
Jeff Walter (00:41)
Yeah.
Okay. And then and then the other thing we’ll you know, what we’ll say goodbye. And when we say goodbye at the end of the episode, do not leave. Do not hit the leave button. yo, we’ll we’ll say goodbye. I’ll wait a couple of seconds. I’ll hit stop. I’ll we’ll we’ll talk about next steps, what’s what’s gonna happen next. And in in about ten seconds everything will be uploaded and it’ll say upload complete.
Jesse (00:49)
Did not press the red button.
Jeff Walter (01:05)
but the bummer is if you drop out before the uploads complete, then you have to come back in, wait five minutes while everything uploads. So so ⁓ so yes, I have had a guest say we said goodbye and they went boom. And I was like, So but we’re just gonna have fun. ⁓ I we’ll talk about it, ⁓ get into the product, why why folks use it. I I like I said I know you’re mainly on the those high stakes credentialing for professionals.
Jesse (01:14)
I gotcha.
Jeff Walter (01:32)
And in the and in academia, there’s some crossover there in terms of certification in external learning and what we do from a scaling channel performance and and guys like the there are organizations like the A ASE in that within the auto s automotive sector and other sectors, especially when it have technical. and so for that purposes I’m exploring it more from a hey.
Let’s explore what this platform does. That’s a really interesting set of use cases that can be transplanted to these other environments, even though right now you’re not focused on something that say our your your platform’s not geared at this moment for what our what our audiences would be focused on. But let’s explore how that technology is helping, you know, companies prep and helping students prep, because it’s just as w went you know, during our our initial conversation.
You know, it’s just a minor adjustment to then say, I’m the owner of brand A. Brand A distributes and services through a network of three hundred, four hundred units or partners with a couple, you know, thousands of folks. And I want to make sure that those folks have some level of knowledge. And so I want to prep them to so so okay. All right, that’s it. Boom. That’s all she wrote.
Jesse (02:45)
Perfect.
Jeff Walter (02:48)
And then we’ll have fun and we’ll talk and we’ll go into a million different ⁓ rabbit holes and that’s where all the fun is. Yeah, so and okay. and yeah, do you we were scheduled for in until two o’clock. do you have a hard stop at two?
Jesse (02:52)
Tangent. Yep. That is my favorite part too.
no, I do have a fifteen minute buffer. happy to send a reschedule link if if you need me to have more buffer than that. Sounds good.
Jeff Walter (03:06)
Okay.
Nope, nope, nope. I just want to know
if I have to wrap it up. You know, so we’ll try and wrap it up around two and then just do the post afterwards. Sound good? All right. All right. Glass off, look good, you look good, and we’ll start in three, two, one, go.
Jesse (03:13)
No pressure.
Perfect. Sounds good.
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (03:25)
Hi, I’m Jeff Walter and welcome back to the Training Impact Podcast, where we explore scaling channel performance through training infrastructure. My guest today is Jesse Mara. Jesse is the co-founder of Studyspaces.com. Studyspaces.com empowers test prep and tutoring companies with a state-of-the-art learning platform that we’re going to learn all about and then also learn how that applies to channel training. Jesse, welcome to the program.
Jesse (03:51)
Hey Jeff, thanks for having me.
Jeff Walter (03:53)
Yeah, so so Jesse, as my listeners know, the first thing I I I love the autobiographical. I love the journey ⁓ that people take. And especially I got a real, you know, as an entrepreneur myself, I got a real soft spot for entrepreneurs. So so what was the journey that got you to deciding, hey, I got a good idea. Let’s start this company, studyspaces.com. Well how how did you get to that conclusion? What what grew where what was the path that got you there?
Jesse (04:21)
It is ⁓ it is very untraditional. It’s a a lot of a lot of failing in the way that I’m I’m very proud of. I started my bachelor’s as a as a pre med student. I wanted to go to med school until I had my first shadowing experience and realized I cannot handle being in those operating rooms. So immediately switched my major, went into engineering. ironically, I’m a horrible test taker for for someone running a a
testing and and tutoring platform. So that was never my strong suit. but I did have a lot of tangents throughout my college experience, so to speak. I worked in in real estate companies, in restaurants, and in the operations layer, and I was always fascinated by how different and how similar every business’s back office is, regardless of the industry they operate in.
Jeff Walter (04:48)
No.
Jesse (05:09)
⁓ and then when I graduated, I was working in consulting, in operations consulting. My best friend throughout college was working in a big tech job. That’s when AI was just exploding with the Chat GPT just being introduced, everyone was losing their mind. And he comes to me one day and he says, Hey, we need to ⁓ we need to build something in this space because I feel like there’s something big here. I cannot write code to save my life. So this was completely props to him.
And our first idea was well, let’s solve a problem we both had that was very, very fresh, a fresh pain. And that was how s how much it sucked studying. Every professor gives you like a hundred slides to study and you have five classes a day and that takes hours and hours. So we built this platform, it was a consumer product, we called it memonic AI. It will let students drop what they had to study and it would give them targeted practice. So it makes that process much faster.
It grew a lot faster than we expected. We surpassed a hundred thousand users within the first year. And we learned a lot about how people learn. It’s a bit of a wordplay there. from there on, we kept hearing more and more that the strongest need for studying is is the high stakes exams. The the the pressure behind preparing for a quiz tomorrow morning and preparing for an exam that’s gonna decide whether you can afford a college of your dreams is
Jeff Walter (06:13)
Mm-hmm.
Jesse (06:32)
It’s a very big difference. And we were noticing some unusual user behavior being tutoring firms and and businesses and professors using our platform even though it was intended for students. And they were using it because they like the core capabilities, but it lacked that infrastructure for them to use this as a tool for their own students. ⁓ that’s what led to our pivot. So we realized the biggest pain we could solve is that high stakes learning.
Jeff Walter (06:33)
Right.
Jesse (07:00)
for students and that help that that only happens with the person in the middle being the tutor. So we put it to study spaces turning all that understanding into a platform that now tutors can use with their own students. So a bit of a roller coaster there.
Jeff Walter (07:14)
So so if I so if I understand that and well and it’s interesting because you you y one of the things you said early was you you’re you’re not w aren’t a good test taker. And and and which which actually, you know, you say it’s kind of ironic, but it actually makes perfect sense. Right? Like if you were an excellent test taker and you know you’d be like, Well, what’s the problem?
Jesse (07:24)
Horrible.
Jeff Walter (07:38)
There’s there’s no problem to solve, right? And whereas i if you if you struggle with taking the test, which which doesn’t mean you don’t have the knowledge, it it it’s it you can and you have the knowledge, you could apply the knowledge, but it it’s it’s actually demonstrating it on a traditional ⁓ multiple choice or traditional test. ⁓ if you didn’t have the pr if if if that wasn’t a challenge, you probably would you you probably the tool would have been very different. You know, and
Jesse (07:57)
Exactly.
Absolutely. A hundred percent.
Jeff Walter (08:06)
So I think that’s really fascinating. And so so then let so then so basically it started off as something that I as a student can just take some material and drop it in and then it would create what like a study guide or a an interactive tool that would like how how how did that work? Like I understand what you said, I don’t know what that means.
Jesse (08:27)
Little Yeah.
It’s a little bit of both. so the idea was for this to be useful for any student for any subject. whether you’re preparing for your history quiz or your calc midterms, ⁓ you would just drop what you need to study, the platform would analyze it, would understand exactly what you will be tested on and it will give you that practice environment, that that dynamic experience of going through a quiz or going through a test.
Jeff Walter (08:35)
Right.
Jesse (08:56)
On top of that would also give you the study guide of what you need to first learn before you assess yourself. So the tool kept evolving. It started with just flashcards and then there was quizzes and then there was study guides. And then closer to the end of that monic journey, we were preparing full exam prep programs for the students. So they would drop for a horrible student who hasn’t touched the book the whole semester, they could drop everything they needed to pass that class. And the platform would build a
sort of a a a cram program of everything they need to do to catch up on and then a lot of practice in the end so they can make sure that they can ace that exam in the end. so yeah, a little bit of everything. This was revolutionary in twenty twenty two because Chat GPT at that time was just a questioning answering machine. There was no interactivity yet. ⁓ and then fast forward to today every big L L model out there.
Jeff Walter (09:29)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Jesse (09:51)
offers the exact capabilities so goes to show how fast the space is is evolving in that sense.
Jeff Walter (09:57)
Yeah, well but but does it do they do it in a
Does it do do the generic tools generate that level of interactivity?
Jesse (10:05)
⁓ on a on a surface level, yes. You could have your your clause, your chat GPT give you a quiz on on calc and that will give you that base layer understanding or or a simple quiz that you can interact with. what we did is build a platform around it so that you can compound on the skills you’re testing on. And that’s what students liked. So it’s not just a single session of studying, it’s a progress of all the sessions over time. so
it it led a little bit into that skill assessment level of of learning so you know where you stand on calc, not just today but throughout the whole semester.
Jeff Walter (10:36)
Okay.
Okay, so I d so so starting with the base, you you d there’s some explicit knowledge somewhere. Something’s been written down or there’s a video or or something, right? You gotta start with some type of explicit knowledge and and you put that as the source materials for I you know, I wanna learn about the the these materials. And then it it’s generating a bunch of ⁓ study guides and and
flashcards and other type of learning activities about that. And it’s and then I if I get you right, it’s also keeping track of, okay, well three months ago when you took that quiz
about that, you know, subset of knowledge. Right. There’s there’s ten knowledge areas in this in this body. And ⁓ I you I gave you a quiz on this, you know, a year ⁓ a month ago and you you were doing five out of ten. Now you’re you know eight out of ten or whatever you know, you you you got progress and you can see and so I can over the course of semester, you know, get to where I need to be depending on how
far in advance I actually plan to do all this. Right? ⁓ so that’s where you started with. So that’s really interesting. And it’s you know what I find really interesting about that? And it’s a it’s a it’s it’s a theory I’ve had. having done you know K-12 undergrad and grad school, you know there is a lot of value
Jesse (11:45)
Exactly. Yep.
Jeff Walter (12:03)
to all of that academic ed education beyond the knowledge you learn. You know, like I I heard somebody refer to college as its half-learning, half finishing school. Right? And ⁓ and and certainly in in my grad school experience, I remember when when they invited the class in
Jesse (12:17)
Yep.
Jeff Walter (12:25)
They basically said, Well, we could just lock you guys in a room for two years and y y you’d come out knowing more than you know, Joan, just as much as as what we’re gonna teach you over the next two years ’cause you know, you’re very smart people and
you know, you’ve had amazing experiences and and and the so with the grad school it was like, yeah, you’re gonna learn all this stuff. But then there was also the s social dimension of you’re gonna build all these relationships with all these peoples that are that are that are focusing on a certain type of career at a certain particular competency level, right? And that’ll help you in your career. And so but I always thought like, my gosh, for the amount of knowledge I acquired
in four years of college, I bet you I could get that done in four months. Or maybe s maybe six months. Like just knowledge acquisition. There was all the other stuff. But just in ⁓ in knowledge and understanding ⁓ and it’s you know and it’s interesting that when you said cram, because when you said like, you know, you didn’t go to class all semester and and cram.
Jesse (13:14)
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (13:27)
Where my brain was going is it just shows you how little we’re actually teaching. Like w how how in ⁓ I that’s actually a negative way of looking at it. How inefficient the traditional teaching method is in terms of conveying knowledge from one human to another. I
Jesse (13:43)
Yeah. I really
like this topic. ⁓ specifically because you made a a really good point about how if the goal of college was just to
take this knowledge in and and sort of memorize it, be tested on, you can do it so much faster. Funny enough, there is this this very interesting movement happening lately in a lot of universities where they have this expedited path. So you could register for these classes, they’ll give you the full curriculum, and you can just choose to test out of it. And once you can prove that you are sufficient through testing out of them, you can finish a full bachelor’s degree equivalent to four years of of
college within two months and I think the record holder right now is about forty one days. They finish a full college degree. So if someone’s goal is strictly that, by all means going to class at eight AM while you’re still asleep because you were up until two AM last night is not is not the perfect way to learn.
Jeff Walter (14:25)
Yeah.
⁓ my gosh. I
that was my tal calc two class f first semester freshman year, eight AM. my gosh. That was my god. Yeah.
Jesse (14:42)
Same here, same here. It not a fun experience. ⁓ but for s for everyone else who sees college as a like you mentioned,
perfectly it’s it’s an exposure environment. You get to be around people of that same mindset and and that social aspect to it, then I would argue that delayed learning progress, that four years worth worth of learning justifies it. as far as just the knowledge aspect, absolutely, there’s more efficient ways to just cram through it for sure.
Jeff Walter (15:11)
Well, it and it it makes me wonder, like there’s so many ⁓ you know, it’s it ⁓ we’re a little off topic, but it’s fun. ⁓ well ’cause what it makes me wonder because there’s so many things that are are doing their th doing their thing and you think it’s one thing and it’s really a multitude of things, and along comes a disruptive technology, and then the disruptive technology ends up bifurcating the thing.
Right. And so like it’s you know, so a college degree meant something, but now it actually means a couple of things. And and and you know, one of you know, if you had asked people or asked me, you know, fifteen years ago what what or twenty you know, what what what is what is a college degree means, it means you’ve acquired a certain level of knowledge about a certain subject, right? You know, you know, some minimal level of knowledge about a certain subject that, you know.
you could reasonably, you know, ask somebody something about that subject material. And, you know, some of it’s a little well well arounded, a little renaissance person, and then your major, you should you should have a little bit more knowledge. And then, you know, and then if you you know, and then ⁓ you know, I think Sylvester Stallone and Tulsa King had the great line. I don’t have you have have you ever seen that?
Jesse (16:23)
It’s
it’s on my must watch list for sure.
Jeff Walter (16:26)
Yeah. Well well he was talking to ⁓ it was early on in the in the series and and and he was talking about college and and so he he he plays a ⁓ a a gangster and he’s in Tulsa. And he was talking about somebody in college and the guy’s talking about college and he goes, Well and and and he goes well college is basically a credible sink I he he used different words but
It’s a credible signal to a future employer that you can endure four years, keep keep at it at four years and learn something reasonably well so that the unlikely event that he hires you, you won’t screw up his business too bad. But but the interesting thing there is it’s like, there’s this second thing, right? That you can stick to something over an extended period of time. Right. So there’s the knowledge acquisition, like if you take what you just said, you could acquire all that knowledge in 21 days.
But that doesn’t show the fortitude of sticking to something for four years, which is a signal in its own right. And then you have the third dimension is the socialization of taking your cohort and and putting yourself you know
Jesse (17:18)
Yep. Absolutely.
Jeff Walter (17:28)
put you know putting yourself on campus for four years and running into the same people and building a bunch of relationships with people that are similar in in in cognitive ability and and ⁓ conscientiousness in terms of applying you know ⁓ industriousness and and and getting to know each other for four years.
And having those relationships. And so anyway, and then you go, it’s really three different things, right? It’s I acquired this knowledge and and I might have developed a couple of skills depending on what you focused on. I I I’ve demonstrated that I can you know, I I’m an adult now. So I demonstrated I can actually start a task that takes many years to complete and do it. And I’ve also built a bunch of relationships and
And I wonder as the technology disrupts if we’re gonna see the the thing bifurcate into its component parts, right? Like it’s you know, like it’s a anyway, yeah, it’s interesting. Like
Jesse (18:20)
That’s a really good point. Yeah.
It is. I wonder what it would look like, sort of a cohort where you just go to socialize? Maybe
Jeff Walter (18:30)
R right, like a like you know, a dorm of, you know, a thousand people where you just like live there for th three, four years and but then there’s gotta be some unifying thing, right? Like it like it’s funny, like my mom lives down in the villages in Florida, the largest retiring community, and I’m like, it’s like college without classes. I mean it really is. like they have all the social activity and they’re you know, like and it’s all like this they got a a similar age cohort.
Jesse (18:35)
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Jeff Walter (18:58)
And ⁓ you know, and there’s not yeah, they’re not raising kids anymore. And so ⁓ and ⁓ and it and it’s it’s the social side. It’s really interesting.
Jesse (19:07)
Yeah.
I I love that concept. My my only point of reference to that is is hacker houses, if if you’re familiar with the term. So for everyone who just gets into entrepreneurship, especially in the tech tech space, it can be very isolating. You gotta be in front of the computer for sixteen hours for days and days and days in a row. and unfortunately if you’re along friends who want what’s best for you, which is sleep and socializing, then they will distract you from your goal. So this concept of of
Jeff Walter (19:13)
No, no.
Right.
Jesse (19:35)
hacker houses is where you go and live in this giant communal space where everyone is building something. So you have that peer pressure to keep building without the distractions of doing anything else but building. So you have a bunch of these twelve startups all under one roof, all working on different companies and they all share the same living conditions because like you mentioned with the villages, they have something in common. ⁓ so it’s a fascinating concept.
Jeff Walter (20:00)
Yeah.
Yeah. Well that yeah, I mean that that’s I mean that’s it like that’s interesting and then and then you you like I I wouldn’t be surprised if you got more of the hey, you can get your degree, the certification says you know something, but then you you have these other things like our hackers. Well, like like my grad school. Like that you know, like what he was saying, like I could just throw you you know, seven hundred and fifty of you in a room and for two years and
You when I let you out, you’ll you’ll be a lot smarter, right? Because you all have a common interest. We were we were there for B school, right? You know, some people are entrepreneurship like me in marketing and finance, but you all have different interests and you’re all smart people that have done some cool stuff. So, you know, guys hang out for a couple of years. You’ll learn a lot. but but ⁓ anyway, let’s get back to study spaces. So you so it makes sense, I I
You you built this tool for individual folks to study, which actually is interesting ’cause goes back to the hey, I’m I’m I’m I I’m I you’re not the best test taker in the world. Let me build a bunch of tools that’ll help me take a test. Right? And and pass the test and and and demonstrate that knowledge. And then you get y the other thing you also get into the whole like temporal knowledge and is it temporary or is it long term and you know, did it move from the r right frontal cortex to the back front left back frontal your the back.
Jesse (21:19)
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (21:20)
⁓
yeah, ’cause ’cause learning goes from here to here to here. and so and then and then you noticed and in the pivot that was interesting. It’s an interesting entrepreneurial thing. You said there was a pivot because you noticed a bunch of people that were using your platform were not students, but they were instructors and tutors and coaches and you know and and how were they using the how were they using the tool?
Jesse (21:42)
One of my my favorite emails was professor at a university in California who sent us an email and said, Hey, I think your flashcards feature needs an update. And we said, what do you mean? And his use case specifically was when he dropped the slides, the p the the lecture slides there, he wanted to be able to generate those flashcards, but then instead of having a
one on one session to practice the flashcards. He wanted to put them on the big screen in the lecture hall and give everyone a chance to to put a guess as to what the answer is to the flashcard before flipping the card. And our program at the time would sort of auto-flip the card after a certain amount of seconds to get you in that in that pacing so that you don’t overthink it. So he said, hey, I want to be able to to guide this this this learning experience with my students.
Jeff Walter (22:28)
Right.
Jesse (22:34)
And we were baffled because we never expected a professor to use this in their classroom, in their lecture hall with all their students. It was supposed to be those students using it after class to to test themselves on the lecture. so we kept asking questions. The more use cases like this came up, and more and more it led to these instructors, this these teachers wanting to centralize the knowledge they have, package it based on their expertise, and then
give an outlet of that structured knowledge to their students. So now we have this whole hierarchy of admin and learner all within a platform, which pushed us to to have to pivot because the existing platform didn’t support that use case. and the biggest switch happened specifically from that survey in the beginning where every student joined, they would claim at first they would claim things like, I need to prep for a quiz tomorrow or I need to prep for my midterms. But then
As the platform got more popular, people would put notes like, I need to prepare for the SAT. I need to prepare for for the MCAT exam. And we realized the platform would absolutely under deliver there on that aspect. Those are very high stakes exams. even as the founder of the platform, I couldn’t in good faith recommend them put the such a high stakes decision on on a platform like that. So we brought both of those insights together, both of those signals, and we said, Well, what if this
Jeff Walter (23:36)
Right.
Right.
Jesse (23:54)
professionals at at training and teaching students are the ones who perfect the platform to teach these different disciplines because we for sure won’t be able to make this perfect for the SAT and ACT and the MCAT all at the same time. But these people can use the platform as infrastructure to deliver those perfect experiences to those students. So that’s how study spaces came to be.
Jeff Walter (24:15)
Well
Yeah, well well that’s r so that’s really interesting. There’s a couple things there. So I I I understand the it was built for solo use. So I’m the admin and the learner. I drop stuff in as the admin, and then it’s a one-on-one learning experience. So I I g I get the bifurcation going
You know, of that professor that that that sent you the email, it’s like, well, no, I wanna bifurcate the ⁓ gosh, I think I use the word bifurcate today more than I have in the last like five years. But but I but but I wanna bifurcate the administrative experience from the learner experience so that I can curate the content and then I wanna go one to many, right? Which is
Jesse (24:46)
It’s a good word.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jeff Walter (24:58)
Which is which is a different use case, right? Instead of one-to-one, all the same person, I break off the admin, but not just have a learner, but then it’s a one-to-many. The admin creates an environment for many. And then you can do the types of things you were talking about, like, well, let rather than do a time thing for an individual learner, let me do more of a cahoot type thing where I put it up there, people can respond.
you know, they can answer the question and and then and then if it if there’s some type of input device, I could see thirty percent said X, four forty percent said y, and and and and then we can talk about well, why was the right thing for this reasons and blah blah blah. and and and so you know it gets to one too many. I think the inter y so I get that you said something really interesting, which was like I wouldn’t have recommended it
you know, all in in good faith for high stakes exams. And I’m wondering why. What what what what was it about the the tool that that it wouldn’t be it wouldn’t have been a I mean, yes, it’s better than nothing, right? So, you know, so we’re not talking about that, but we’re talking about you saying, Hey, it’s great for, you know, courses, but for these high stakes thing, what something’s mi something is missing. What
What’s the gap in your mind that ⁓ that led you to say that?
Jesse (26:18)
My my favorite analogy to this is is is the gym, is working out. ⁓ think of someone who wants to just be active and work out and and stay fit. They could go to the gym, all they need is the platform, the the environment where they have all the right tools to train. And they can go ahead, they can go every day, it can be based on their own level of discipline and and willpower. because that goal is lower stake. It’s it’s more of a a a habit, so to speak, and and a lifestyle.
Jeff Walter (26:28)
Right.
Jesse (26:47)
But now compare it to someone preparing for a bodybuilding competition. Now they can no longer leave it up to just I’m gonna go to the gym and work out on the machines that are empty in front of me whenever I feel like it. Since they have a set date with a set result that they’re aiming for, they need at first an accountability partner, and in our case that happens to be the tutor, and second they need a program. You can give them all the tools, you can give them a full gym stocked with machines, but they won’t know what to do at at what frequency.
To make sure they hit the goal. So that was our platform. It was a gym. It had all the tools, but if you let a student figure it out for their own, chances of them getting it right were pretty s pretty small compared to this tutor who’s been training kids to to score to AZSIT for 20 years in a row. They know exactly what you need to do at what frequency, when to pivot to a different skill, what your knowledge gaps are. So that tutor is that personal trainer in the loop.
Jeff Walter (27:16)
⁓ That’s that’s good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gotcha. So I I think that’s a great analogy. So it because it because it sits there and goes, look, the platform was not missing anything from a technological capability standpoint. What what was missing was the guidance on how to use the platform to optimize performance. Right? And and and then if you you know, and on a lower stakes thing, it’s like, well, it’s okay. I mean, it still be better if you had a coach, but but you’re not gonna have a coach
Jesse (27:48)
Thank you.
Absolutely.
Jeff Walter (28:13)
For taking the a quiz next Tuesday, right? Or or even a finals exam. But you but you will for the the the the MCAT, you will for the bar, you will for the SAT. Or at least you’re more likely if you want to optimize your performance for these high stakes thing, you know, because i I I think your bodybuilding example is perfect because it’s like, well, you can r y a a professional bodybuilder could can take the empty gym.
and do very well, they still prefer to have a coach. Right. So even so even if you have the requisite knowledge, right? And even if you figured it out, but then you get, you know, somebody like me, you know, I’m an exercise endurance type of guy, and I’m not I I I know something, but not that application. And I’m not going to be able to optimize my time and energy to achieve that goal at a particular point in time.
Jesse (28:42)
Absolutely.
Yeah. Exactly.
Jeff Walter (29:06)
If you just give me that empty gym. You know?
Yeah. Very good. I like that. That’s really cool. So th so so what other things have you built into the tool? We talked about the admin and then the multiple users, so that a a coach can sit there and go, Okay, I’m coaching these this this team, this group of people. they can have individualized experiences, you know, within the in the within the gym I set up.
But then there’s the coaching to get them to a certain optimal output in a certain period of time. So is there stuff that you added to the tool to do that or or or how did that work?
Jesse (29:41)
Absolutely. ⁓ my my favorite aspect of the platform, which sounds backwards, is that we had no idea what to build in the beginning. It was this platform where you drop stuff and it gives you quizzes and flashcards, and that’s it. So when we first pivoted into this B2B space where where it was a platform for tutors to deliver to their learners, we truly had no idea what they needed. So we just asked and we kept hearing things like, I want to be able to assign a question ban.
I want to be able to now assign a timed quiz. I want this quiz to be sectioned with a break in the middle, and I want this student to have access to 1.5 time because they have learning disabilities. So every single request or every single gap in the platform became one more thing on our roadmap and we kept building based on just user feedback. so everything we built did not come from us the founders. I cannot take credit for any feature on the platform.
So it was amazing. We kept building so much so that every time the next person would be introduced to the platform, they would ask a question, and that question was answered by the previous person who just requested that feature a week ago. so it became easier and easier. Small caveat there. it became this jungle of tools, so to speak. Everyone had their own workflow, so everyone was asking for a different thing. And and this is why I love the gym analogy so much. You walk in there and it’s a
Jeff Walter (30:54)
Right, right.
Jesse (31:01)
bunch of contraptions you don’t necessarily know what each does until you go and read the little label. so although it became more useful, it became less easy to use because there was so much all over the place. So the next step to that became how do we turn these features into workflows? We learned that the most used features go in in in sort of a chain. A lot of tutors would first assign a homework and then they would
Jeff Walter (31:13)
Yeah.
Jesse (31:28)
assess the results of that homework where they would go over how the student performed because they’re autographed. And then the next step would be to jump on a call with that student and go through their results and finally assign the next homework based on the combination of the first three steps. So we slowly started turning those into workflows. So you don’t have to do one feature at a time. You just start this process. so slowly it took shape into a bunch of workflows. and
Jeff Walter (31:47)
Okay.
Jesse (31:55)
think it’s a work in progress. I think that’s one of the things that never really has an end. ⁓ I’m over critical of what we’ve built, so to me it still feels like it’s either too limited or too confusing at the same time. but I’m very proud of our roadmap management system ’cause we don’t have to worry about coming up with ideas. People just tell us what to build. And it’s it’s amazing.
Jeff Walter (32:15)
Well i i y i it it’s well I yeah, we ⁓ as as a a learning platform different application. I I know exactly what you’re talking about, be and I like your I love your gym analogy, and I’m gonna use that in the future because well, ’cause
Somebody says, hey, I can really use something that does this, and then I can really use something that does that. It’s like another piece of equipment going into the gym, right? It’s like your bite you’re your your your curling machine, it’d be better if it was like this, because I can get the top of the bicep instead of the bottom. And you know, and the way I do tutoring, you know, I I I do a tri extension this way versus that way. And and and you know, I I I do I I do squats standing, I do squats sitting. Like and so next thing you know, you your your gym is littered
Jesse (32:52)
Exactly.
Jeff Walter (32:59)
With five variants of every of how to exercise every muscle. And it get and the point there, and I like where you where you are, where on the one hand, it’s great because you’re meeting the needs of the market, right? But the other hand, it’s becoming much more complicated. And and finding that balance between simplicity of use.
and and robustness of functionality is a really hard thing to to do. You know, with with our platform, people always praised it as being, wow, I can do so much more than I can on other platforms, but it’s like a seven forty seven and I just want to go to the grocery store for milk. Right? Like
Jesse (33:28)
Very.
Jeff Walter (33:40)
And and and and you know and and through w workflows and other techniques you you can you can make a robust system simplified. It’s like, no, this is how you go get milk, right? Or or to your it’s like, you’re training not for a bodybuilding contest, but you’re training for, you know, a triathlon. Well, here’s the workflow for triathlon.
Here’s the workflow for bodybuilding caucus. Here’s the workflow for just you know general health and aerobic endurance. You can ignore ninety-seven percent of the equipment in the gym. We’re just gonna focus you on this path. And that and and then and so then can and then I assume then the you y you do that, but then the tutors can can can deviate from the workflows or tail or
Jesse (34:05)
But on.
Yes.
Spot on. That
was that was step three. Yeah. best we could do is generalize workflows. We saw that the most common use case is of this featured set is this three features in a string. So we turn into a workflow. But everyone has a complete different approach. Even when going back to the gym analogy, if someone is gonna do legs day, some people do this combination of exercises and other person does a different combination of exercises. So there’s no true
Jeff Walter (34:30)
Or ta or tailor them? I guess I guess maybe a better
Jesse (34:57)
leg day workflow so to speak. So the next step was us giving them a chance to build their own workflows and save them on the platform. They take the shape of programs. So now a tutor can go there, can build the program in advance, and they can build multiple programs. ⁓ if a student has twenty days to prepare for the SAT and they only need a hundred point increase, that program is going to be extremely intensive. But if a student is going to take the SAT two years from now, then that program is going to be lengthy and
a lot more slower pace. So now these tutors can go build their own programs in advance, have a program library, and every time a new student comes in, based on the needs of that student, they can just assign that program, not having to reinvent the wheel with every student, because they have this winning workflows, this proven programs that worked before, and now the platform is truly personalized to them. They can ignore every workflow we built because they have their very own that they built within the platform.
Jeff Walter (35:54)
that huh. Yeah. That’s well, you you you introduced a a number of different dimensions there, and that’s really cool because there’s the t temporal dimension of I want to get a hundred point increase in my SATs and I have thirty days to do it. Well that’s gonna be one type of exercise program versus I want I’m gonna take the MCATS next year and you know I wanna try and get into the ninetieth percentile.
And I’m currently in the eightieth percentile like and and I you can it’s a different cadence, it’s a different pacing. That and then I can reuse that as an instructor. And then it truly becomes part of because every every test prep, every instructor has their own philosophy, right?
You go, like you said, it’s leg day, but the way I like to do leg days, what I think generates the best results based on the temporal need and the increase in performance we’re looking for is X, because I ascribe to this developmental philosophy. Whereas you have a different developmental philosophy, right? And and so you’ve got Y, and and our two workflows are different, but we’re we’re using the same gym. And we might even be using some of the same of equipment. We’re just doing it in different cadences and different
Jesse (36:52)
Absolutely.
Jeff Walter (37:04)
different temporal yeah. That’s really that’s really cool. That’s really that’s really, really cool. So huh. That man, that’s really cool. So yeah yeah.
Jesse (37:13)
Thank you. Yeah. Wish I could take credit. I
had no idea about any of this. We literally just listen to people tell us how we’re doing things wrong and then figure out how to do it right based on what they need. So extremely lucky.
Jeff Walter (37:25)
Well, i y you know, it’s it I I think that’s interesting, ’cause like we’ve been a software company for a long time now and we operate the same way. you know, like we’ve been doing for over twenty years and it’s amazing how many firms don’t.
Jesse (37:39)
So
Jeff Walter (37:39)
Yeah, yeah, it’s they’re like, I’m a I I know better. I’m like, you know, like it dawned on me like none of us here in in my offices here with all my people, none of us run a training program with hundreds of partners and thousands of learners. None of us do. We’re building the platform to do that, but we we don’t actually do that. Right? It’s like our clients do.
And so, you know, we we put a function you know, we sometimes we build a piece of functionality and it’s like, well, we thought it was a good idea based on the feedback we got. And then it goes out there and they’re like, Yeah, you’re close. You really need to shove it over a couple of yards to the left. And and then you do that and it’s like poof, that’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, right? I yeah. So it’s kudos to you for listening to your customers and listening to the market, because that’s
Jesse (38:22)
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (38:28)
At the end of the day, that’s what we are doing as as software vendors, right? We’re we’re just providing a platform for people to operate their ⁓ processes off of. Yeah, it was interesting. If I can go down a ⁓ I w I know we’re coming up on time soon, but it this was a real this was a a a a a seminal learning moment for me back when I was a consultant in in my younger days. I Blue Cross, one of the blue blues was a client of ours and we were focused on health insurance.
Jesse (38:38)
So that’s it.
Jeff Walter (38:54)
And we were a s a so you know so IT consulting firm. And anyway, we were analyzing their ⁓ some some of their premium processing processes, right? And and and as a technologist, you know, I grew up a programmer, right? He was a developer. it was like you think that the the technology is the process, right? And
And we were kind of doing we were auditing and and and this particular insurance company had a problem cash in the books, didn’t equal cash in the system, didn’t equal cash in the bank, to like tens of millions of dollars. And you know, and so we’re kind of doing an audit and trying to figure out where is this going wrong. And anyway, there was this one thing, and so ⁓ there was this one group and they were processing claims, and we we had questions like how do you process
this type of situation because it’s not clear how this because the system doesn’t seem to support that. And you know, and and and they go, that’s an IBM twenty seven ten to the drawer. Or s and we’re like, what the heck is that? You know, and this is back when everything was on mainframes, right? So everything was IBM. Right? And and like me and my colleagues are like, have you d you know, is ⁓ i is there a screen I like
Jesse (40:06)
Ha.
Jeff Walter (40:07)
Well and we and we asked the we and we asked these lady the these these folks, mostly older women, to explain it to ⁓ a bunch of young young kids, right? You know, we’re we’re you know, I was your age, you know, ⁓ and I’m like, what the heck is this? And even my managers, they’re like, I don’t know what this is. And and so one of the you know, she goes, well the system doesn’t support that. So the process is you take out this, you know, in our drawer.
There’s this I form, it’s an IBM 2710. We fill it out with a pen and paper, and then we put it in the drawer at our desk. And then once a week, Marge comes by and collects all the forms and stores them in the filing cabinet right over there. Now, as a business process, it made complete sense.
Jesse (40:38)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeff Walter (40:55)
They weren’t they had a process. They documented the process. and and then we just hit okay and send the claim through. Right? Without the correction, because they can’t correct it. Right? So if you’re looking for a business process, it made complete sense. It was a legitimate business practice. It wasn’t ad hoc. They weren’t just going whatever. They had a process. All the information you need is in those filing cabinets right there.
Right. But the system was that’s technology was not the process. The technology supported the process. You know, and that goes back to what I was saying, you know, to to your point. It’s like you guys aren’t tutors. And we’re not training program managers. we’re providing a platform, a tool, and I I think that’s just g you know, absolutely brilliant. ⁓ good good best practice. It’s just listen to your customers, they’ll tell you.
what to do. It’s just a a beautiful thing. So kudos kudos to you guys.
Jesse (41:49)
Yeah, I think
thank you. Thank you. I think going full circle to to my my my journey to this being ironic, I I subscribe to the ideology of two founder archetypes. You have the superstar founder, that perfect product market feed, right? Like if you think of whoever’s building the next running app, imagine that founder being a a world class marathon runner. Obviously you want to get that app because this guy knows what he’s talking about. And then
The blessings there is this guy knows what he’s doing. The curse is he’s gonna build it based on what worked for him. So it’s great for standardized processes. On the complete other end of the spectrum, you have the person who has a problem but not the solution. And and and that’s where I saw myself in when we started this. I knew exactly what was wrong with this process and I wanted to figure out a way to solve it, but I had no idea how to solve it. so it’s the opposite of being that founder market feed, you just have a
Jeff Walter (42:22)
Right.
Jesse (42:44)
problem market fit so to speak. You’re just familiar with the problem. and that makes it very, very open minded to suggestions and and feedback because truly you you don’t have any ego behind saying, no, I know better, because you truly don’t know better. So you have a blank slate to start with.
Jeff Walter (42:59)
Yeah, well I it well I I I think you said something really important there. It’s it’s the ego. ‘Cause e even if you are that world class athlete, you know, you you know how to do it the way that was successful for you, and that’s and that’s one of your workflows, right? Like that’s like, hey, we know this works. Right? It worked for me, right? Or because you know, ⁓ or you know, I’m a a world class tutor.
Jesse (43:21)
Mm-hmm. Exactly.
Jeff Walter (43:28)
And I’ve been recognized by the industry with all these accolades, right? But and that might be true for the type of student that that particular type of tutor happens to cater to. And then there’s the other 99.9% of the market, right? Because you know, because even if they’re the world’s best tutor or or or the world’s best runner, or it’s like
Jesse (43:46)
Exactly.
Jeff Walter (43:54)
The people that can follow that program and be successful are always, by definition, a subset, a small subset of the entire population. Cause we all have our own, you know, skills and we all have our own strengths and weaknesses, right? And you know, so that’s that’s fascinating. I I I say I I say this all the time, just gotta stay humble. You gotta stay humble. ‘Cause you know, and and then and then pe and then my gosh, if you can listen to clients.
Jesse (44:14)
Absolutely.
Jeff Walter (44:22)
and incorporate their ideas into your platform and you can figure out how to take complexity and make it simple, but yet still be robust, like that’s a winner. That’s a winner. So
Jesse (44:33)
That is the golden key.
I I can’t wait for the day that startup that magical startup comes around that just turns features into processes for you. I think that’s gonna be an immediate unicorn on day one.
Jeff Walter (44:42)
Yeah.
Yeah, well I ⁓ you know well fortunately or unfortunately, there’s always a lot of hard work in between. Yeah, there’s there there’s there’s there you know, I you know, it’s it’s that if it’s b if it was that easy it would have been done already, right? So you know, but hey, I I I see we’re we’re we’re coming up on time here. We we got into a lot of interesting things. You know, I just to talk to talk to fo you know, tell the the audience, you know, one of the things that I reason I wanted to focus on this, this particular piece of technology.
Jesse (44:50)
Yeah, absolutely.
Exactly. Yep.
Jeff Walter (45:14)
is on the external learners, when you’re trying to teach people how to sell service or use your products, you know, certification is ⁓ the way you ensure that the folks un that there’s some level of understanding. And while we haven’t seen this type of approach in i in in our sector much, I wanted to talk I I probably should have mentioned this way at the beginning, but I wanted to ⁓
have this conversation because I think what you were doing gets into that hole. How do you get how do you do knowledge transfer? How do you get that knowledge acquisition? How do you give people the support tools to accelerate the ⁓ the proficiency of acquiring that knowledge? ‘Cause it’s it’s really interesting. You’re solving a a a different problem, but it’s the same pro it there’s a similar problem.
The student problem of cramming or trying to get that extra hundred points on the SATs or all that, you know, on the academic side academic side and on on the high stakes credentialing side, it it’s not necessarily about it’s about the end result, but not necessarily about the prof the the productivity of the learner’s knowledge acquisition. Cause there’s just an implicit the learner’s time is is infinite and
cost is zero, right? And what I think what but but yet you want it to be effective, right? But what I find interesting, and I I I just mentioned this to all the listeners, is you there’s two sides of what Jesse’s been talking about. Because you’ve got, you know, it’s it’s increasing the efficiency through which you get that information into your knowledge. And in what our audience is pro primarily focused on, these are folks that are working.
And they’re and they’re not working for you. They’re working for your partners, and your partners are paying them. And so efficiency, the productivity of acquiring those knowledge and developing those skills is very important because somebody else is paying that learner. And they want that learner to be doing what they pay they hired them to do. And so I thought this was would be a really interesting conversation because.
you know, of all the things that you’ve talked about, it it it’s not only just getting the extra hundred points on the the SATs, it’s a more efficient way, like we talked at w at the beginning, it’s a more efficient way of acquiring the knowledge and that puts money in the pockets of our partners. Because and so I I just wanted to cover that before we we left. what’s what’s coming down the pipe for you guys? Anything cool ⁓ down the pipe?
Jesse (47:33)
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
Maybe it’s true.
Good question. ⁓ there’s a lot of extremely nuanced features that only get tutors excited, so to speak, and I wouldn’t want to bore any listener with that. but my favorite favorite angle to this is goes on par with what we’ve been talking about, how every single process is is personalized. Everyone learns differently, whether it’s it’s a worker getting trained on certain skill sets within their company or a student getting
Jeff Walter (47:59)
huh.
Jesse (48:15)
prepped on on getting a certain score on the exam. So there is no one structure to do these things. And that boils down to the insights and the dashboards as well. There is no one way to show someone what they need to see for that student ⁓ or for that learner, right? You have and I might be overstepping here, but I’m sure there is there’s managers who want to see a table that says, okay, tell me which person has this skill set and then
Jeff Walter (48:43)
Yeah.
Jesse (48:44)
some someone else wants to see tell me which person has acquired this skill set over the last thirty days. So now you jump into that space of needing a hundred different dashboards and widgets. ⁓ and one movement I’m seeing in this space that has us excited is is this this concept of MCPs with with the big LLMs, where we don’t have to predict every dashboard someone wants to see or every widget and spend time on building those. We can give that outlet to them through an MCP. So now they can go on Cloud and say,
Jeff Walter (48:53)
Mm-hmm.
Jesse (49:13)
Give me a table of all the students that started within the last two weeks that have had a stalled progression on this very specific math topic. And they can get that perfectly personalized dashboard so they can do that targeted intervention for those students. That’s not something we would ever build because on the grand scheme of the company it wouldn’t benefit the majority. But now they can build it for their very own company using our platform as that
Jeff Walter (49:34)
Right.
Jesse (49:39)
data infrastructure where the learning happens. So that’s that’s what we’re we’re gonna be exploring next. Instead of having a closed system where no you have to be here, all the dashboard, all the data is here. I think there’s this beautiful opportunity to open up that system and and not have that ego that we have the most beautiful dashboards, but sort of saying, hey, we’re gonna take care of all the boring stuff, all the databases, all the learning, all the interactions.
You can take this and in one prompt turn into whatever dashboard you need. Or do you need a progress report for your boss by Friday? Sure, go to Claude and say, go into study spaces and tell me all the students that have improved over the last week. And then it will get that ready for you. so that that has us very excited. And I think for the company itself, a lot of startups see this as a little bit of cannibalizing, like I’m sending out my my moat to the big LLMs. But I think the value here truly is
if you can analyze and see the most common use cases of what people pull your data out to to visualize, you can then turn those into internal dashboards. So for the less tech inclined clients, now they have this these new dashboards that were built from inside from all the more tech forward clients who put in the work to to build those custom approaches. so yeah, very fascinating stuff to me. I find that interesting.
Jeff Walter (50:41)
Mm-hmm.
That’s
well i i i you know, I agree with you and as somebody who was into ⁓ business intelligence systems and and and data lakes and all those fun things, so many of the tools ended up being very brittle and and and you had to be a maestro to get the intelligence
And the insights that you wanted out of. And and I think that’s the next interesting turn of the screw. You know, we’ve we’ve done or or doing generative AI and to a certain degree you know agentic AI is now kind of the hot thing. And then and then I and I think the tools are there, but it’s not as widespread to do this kind of analytical AI. And I think to your point
It’s just gonna unleash a tremendous amount of insights. and that that’s gonna reduce friction and and and allow us to be more efficient with what we’re doing. So I think that’s really cool that you guys are are looking at that. Hey, one one more thing before we go. if anybody if anybody out there wanted to get a hold of you guys, ⁓ how do they find you?
Jesse (51:56)
⁓ studyspaces.com. Jesse at Studyspaces.com. Send me an email anytime. I think it’s Jessie Mara on LinkedIn. but yeah, feel free to reach out anytime. More than happy to help with the platform, with my network, whatever it is. I got this far where I am thanks to just asking people and and reaching out to people like you and asking for advice. So I am very, very happy to ⁓ to be a resource for anyone.
Jeff Walter (52:18)
Well, J Jesse, it’s been a a lot of fun. yeah, it’s it’s interesting ’cause you’re you’re tackling a problem that’s kind of tangential to what us and and our followers really are focused on. But it’s there’s so much cross pollin pollination going on that ⁓ I I really appreciate that you took time out of your day.
to kind of educate us and and let us know what you’re doing so that we can feed all of our thoughts on how you know we you know and when I say we, I don’t just mean me and my company, but the greater community out there. Yeah, we’re all yeah, we’re all trying to figure out how to acqu help people acquire knowledge, develop skills better, faster, cheaper, and ⁓ and and and I appreciate all the insights you provided. So thank you for your time today.
Jesse (53:02)
Thank you for having
Jeff Walter (53:03)
Yeah.
All right. And to everybody out there, thanks for joining us today and ⁓ we’ll see you next time. Have a good day.