116: Empowering Learning Communities: A Conversation with Vince Jeong, CEO of Sparkwise

Holly Owens (00:02):

Hello everyone, and welcome to another amazing episode of Edup Ed Tech. My name is Holly Owens

DaNadia Johnson (00:10):

And my name is Nadia Johnson. And we're your hosts

Holly Owens (00:14):

And we are super stoked today because we have a very special guest with us. We have Vince Strong, he is the co-founder and EO of Sparkwise on the show. Welcome, Vince.

DaNadia Johnson (00:26):

Welcome. Hello Vince. Thank you for having me here.

Holly Owens (00:29):

We're stoked to talk to you and get into everything Sparkwise in this episode, but before we do that, we want to know a little bit more about you. So tell us a little bit about your journey. How did you get here? Give us all the details.

Vince Jeong (00:46):

Yeah, no, I'm happy to share here. Probably helpful to share. Well, why am I doing an ed tech in the first place?

Holly Owens (00:55):

Sure.

Vince Jeong (00:56):

And I think there's, for me, there's a two part answer there. The first is why education. The other is why professional adult learning, which is what we're focused on. And in terms of why education, it really comes from my background as an immigrant from South Korea as an immigrant, education is a matter of survival. It's your family's ticket to a better future, your parents sacrifice to get you to a new place. And so I think it naturally became a really big part of my life. And secondly, why professional and adult learning? I think it's because I saw how powerful great professional development can be and the impact it has had on me on my life. So I started my career at McKinsey and Consulting is an industry that is very focused on humans. It is a people business where people are their number one asset, where the whole business is about changing mindsets and behaviors of their clients. And the way it translates to actual business is that they spend a lot of money and effort to develop their people. And for me, it really helped me become the professional that I'm today. I think I learned so many different skills. I actually say sometimes kin might be the best university I've attended because I do feel like I changed a lot from that experience. And because of that gratitude, I think I wanted to do something in the professional learning space.

Holly Owens (02:28):

I really like that journey and you're right, it definitely, and I don't have this experience of being an immigrant and the struggle and fighting for education and fighting your way in society and culture in a new country. So I'm so glad that you can bring that to the spotlight and that experience here on Edup ed Tech and now you're an entrepreneur and and you're ACEO. So that's a success story.

Vince Jeong (02:54):

I don't know about success yet, but I certainly feel

Holly Owens (02:58):

It'll be after this episode.

Vince Jeong (03:01):

But I certainly feel more aligned with it, I would say. And my parents are small business owners and entrepreneurs themselves now. And so it very much feels like it's something that I've also learned from that the value of hard work, taking risk, believing in yourself and so on.

Holly Owens (03:16):

That's great.

DaNadia Johnson (03:17):

I love that. Yeah, that's wonderful. I want to know a little bit more, this is Edup ed tech, so we specialize in ed tech. So we want to know how do you personally define educational technology? What is your definition of educational technology? Yeah, I

Vince Jeong (03:40):

Guess simply put maybe technology that helps develop humans. I think the human is a really important aspect there. And I do think that educational technologies that win are very human-centric in its core and build on human insights that are durable

DaNadia Johnson (04:04):

And help to enhance the learning. Like Ed Tech is not here trying to replace people. We're trying to provide tools that enhance learning and make it easier and accessible. So yeah, I love that definition. I

Holly Owens (04:19):

Like that too. Straight to the point. And the humans are, you can't operate the tool without the humans

DaNadia Johnson (04:24):

There.

Holly Owens (04:25):

I think that's one thing people miss in that aspect. They're like, oh, ed tech is just technology that's in education and replacing teachers and AI is replacing people, but it's really not. It's a combination. And I think that's what you really said there.

Vince Jeong (04:41):

Yeah, I fully agree.

Holly Owens (04:44):

All right, so let's get into it because I know I'm going to have more questions after you talk about Sparkwise. So tell us What Is Sparkwise, how does your product or services that you offer help institutions and organizations in the educational aspect? And you talked a lot about the adult learners, so I want to hear more about that too. So tell us all the things.

Vince Jeong (05:04):

Yeah, Sparkwise is a group learning platform. It gives a scalable way for professionals to build skills and create a sense of community together by practicing, discussing, exchanging feedback and so on in small groups without requiring expert facilitation. And the problem that we're solving is that if you think about traditional online learning that we imagine when you hear the word online learning, it tends to fail to deliver impact at scale. There are tools that really solve for scale things like asynchronous videos or maybe big zoom calls that really get to a lot of people, but those all tend to become either solo or passive learning and frankly, people don't really engage in that on the other side, really solve for impact. And what ends up happening, it's a very high touch Group Facilitated experience or one-on-one coaching that is costly, inflexible, and doesn't allow everyone to experience this great learning to develop themselves. And So what we're building is we're trying to offer a group learning alternative that is as scalable as asynchronous videos, but as engaging and impactful as high-touch workshops.

Holly Owens (06:25):

Oh, I like it. And the team aspect of it too, the community aspect of, and it's so difficult to build teams in an asynchronous setting and really get people having conversations and being in a space where you feel like you're actually collaborating. That's challenging. Do you think in creating this ed tech tool, you're maybe also trying to solve the problem of, I feel like sometimes humans don't know how to communicate well with each other and sometimes honesty isn't something that honesty and trust are big on teams, and I feel like you don't grow if you're not honest with your teammates or you don't trust them. So I feel like this offers an opportunity for that kind of growth as a community and as a team.

Vince Jeong (07:15):

Yeah, I'm smiling as you're saying it because I think you're hitting it right on this head. So in fact, one of our most popular topics covered is in fact communication and building trust and so on. But also I do think that the core reason why I think our platform is valuable and works is the fact that it's done in teams, in groups that people get to learn each other, that it actually builds on the insight that learning is inherently a social process and it really brings that to life through technology.

DaNadia Johnson (07:57):

I like that. I was going to say, I feel like it leverages the people, the community learning from each other, which I think is awesome as well. Yeah,

Holly Owens (08:08):

I See these different topics that you have in here, and one of them caught my eye is disagreeing productively.

(08:18):

I work at Amazon at my full-time job and one of our leadership principles and it's public information so I can share it, is disagree and commit. And so I really find that's a huge challenge with teams is you don't, and especially Nadia and myself are very nice people. Nadia may ruffle a few feathers before I do sometimes, but I just like to be nice and I've been accused of being too nice and not saying how I really feel or taking criticism or giving constructive criticism. So I really feel like that's a topic that is very much appropriate in this sort of setting in the work from home culture that we are sitting in when we're on our teams. If you can't be around each other, like I said, how are you going to develop that trust, but also it's okay to disagree with what other people are thinking and your solution isn't always the right solution. So I like it how you're incorporating those types of support areas as well into the tool besides giving them a platform to communicate on. So really that one caught my eye. I was like, Ooh, that's a good one. I related it to the Amazon leadership principle

Vince Jeong (09:33):

And I think you're highlighting, yeah, it's one of our really popular topics. And I would say if you dig into that example, if you want to really learn how to disagree productively, you really actually have to grapple with how would you do it in a realistic scenario? What are the considerations, what are the pros and cons? And you have to get, and everyone has a slightly different perspective, so you actually want to learn from each other. And so it's these kinds of skills where I think learning in groups is truly more powerful than if you were watching something or just reading something in theory, but actually not knowing how to practice. So for example, in our sessions, typically every session lasts for about an hour. You as a participant have a calendar invite and you join our platform when the time comes. And as a small group, you're basically guided by the platform through many different steps.

(10:38):

It could be ranging from, there's a scenario that you analyze together, like a poor version of disagreement you're seeing and you discuss why is this not productive? Then you learn what does it mean to disagree productively? And then you actually practice rewriting some of the disagreements to make it more productive, giving each other feedback, reflecting on how you disagree and whether, where are the opportunities for you to disagree differently in the future. So it really makes you grapple with the tactic and think about it together, give each other feedback in a way that really brings the learning to life, and that also makes it easier to remember and apply it in your day-to-day. I'm

DaNadia Johnson (11:22):

Glad you went over that. That was going to be my next question. Honestly,

Holly Owens (11:26):

I was over here looking at the sessions and I was like, I wonder how it guides the learners through

DaNadia Johnson (11:33):

The session. So that's super helpful. I think that's super helpful context. I think it's super cool, but I was wondering about how learners are participating in the discussions of the topic. So that just makes me even more excited about the tool. So without, we don't want you to spill Too much of the tea, respect your marketing team and NDAs and all of that. Is there any exciting things on the roadmap for Sparkwise in the upcoming months year? What is something maybe that's exciting that's on the roadmap?

Vince Jeong (12:12):

If there's not

DaNadia Johnson (12:13):

Anything, it's okay. I think there are things that are related to our product

Vince Jeong (12:19):

And then there are things related to growth and who we work with. Maybe I can highlight what I find that exciting about. Yeah, highlight both. Yeah.

(12:26):

I think on the product side, I think it's relatively simple. There are three areas that are really focused for us. One is continue to improve the learner's experience. So how to use data. Not everything is ai, but I think AI can be useful to give participants smart, real-time guidance and feedback that makes this group experience come really further to life. Second is improve the experience of the leader who's using the tool to develop their people. So how do we give them the administrative capability to schedule things whenever for whomever and give them insight to how the sessions are going while people are learning so that they can really reinforce it. And then thirdly, we think there's an opportunity to really accelerate the authoring of our experiences, turning content into this very different group learning pedagogy and letting more people take advantage of the platform. So on the product side, those are the things that are working on and very excited that actually some of the advancements made in AI really does unlock new frontiers in being able to build this faster and incorporate, I think on the growth side for the business, there are also three different areas that we are very excited about.

(13:41):

I think one the most straightforward or one is that we've started to really serve bigger enterprises. I think our product both in terms of its stability, it's the security, it's polish, it's the content catalog we have is such that large enterprises are starting to really use us at scale. And in particular people-centric organizations such as firms in professional service sector and so on that really invest in their, people are seeing a lot of benefit from using us. The second group in the growth bucket is we also see ourselves strategically being more of a platform in the long run. What does that mean?

(14:23):

We actually power other people who are delivering learning to their audience, do it in a different way at a scalable way through us. So we're starting to work with some large learning providers and helping them reimagine their offering so that it's really more scalable and high impact for their own customer base and learner base. And thirdly, we are also starting to work with more knowledge solopreneurs. So book authors or business influencers that have assets that they can turn into a very engaging group, modules that are much more scalable but much more impactful for the audience and really help them also monetize on that knowledge they've built over time. And so we're seeing really interesting and exciting responses and resonances on these different three areas. And so we're very excited to clients who fit one of those areas and work with them as we learn as a company where we want to focus.

Holly Owens (15:26):

Oh, it sounds really good. That's

DaNadia Johnson (15:28):

Exciting. Yeah,

Holly Owens (15:30):

That sounded really good to me. That was a great TED talk.

(15:35):

I mean, because I'm just thinking about all the different things we do as teams, and one of the things that came across in a conversation recently is how much meetings cost, not the money, how much they cost for the schedule, the time because you can never get time back and what would that equivalent to and to dollars. So this really makes you kind of focus on who needs to be there, what time it needs to be, how much you're really making it easier for people to not have those meetings. Like a meeting that could have been an email is what people often say. I love that. I love that. Using time more efficiently is always a good thing For

Vince Jeong (16:20):

Sure.

Holly Owens (16:22):

Alright, well believe it or not, we're coming up on the end of the episode here and we definitely would love to have you back after you put out some new things into the world and you have these testing sessions. In my head I was thinking you were saying learning management systems, but if you can't share that, I understand, but I was like, how could this integrate with online learning and learning management systems, especially when I schedule synchronous sessions for my students. But I digress. We'll talk about that another time and offline. So we have two final questions for you to wrap up the episode. So the first, is there anything we missed, anything else you want to share about Sparkwise? And then the last question we have for you is in this space, in this EdTech industry like teams and community, we want to know what you think the future looks like there. So anything we miss and then tell us about the future

Vince Jeong (17:15):

In terms of anything we miss? I would just say we're really excited to talk to people who are passionate about this space as we are. Whether it be folks who might want to work with us or are in the space and want to bounce ideas. And so I'll just say I would love to connect with folks if they find what we're doing interesting in terms of where the future of EdTech looks like. I think maybe what I'll share is my perspective on where I think there are opportunities in EdTech that I feel like I'm personally learning and EdTech that I think is more better basically positioned to win. And it's my own opinion, but it's something that I've sort of thought about.

Holly Owens (17:58):

I like that it's your own little learning constructivist experience. Yeah, Yeah. Go with that.

Vince Jeong (18:04):

So the first one, so there are three things here. The first one is focus on learners and not buyers. I think learning tools are particularly difficult in the sense that the learner and the user is usually different than who has the money. Oftentimes, especially in the corporate setting where I am operating it and the market is actually saturated with tools that currently serve the administrator or the instructor or the buyer. And this is natural because you often solve the problem by the person who's paying for your solution. I think in that process, however, it's left a gap for tools that actually really delight the learners. And this is why a lot of, I think learning tools actually have low engagement scores and so on. So cracking that learner impact I think is pretty critical for the next wave of tech. The second point I would say is focus on learner experience and not content. Content is everywhere. We all know this and AI is making it even easier. We

Holly Owens (19:05):

Love hearing you say that as instructional designers. Yeah. Yeah. I mean on LinkedIn there's a lot of instructional designers that also talk about this. It's not a new insight per se, but for sure I definitely feel that the

Vince Jeong (19:17):

Winning, I think Ed Text will be re-imagining the experience and not proliferating more and more content. And the third one is something that I hit on a little bit earlier is that I really think that the winning ed text should be built around true human motivation and true human behaviors. So this is actually, maybe this might be a little bit an unpopular opinion, but there's a lot of conversation about chat GPT tools being created and transforming learning and so on. I think there's definitely potential to do that. However, especially when it comes to adult learning, I think a lot of, it's hard for me to imagine someone being so inspired to talk to a bot that they'll sit there and talk to a bot to learn really critical skills. Google existed, YouTube exists, content's been out there, people are still not using them to learn, especially when you're busy adults. You got to tap into actual human motivation behaviors that gets people to want to learn. And I think that's a really critical piece to build around if you want your ed tech to succeed. And in many ways, I think those are things that we believe in and therefore our product is very much trying to hit those. That

Holly Owens (20:37):

Was good. I like all those

DaNadia Johnson (20:38):

Are good points. Yeah,

Holly Owens (20:39):

They are.

DaNadia Johnson (20:40):

Yes, for a lot of EdTech companies tools, those are really Good last words.

Holly Owens (20:50):

I mean, it takes quite a bit to scale a company just starting as an entrepreneur and even opening a small business, it takes a lot to scale with it. I think the thing that people don't realize, and we can have an episode about this, I'm sure with a few CEOs and co-founders, is that it doesn't happen overnight. Those are anomalies. Those are very far, far and few in between. It takes a lot of work and it also takes, like what you're saying, the learners buy-in that it works for them and they're motivated to want to use it and they see the value in it and it's not about getting the contract or things like that. It's really something that's going to help move the needle when it comes to the learning space.

Vince Jeong (21:35):

It was fun to chat through these things. I appreciate you listening. We

Holly Owens (21:38):

Chat a lot more. I'm sure we could chat a lot more and we

Vince Jeong (21:41):

Can't

Holly Owens (21:42):

Thank you enough for coming on the show and sharing everything about Sparkwise. So we look forward to doing a future episode. We'll contact you and we definitely want to hear all the updates and we'll have everything in the show notes about where you can connect with Vince and see Sparkwise and all the things. So thank you so much.

DaNadia Johnson (21:59):

Yeah.

Vince Jeong (22:00):

And thank you for this wonderful podcast where you get to feature different learning ideas and people. It's really great that you're creating this community. It's

Holly Owens (22:09):

So much fun for us.