Assertion Supported
Cohen: Ohio State and other universities mandate AI in curriculum
“There's some schools that are like mandatory AI usage like in the curriculum. I think Ohio State is one of them.”
Disclosure
Cohen: Hesitant to invest in AI edtech focused solely on teacher productivity
“One of the reasons why I've had, like, a little bit of a hard time investing in these early education companies is they're allowing a teacher to be a lot more productive and be 10 times better at their job, have feel like burnout is a lot lower. Incredible, ri…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cohen: AI will eliminate active teaching but won't replace human teachers
“I think we're very far away from AI teachers. Now, I think what will happen is, like, the amount of active teaching will go away because I think you can, like, have really good active teaching with AI but I don't think it's going to fully replace a human teach…”
Disclosure
Cohen: AI startup charged $500 monthly promising 3rd-grade literacy in 3 months
“I think, like, one of the most interesting pitches I've seen, and the company was super early, was an AI reading company, which basically, like, sent kids books, and then they had AI teach the kids how to read, And it was mostly three to four year olds, and it…”
Opinion
Zach Cohen: Generative AI tools make teachers 10x better at their jobs
“They're allowing a teacher to be a lot more productive and be 10 times better at their job.”
Assertion Supported
Cohen: Teachers are paying out-of-pocket for daily AI software
“It's teachers who are willing to kind of pay and use this in their every single day workflow.”
Assertion Partly supported
Cohen: 80% of US K-12 school districts have AI procurement teams
“I think, 80% of districts now have, like, a generative AI team that's going after and looking at procuring, kind of, new technologies. So not only is there, like, earmarked budget, there are people who are thinking and proactively looking for it.”
Assertion Supported
Cohen: 50% of US teachers have used MagicSchool AI
“I think Magic School has over like five million users. I think 50% of US teachers has used their tool.”
Assertion Supported
Cohen: Alpha School students rank in top 1-2% nationally
“I think they rank like 99th percentile in a few different assessments. Their students are now like top one, top two percent in the nation.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zach Cohen: LLMs like ChatGPT are already good enough to teach
“Language models are good enough to teach. Like, they really are, right? Like, if you want to learn something, ChatGPT is a great place to go learn something.”
Insight
Zach Cohen: Consumers in ticketing marketplaces are loyal only to price
“But it's just interesting to see that the ticket marketplace is still very transaction focused. Consumers are not loyal. They're loyal to price.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cohen: Top-Revenue AI Edtech Startups Sell Bottom-Up to Teachers
“Most of the most mature AI companies from a revenue standpoint have been selling to teachers bottoms up, which is tremendous.”
Insight
Cohen: Top EdTech products achieve 4-5 days of weekly user engagement
“Because if a student is doing this to just get their homework done, I don't think you're gonna see that level of engagement. You're gonna see it taper off around certain times, certain months, or it'll be a little spikier. But people who are seeing kind of fla…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cohen: AI remains at the periphery of the education system
“AI is still at the periphery of education, right? So since it's at the periphery of education, we don't actually know what the outside's impact is. It's helping teachers create assignments better. It's helping students get homework done, but it's not like core…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zach Cohen: Main education AI use case is generating worksheets
“The biggest use case of AI right now is generating an answer sheet or a worksheet assignment.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Zach Cohen: AI will let students freely select learning modalities by topic
“We're gonna have, like, a kind of, like, factioning of, like, a bunch of different types of Learners where depending on the topic and your understanding of the topic, you could pick whatever modality you want.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cohen: Textbook publishers remain primary gatekeepers of classroom content
“They are still the gatekeepers of a lot of content and what gets in and out of the classroom.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Zach Cohen: AI will move directly into classroom instruction within 12 months
“I think we are going to, in the next 12 months, move from kind of the outside of education, the use of AI, just to make things easier to, like, bring it into the classroom, whether it's, like, adding it to a discussion.”
Opinion
Zach Cohen: Whatnot turns shopping into entertainment rather than transactional utility
“Specifically what not. Which is actually making shopping more of an entertainment product and less of a transaction product.”
Insight
Cohen: Third-wave marketplaces build curation directly into the core product
“And I think that kind of wave three The locales, the senses of the world are providing that curation layer as just the marketplace itself.”
Prediction Not publicly verifiable
Cohen: Ticketing marketplace GMV growth will slow down in coming years
“But if you start to look at the data on a monthly level, you start to see the second half of 2022 really slow down from ticketing marketplaces. And I think that will continue to happen. I would be surprised if ticketing marketplaces weren't prevalent on the li…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zach Cohen: Consumers pay a premium for vetted marketplace tiers
“Anyone can list, but to get that special layer of curation, the suppliers have to go through additional vetting process and consumers will pay a premium for that.”
Assertion Supported
Cohen: Peek Retains Travel Vendors via Vertical Operating Software
“On the supply side, they're actually providing a vertical software that allows these businesses to run digitally, because a lot of them are offline, whether that's bookings, financing, all of that kind of supply side software. And that only keeps a supplier ha…”
