Well this is pretty crazy. I’m now the CEO of OpenEd, a company founded 15 years ago and operating under the name My Tech High until today.
Matt and Amy Bowman founded this company to help homeschool families who needed some structure, resources, curriculum options, community, and even things like college credits, but who also need flexibility over schedule, the time and place of learning, and what tools and approaches work best.
They started with 92 students in Utah, creating a partnership with a charter school there. Through My Tech High (ahem, OpenEd) these homeschoolers would be enrolled as virtual students with the school, build a schedule that included the basic state requirements, but allowed maximum flexibility on the rest, and access to dozens of the best curriculum providers on the OpenEd platform as well as in-person providers in their community – all at no cost to them.
There’s a reason the program grew and is now 12,000+ students strong in multiple states.
I first met Matt nearly a decade ago, shortly after founding Praxis, my own alternative education company (in this case, a college alternative). We collaborated and kept-up over the years, as fellow travelers and kindred spirits in the quest to bring more freedom to education.
After selling Praxis, starting Crash (an early job-seeker platform that never got a large enough market share to justify the investment we raised) and eventually converting it to a media company and selling it, I was at a weird place in my career. I’d spent nearly 15 years working in and around education in some form or another. I was tired, a little burnt out, and unsure what was next.
I knew I wanted to build more companies, and education was still a passion. But I decided to take a few years doing fractional CMO work while I planned the next move.
My old friend Jared Fuller came along and convinced me that what I really wanted to do was help him start a media company in the B2B software world. So we started PartnerHacker, got acquired by Reveal in less than a year, built the Nearbound brand and movement, and then got acquired again. All in just two and a half years.
It was an amazing challenge and experience. I was a fish out of water in many ways, but I learned a ton and had amazing success.
And the timing was crazy.
Just before the second merger, which provided a natural opportunity for Jared and I to exit the business, Matt Bowman emailed me out of the blue and asked to chat. He told me he was ready to hand over the reins of My Tech High, and wanted to know if I was interested. Jared and I did some contract work with them, got to really see and feel the company, the team, and the customers and we fell in love.
So here we are. I’m back in education and couldn’t be more excited.
Jared is joining me as COO, and we brought over some great team members from other ventures – Ela Richmond, Alex Hernandez, Charlie Diest, Dave Wasmer.
OpenEd is more than a company. It is a movement.
We want to help give every parent every educational option. Private, public, homeschool, unschool, co-op, microschool, virtual, physical, part-time, full-time; each of these are tools in a parent’s toolkit. There’s no need to feel crammed or confined to one. I have utilized just about every one of these for my own kids. That is the future. That is where education is going. It’s opening up. The walls are coming down.
We currently offer our district partnership model in Utah and Oregon, and are actively looking for districts and charters in other states into which we can expand.
We also offer some incredibly unique stand-alone courses in tech and entrepreneurship that anyone can buy.
We are actively looking at additional models and methods to support the opening up of education. We are revamping our software platform, exploring microschool and tutorial partnerships, the burgeoning world of ESAs, and more.
But as I said, it’s not about our offerings as much as this movement.
That’s why I’m most excited about the launch of the OpenEd Daily, a quick, punchy morning email newsletter for anyone and everyone interested in an open education. We also have a weekly podcast, and you’ll see a lot of activity from us on social.
Join the movement, and let’s open up education for every learner!
A few links:
OpenEd homepage, where you can (and should) sign-up for the newsletter!
The OpenEd strategic narrative deck
The OpenEd store where you can buy a la carte courses in tech and entrepreneurship