EdTech: Travis Allen of ProSolve On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact On Education

Ability to build to the market — There are three ways to build a product. Build things I want. Build things my current customers want. Build things the market I have not sold to yet want. It is the latter pathway that will be the most lucrative and have the largest impact. Often, we build things we want to have but that is no guarantee that thousands of other people have that problem to solve as well. Learn to research markets at large, identify underserved areas with big problems (and funding to solve those big problems typically) and build to them.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course, many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. In this particular installment, we are talking to leaders of Education Technology companies, who share how their tech is helping to improve our educational system. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Travis Allen.

Travis Allen is a visionary in the educational space, promoting a shift from a knowledge-based to an experiential-based educational ecosystem. As a high school student, Travis created a viral YouTube video to revolutionize America’s educational approach. Today, he is the Founder and CEO of ProSolve, a rapidly growing company creating a generation of career-ready problem solvers by transforming systems with their “Learning, Experienced” approach to teaching and learning. Travis has presented in over 45 states and eight countries, reaching an audience of over 300,000 people!

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

I was born in Utah and am one of 4 in my family. I grew up in ten different states, forcing me to adapt, make new friends, and be comfortable with change. Being one of 4 kids and having a dad that traveled almost every week, created an environment where independence and problem-solving skills were a must. My dad was a businessman and entrepreneur and always encouraged us as kids to challenge the status quo and speak our mind. My mother was a stay-at-home mom who nurtured my siblings and I and had a very playful spirit. I was a smart kid who loved to read, but hated school. I loved my school projects, especially ones in which allowed for creativity and thinking differently.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I started my business at the age of 18 and by 20, I won the “Google Young Minds” award. This was an international competition that was looking for young people making an impact on the world with their ideas or businesses. I and 9 others won and received a mysterious award of attending the Google Zeitgeist conference. This conference was so secret, I could not find out anything about it or who would be attending. A few weeks before the conference, I was sent details about the event and who would be attending. I was shocked as I looked through the list of 300 attendees or so, and I knew who 75% of them were. It was an extremely wide variety of famous people like Mark Cuban, Sir Richard Brandson, Tony Hawk, Will I Am, and many others. The Google Young Minds winners all went to the big fancy dinner that kicked off the conference, and to my horror I noticed a designated table labeled “Google Young Minds Group”. To have all of these amazing, powerful people around and not be able to sit with them seemed like a missed opportunity. Rather than sit at my assigned table as my 9 colleagues did, I chose to sneak off and find a different table to sit at. I ended up sitting next to a group of famous YouTubers, the President of YouTube, and the creator of Angry Birds. I learned that there are times when following the rules are important, and there are times that you may want to consider breaking them.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There are many people who have been instrumental in helping me get to where I am today. My dad always quoted Jim Ron saying, “you are the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with” and from this quote I always wanted to surround myself with people who could inspire me to do more. One of those stories I will share is about the founder of OtterBox, Curt Richardson, and his wife, Nancy Richardson. Through my work in education, our business began to partner with OtterBox who has a huge passion in supporting education. I eventually ended up speaking to Curt and Nancy and they offered to send their private OtterAir jet to pick me up and take me to their HQ in Fort Collins CO. From there, they guided me into the world of running a successful, mission driven, company and introduced me to many of the key players within the company. They did not stop there though; they then flew out their strategic consultants to our HQ in GA and met with my team for 3 days in order to build a solid business plan. Their kindness and willingness to freely give to me inspired me to rise up and hope that I can one day offer the same value to upcoming entrepreneurs.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

It is not a quote but more of a rule. The 80/20 rule. The concept is that if you look at anything in life, 20% of people do 80% of the work in a company. 20% of your tasks produce 80% of the results. 20% of the people you hang out with, influence 80% of who you are. You can go on and on and apply this to so much of life. This is always a great reminder of helping prioritize what is important. I think this is also why you see people who have perfect this and can work just a few hours a week and produce amazing results.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Playful Spirit — Someone who likes to have fun and doesn’t take things too seriously.

Most people will end up spending around 100,000 hours of their life working to make a living. That is almost ⅓ of our awake time on this planet! I believe it is so imperative for us to enjoy these hours and make the most of them, no matter the job. At our company, this is one of our cultural values that we strive for. We believe that a playful spirit transforms day-to-day work into an environment for creating amazing products and meaningful connections.

Stoicism — teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions.

As an entrepreneur, bad things will happen. It is part of the journey. Your ability to manage your emotions and lead during the rough times will be imperative to your success and separates long lasting leaders, versus “get rich quick” opportunists. In my company, we launched these giant 40 ft mobile escape room vehicles to take to educators and put on very engaging professional development for them. We built a second vehicle ourselves, and it rolled off the highway on its maiden voyage, sending two of my colleagues to the hospital. We then found out afterwords it was not properly insured. We built a third one, epic double decker that we poured 300k into, with the big unveiling to be launched in March 2020… Only to have 100% of our business cancel on us for the next 18 months. It was how we responded in these moments that defined us as leaders.

A problem solver — an individual who makes decisions and resolves issues using critical thinking and analytical skills.

At the end of the day, it is difficult to succeed in today’s rich AI and tech world, if you cannot identify unique problems and find creative ways to solve for them. Whether you are starting a business or working in a company, this single trait I believe will set people apart in any company. Tech and AI are quickly replacing all knowledge based, skill based, or repetitive based type of work. This leaves a workforce starving for those that have Human Intelligence. What unique skills, thinking, and abilities do you have as a human to solve big problems, that tech can’t already solve?

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our educational systems. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?

We as a company, obsess over our desire to build career ready students who are prepared for a post AI world.

The biggest problems we believe facing education are the following:

92% of businesses say soft skills are more important than technical skills but 89% of employers say they can’t find works who have them.

44% of job posts for teachers are going unfulfilled with the teaching profession being the #1 burnout profession.

Schools have seen an overall 9% decline in enrollment over the last 3 years with 53% of students polled saying they find education not relevant or engaging.

How do you think your technology can address this?

The internet and AI have disrupted the workforce so much, that it has made our traditional education model no longer as valuable. Imagine an education system that is able to leverage the very technology that has caused the disruption, to now also be the catalyst that ushers us into a new age of education. The secret to achieve this is not the technology directly itself however, but the way in which we change pedagogical thinking around how we teach and how we learn in the classroom. Our solutions focus on taking education from a knowledge-based learning, to an experiential based learning. We believe the best way to create career ready students and to engage our students is to either simulate real world problems in our classrooms, or let kids solve real world problems. Instead of memorizing information, or discussing theory, provide hands on experiences that allow them to do learn by doing. Technology can do this in many scalable ways.

• Create immersive experiences through play and game-based learning
• Create AI that assists teachers with the repetitive, mundane parts of teaching to allow teachers to focus on relationships.
• Use AI to modify a lesson plan in 30 different ways, each unique to that student’s needs.
• Create simulated worlds that engage students while creating a safe environment for them to practice problem solving skills with real world simulated examples.
• Use AI to track social and emotional traits and trends to better identify gaps in this area to improve. (something that historically has been very difficult to measure!)

For all of this to work, we must focus on bringing the art of teaching back though, instead of just treating our teachers as test preppers. How do we ask questions that can’t be googled? How do we encourage creative thinking with our students? How do we get to know our students so well, that we can bring real world relevancy to their learning and interests?

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about education?

When I was a 17-year-old high school senior in Fayetteville GA, I decided to take notes using my smart phone but the policy in my class was “no cell phones allowed”. My teacher took my device and gave it to the principal. I went hope extremely frustrated and did what most kids do, complained to my parents. My dad said “shut up and do something about it!”. From there, I spent 4 months building a YouTube Video showing how 1:1 mobile learning would transform education. My video was found by Steve Jobs, and promoted around the world by Apple. I accidentally fell into the world of education technology as the video led me to do motivational speaking at education conferences. For the first 10 years, I presented in over 12 countries, 43 states and to 400k + administrators and teachers sharing my unique student voice perspective on education reform. Over the course of those 10 years, It has shaped who I am and the passion I have for building an education system that is preparing us for the future work force.

How do you think your technology might change the world?

I think that most of us, myself included, don’t know just how much AI is going to disrupt the world we know. I compare it to the industrial age when we created machines to do the physical labor for us, ushering us into new heights of possibilities and innovation. Just like then, we are living through a huge transitional period where AI is now doing the “knowledge” for us and pushing us into a new era of possibilities. Asking what I think the future might look like is similar to asking someone in the early 1800’s what the world of 2000 might look like. What might be our equivalent to the internet, or airplanes, or skyscrapers, or phones?

For me, I imagine a world where most of the mundane, repetitive, knowledge-based aspects of life our now done for us, hopefully freeing us up to raise our conscious level to new heights and focus more on highly creative work. AI is going to do so much of the thinking for us. From telling us when to wake up, when to go to meetings, who to give a call to that day, or what we should eat for breakfast. One could be fearful of this, in that we are creating non-thinking drones and while this is a definite risk, this has been the story told throughout time. GPS does the thinking for us and most of us cannot navigate without one now. Because of this, it can free our brains up to take on more creative problems. Unless we succumb to the mindlessness of social media scrolling occupying all our thinking!

I think AI will empower the human species to colonize other planets, eradicate poverty and starvation, educate the masses in ways thought impossible, create simulated worlds for us to explore, move us to a more sustainable lifestyle, re-design cities in ways that are sustainable, walkable and clean, and so much more.

Keeping the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

AI and technology have always been a double-edged sword. For the many things that it gives, it brings in new unforeseen dangers. How could people predict in the 1800s the idea of internet stalkers, social media addictions, information overload, disconnection from the real world, anxiety, depression, lack of critical thinking, and so much more?

My observation is that we are currently living in the middle of a transitionary period of time. A time in which we have traditional ways of thinking and living as a society, but new technologies are demanding change and we are slow to make those changes. My hope is that AI and cultural trends we can create will aim to address many of the issues I mentioned earlier. AI will bring a new wave of challenges we must prepare for.

• Job loss. We have always seen more new jobs get created with innovation then get taken away. This may not be the case with AI. How do we build a healthy work force if there are not enough jobs?
• Decline in creative thinking. If the AI does all the thinking for us, how do we raise our kids to rise up and take on bigger creative challenges to solve? If they don’t do this, they will be mindless, consuming, tech addicts.
• AI outpacing the growth of humans. While many movies depict a post-apocalyptic world with AI, it is not too far off of what might be possible. If AI begins to far outpace its evolution as compared to humans, it could lead to AI being the dominate “species”.
• Cyber Threats and Security. We are going to see a huge rise in creative scams, hacking, and cybercrimes. Right now, AI has the power to imitate your mothers voice, call you, and ask you to bail her out of jail.

How do you envision the landscape of education evolving over the next decade, and how does your technology fit into that future?

There is what I wish it may look like in 10 years, and what I think it will most likely look like. I wish it would look like the following:

Imagine a future school experience where there are no bell schedules, no grade levels, no standardized tests, and no grades. Instead, there is a creative space that inspires young minds to come in and solve really difficult problems every day. Schooling looks and feels more like leveling up, earning achievements, and making progress at a pace that matches your own speed. A student’s experience is often self-directed, with constant guidance from both their AI bot and their human teachers/mentors.

The AI bot guides them in all things knowledge based, repetitive, and mundane, allowing the student to take on bigger aspects of thinking and problem solving. The bot is also analyzing progress every step of the way and constantly giving real time feedback as they move forward. The bot is able to spin up quick real world simulation experiences for students to navigate through in a safe environment that allows for plenty of room for failure.

The human teachers/mentors are there to motivate you when you are down, guide you when you are lost, and to help you navigate through social and emotional aspects of your learning. They are using AI as well to quickly identify and assess real time gaps in student learning and giving them concepts and ideas to support them as they help develop the students.

While this may seem decades in the future, AI could expedite all that we know about the world around us.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

1 . Ability to build to the market — There are three ways to build a product. Build things I want. Build things my current customers want. Build things the market I have not sold to yet want. It is the latter pathway that will be the most lucrative and have the largest impact. Often, we build things we want to have but that is no guarantee that thousands of other people have that problem to solve as well. Learn to research markets at large, identify underserved areas with big problems (and funding to solve those big problems typically) and build to them.

2 . Ability to think creatively — Tech can already start to code itself. Anyone can build a cool tech product with little to no tech skills. The ability to think in innovative ways will separate those that succeed and those that don’t. Your ability to invent a technology that makes positive impact is mostly only limited to the creativity of your mind and what unique way you dream up to solve a problem worth solving. Become great at ideating.

3 . Ability to think Critically and logically- In my experience, one of the most crucial abilities to succeed in building something complex is the ability to think critically and logically as you build it. For my own development process, I have had to become a master at thinking through complex data sets, mastering things like “if this than that” logic with in systems, and connecting dots that tech can’t see on its own.

4 . Ability to design great user experiences — In addition to thinking creatively, it is critical that you have the ability to design your tech solution in a way that is so intuitive and easy to use, anyone could do it. To do this, you must be able to successfully put yourself in your users’ shoes and reverse engineer the ultimate experience. Good user experiences will make a break, a great, innovative, product.

5 . Ability to convince people to believe in what you believe — You have built an innovative solution, you made an amazing user experience to go with it, and it was all built to an underserved market. The final piece of the puzzle is the ability to convince others that how you have solved the problem, is the best way and why they should use it. If you can build your solution around a strong mission and purpose for what you do and convince others to believe in it to, you are now creating real, positive change!

In the realm of EdTech, there’s often data collection involved. How do you ensure the ethical handling of user data, especially when it concerns students?

I don’t feel qualified or knowledgeable enough to answer the question.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

The biggest insult you can tell a young person is that they are leaders of tomorrow because that implies that they lack the ability to be our leaders of today. Do not wait until you are older to make change. When you are young, you have the ability to take big risks and try new things. Now is the time.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

I have had a social media hashtag for many years called #TravisMeetsMusk. I have wanted to have lunch with Elon Musk way before most people even knew who he was! Elon represents a visionary who knows how to disrupt industries that typically don’t change. Hence why I would LOVE to debate and brainstorm with him on how we reform education in amazing, big ways.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Prosolve.com

@ProsolveTravis on Twitter

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.