3 Lessons from Sam Adams, Co-Founder & CEO of dot.LA
Sam Adams, Co-Founder & CEO of dot.LA, and a former financial journalist for Bloomberg and Reuters, recently came on our Demo Day podcast for CoEfficient Labs. In the episode, Sam shared a variety of insights around education and took us through his journey to dot.LA.
Launched in January 2020, dot.LA is the premier source of news and information for the Los Angeles technology and start-up community. dot.LA has quickly built a sizable audience and become an influential outlet. At present, dot.LA has a newsroom of seven journalists in addition to events and operations professionals.
Below I’ll share a few of my takeaways from our interview with Sam.
The “Pelotonification of Education”
As Sam mentioned in the interview, “online education isn’t the end-all-be-all,” and for me, as someone who finished the last few months of their MBA online, I can tell you this couldn’t be more true.
The non-academic elements of schooling, as Sam argues, are even more impactful in terms of development, which calls into question the idea that online education will become more mainstream.
This “Pelotonification of education,” as Sam puts it, has its limitations and he hopes we’re not heading towards a world where one teacher is teaching 10,000 students in front of a screen.
This one-to-many model may work for fitness classes, but when it comes to formal education, it’s not necessarily the best option.
The In-Person Experience is Everything
Building off of my first takeaway from Sam’s interview, because of our current COVID situation, it’s so tough to graduate high school right now.
As Sam mentioned, starting your freshman year on Zoom, in your parents’ house, you’re getting maybe 10% of the experience — even if classes are 80% the same. Not having the ability to network in person and have those random interactions with classmates means you miss out on a big part of the experience.
I think the same goes for businesses who relied heavily on trade shows or other in-person events — they’re hurting because of it. The in-person experience is everything and, given the uncertainty of this COVID situation, businesses will have to adapt, finding new ways to reach potential customers, and replacing those in-person channels with digital ones.
The Networking Window
In our interview with Sam, he gave some great advice about the approach for students to take to build a network during school.
Sam describes school as a sort of palate-cleansing, an opportunity to start fresh. The window of time you’re in school presents a great opportunity to experiment, try new things, and meet new people in the process. This is the perfect environment for building a network — but you’re not in it forever.
After school, you get in a routine, stay on a path, and it’s harder to meet new people. The window for building your network becomes much more narrow, making the time you spend in school that much more important.
I agree with Sam’s thinking on this and believe all students should put a great deal of effort into getting to know their classmates, professors, and even industry professionals while in school. After all, you can’t play the “student card” after you graduate.
Want to Learn More?
You can watch Sam’s full video interview on our Demo Day website, or listen to his full episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Tune in next week as I share more learnings from Demo Day. Sending love from the entire CoEfficient Labs Team!
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