Launching at SXSW EDU: Quantity Time Required for Quality Time

As an educator, a four-time education entrepreneur, and a father of three daughters, I’ve learned that to get that vaunted and valuable thing called “quality time,” there are few shortcuts — you’ve got to commit quantity time to get quality time. And, quality time is needed to drive learning! But, physics teaches us that time is elastic… and, on occasion, there are opportunities to compress time and reach quality time quickly. SXSW EDU has been one of those unique opportunities for us.

In 2015, our company, Lea(R)n, was less than a year old, recently graduated from the Kaplan Techstars accelerator, and just exiting a slew of successful betas with schools, districts and states, when we were accepted as one of 10 global companies to compete in LAUNCH at SXSW EDU.

Our team thought, “What a great chance to share our new technology with more people?!? We’re in!”

Of course, as an early stage company, our small but growing team was wearing many hats and, of course, cash was tight. Cash is always tight! After some discussion, we decided to bite the bullet, split an Airbnb with one of our great early investors, and have the whole founding team attend.

It was one of the best decisions we made that year! The combination of hallway connections, content sessions, and social events allowed us to compress useful quantity time into quality time, and gather feedback and guidance that has had profound impact on our platform and services, positioning and growth. In just a few days, our team met leaders from every corner of education — innovative educators, companies, investors, foundations, consultants, thought leaders — and we had MEANINGFUL, QUALITY CONVERSATIONS that are all so rare these days.

We came to participate in the Launch competition — and through that, I can tell you the coaching from the judges resulted in shifts to our pitch that we still use today. Through the practice and the main LAUNCH event, we introduced ourselves and our technology to the entire market… But, it was the engagement and quality conversations that keep us coming back every year.

We still get folks telling us, “When I saw you guys at SXSW EDU that first time, I knew your team was onto something big!”

We tell them, “Actually, that’s when we figured out we were on to something really big too!” With more than 20 meetings a day, quality conversations, and relationships that continue to help us today, we have to credit SXSW EDU as the place we coalesced a view of the education sector, found our place in it and launched LearnPlatform to equip educators and their organizations to easily streamline, organize and rapidly analyze all their edtech to improve budgets and student outcomes.

And, since then, SXSW EDU has been one of those valuable, annual touchstones to connect, engage, and have quality time with educators and leaders like us, committed to positively impacting teaching and learning. We’ll be there in 2018 too for some more quality time!

Guest post courtesy of

Karl Rectanus
Co-founder, Lea(R)n

Karl Rectanus is a former teacher and administrator who co-founded Lea(R)n to expand equitable access for all students to the education technology that works for them. More than 2,000 schools, districts, state and universities use LearnPlatform to improve budgets and student outcomes.

Photo by Rebecca Hedges.