Shaping an EdTech Company From the Inside | Kennedy Davis & Taylor Shead

Taylor Shead: Let’s get the audience acquainted with who you are. So why don’t you introduce yourself?

Kennedy Davis: Well, I’m Kennedy Davis. I’ll be an incoming freshman at the University of Texas at Dallas. I graduated from Conrad’s dual enrollment program, and I’m very excited to talk.

I’ve been with Stemuli for more than a year, I think, now. So it’s been really exciting to see the whole process and just be a part of it.

Taylor Shead: I think we’re coming up on two years, Kennedy.

Kennedy Davis: Really? Wow, time goes by fast.

Outside of school, the biggest things I do are swimming a lot, especially in high school. I was captain of my swim team for two seasons, but I also enjoy creating content, and I have a few channels I still keep up with to this day.

I found Stemuli through my school. My vice principal recommended it to me, and my swim team manager also recommended the program to me. After that, I was able to access the community, and it was a really cool thing to do, because it was one of the first bigger things I’d done during high school with an actual company.

If I had to explain the League in one sentence, it’s basically a whole group of students that helps the game perform even better every time we meet.

We’re able to connect with students from across the country, not just in my school area, and get different opinions on the game. I remember when it started out, it felt like the opinions of the students weren’t really coming in yet. We had ideas, but slowly, as the game was built, you could see our ideas and what we’d thought of throughout these weekly meetings coming into the game. It was really cool to see everyone’s opinions being considered when making it.

We start off with the meeting. We have them every Saturday, and they’d be an hour or maybe a little longer, depending on what we were covering. Sometimes we’d actually get to try out the game, which was the best part for me, getting the hands-on experience. Other times we got to see new features being added.

The whole team would definitely help us with anything we needed if we were struggling with tools or needed help with the links. And Felix, I think, was the one who did the prompts and stuff for each of our challenges. Being able to have that outside experience and kind of make your own video, especially as someone who makes videos as a hobby, was pretty fun.

Having the team there, not just one person who shows up for this, but actually being involved with it, and sometimes even having some of the game engineers show up in certain meetings, that was cool for me, because I’d never really had that experience before. A lot of the time, it’s kind of like the students are in their own realm, and the actual game stuff is in a completely different area. But this time, it was actually merged together, which I liked a lot.

Co-Designing Orbi Math and Founder Tycoon

Taylor Shead: One thing I’m super proud of, just from working with the League, is that I’d estimate there are about 50 students in the League, on and off, every week.

But the fact that you all helped us identify the real problem that needed to be solved, I know with Orbi Math, for instance, the client we were working with was looking for an engaging way to teach math. When we started working with you all, I remember London at one point saying, “No, I need help right in the moment, right when I’m trying to do my math problem.”

That’s where we went from trying to make math curriculum that was career-focused and personalized to everybody, to saying, “Okay, let’s help students right in the moment where they need it. Bring your own problems, upload them to Orbi Math, and have all the manipulatives and everything else.”

And with Founder Tycoon, I remember when we first said, “Hey, y’all, we’re going to develop a tycoon game,” and gave you the challenge of developing your own tycoon games, where someone had an idea like a mall tycoon, and then it was a car dealership tycoon.

I also remember one of the first times our design team showed you all different styles the game could be in, and y’all said, “We want that style, we don’t like these, we want this one.” And I was just like, “I don’t know, whatever you all selected, let’s go with it.”

Taylor Shead: So I have a three-part question. I’m wondering: what did you learn from us at Stemuli by participating in the League, and what do you think you taught us at Stemuli by being in the League, whether it’s you or your other team members?

Kennedy Davis: Oh, man, that last part. I can definitely answer the first part. I think what I learned the most is communication and how to work in a team. I had some experience before, but not really in a more work-oriented setting, if that makes sense. It definitely forced me to be more outgoing with my opinions and learn how to express them in a way that would make sense to other people, instead of just keeping them to myself.

I remember when I first started, I was really nervous about talking, because it felt like a whole new realm of people, and I didn’t feel comfortable at first. But the team and everyone there was really nice, so it helped open me up a lot more. I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned throughout this whole time, alongside the AI skills throughout the game and some of the business skills I’ve picked up while playing some of the demos.

As for what we taught the team, I’d say it was being able to take ideas and actually turn them into something usable. In the meetings, you have all these different opinions about what something should look like. I remember we’d get polls sometimes, or we’d use emoji questions to help isolate what actually needed to be changed.

So at first, it was kind of just, “You spit out whatever you want to say,” but as the meetings went on, it definitely felt more streamlined, so people’s opinions could actually be used to make the game better.

I do remember the team saying, “Oh, that’s a good idea,” and it felt like my opinion was being used for something that could actually help kids keep playing the game. It was like, “Oh, okay, so I can say stuff, and it actually gets prioritized to a degree.”

Taylor Shead: The question on my mind is, when you look at the products Stemuli has developed, what percentage of the product do you think we gave you all the opportunity to give feedback on? Y’all were literally with us from the beginning of both Orbi Math and Founder Tycoon. So when you think about where the product is now and where it’s headed, how much of that would you say is influenced by student voice? If you were to put a percentage on the direction and everything we’ve taken.

Kennedy Davis: I’d honestly probably say more than half, in my opinion. Especially with Orbi Math, when that was first starting, I know we had a lot of input. And as Founder Tycoon slowly got built up, even with small things, like certain design changes, I remember something about shadows being presented that seemed so small, but those tiny things add up throughout the whole game process.

So I’d say probably more than half, maybe 60 to 70% in some cases, across the whole process for both Orbi Math and Founder Tycoon.

The Case for Co-Design in Education

Kennedy Davis: If there was co-design happening across every education product, what do you think the impact would be? And if you could talk to another CEO and tell them about the importance of co-design, what would you say?

The first thing I want to say is, yes, I absolutely agree co-design should be part of way more educational platforms. Throughout my K-12 years, especially during COVID, when a lot of things switched online, a lot of the programs just didn’t feel like they were helping me as a student.

It would feel like you had to do a lot of extra steps just to get to the actual learning process, and that can make learning feel more frustrating than fun. I think if a company had done co-design, where students were actually able to say, “Hey, this isn’t good, you shouldn’t be so punished just because you got one thing wrong,” that problem would’ve gone away instantly.

With Stemuli, there’d sometimes be something we didn’t like, or a process we didn’t understand, and it was often clarified or changed. But when you don’t have co-design, when you aren’t actually working with the people using the product, it can end up really misaligned, and the people using it don’t get the benefit they’re supposed to.

And that’s just one company. I know there are many others that just don’t work for the students using them day to day, not the ideal student who’ll be using it, but the real students going through this, who have to get good grades and make sure they’re performing well, for a lot of different reasons.

Having that extra stress of a program that doesn’t actually understand how they work doesn’t help, which is why co-design has been really valuable, especially with Stemuli and founder Taylor.

Taylor Shead: That’s a great answer, pretty cool to think about. So what do you think, if we could wave a magic wand and every company producing education products took a similar approach to Stemuli, what would the impact be on students, on the companies, on the field, if they chose to do that?

Kennedy Davis: On the students, I’d definitely say a lot less academic stress, because there’s already enough academic stress, especially once you’re getting closer to college age, trying to transition into that new part of your life and make sure everything’s good so you can perform well out in the real world.

For students, it would mean a lot less stress, and they could actually start learning instead of being worried about, “Let me not get this wrong so I don’t have to work for another two hours just to get back to where I was.” And for companies, I think they’d get a lot better feedback, and actual educational data that matches what they need, instead of students trying to game the system so they don’t have to do all this extra tedious work.

The data they get could actually help their students even more, showing them, “Okay, people aren’t performing as well here,” or “Maybe they’re doing better here.” And it would be based on real data, not just kids being annoyed by a system and not trying that hard, or trying to get through certain things quicker.

So I think those two things would work into each other. Students get more benefit from having a program that suits them, and companies get more benefit because they have real data from students actually using the platform as intended.

Memorable Moments from the League

Taylor Shead: Awesome. Now I want to talk a little about impact stories. Whether it’s something you heard from other League members or something you experienced with Stemuli, what are some of the lasting memories you have from our co-design sessions?

Kennedy Davis: I think the biggest one I remember is when we had our teams. I remember when we came together, we had, as students, certain team leaders. Our team had done Impact Engine, and different teams came from across the country. I know some were from the MVP program in Arkansas.

We presented our products, made our own merch, and got to share ideas about what a tycoon game would look like to us. At the time, I was confused, like, “A tycoon game? What’s that?” I think we were still mostly at the Orbi Math stage.

So I was like, “Okay, tycoon game, I don’t know, but here, let me just give my opinion.” As the game went on, I was like, “Wait, this started because of that small thing.” At first, I thought it was just for fun, or just to give us a group activity, but it turned out to actually lead into the Founder Tycoon that exists today.

That really stands out to me, especially being a team leader, since I was still kind of new to the Stemuli team and wasn’t sure I could actually do something like that. But it went really well.

I’d also say the impact of learning about AI stood out, because a lot of what I’d learned about AI before came from the internet and social media, and even though that’s good, it can feel a bit all over the place. Stemuli introduced me to AI in a much clearer way. I remember the AI challenge we had access to, that was really fun, getting to see the behind-the-scenes, instead of just random headlines, actually seeing how AI was used in Founder Tycoon or Orbi Math.

That was really valuable for me, especially heading into my career, since I was a junior in high school at the time. That’s an impact that’s really helped me throughout internships and other things I’ve been learning since.

Taylor Shead: Do you want to tell folks what you’ve built with AI, since you’ve learned more about it?

Kennedy Davis: Yes. The first and most important thing I built was a scholarship tracker. It helped me find different scholarships and organize them, because my system was super disorganized, just a Google Doc with a huge list of scholarships. It was a mess. Using Replit, I was able to create a program that could not just track, but actually find scholarships for me.

Some of the scholarships I tracked through that program, I kept my interview notes and everything organized, and I ended up winning some of them. If it weren’t for that tool, it would’ve been a lot messier, and I probably wouldn’t have kept track of things as well, especially since it was around finals season for me.

Having that system was definitely helpful. Then there was a Replit AI challenge we did with the MVP team, where I built a social media manager that helped generate new titles for me. That actually helped some of my videos perform better, since I hadn’t posted in a while because of academics.

It was cool to see how those small things, like the AI challenge, or just testing something out with Replit, ended up helping me in the long term. I don’t think I would’ve been doing any of that without Stemuli, honestly.

Taylor Shead: That’s super cool. What was the total dollar amount of scholarships you were awarded?

Kennedy Davis: I think it was around $40,000.

Taylor Shead: That’s amazing, congratulations. That’s a big deal.

Kennedy Davis: Thank you, I’m very grateful for that. But again, without that system, it would’ve been a lot more stressful. It was already kind of stressful, and extra stress wasn’t needed at all.

Bringing the Leagues Together

Taylor Shead: One of my favorite parts of the League is when we more recently brought the MVP League and the Arkansas League together. I had you all leading the sessions yourselves, calling on each other. I loved how, since y’all had gotten to know each other, you were asking each other great questions and knew who to call on. That was super cool to see.

Kennedy Davis: Yeah, I’d say I got some of the better feedback from those combined sessions. The MVP sessions were more centralized, more Dallas or Texas-focused. But having the expanded League, and being able to lead the conversations more, made it feel like a regular conversation instead of an interview. It was easier to talk about my ideas, or what I thought, because it felt like talking to other kids, which didn’t feel as intimidating.

Taylor Shead: I’ll share a couple of things, and then we’ll see if you have any last words.

Kennedy Davis: I remember the poll about what we wanted the agents to sound like. At first, it sounded kind of silly, because it was just random sounds, but once it was in the game, it actually felt incorporated, and I was like, “Oh, okay, I see now.”

Taylor Shead: Yeah, I remember that too. I think about how, when I hear students who use our platform but weren’t part of the League describe it as looking like a mix between Minecraft and Roblox, it’s like, “Wow, it looks like that because your generation is playing Minecraft and Roblox.” You gave us that feedback, and it ended up looking like that.

If I had to give a percentage of how much y’all’s feedback has been implemented into the game, I’d almost say we gave you the opportunity to give feedback on 100% of what we built. We may have ended up choosing different directions at different points, but I feel like everything you told us you didn’t like or loved, we were trying to find solutions for. I think that’s so cool.

Kennedy Davis: I agree. I know there’s stuff behind the scenes that happens that students don’t see, which is fine, since most of what we do see impacts the game more, but those smaller business decisions, I know that’s involved too.

But I’d say the majority of the game did come from a lot of our feedback, which is something I hadn’t experienced before. I play a few games, and often the company just decides, “Okay, we’re doing this,” and regardless of how the community or players feel, it doesn’t matter, you just deal with it. But here, we were actually able to make changes, and if we didn’t like something, it would be considered instead of brushed aside.

Behind the Scenes with the Stemuli Team

Taylor Shead: Here’s another cool thing I know you and a few others got to do. I think you’re in our Slack channel now. Do you remember any of the meetings you came to where the entire Stemuli team was there?

Kennedy Davis: Oh yes, I remember the first one I joined. I was thinking, “Should I join or not?” But when I went in, I felt fine, it didn’t feel super strict or like, “We have to do this.” It felt like a flow of conversation, and I got to see more of the behind-the-scenes, like the actual studio being built, each of the avatars, and it was cool getting to see it actually being used.

A lot of the time in the Stemuli meetings, we’d see more of the finished product of something we’d suggested. But seeing it built from the ground up, with the different engineers, game designers, and educational designers helping out and giving feedback based on what we’d said, that was pretty cool. Seeing what we’d said in previous meetings actually being discussed in these conversations, which I know some other students don’t get to see, was really cool.

Taylor Shead: I remember the day you came in and it was basically our entire team. I’d told the League students, “Hey, we have developers from all around the world,” and you were like, “For real, Italian?” It was so cool when y’all came in and the team started introducing themselves, and you found out everybody really is from all over the US and all over the world. I’d say our team feels like their connection to the League is one of the most meaningful parts of their job.

I know there’ve been a few times you’ve popped into those meetings, but hearing from y’all, getting your feedback, and figuring out how we continue to improve the product and meet the mission of the company, is certainly, for some people, their favorite part of the job.

Kennedy Davis: For me, when I first heard about Stemuli, I remember looking at the YouTube channel and seeing the game demos from the beginning, and seeing the game now, it’s completely different, but also the same, in the sense that our feedback actually made this game. If you put them side by side, you’d probably say, “That’s the same game,” because of us, the students, and what we gave based on our feelings or what we thought should be changed.

Looking Ahead

Taylor Shead: So what’s your highest hope for the products we’ve developed together? If you think about the impact it has on other students, and if you’re representing all the other team members in the League, what’s your highest hope for what the product does in the world?

Kennedy Davis: I hope other students get to enjoy it as much as we have, because when you see it being built, you see each part, and then when it comes together into the full thing, you’re like, “Oh, this is the game, this is what happens when all the puzzle pieces connect.”

I hope other students can learn from it too, because I think the game has some really good business and AI skills built in, which is really important in today’s world with all the new changes. I remember one of the League members saying, “You feel like a founder,” and I’d definitely say that. You feel like you’re in control of this, and this is what’s going to happen based on what you’re saying.

Having the real-life feeling events happen, where there’s going to be some conflict, it’s not like you instantly go up and just keep going straight. It’s ups and downs. Sometimes it can feel like, “Oh no, I don’t know what’s going on,” and sometimes you’re doing really well. Either way, I think the game teaches you, especially with Orbi, that you can get help, even if you’re struggling.

So I hope that carries over to other students, and I hope they can take those skills and what they learn from the game into the real world and into their careers. A lot of what I’ve learned is almost like a mini beta version of stuff you do in real life, if that makes sense.

Taylor Shead: That’s a great way to describe it, a beta version of real life. Let’s go practice this out. Well, that’s all the questions I have for you, Kennedy. Do you have any questions for me, or anything last you want to tell the audience?

Kennedy Davis: I guess one thing I’d ask is, if you look back years ago when this all started, did you expect it to go to where we’re at now?

Taylor Shead: That’s an amazing question. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’d say two things. One, did I have a dream of wanting to impact very diverse students, from rural and urban schools, online and in person, across different geographies and socioeconomic statuses? Yes, absolutely, I wanted that to happen, but I had no idea how it would come to life.

The second thing I’d say is, before the Gates Foundation taught us what it was like to do rapid cycle development, we almost had that infrastructure already, because our partnership with Conrad is now about ten years long. That first group I met with, we developed our products together. So we almost had an instinct or intuition that this was the right way to do it.

But what’s been completely surprising is the impact you all have shared that the League has had on you. We’ve had students say, “Sometimes my home life isn’t amazing, sometimes I don’t have great friends around me, but now I have this community.” It brought me to tears hearing some League students talk about buying their first cars with the money they earned.

Kennedy Davis: I remember that meeting.

Taylor Shead: Yeah. I watch y’all’s videos in between sessions, and I remember I was on a walk one day, having kind of a hard day, and I was listening to the videos, and when Micah said, “Yeah, I actually bought a car, and I’m confident, and I know how to do public speaking,” things even adults are afraid to do, that part I couldn’t have predicted, the impact the League would have on you all, and then, in turn, the impact you all would have on us during this process.

The very last thing I’ll say is, I was telling the team this morning, we’re getting ready to launch with one of our largest clients for Founder Tycoon, and we’re essentially going to go from about 1,000 users to potentially 70,000 monthly active users.

The fact that we built that product together, and that it’s grown like that in such a short amount of time, that’s something that will stay with me forever. I dreamed about it and wanted it to happen, but now that it’s here, and we’re about 30 days from launching this product to tens of thousands of students, and it was built by students, basically, we were just the engineers. Y’all were telling us what to do, and we were figuring out how to make it happen. That’s something I couldn’t have predicted, how it would feel to be where we are right now.

Kennedy Davis: I’m really excited. I hope the other students, once it launches, are able to have as much fun as we did with Founder Tycoon, and hopefully learn something from it instead of just trying to cheat the system.

I know a lot of other educational platforms, kids complain about. I don’t want this to be the game kids complain about or try to get through, and I don’t think it will be, because I’ve had a great time with the experience, and I know a lot of other people from the League, and the Arkansas League, have really enjoyed it too.

Taylor Shead: Excellent. Well, I’m so proud of you, and I can’t wait as we continue working together on this journey, seeing how you impact the world. If you didn’t ask me this, but if my highest hope for the work we do together is that everybody in the League takes the skills they learn, public speaking, building confidence, how to develop products, how to take something from an idea on paper and turn it into something real, that’s my highest hope for all of you: that you’re able to impact the world, in your own community, with the skills you’ve learned.

Kennedy Davis: Yes, I hope so too. Thank you so much for the encouragement and praise throughout this whole process, because I know it’s helped me a lot with some of the things I ended up doing later, that I would’ve never expected myself doing. Without Stemuli, I think it’s would’ve been a lot harder for me.

Guest Links: 

• Taylor Shead
• Stemuli
• Kennedy Davis
• AIMS Collaboratory