TechVibe Radio Dives Deep with Othot

TechVibe Radio is back on air at ESPN 970 AM every Saturday at 8:00 a.m. from the Huntington Bank Studio.

 

Audrey and we have one of Pittsburgh's coolest tech dudes hanging out with us from a company called Othot. I'm talking about someone who I would call a tech pioneer in Pittsburgh.

Wow, you are really really stroking this guy's ego. I'm trying to you know. Yeah, I hear we have an old guy coming online. You can't see how good Andy Hannah actually looks. Exactly. I'm happy to have Andy on the show. And with him is Amy Baker. Absolutely. So why don't we just jump in and say who's Andy? Who's Andy Hannah? And who's Amy Baker?

Yeah. And what do you guys do, though?  Yeah, sure. So I'm one of the cofounders of Othot,  currently the chairman. And I'm also the chief partnership officer here. So I build relationships within the communities that that can benefit from our thoughts platform, and that we can help. And then around the Pittsburgh tech scene for about 30 years.

See, that's why I said tech pioneer. And you've been there done that across a bunch of different companies. I think it's just so cool.

So talk about Othot real quick. And then we'll bring Amy on. Yeah.

Yeah, sure. So Othot, what we've done here is we built an AI platform, that can be used by higher education, decision makers to help them make AI informed decisions, using predictionss. So taking the data, making predictions, and then figuring out what can best help them reach their goals, whether it be for enrolling best fit students, or helping retain them and graduate them, or keeping them engaged as alumni.

You know, it's great, because you think about right now, you know, in terms of COVID, it's almost like you launched this at such an interesting time. I know you've been at it for how many years in terms of Othot. Believe it or not six and a half, six and a half, we were in the lab, we were in the lab, stealthy for a while doing things behind the scenes, and then kind of coming out and finding that industry niche that you guys have been doing so well, within really great AI from afar. I'm telling you, I think you're like in the right space at the right time for this work.

Think about that. Just the timing and the way people make decisions and, you know, the recruitment strategies, and all the pressures that colleges and universities are going through. You couldn't be couldn't be, you know, doing this work in more critical time. I think, Oh, it's not just from the student side.

Well, it's incredibly rewarding, right to see that we can have people in enrollment help fill their classrooms, but we can also help keeps kids in school. I mean, that's, that's the main thing is how do we graduate more students into great jobs. And you need something like an AI platform to really help you understand the individual students, and how they can be individually impacted. We're, we're well beyond the idea of let's segment, let's look at people in groups of people. Now, let's look at the individual. And now which is always great. I mean, that's, it's really, it's the transformation of having democratization of information and then siloing it individually is quite powerful. You know, most Dell tried to do that with computers like years ago, right. You know, put it through the pipeline and individualize your laptop Who would have thought that here we are 25 years later. Taking it like in a molecular way for students. So it's it's terrific, everybody, let's just put it. Let's introduce Amy real quick. And then we'll get back to talking about Othot. Hi, Amy. Oh, it's great to see you.

Yeah. And so what do you do at Othot?

So I'm Vice President of Marketing here at the thought I joined the company in early September full time, I was working with them a little bit on a part time basis up until then, Andy and I have been talking for what will be two years almost prior to me joining. So we've been working on this conversation for a while. And I think so many of the things you said, are all the reasons why I'm so excited to be a part of it. But I think this is the right product at the right time in the market, there's a huge shift going on in the market for higher ed. And I'm really excited about the value that the solution can provide. When they are in such a difficult situation, honestly, it's gonna be harder and harder for them to meet their goals and to drive revenue for their institution. And I know we can help them see that.

Where do you see some of the biggest opportunities in terms of the of the sectors because when you talk about higher ed, it's a broad market.

It is a broad market, but they're, you know, there's not an institution that doesn't have an issue that they're trying to solve. Even if you're a top tier University, there's something that you want to be able to do better, it may be that you want to shape the class differently if you're a high tier school, whereas if you're a Midwest, smaller regional public school, you need to fill your classroom. So you there's the in AI can help you drive the decisions that either attract the right students, or understand what their needs are, from a financial perspective, or understand what might cause them to struggle while they're in college. And how do you combat that that's, that's what I'd love to see is when you can tell a university, here's your students that are going to have issues in their first year. So figure out how you're going to serve them differently, how are you going to help them become successful? So it's a really awesome way to use technology to improve higher education? I wonder, could you like walk us through? Like, what did you guys discover that that education was going to be your niche? Now you say you said, You spent a lot of time in the in the lab kind of knew getting the AI to work, then all of a sudden find this segment? Like, man, this is what we're gonna go for?

Yeah, so I, you guys might remember. But I used to teach entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University, and I teach analytics and entrepreneurship at the University of Pittsburgh. So education has always been a part of me. And when we started a company, in, you know, with John Abbataco, and Jeremy Garvey, you know, we we started saying, okay, we want to democratize artificial intelligence and make it accessible to any industry. And so we started playing around with industries and because of my relationship at Pitt, and with Mark Harding there, who heads up enrollment, you know, we start talking about these ideas of how higher education could benefit from this. And they said, Look, we're willing to be your first customer. And we were like, that's awesome. And then we went, right? And said, What do you guys think in a smaller University, Rhodes College in Tennessee said, yeah, this sounds great. So it was like, before we knew it, we had two customers, and we just had a platform. And then we had to figure out how do we point the platform to solve problems at higher education happen?

But what are they people who don't use Othot right now? I mean, my hope is that you'll conquer the market. But people who don't use Othot, what do they do? What are what are they doing to address this issue?

Yeah, throwing darts at a wall? Are they trying to figure out what to do next? Maybe some But yeah, I think every every institution is doing some type of analytics, you know, so even the very basic everybody does. Everybody has a spreadsheet, with names on it groups, I'm in a certain way. And that's just not very efficient and very sort of archaic. I mean, we need platforms that understand. A student touches a university, every single day it visited goes to its website, receives something in the mail goes to counseling session. So we learn about that student every single day. You know, the person who has a spreadsheet that's doing segment analysis, isn't getting that type of real time information. So we take analytics to a whole different level, and we're basically replacing, or more or less augmenting what they do internally with a much more powerful solution.

So what kind of data sets you guys crunching and looking at?

Well, first of all, so the number one all of our models, one of the really cool things about overthought is every model is individualized to every university that we work with. So there is no generic model. Okay? technology allows us to say this is a student that you know, how it relates to your university. So, then we take all the rich data that universities have about their students who've been students for four or five years all the way through today. So we're learning about those students. And then we augment that with external information, so we pull a lot of data from the census, we pull a lot of data from sort of high school type data and macroeconomic data. What we don't do is we don't we don't take any fishy data. We're not we don't scrape you know, sites that you know, that people may think that they Well, we, we only use what the university would feel comfortable with us using.

So that how does it help? Um, in terms of achieving, you know, diverse and equitable attraction to universities?

Yeah, it's a huge. So this is a huge piece of what we do. So institutions want diversity, right? So diversity of everything that you can imagine whether it's, you know, it's it's race, ethnic background, whether it's geographic background in so that the how do you do that you have to set your goals as a university that you want to fill the certain buckets with? The people. So what you do then is within the segment, that you say, Okay, this is this is a group of people that I really want to attract, say, There's 1000 people in them, the platform is able to tell you, who are the top 100 of that group that actually are best for your institution, best meeting, they fit, and they're gonna be there. And then the platform tells you what can I best do, what action can I take to actually increase the probability that they'll enroll in our universe?

So is that used for both attraction and retention?

Yep, attraction and retention, and getting the best job when you graduate?

And getting the best job, okay?

Well, meaning it matches what you want to do what you want to do, right? So it matches your interest.

Okay. That is in light of covid. One of the things that the team did is that they created a new model that ignored any sort of standardized test, because let's imagine no more than 50% of students weren't able to take standardized tests. So now they created a new model that says, How do we predict the best students without standardized testing, which, by the way, was a staple of admissions for decades. And so now we have a view of what are the alternative ways we can look at what are the best fit students without testing without the standard. So that was a really great adjustment that the business had made. When COVID came in,

began on the fly. Super exciting stuff, we're gonna get back with more of this awesome conversation we're having with Andy, Hannah and Amy Baker from Oh thought, when Pittsburgh's coolest AI companies, I'm just tickled to talk to you guys today, because this is just exciting to be to see this type of work in action. Plus, when we get back, we're gonna talk a little bit more about what's going on in Pittsburgh tech sector. Because Andy, you are a pioneer in this. As I said before, Amy, you're no stranger to it as well, either. You've worked for quite a few tech companies. Over the years, you guys both have some really awesome insight as to what's working and what's not working at this birch tech sector because we want to be as good as it can possibly be. But we're taking a quick break and we're coming back with more Techvibe Radio. This is Jonathan Kersting.

And this is Audrey Russo.

Learn more about us at PGH tech.org.

 

 

Welcome back, everybody. Audrey, I am super pumped to have our two friends from Othot hanging out with us here on TechVibe Radio, we have Andy Hannah and Amy Baker. Guys, thanks for hanging in there and taking a quick break with us. And coming back to talk more about Othot how you guys have pivoted a bit over COVID-19. And it's just such a cool story. And Andy, like I said, this is like what your six or seventh company, you're like the company creator here in Pittsburgh, I think it's kind of fun. And I love seeing the traction that you've been getting here as of late. And so let's talk more about that stuff, man. So like, I mean, before we went to break, Amy was mentioning just how you're able to on the fly be able to pull out and not pull you academic data of test score data from students. So schools could still get a good picture as to whether a student would do well in their in their institution. So tell us more about that.

Yeah, I think that's one of the really powerful things of really sound AI platform is it doesn't rely on the relationship of one variable to another, it takes into account everything about an individual so that we understand them deeply. So for example, what we one of the things that we're able to do is that we're under were able to understand the impact that financial aid might have on an individual. So during the time of COVID, you know, financial aid becomes much more sensitive to individuals. So we can help schools understand where that sensitivity is related to each individual. So Amy had already mentioned test scores, we don't have test scores, we've also showed our you know, you can't visit a campus, right? So if you it's very powerful variable being able to visit a campus. And so if that if you don't have that, you have to ask yourself, what's the next most powerful action that I can take to help convince a student to enroll the university? So our platform can help schools understand what will what will move that needle, what will make it more likely for that individual to enroll in the university.

You also have another angle we talked with so we're talking with Andy Hannah at Othot, so if you can go to Othot.com, right?  People are listening. And we have Amy Baker here who runs marketing. If you think about Othot, the whole life cycle of education, particularly, it's just look at higher ed, just what happens now in schools like in the in the period of time, where, where they go to schools to do recruitment? Do you help by having them hone in on where the right schools are when you know when to make an appearance at the school? What happens now on COVID?

You know, what we help, what we help universities do is understand who's most likely to visit? Or Who's most likely to apply or Who's most likely to enroll. So we help those universities really hone in on those individual students. And if they're unable to visit, then what's the next best action to take? It might be calling them on the phone, it might be a particular marketing brochure, or it's it's looking at all the the tools that you have at your disposal, and helping you maximize the impact of them.

It's not one solution anymore. So if Amy's working over at one university, and you're working at a college, to different solutions to different strategies, on what you're trying to attract. That's right. That's right. What if What are the other issues that universities and colleges are facing right now alumni, Alumni Engagement?

Like you know, I think alumni engagements always always been a question how do we get alumni more involved? And I and alumni, it's changing. So one thing that's that's really cool to think about, is that we follow a student from the day we meet them in high school, until they're the days that they're active alumni so we accumulate data and analytics, all that's some powerful stuff.

Yeah. So we're able to say what are the actions that are going to make an alumni more engaged, or make them or you know, help them decide to make a bigger donation? University. Let me tell you about what's the really, really most powerful thing here, which is lifelong learning. Right? So ultimately, universities are going to have an ongoing relationship with their graduates and continuously provide them with education throughout their career and throughout their lives. Hmm, you can only do that if you have the information about them from when they were a student through their first jobs. So you want that information so that you can continue to feed them that that information that education over that over that life cycle.

Really interesting, really highly valuable. So Amy, is there a difference? So you in the marketing role that you have and that you just joined the company, you will be involved in every stage of the lifecycle development, right?

Absolutely. So we are further along in supporting different stages of the lifecycle. So of course, from enrollment, recruiting, financial aid, we're all really strong at that. And that's really well on its way earlier this year, just before COVID they launched their student success or retention solution. And now we are focusing on advancement, which would I'm sorry, postgraduate success and advancement, those are more future and really a proof of concept stages. But yes, absolutely. All of those. And that's actually one of the unique things about the solution a really is full lifecycle for the students perspective and for the university as well. And so they can make sure that this is a little bit more of a matchmaking approach really up who's best fit both from a student perspective and a university perspective.

So like, I would imagine and wish that you know, because college isn't for everyone, universities aren't for everyone. But there are a whole bunch of, you know, what are referred to as stackable skills that can be acquired. And at some point, I'd love to see a thought play in that space as well. You know, you think about the number of Jonathan and I just had a chance to talk with Ira Moskowitz, it's from the ARM Institute. And he talked about stackable skill sets, and the demands for robotic missions are generic becoming robotic technicians, just so you want to know what Yeah, next year, Audrey I are gonna become robotic technicians, just a just a backup. So anyway, the point is, is that that's also I could see your work, having, being able to harness those other options as well, right, because there's part of the issue that's happened in America is that if you don't go to college, then what we went through this, you know, college is the only way, you don't have an on ramp, but we've lost a lot of people as a result of not having something in there. Do you see yourselves somehow getting into that space as well?

I would love it over the long term. I think what what, you know, what we're all about is the best outcomes for individuals. Now, those individual college students, but why does that have to stop at college? Right? So every everybody needs certain skills, experiences that are going to give them the best outcome. And that's how I'd like to see Oh, god eventually go.

It's really exciting. I love the way that the way that you started the company that you know, over five years ago, and when we were looking at predictive analytics inside of businesses, etc. And then you sort of latched into an area that is absolutely just so timely and so important, particularly as the skills gap. Everyone's trying to figure out some crazy solution for the skills gap. And instead, I imagine that you will be able to have my own persona. Not his own persona, right? You trapped me in high school, right? You track me on and it's like these people know me. Yeah, but I mean, I find that you know, just just important.

Yeah. So what's next?

So what's next for us? Is, as Amy has mentioned, there's two nodes of our platform that we really want to to get into the market, which is the alumni side, and postgraduate success and postgraduate success is all about helping students get the best job, they can have the best placement that they can add a manageable amount of debt,  cuz that's such a huge problem. Now with the amount of debt people are taking on to get jobs that really can't pay back, which is just incredible. It's because it makes me so proud that like, it's a Pittsburgh company that's coming up with these kinds of solutions that are really going to impact the entire world. I just think it's so cool. So cool. Dude, we got a couple minutes left. And you know, I kept talking about at being a tech pioneer. And you said before me more than 30 years in Pittsburgh's tech, see? I mean, how much have you seen it? Get better? Is it gotten worse? What do we need more of? Like, I could ask you 1000 questions, and we only have like three minutes left. And I'm like, Oh,

I appreciate that question. You know, my first startup I was with was internet securities back in 1995. So literally, long time ago, never knew that about it. Okay.

And, you know, we had to move the company out of Pittsburgh, we moved to Boston, because we didn't have the infrastructure here in Pittsburgh. I can't imagine moving a company out of Pittsburgh today.

I love hearing that.

I think that we have the critical mass that we need the people technology of support from organizations like the Technology Council, I mean, to Audrey, you literally have been a sales lead on at least two or, oh, I could I could sell your stuff all day long.

I love it.

I absolutely really understand it. It's easy. It's easy. And in the world that Jonathan and I live in, we live with, with these people in terms of better leading higher education institutions. And look, we're able to recruit people like Amy, you know, just coming off of incredibly successful exit and be nice to her. Andy.

Right. I'm trying That's why, you know, we were talking for two years. It took me that long, you know, I've never been fast, Audrey, you know, we speak for just a little bit. I would say the other part of that answer is I think too often. organizations don't see how much talent there is in the city. And sometimes people from the outside looking in, say, Oh, you can't possibly find the talent you need in Pittsburgh for this business. And they're wrong all the time. And it's frustrating to watch people come in from the outside and say those things because this is not true. Now, it's not true whatsoever. But it's based on a long legacy. It's not based on today's news. But it's a it's a legacy.

Yeah. But that's why I think that the fact that I've been around for 25 plus years in this community, I've seen a change, I have the ability to look across a timespan and say, every fundamental piece of the ability to build a company has changed for the better, doesn't mean that we can't get better. But come on, look at companies like Niche and Duolingo I mean, it's crazy. Maybe machine. I mean, we bought some of the best startup companies in the country here. And it's just the beginning. Yeah, we're at the beginning.

I agree with you. 100%. And he just pumped us all up. For more information about Othot gp to www.othot.com.

Absolutely great to have you guys on the show. Time goes by way too fast. And we're having we're gonna have you back on very soon because we want more updates about the alumni stuff you're working on. Like it just it just makes me so pumped.

Thank you for doing what you guys are doing supporting the community. It's just great. Thank you.

Great stuff. Hey, another tech vibe under our belt Audrey. We got to like take the seatbelts off. Now we can get out of the old TechVibe rocket ship here and enjoy the rest of our weekend. But we'll be back next Saturday every Saturday bringing you awesome stories like that. Andy Hannah and Amy Baker at Othot. This has been Jonathan Kersting and this is Audrey Russo.

I can keep on saying from the Pittsburgh Technology Council learn more about us at PGH tech.org. We've got so many ways to help your tech company succeed, then check it out. Thanks for listening to tech vibe radio coming at you from the Huntington Bank studios.