914: LIVE From the 2024 ⁠Career Education Convention⁠ - with Shiroy Aspandiar, Co-Founder/COO at Dreambound

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to ed up on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. This is Dr. Joe Sallustio back with another episode and we're giving my guest co-host Douglas Carlson, head of partnerships at Lead Squared, a little taste of what it's like to do podcast after podcast after podcast here live. Douglas, how are you feeling today?

Douglas Carlson: This is fun. I'm having a really good time.

Joe Sallustio: You're having a good time? Need another cup of coffee yet?

Douglas Carlson: Probably.

Joe Sallustio: And you will need one if you don't need one now. You're gonna need one after lunch when you get that food hit in your belly. It's gonna be like, goodness. We got to talk all day long. It'll really get you tonight when you have to go to dinner and talk to a bunch of people. My wife always says to me after I podcast, she's like, "Let's talk." I don't want to talk. I've talked to everybody including Douglas Carlson.

Anyway, we've got another great guest in front of us today as we continue to talk about amazing work being done for partners in and around college and career college education. And we've got a great person. Let's get him in right now. Let's see, this one. We haven't used this one today, have we?

He's Shiroy Aspandiar. He's co-founder and CEO at Dream Bound. What's up, Shiroy? How are you?

Shiroy Aspandiar: Great. It's great to be here.

Joe Sallustio: Great to have you. And sorry for the pause there. I'm a little off my game right now as we get closer to lunch. But this is the second time we've had somebody from Dream Bound on. Had your co-founder and CEO, I think, on Athena. She was great. And we did a Metarita conference, actually, just very similar to this. So tell us again about DreamBound. What do you guys do? How do you do it?

Shiroy Aspandiar: DreamBound is a search engine for adult learners to find career and vocational training opportunities, everything from business, technology, allied health, and the industrial trades. We help them find the right training program for them.

Joe Sallustio: The thought that students don't get exposed to as many program options as they should. And so being able to display the number of colleges that helps them become more aware and better buyers. I think that's a huge part of it.

Shiroy Aspandiar: First, we actually just started doing it manually. We were helping people connect with allied health training and we found that people needed very different things. And if they went online, it was quite hard for them to find the right training. Some needed something that was with a flexible schedule because they worked full time. Others definitely did not want something that was online because they could only learn in person. Others needed financial aid, some wanted an accelerated program. So pretty quickly we found that if you couldn't find a good website that would allow you to really browse and filter and find detailed information, you were most often not finding the right program for you. And that's how we built DreamBound.

Joe Sallustio: Where did the idea come from? Whose idea was this? You and Athena sitting around going, hey, let's start a search engine website where we can display higher education opportunities. What does this look like? Where were you when this happened? What were you eating? You know, give us the whole story.

Shiroy Aspandiar: It's actually starting, well, it was originally Athena's idea. We met at a coffee shop in San Francisco. She said that she wanted to help more Americans find career and vocational training that we needed to help close our skill labor gap in the country. And we began to kind of look at the problem from everything from helping a person find a program all the way to getting a job. And then we decided to really focus on helping people find and discover the right program.

Joe Sallustio: Amazing. Douglas?

Douglas Carlson: So this is obviously a two-sided marketplace. So I think you've done a really great job just peeking at your website here, which is fun. Being able to display that and do the kind of the search side for students. Tell us about the other side of the marketplace. How do you go out and vet programs? How do you think about that? How do you think about educational partners?

Shiroy Aspandiar: Yeah, absolutely. I think, well first, we look for schools that are accredited or are on the WIO database or state approved to be able to offer the proper credential and training. And then for students, we've done so much work with SEO and organic content. Helping them to choose between maybe a surgical tech program or a medical assistant program. A lot of people, they know that they want to maybe enter the healthcare industry, but they don't know where to start and they don't know the difference in nuances between the programs. So we help generate a lot of content that helps them ultimately discover what's good for them.

Douglas Carlson: Interesting. How do you then approach educational institutions? Do you already have a sense of what programs you want in your database? Or is it more of a discovery conversation? What's that look like?

Shiroy Aspandiar: Yeah, we try to be pretty selective because we want to make sure that whatever's on our platform will help you get an in-demand job quickly. So we have about 85 or so different programs and it's growing. But we want to make sure that we're curating it carefully. Like you won't find a liberal arts program on DreamBound. There won't be like an English certificate program.

Joe Sallustio: So the job piece is important. It's the most important criteria. Like if we put this up here, it has to result in some kind of employment. I think that's what the consumers are looking for more, they're looking for opportunities that will result in a given job at the end of the day.

Douglas Carlson: Interesting. So it's kind of a thing through the full piece. So it's obviously the student, you have the matching engine, you have the selected educational institutions, but you also are really reflecting the actual job market and what's there. How do you get the information, what information are you looking at to make the decisions on, we should really be promoting Surge Tech or Veterinary Tech or cosmetology, whatever the right piece is, how do you go about looking at that data or finding that data?

Shiroy Aspandiar: Yeah, I think that BLS data is an important component of that, making sure that we're also just listening to employers in schools for what they're seeing from student demand. And then also just because we have this search engine component, we're able to look in real time and see what students are searching for and what they're excited about.

Joe Sallustio: What are they excited about? What are they searching for?

Shiroy Aspandiar: Yeah. Some things that really surprised me were like sterile processing technician training. Like I hadn't even heard of it before searching for it. Medical assistance is pretty popular on the platform, medical billing and coding as well. Pharmacy technician, cybersecurity, data analytics, UI/UX design. Those are some of the more popular programs.

Joe Sallustio: Do you notice any fluctuations in degree versus non-degree lately? What's got more juice right now?

Shiroy Aspandiar: Well, we really started focusing on non-degree programs. So certificate and diploma programs. We think that that trend is continuing in our country for sure. If you look at Gen Z, there's so many articles right now about how they're really questioning if the four-year option is the right option for them. They're looking for something that's shorter, that has less risk, less financial cost. So I think that directionally the country is moving in more of the non-degree certificate programs.

Joe Sallustio: So is it part of the business model here? You're casting as wide a net as possible. You're marketing Dream Bound to anybody who's looking for higher education and then you're passing on that lead to the institution at a cost. Can you talk about that model?

Shiroy Aspandiar: Yeah, I think one caveat would be that we're actually more focused on the adult learner primarily. We find that they have the most need and they might be reentering the workforce, so looking to level up from retail. So that's who we mostly are supporting and serving. And then yes, we work with schools on usually a per-inquiry or per-lead basis to help drive enrollments.

Joe Sallustio: How's the demand for that right now? Because schools, they fluctuate. Some are looking at, there's always been companies that have existed, I think you're doing it a lot better, but to complement some of those organic efforts that this school is going through to help them round out a class or build enrollment in a particular program that might be hurting. Do you see demand up down? How was your growth path, will you?

Shiroy Aspandiar: We see school demand as it's... I mean, it's actually been quite easy for us to be able to grow and scale. I think if you're doing things the right way, if you have strong organic traffic, if you're not trying to make life difficult for both the student and the school by trying to sell that inquiry multiple different times, which we do not do, it's actually quite easy to be able to partner with a lot of institutions. They're looking for a great platform like DreamBound. And yeah, we've been able to grow through conferences like CQ and Insight TDU that Athena was at. Yeah, it's awesome to be there.

Douglas Carlson: Honestly, I think too, if you do this well, marketing can be a great revenue driver for the school at the end of the day. I think that sometimes schools are a little reluctant to invest into marketing efforts, but if it pays off and it's cost effective, you can really turbocharge your growth. Where these students might be. And obviously the power of online is even if it's a US-based institution, you can be anywhere in the world. Do you have any data or any sense for location of students? Have you taken a geographic strategy at all or is it just the net pretty wide open?

Shiroy Aspandiar: Very wide open throughout the United States. We're not doing too much yet to attract international audiences. I know that some schools are interested in that, that's coming for us, but we've really focused on casting a huge wide net nationwide. We of course do drive more traffic in some of the larger states, but yeah, we have students from all over the country that are finding DreamBound.

Joe Sallustio: You know, one of the things I like about what you guys are doing is you're putting exam prep information up on some of these programs. Like there is an exam, there is a state license, there isn't. You have to get a certificate. Here's the hours you need. You're really providing detailed program information that is sometimes hard to find on a college website. And if you have to look it up 10 times or 12 times, if you're looking at 10, 12 different schools, which a lot of students are looking at multiple schools, how to keep track of it, how do you keep it where it is. When you think about, maybe the better question is, how do you decide what information to display? Is it, right? Because there is so much information. You know, the way the class schedules are, the calendars, the... How do you decide what to display and what not to display?

Shiroy Aspandiar: We've tried really hard to think critically about what are the decision drivers that would help somebody, you know, ultimately land in the right training program. And we found that duration is hugely important, information about cost, the learning modality, and then ultimately what is it going to take for me to be able to land this job so that's where the certification and examination components come in as well. So we've really tried to structure around like what we think they'll need to absolutely know so that once they connect with the admissions officer they're like a, you know, halfway informed already.

Joe Sallustio: And what are you... who are you serving primarily with your institutions? So nonprofits, for-profits, career colleges, publics, I mean give us a...

Shiroy Aspandiar: From the proprietary schools to large online learning providers to, you know, your accredited nonprofit organizations as well. It's truly, truly a wide, wide net. We also work with coding bootcamps too.

Joe Sallustio: Do you find that... And sorry Douglas...

Douglas Carlson: No, you're on a roll. Keep going.

Joe Sallustio: Do you find that there has to be some kind of vetting process, right? I would imagine for you to list a school. Do they have to have multiple start dates or do they have to have some kind of, you know, what is the criteria to say, you know, this institution is set up on a traditional calendar and they don't have an infrastructure to serve an adult student. If we add them to the platform, it actually hurts Dream Bound, right? It's gonna hurt because the student's gonna pick that school and they're not gonna get served. And then the student is gonna come back to Dream Bound and say, you didn't give me what I want, you know. So what's that vetting process and how do you think about who to add?

Shiroy Aspandiar: Great question. Again, first, they need to be either on like a state or national database for the accredited program. That's a big part. But for some schools, like we do have a few schools where they just have a few start dates throughout the year, they're still able to do very well on Dreambound too. For most of those programs, they're a bit more involved. They're lengthier. They're more often like a nonprofit school as well too. So it's not so much like the start date. It's ultimately because the student can browse by like, you know, if it's an accelerated program, if it will be completed or if it's an on-demand program online too. So ultimately the students are able to differentiate.

Joe Sallustio: So they're filtering that out. Yeah. That's a, I mean, it's almost like a, I compared it to a website a long time ago called AutoTrader, which have these cool ads where you could almost like visualize different kinds of cars and whatnot. So it's very much filterable, allowing you to find exactly what you need. And are these specifically online courses? On ground, hybrid, what's the modality?

Shiroy Aspandiar: Yeah, we actually offer and they can filter by all those modalities as well. Hybrid, online, in person.

Joe Sallustio: Got it. Is there a school that you would like to work with or schools you'd like to work with that you're not working with today?

Shiroy Aspandiar: There's so many. I mean, we're still growing quite a bit. Yeah, then we're actually here...

Joe Sallustio: That's what I want to give you a little shout out if you wanted to...

Shiroy Aspandiar: Yeah, I don't want to like single out one or the other.

Joe Sallustio: Hey CEO, listen...

Shiroy Aspandiar: Yeah, but there are many. I think that conferences like CQ allow us to be able to meet people who really care about career education in the country, obviously. So yeah, we're hoping to be able to meet with quite a few different people here.

Joe Sallustio: Well, there you have it, everybody. We're really excited to have you here and talk about Dream Bound for a second time. Sheroy, as we exit, we always want to ask, and Douglas, he makes me ask now. No, he doesn't do that. But we want to know what you see for the future of higher education.

Shiroy Aspandiar: I think we're going to see the four-year college degree model be reinvented. I think that we're already seeing some of it. There are some schools that are moving to an accelerated bachelor's program to either 2.5 to 3 years, but I think more so we're going to see an alignment around skills-based competencies and skills-based training. I think that we'll see more people pursuing micro-credentials or stackable credentials, and I think the future of the degree is going to be more piecemeal. People will allow it to be, you know, picking up certain credentials that build up into an associate, and that associate can then eventually maybe build up into a bachelor's program. So I think stackable, more non-degree programs, shorter programs I think are the way.

Joe Sallustio: Well said and one person that has the skills right now to pay the bills is my guest co-host Douglas Carlson, head of partnerships at Lead Square. Douglas, what did you think of this episode?

Douglas Carlson: This is great. I love what DreamBound does and I'm really happy we got a chance to pull you in. I know you got a lot going on at the conference, so I appreciate it. Thank you for your time.

Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gentlemen, our guest, he's your guest. He's Shiroy Aspandiar, co-founder, CEO at DreamBound. Thanks for being here, Shiroy.

Shiroy Aspandiar: Thank you, Joe.

Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gentlemen, you've just ed-upped.