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00:02 - Diana, thank you so much for being here.
00:05 - Thank you for having me.
00:06 - Of course, so to start, please tell me
00:09 about what your company Parallel Learning does.
00:11 - So we provide both software and services
00:14 to school districts around the country.
00:17 We work specifically
00:17 with their special education department.
00:19 So in K through 12 districts, you have general education
00:22 and then you have special education,
00:24 which is about roughly 15% of students
00:26 who usually have a learning or thinking difference,
00:29 mental health challenge.
00:30 And we basically staff school psychologists,
00:33 speech therapists, special ed teachers,
00:35 a whole host of different professionals
00:37 who work directly with students to make sure that,
00:40 even this most complex students are set up
00:42 for success in the district.
00:43 - I wanna hear about the why.
00:46 Tell me about your founding story, how this came about.
00:50 - Well, I'll start with, I have dyslexia and ADHD.
00:52 So I fall very squarely into the population of students
00:54 that we now work with here at Parallel
00:56 and was lucky enough to have access
00:59 to a lot of resources growing up.
01:00 My mom in particular was very on top of things,
01:04 made sure that I really reaped the benefits
01:05 of early detection and early intervention for my challenges
01:09 and was diagnosed when I was seven years old,
01:11 which is a very unique story.
01:12 Most kids are years behind in core academic subjects
01:15 or struggling with very severe mental health challenges
01:18 before anyone really intervenes on their behalf.
01:20 And so with that, I was extremely motivated
01:22 by my own experience to kind of recreate my reality
01:25 at scale for more students
01:26 and was also paired with the start of the pandemic
01:29 when so many students, schools were struggling,
01:31 but general education online, nevertheless,
01:34 special ed students were just simply
01:36 not getting served at all
01:38 and was extremely concerned to see dire circumstances.
01:42 And that was kind of ultimate culmination
01:45 for jumping into Parallel.
01:46 I've been really excited to partner
01:48 with some amazing clinicians in the space, operators,
01:51 engineers to really bring Parallel to life.
01:54 Talk to me about how many students and educators you serve
01:57 and how that's grown over time.
01:59 - Yeah, it's grown a lot, very quickly.
02:02 So we started actually working with school districts
02:05 just over a year ago.
02:06 So prior to that, we were actually serving families
02:09 who were actually not getting served
02:10 within the school districts
02:11 or were looking for additional services.
02:14 And that business was fantastic and growing also very rapidly
02:18 that districts came to us and said,
02:20 we actually desperately need your services as well.
02:23 And so that gave rise in spring of 2022
02:26 of when we started deciding
02:27 to work with school districts directly.
02:29 That's actually now 100% of our business.
02:31 It's been an absolute joy to work with districts
02:35 across the country.
02:35 We're in 15 states at this point,
02:37 serving thousands of students per month,
02:40 doing both psychological assessments, speech assessments,
02:43 mental health assessments,
02:44 and then also doing the kind of ongoing services.
02:48 So things like speech therapy,
02:49 special ed teaching and so on.
02:51 So really becoming this kind of full stop partner,
02:54 I should say, for school districts.
02:55 - Tell me about your fundraising journey.
03:03 What's that been like for you
03:04 and how much have you raised so far?
03:07 - It's been a really exciting journey.
03:09 It's amazing to see how many institutional investors
03:13 ultimately support our mission
03:16 and really wanna see Parallel grow.
03:17 I'm a solo founder,
03:19 so fundraising has been something that has
03:21 fully fallen on my plate.
03:23 And with that, we've gotten a lot of traction.
03:25 So we've now raised about 30 million in total
03:28 from some of really the top investors out there.
03:31 Tiger Global, Obvious Ventures,
03:33 Rethink, Impact Fund, just led a small round.
03:37 We've been really lucky to work with
03:38 kind of investors of all different backgrounds,
03:41 both from the more impact-centric investors
03:43 who have more education,
03:45 more healthcare-specific experience
03:46 to the kind of big growth funds
03:48 and really see it from all sides.
03:50 So it's an amazing opportunity to have
03:52 everyone around the table
03:53 and everyone's been highly supportive
03:56 of making Parallel what it is today.
03:58 - One last question for you.
04:02 What would you like your legacy to be?
04:04 - I think as a founder in this space,
04:08 you have to say it's got a mission element, right?
04:11 Like obviously everyone that works for Parallel,
04:14 it's great that we're a venture-backed company
04:16 and we're growing quickly.
04:17 And like the business success is part of it,
04:20 but I think more than anything,
04:22 that actually means that we've done really
04:24 a lot of good in the world
04:26 and that we've really helped change the trajectory
04:28 for students just like myself.
04:31 That like, frankly, if I did not have access
04:33 to resources that I did early on,
04:34 I would not be sitting here today.
04:37 I would not have the confidence for that.
04:38 I would not have that basic skillset.
04:40 With that in mind, I think that's probably
04:42 like the biggest motivation is how do I really, you know,
04:46 hit the point where I feel like we've helped
04:48 as many students as we possibly can.
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