The future of media and journalism is at a crossroads. The adaption of media to embrace a digital reality has had a profound effect on the industry, allowing independent journalists and creators to build massive scale for the first time. However, with these enhanced distribution opportunities, these same digital avenues have also led to a surge in misinformation. Building the skillset and perspective to embrace this new paradigm is something that needs to start at a young age. Pressto is a media education and facilitation platform for students to allow them to develop the critical skills needed to assess, build, and distribute media through project-based learning. Students, K-12, are able to publish their own digital publications, Zines, and through the guided experience build writing skills, audience development capabilities, critical thinking acumen, and literacy of the media landscape using cognitive behavioral science. The platform is currently accepting new students on its waitlist and is actively piloting at several schools with launch slated for the summer.
AlleyWatch caught up with Pressto Founder Daniel Stedman to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, recent round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Pressto announced its Pre-Seed capital raise of $1.5M led by Tidal Venture Partners and with participation by Copper Wire Ventures as well as angels including Isa Watson (Lightspeed Ventures Scout Fund), Wray Thorn (Clear Heights Capital), Dan Carroll (Clever), Ann Berry (Threadneedle Ventures), Jacob Zachs (former Newsela), Chris Yeh (Blitzscaling Ventures) and Alex Rappaport (Flocabulary).
Tell us about the product or service that Pressto offers.
Pressto’s proprietary technology makes learning to write fun for kids and easy for teachers. The platform is designed to transform the way youth create and understand media by helping students develop a healthy relationship with what they consume and create, and ultimately, the narrative that they then put out into the world. Pressto also begins to prepare students for a future of work where “creator skills” like publishing, sharing, and audience development are critical to success.
What inspired the start of Pressto?
As the founder of Brooklyn Magazine, I was inspired to volunteer at student newspapers in Brooklyn, but I discovered that many had closed. Later, after my last company had been acquired, I had the time to volunteer to start an elementary school newspaper where my son Graham was in kindergarten. This was the inspiration to start a platform that would make student journalism incredibly simple and intuitive. We’ve learned that it is a challenge to make writing engaging for students and easy for teachers – it’s intimidating for both – and we see the results in the news every day (disinformation, science denial, etc.) Now, our mission is to create a better way to write.
How is Pressto different?
We’re getting kids excited about writing while helping them develop critical media literacy. Through project-based learning – like publishing their own Zines – Pressto’s simple and purposeful platform provides fun, skill-building activities that go beyond the classroom. Pressto also gives them the tools to understand the difference between fact and opinion so they can better identify disinformation in the world around them.
What market does Pressto target and how big is it?
Pressto is currently part of a pilot program with the New York Department of Education reaching over 10,000 students throughout the city and also extends beyond the classroom so that parents and children can utilize Pressto on their own.
Pressto makes learning to write more fun for kids and easier for teachers. For our release this coming August, we’re looking to reach anyone learning to write. That market is 55 million kids in the US & Canada and over 500 million kids globally.
Pressto also begins to prepare students for a future of work where “creator skills” like publishing, sharing and audience development are critical to success. More than 50 million people globally consider themselves content creators, and the market size has grown to well over $104B. And roughly 30% of American youth want to become digital creators instead of traditional occupations such as doctors, lawyers, astronauts, etc. creating a potential generational shift in the global workforce. We’re encouraging this in a way that will give kids a more healthy relationship with the content that they create and consume.
What’s your business model?
There are four product areas that appear viable during the next two years:
- Pressto+ – This is our paid product which grows organically from the free Pressto version and is a tool that will be used by teachers in regular school curriculum and as a supplemental instructional tool for upper elementary and middle school.
- D2C – This software product will be similar to the school curriculum product, but it will be sold to and geared toward individual users and families.
- Online Tutoring for Writing – This will be a professional service supported by software. It will be sold to schools for more specific skills training at a higher level that a general school classroom allows.
- Professional Development for Writing – This will train teachers in best practices for teaching writing and engaging their students. We are using Pressto to get kids excited, sparked, and engaged.
What are your post-COVID office plans??
We were born as a remote team and will remain so.
What was the funding process like?
It’s hard work. You need to be honest, kind, relentless, and try to get the “no” out of the way quickly. You also need to listen and learn from every “no.” Expect to hear “no” a lot, but don’t let it be discouraging. If you really believe in your mission and product and team, every “no” will just drive you to fight even harder.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
We’ve had incredible support and it’s allowed us to scale faster than we could have imagined. Our biggest challenge has always been balancing our passion for our purpose of teaching writing, and sharing all the incredible societal benefits that offers, with the category-creating financial opportunity of elevating writing to the same level as reading and math.
We’ve had incredible support and it’s allowed us to scale faster than we could have imagined. Our biggest challenge has always been balancing our passion for our purpose of teaching writing, and sharing all the incredible societal benefits that offers, with the category-creating financial opportunity of elevating writing to the same level as reading and math.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
The opportunity here is to create an entirely new category in learning that’s as big and impactful as developing a new category of transporting people from one place to the next. We can make writing as critical to core curriculum as reading and math. We already have over 10,000 students in NYC lined up to begin using Pressto this Fall for our launch. It’s a skill that has never been more important to the future of learning and work. Pressto’s not only creating that entire category but laying the foundation for a massively profitable company along the way.
We live in a world with TVs that are less than 1” thick, but writing is still taught the same as it was over 50 years ago (actually, it’s worse). Pressto is using technology in a novel way to make learning to write fun, easy, and intuitive. It’s inevitable.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We launch in August! And we already have over 10,000 students registered to use Pressto in the Fall. Nothing inspires us more than seeing the work these amazing kids create on Pressto. We’re excited to see what these 10,000 students will create, and look forward to the millions of students who will love writing and learning on Pressto.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
It’s a delicate balance. While listening to feedback is important, it’s not as important as your gut. You’re doing this for a reason – don’t let anything make you forget that reason. For us, it’s the work we’ve seen from the kids who use Pressto. That’s what we fall back on when we’re feeling exhausted or frustrated that our story isn’t resonating. We just see the work, and get back to work.
These are things that investors want to see, but, before that, they want to see if you can stick out the early months and survive through a moment when your vision starts to become de-risked. Keep on fighting & building.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We’re very excited to see that kids who are interested in creator culture and the creator economy are sparked by Pressto – we believe that we can be a very strong and positive influence on their relationship with media.
We see a strong correlation between the lack of civility in online discourse, students’ underdeveloped writing skills preventing them from communicating their thoughts effectively, and civics no longer being taught in schools. Students are missing out on developing the basic skills of civil discourse which are essential to a healthy society. We’re out to make a big change by helping kids to find their voice, develop agency, and do it thoughtfully and considerately.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC?
That’s easy – anywhere that Emmet Howle is frizzling up chicken. You won’t find his name online, but he’s the wizard behind institutions like Egg (closed), Dokebi, and at least one secret restaurant that operated out of Golden Years on Metropolitan – hint: it was called “Fried My Best.”
