News Corporation Sells Amplify

I worked at Wireless Generation early in my career. It was the education company that was bought by News Corp in 2010 and became Amplify.

You can find some articles on it here and here, but the short story is that after 5 years at News Corp, the company wasn’t performing as well as they had hoped, and they sold it to private investors.   There were also massive layoffs.

Wireless Generation/Amplify is a data driven education company. A large part of the focus when I was there was helping teaching in the early elementary school years ensure that all of their students learn to read and learn basic math skills. It goes without saying that getting this right for kids is really important, and in the 2000s we were starting to see internet-scale data on this for the first time. Sometimes at Foursquare, we’ll improve some click-through-rate by 1%. But if you improve reading-rate by 1%, think about how many lives are changed for the better!

Wireless Generation also built some of the first open-source curriculum for the internet, and it looks like Amplify now has a really fun math game. The positive side of my experience there, along with some talented employees, was around the products we were building.  The downside was that despite rhetoric to the contrary, management style was much too top-down for my liking. Working on a large contract for the NYC DOE was particularly painful since decisions were made by government bureaucrats and were sometimes politically driven. I can probably write several posts on frustrating times at Wireless Generation!

I can only speculate on what went wrong, and even if the articles had gone into more detail I would be certain that the story from the inside is completely different. What is it that News Corp miscalculated? As far as I can tell, there weren’t any major setbacks.

It turns out that while the original sale was going on, I was taking a course on business strategy at NYU. I had emailed my thoughts to the professor, and I was able to find them. This is an excerpt from December 2nd, 2012, printed as is (along with some awkward phrasing!)

A lot of people are asking why news corp want to get into education.  Clearly, the newspaper business is not a great one to be in right now – maybe they feel like they need to do something.  I feel that they might might want the company because they want expertise in digital content distribution (I developed hand-held and web applications while I was there).  However, they’d probably be better off just hiring a much smaller team to do that.  Someone said this is just about Rupert Murdoch trying to build a legacy.  I don’t know.

Other people are asking whether it will work.  They’re keeping the same management team.  I have a feeling that WirelessGeneration‘s growth is now going to be heavily subsidized by news corp.  But after Monday’s class discussion I’m wondering what news’ other businesses will get out of it.

Of course, I still didn’t mind getting a check for shares.

Because their products are so important, I hope that Amplify can refocus in the future. I can see a few things going for it:
– It will be under the leadership of the original founder, Larry Berger. He is a capable leader, knows what he’s doing in education, and I’m sure he’ll have big plans.
– It will have a smaller, more focused team. If it has 400, it’ll be the same amount as when I was there.
– The ownership will be private. There will be no parent corporation in an entirely different industry trying to steer the agenda.
– If they get to keep their amazing office space in DUMBO.. can’t beat that!
This is on the patio – taken by me in 2007.

It sounds like they are going to try to refocus on the original mission, this time with a much more experienced team. I’m feeling a lot more optimistic for them then I was 5 years ago – this could be the low in a turning point of sorts!

Also – I know this could be a difficult time for people who are still working there, so I wish you all the best. If you are a current employee or recently laid off and you need a new job, I’d be happy to meet up and show you a demo of what we’re working on at Foursquare. I have a lot of respect for anyone who is working through all the issues at Amplify, particularly the engineering and product teams.

Of course, I still didn't mind getting a check for shares.Because their products are so important, I hope that Amplify can refocus in the future. I can see a few things going for it:- It will be under the leadership of the original founder, Larry Berger. He is a capable leader, knows what he's doing in education, and I'm sure he'll have big plans.- It will have a smaller, more focused team. If it has 400, it'll be the same amount as when I was there.- The ownership will be private. There will be no parent corporation in an entirely different industry trying to steer the agenda.- If they get to keep their amazing office space in DUMBO.. can't beat that!This is on the patio - taken by me in 2007.It sounds like they are going to try to refocus on the original mission, this time with a much more experienced team. I'm feeling a lot more optimistic for them then I was 5 years ago - this could be the low in a turning point of sorts!Also - I know this could be a difficult time for people who are still working there, so I wish you all the best. If you are a current employee or recently laid off and you need a new job, I'd be happy to meet up and show you a demo of what we're working on at Foursquare. I have a lot of respect for anyone who is working through all the issues at Amplify, particularly the engineering and product teams.