Mike Teng, following in his father’s footsteps, became a software engineer and worked in the area of education where he noticed a big problem- there wasn’t a good way to find and schedule substitute teachers, and practically every school experienced the same challenge. With two college friends, he built Swing Education, raised $23 Million from Venture Capitals in Silicon Valley and is now filling over 10,000 teacher absence days per month, across 1,000 schools. Before his entrepreneurial journey, however, Mike experienced the hardship of infertility. For three years, he and his wife tried tirelessly to conceive and through that process, a lightbulb went off in Mike’s head. For the first time, he understood the power of empathy in seeing his wife’s struggle despite being emotionally impacted himself. Through empathy, he was able to connect with her in ways that he didn’t before and it brought them closer. He took that lesson as he led his company which resulted in unbelievable effectiveness- and his stat’s prove it. Swing Education has less than a 7 percent turnover rate annually, while the average is 17.8 percent, and he was able to grow the company’s revenues to $20 Million in 3 years. In this episode, he shares what events shaped who he is today and how he approaches leadership.

In this episode you will learn about:

• Leading a team
• Raise capital for an EdTech company
• Lessons on leadership
• Diversity

About Mike Teng:

For the last decade, Swing Education CEO Mike Teng has been an innovator in education, equipping students and schools with technology to make administration more efficient and learning more effective. As the tech director at Rocketship Public Schools, Mike spearheaded blended learning initiatives that contributed to the organization’s success in achieving results for underserved communities. In 2015, Mike helped found Swing Education, an online marketplace that tackles the substitute teacher shortage by matching subs and schools via a data-driven online platform. Under Teng’s direction, Swing has covered 100,000-plus teacher absence days, giving millions of students access to better instruction.

Connect with Mike Teng:

• Website
• Linkedin
• Twitter

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Full Transcription:

Mike Teng: We raised $15 million in our series B, but $23 million all together.

Tanya: That’s Mike Teng, CEO and founder of Swing Education, a platform that connects substitute teachers with schools.

Mike Teng: My Dad was a software engineer and I always kind of trained myself in that direction. And so I went to school for computer science and became a software engineer and did that for six years.

Tanya: You know, so of my network of founders that I know founders that have a background in engineering and have started a business are like a Swiss Army knife. I mean they just are so unbelievable and well positioned to really take leadership of companies.

Mike Teng: I’ve definitely found it to be an advantage. I worked as a software engineer for six years and especially around Silicon Valley, that makes recruiting software engineers, easier. Makes finding a technical cofounder easier since it’s all basically people that were friends or that I’ve worked with before.

Tanya: That’s awesome. Something that I thought was interesting that I learned on actually Swing Education’s website, is from K through 12 students will spend, on average, six months with a substitute teacher. That’s not an insignificant amount of time.

Mike Teng: Yeah, definitely not. I mean even just thinking about what you might expect as a normal absenteeism rate of five percent of the time someone needing to be out, it ends up being like 1 in 20 days.

Tanya: Yeah, that’s really crazy. So just to dive in a little bit into Swing Education and sort of your time as a founder, how many people do you have on your team right now?

Mike Teng: We have 46.

Tanya: 46, wow, it grew from last time we spoke, by a lot.

Mike Teng: It’s been, it keeps growing.

Tanya: That’s awesome. Congratulations. And how many schools now use your platform?

Mike Teng: Yeah, so we have about, over a thousand schools that are on the platform and about 500 of them that are using us on a weekly basis.

Tanya: So what does that translate to in terms of how many substitutes you connected with schools? Or placed in schools?

Mike Teng: We do over 2,500 teacher absence days a week now. And you know, all time, we’re at over a hundred thousand days, which is awesome. It’s like really incredible being able to cite those kinds of numbers, two and a half million student days if you wanted to kind of like projected out that way too.

Tanya: Wow. What states are you in? Is your platform available?

Mike Teng: Yeah, so we’re all over California, New Jersey, New York City, Washington, DC, Dallas Texas, and Phoenix Arizona.

Tanya: And just curious why those states? So, did they just kind of happen or there was a strategy involved?

Mike Teng: They did just kind of happen I think like early on some of it was our customers kind of pulled us to certain areas. So, one of our early customers, Kipp Bay area, they also operate schools in Los Angeles and Washington DC and New Jersey. They actually, I think had introduced us to their New Jersey team, and then they’re New Jersey chapter didn’t actually sign up with us until much later, but we had already sort of committed to going into Jersey, so we found a bunch of other customers there. But that was one of the early ways that we kind of picked some of these places. Texas and Arizona, and New York City they were just places that we really wanted to open, thought they were great markets to go to.

Tanya: Very interesting. Okay. How did you start? Like what happened that you thought, hmm, I’m going to start a company called Swing Education? What’s the backstory?

Mike Teng: I mean it’s so interesting because out of me and my two cofounders, so out of the three of us I would say my CTO Oz, is the only one out of the three of us that actually wanted to be the founder of a company. That would have told you five years ago that that’s an aspiration that he had for himself. I think Asha and I did not think in those terms. I was super happy with my job at a Charter school as their Head of Technology, I had been there for four years. And the Director of Recruitment at Rocketship actually asked me to help the school I was working at, with logistics and coordination of substitute teachers. Ended up kind of like looking into the problem, starting to work on it, and talking to neighboring schools and districts about how they handle these issues, and found that it was a big challenge for everybody. Met Up for lunch with a high school friend of mine, Asha. And so, we’ve been friends since 1997 or 1996 something like, I was telling her about the problem. And basically,  a couple of weeks later came back, you know the thing that you said you were working on, that seems like a pretty big problem. She had found this Ed Week article talking about state of the art in terms of software, were these automated phone calls. And so we kind of started from that place of let’s solve some of these logistics and coordination problems together, and thought of it more as a side project. In the end we ended up basically just wanting to commit to this as a project and company. And I think because of my background in both technology and education, I ended up becoming CEO. But again, that was something that was almost by default as opposed to, at the time something that I was really aspiring to do.

Tanya: And what are the backgrounds of your two other cofounders?

Mike Teng: Yeah. So, Oz, my technical cofounder, my first job out of college, we actually worked together on the same four-person software team, for a  financial software company called FactSet. And so, we became really good friends there, although he also went to high school with Asha. So, we’ve all known each other for a really long time. And so, he did that and then ended up working on other things after that, putting out a startup that got acquired by Workday, also high frequency trading. Asha had actually spent her entire career at Deloitte Consulting, so she had become a Senior Manager. And I think basically, I used to point at Deloitte and say, you either are committing to be a partner for the rest of your career or you’re going to try to do something else. And then we came across this, and it’s been amazing. I mean, it’s been really, really phenomenal to have worked on this company with two people that I know so well, and that I’m so close with.

Tanya: Yeah. That, that was one of the things that I was wondering because, you know, founder conflict, or cofounder conflict I should say, is a huge, huge issue. And we hear about it here and there, but most cofounders that exit the business, usually exit under an NDA and like, you know, all these, you know, non disclosures that really bind people from talking about what actually happened and you know, for sometimes good reasons. There’s stakeholders and shareholders and all the, you know, employees. And so you really want to minimize the damage. But how has it been, you know, like the pros and cons of working with people that you know so well in some cases, you know, high school? Versus, you know, some of the challenges?

Mike Teng: There are so many pros in my mind, and I think it’s easy for me to say that because it’s gone so well. You know, the main thing being that we all really trust each other, that like we know that we care about each other as people. And that, that was established before we ever started Swing. We’ve had disagreements just as friends, or in Oz and I’s case, coworkers and we were still friends afterward, and still could work together and talk to each other afterward. And so, knowing that you can do that and still be friends or have a good relationship means that you’re not as scared of each disagreement. Like in the back of our minds I think when we are having a debate or about something, no matter how heated it might get, we don’t feel like our actual like fundamental relationship has ever at risk. And so I think that’s the biggest pro. And con, I suppose is that things don’t go well and you know, break up for whatever reason. And I think that there are sometimes a lot of good reasons for that to happen. I think I’ve been really fortunate. I mean that they’ve both developed as leaders, as the company has grown. And so we’ve never had to have a conversation about like, oh, should we hire over somebody or anything like that.

Tanya: So, that’s really interesting that the cofounder dynamic is really, really working. And a huge part of that is just like the background upon which you approach every conversation, and just that history there, that understanding.

Mike Teng: Yeah, definitely. And we think about problems the same way. You know, the other interesting thing I would say, and I say this, I think sometimes it can come across as kind of like flippant, although we’re all really good friends almost just because of Bay Area geography. I live in the South Bay in Mountain view, closer to San Jose. Oz lives in San Mateo, Foster City, and Asha lives in San Francisco. So, actually, we’re not close friends that I saw on a weekly basis. So, I sort of joke with people that, you know, if this all goes to crap, I’ve only really lost like six or seven days off my annual social calendar.

Tanya: That’s really funny. No, that’s awesome. So, here’s one thing that, I’m just going to go right into it. What has been unquestionably the biggest challenge that you’ve dealt with in your life?

Mike Teng: So, I knew that was, you know, going to be one of the questions ahead of time. And I’d been thinking, there’s actually like an answer that really pops up to me and stands out right away. But I wasn’t totally sure if it was something that I could talk about. I’d say maybe six years ago now was when my wife and I decided that we wanted to have kids. And you know, we were very lucky. We have a two and a half year old at home now, but it’s been a very long journey with multiple failed pregnancies, a lot of kind of infertility treatments, and a couple of kind of the pregnancies that didn’t work out were pretty late term ones, and various anatomy scans and things like that. And so, I think that those things are just like, like it was a really, really tough thing to have gotten through.

Tanya: I can imagine. I mean, you know, it sounds like, how long were you going through all of that until you were actually able to conceive and deliver your, your child?

Mike Teng: It was, I think a little over three years before the start of this successful pregnancy. So, yeah, it was a long time, and actually he was conceived maybe about a month after we started doing business. Like a little over a month after we sent our first Swing substitute teacher out into the world.

Tanya: That was good luck. That was meant to be. You started, you know, both your babies were born more or less at the same time, you know, like began at the same time. That’s amazing.

Mike Teng: And Oz and Asha also actually had kids within 10 days apart from each other, that same November. So, a lot of things happened in all of our founders lives at that time.

Tanya: Wow. That’s, that’s amazing harmony. I know from a woman’s perspective, obviously, I also have a lot of friends that had fertility issues a lot. And actually so much so that, that’s one of the reasons why my husband and I, we started trying way before we were ready because we did anticipate it taking a long time. But in our case we got pregnant almost immediately with our second child, and our first child, but our second child, children, were identical twins and it was the first month that we were trying. That’s it’s own set of problems. But how, as a male, how did that affect you during those three years?

Mike Teng: I think what’s really interesting, and you know, due to the topic and the reason why we’re talking, it made me think about how that has impacted how I think about my relationship with employees and things like that. And like what it means to run a business or how has that impacted my, my style as a leader maybe. And, I think, you know, as hard as it was for me, it was harder for my wife. And so even though we’re sitting here talking about how, I’m using this as the answer it was the most difficult thing that I had to go through. I had to talk to her to make sure that she was okay, that I was going to talk about it with you. And even that is like a sign that this thing will always I think, be more difficult for her than me. Even though it was really difficult for me. And I think it’s something that I’ll not forget.  I’ll be really eternally grateful to her, she has always been very empathetic with, you know, what it means for me as well, and my emotional state.

Tanya: Yeah. Certainly, carrying a child and then, you know, losing a child. You can see it from, you’re obviously there for the journey, but you have a different experience. So, I could see how that impacts you differently or it might manifest differently in your life. But you said something very interesting. So, how has that event really impacted how you really lead today or even just how it has influenced your outlook on life?

Mike Teng: Yeah, I think it’s just, it makes it so that because of the nature of it, where as hard as it is for me, it almost by definition is harder for this other person. I think I should never try and get too caught up in what my perspective is, even on our kind of company problems. I think a lot of times, I mean one of the things I thought about in terms of like, oh, it’s been tough from a business standpoint was like, you know, the first time I had to let somebody go, the first time I had to fire somebody and yet again, as hard as that was for me, it certainly was more difficult for the person that it was happening to. And I think it was really easy to say, okay, wow, that was so hard. I’m just going to go hold up in a room, shut the door, and not talk to anybody for the rest of the day. And yet it sort of, then it seems that’s such a selfish thing to do to send a message to people in the company that I’m, as the CEO, having to have let somebody go, and having the hardest day. When no, like someone else’s having the hardest day. And I’d never want to lose sight of the decisions that I make or we make as founders, and how they impact other people. Even if it always feels like, you know, it impacts us a lot as well.

Tanya: So, it sounds like empathy, going through that really tough time in you and your wife’s life, which by the way, thank her for me please for really allowing you to share this tough period, because I know you guys are not the only one dealing with this 100%. A lot of people are dealing with this and I’m sure a lot of people will be able to relate. So, how have you evolved over the course of your leadership since starting the business, and even if you were managing people before?

Mike Teng: Yeah, so I think over like a 12-year career prior to Swing, I managed one person for one year. So not much in experience. I had a lot of managers though, I think in that same 12 years, I have had 14 or 15 managers. And so, I tell myself that I learned by sort of figuring out from my managers, which of those things that I want to replicate and which of the things that I did not enjoy so much and wanted to avoid doing myself. But so much of it really is just feeling our way through it as we, as we go along. I mean, now with so many people at Swing, I think so much of it is just trying to stay accessible in a way that people still feel like they can talk to me, and that I’m approachable. I told people this before, but I feel like I’ve been told at Swing that I can be intimidating. I don’t think, I don’t know, as a nerdy, smallish, Asian male, I feel like I’ve never been in this situation where I walk into a room of people who are like, oh, this guy’s really intimidating. So, it’s really interesting to be told that people are thinking of me that way. So, yeah, I think even then having that kind of empathy for thinking about my past companies and what would it be like if the CEO walked into the room, even if they’re not a physically intimidating presence.

Tanya: Yeah. It’s interesting because I also cofounded a business for eight years, then exited and I had that same feedback all the time. And I was just like dumbfounded when people would tell me this, and I can have a very strong personality, but you know, I just didn’t see myself in that moment as, you know, whatever moment they told me, I was a little bit intimidating. I think, I mean, let me know what you think, but I believe that it’s also situational. You know, it’s because of the position of power where you have the ability to hire and fire and that person’s a little bit vulnerable in that way. That context creates already sort of a sense of, maybe not fear but you know, just like that gap, that discomfort.

Mike Teng: Yeah, absolutely. And obviously, I think the firing part more than the hiring part, even though there’s not that much evidence that someone could say something, or hopefully there’s no evidence that someone in a one off conversation could say something that would get them fired. I don’t know, it is really interesting. But it’s something that I think again, empathy helps with that, and I think being authentic and vulnerable, and sharing personal stories and challenges is helpful. I do think that maybe in some ways not having managed people previously, made that problem more acute for myself or harder to empathize with because I am a very opinionated person for sure. But I think in previous jobs, because I never managed anybody, my opinions, people didn’t want to take them seriously. They didn’t have to. So, I don’t know that I ever learned that I should hold some back. But yeah.

Tanya: So, you said that you mostly learned, you know, sort of the ropes of leadership through seeing people do things that worked and things that didn’t, what were some of the things that you did learn that worked, and some things you saw people doing that totally did not work?

Mike Teng: I think what works is, first and foremost I would say there’s that gallup poll set of questions, I forget where it started exactly, but that companies use to measure employee satisfaction. And I remember that one of the ones is something along the lines of, does somebody at work care about you as a person? I remember thinking that that’s such a low bar, like just one person out of these like 500 people has to actually care about me as a human being. But you know, it really helps if that person is your manager, or at least that you can say that about your manager. And knowing that if you really do have a personal issue that comes up that supersedes work, that that manager will have your back in that regard. I think that that’s always been huge to me, and it’s just kind of one bar. What not to do? I mean like everyone kind of hates being micromanaged. I would say, the way I have experienced that is just trying to be told to do something the way that my manager would do it if they were the one assigned the project. And so, I try and remind myself as much as possible, and remind managers at Swing that there are a lot of ways to get from point A to point B, and if you sort of arc in all the details of how to get from point A to point B with your direct reports, that will just cause them, probably to get lost as opposed to be able to find their own way.

Tanya: Yeah. How do you distinguish, or have you even thought about this, what is the difference between leadership and management?

Mike Teng: I think that leadership, maybe one way to think about it in my mind, is task management versus like vision setting. And management to a certain extent is just like, oh, how are we doing on these performance, or goals, or whatever? And leadership probably leans more toward the, let’s inspire people to do things, hopefully in a way that they’ll come back to us with their own set of ideas, and they’re seeing kind of a more broader context of what the business needs or what they want to do with it, within that context. There’s a little bit of management telling someone what to do, and leadership is getting them to do it without you telling them what to do.

Tanya: Making it seem like it was their idea to begin with. Yeah. What are some of the mistakes that you made as a leader, that really taught you the ropes?

Mike Teng: You know, we’ve been fortunate that things have gone pretty well for Swing, and were mostly good times, not bad. So, much of it is just about communication. And mostly, the mistake is usually lack of communication. I think very rarely do you hear, ah, man, there’s too much communication here. The times where I think I have something formulating in my head and it takes some number of weeks, and by the time it comes out it’s, oh, okay, we’re all just going to do this and we’re going to reorg these teams a little bit. And people suddenly feel like, where the hell is this coming from? This is crazy. Can’t we stop and talk about it? And I think oftentimes for me it’s like, there’s no time. We’ve already been thinking about this for four weeks and then it’s like, who’s we? And then, okay, it’s just me. But still it’s been four weeks already. And so, I think remembering to bring people into conversations and thoughts, earlier rather than later and also just help make sure everyone’s on the same page.

Tanya: That’s a big one. Do you know roughly how many female versus male employees you have?

Mike Teng: Yes. Yeah, we are 54% female. And the board is 60% female.

Tanya: Ah, Mike, that’s amazing. Good job. What have you noticed is the difference in leadership styles between men and women, if any?

Mike Teng: There’s definitely a difference. I’m hesitant to stereotype too much here or make too many generalizations. I think that more often women tend to be, led by example. We see this actually internally with we have these, essentially we call them working groups, but it’s kind of like committees that we form every two to three months to tackle some specific project. And they’re usually not so specific to our day to day work. So, as an example, one is helping to set up volunteer work for the company, so that people can spend some time in schools. They have one around core values, and how we can make sure that people are reminded of those things. But we ask people to volunteer for them, and it’s not a requirement that everyone participates. And you know, I think the first time we did it, we ended up seeing that like 75% of the volunteers were female, and all of their people that were volunteering to lead the groups were female. At the time we were 60% female as a company. So, that closes some of the gap but doesn’t actually close the whole thing. And I ended up basically just telling everybody, look, the women work a lot at Swing and men work a lot at Swing, and so there’s not an excuse to say, oh, I’m too busy right now to sign up. And so, the fact that this is happening, more men just need to step up and volunteer for these groups. And, I remember one person ended up replying to me, and saying I’m in, would it be helpful if I volunteer too? And I was like, yeah, I mean, yes, it would be helpful. And so I think that there’s a little bit of that stereotype where men might prefer to just talk about it rather than show people that they’re willing to work at it. So, I think that that’s for sure one of the things, but you know, I think hopefully we have, in part because of those numbers and the demographics at Swing, a pretty consistent environment, especially when it comes from a gender perspective. And that everyone feels like their voice is heard, and should be heard.

Tanya: So, actually the origin of that question is really interesting. I was in Costa Rica this past weekend and the topic of pitching to investors, so getting and raising capital, came up. And one of the girls that I was with, she’s a founder. And she just raised 6 million for her seed round. And she was talking about how her investors are cautioning her that when she’s pitching, to not be so conservative with the numbers. And she was like, well, what do you mean? I need to make sure that what I’m saying is actually accurate. And you know, that brought me back to another conversation that I had with one of the partners, a top tier venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, where she literally physically described a huge gap between how men pitch versus women. Women are, you know, they sit down with their legs crossed and their hands crossed and literally take up the least amount of space in the room. While men are open legs, sprawled out and like, yeah, my company is going to be huge and this is why you want to invest. And literally to her, it was a huge difference. You know, so it’s interesting how like you said, it’s a stereotype and that’s not everybody, but there are differences sometimes.

Mike Teng: Yeah, I try to stand. So I guess I’m guilty, you know, even though I’m talking to two people on the other side of the table. My inclination is to just stand, which is maybe just weird.

Tanya: Oh, that’s so funny. That’s so funny. So why do you stand? It’s just because you have so much energy and you’re so excited about the future, that you have to just get up?

Mike Teng: I feel like part of it is your energy. Maybe I just am overly caffeinated by the time I sit in the room to pitch. But I think a lot of it is just  I feel I think better on my feet. I feel when I’m kind of standing there and walking around, it makes me feel more prepared to answer questions.

Tanya: Yeah. So, speaking about answering questions and the whole process of raising capital, what was your process like, to raise capital?

Mike Teng: Every round has been a little different. So, we’ve done three rounds now. I think our paying customers are schools and districts, and so that’s always been a challenge for us. There’s definitely a set of investors, especially venture capital firms, that are just basically uninterested in businesses where you’re paying customers that are school districts. I think we try and get people around that back by saying, well, if you look at our growth, and you look at our sales cycle lengths, and kind of our close rates, all of those are much more like enterprise sales then they are a traditional Ed Tech Company. So, I think that’s the challenge. But you know, we’re a mission driven company also and I think hopefully that just attracts the right set of people out. I’ve said this more privately than super publicly, but the investors that we have, you know, our boardroom does not include any Caucasian men. And by and large, I would say the partners that have been interested are from across all, all three rounds, have been basically firms or partners that are basically non-Caucasian men. And I don’t know, I mean this is not hard science, but it, I think it’s just interesting. Like we’re in an education mission driven business, and I could see that playing a part here too. So, I don’t know, an education generally does attract more female employees as well. The Charter school that I worked at, I think was probably something like 70% female, and certainly at some point a team that I was on was maybe 15 people, and I think there were only two men on that particular department that I was on.

Tanya: You know, that’s so interesting because I was on a call with one of the founders, and I was actually making an introduction to somebody in our network, an investor. And the founder was female, the investor was male, both great people. And the founder, she built this amazing company, went to IC, had already raised initial capital, got some really great traction for, you know, she was in a seed round. And she delivered the most buttoned up, answered every concern that the investor was throwing. And you know, this was a very sophisticated investor, and I was actually really proud of this female founder. And at the end of the call I thought, my God, she nailed it. That’s it, he is going to put the money in today. And, he said, you know, this is all very interesting. Let me speak to my wife, because it was a platform that allowed women to give or rent their clothes, their idol clothes in closets. So, that’s like a spinoff of Rent the Runway, and the guy totally could not relate to the problem. And you know, even though the numbers made sense and things were sort of heading in the right direction, because he did not personally relate to the problem, that really was a barrier between getting the funding for her, for the founder. And so, I can see why you would have a greater tendency to have female employees, and female or non-Caucasian investors. That’s fair. Especially for Silicon Valley. I mean, that is well-known to be just that or all those.

Mike Teng: Kind of like a buffer.

Tanya: Yes. Yeah, that’s great. So, just interesting to know, what is your take on retaining employees and keeping morale high?

Mike Teng: You know, I think we are really fortunate in that we’re at this intersection of being venture backed with pretty exciting VC’s, mission driven in education, doing something, solving a problem that I think is reasonably obvious, and that doesn’t take a lot of explanation. And so, it feels sometimes to me like there’s not that many places that we would lose people to. We’re also not located in San Francisco, which you know, sometimes is a con, but once you’ve committed to, or if you’ve lived on the peninsula in the Bay Area, then that also sort of makes it a place to be. We haven’t lost that many employees. I think we’ve only maybe had 3% year over year turnover in employees. And so, I think all of those things, being mission driven is definitely a little bit of a hack, if you want to call it that. I mean it’s almost like cheating because people are really here to help schools operate better and help substitute teachers get into the classroom more quickly and easily. Help them become teachers, and that’s great, and they should be here. So, treat people fairly. Fairness is definitely, we lean on heavily. And then I think, you know, being a diverse and inclusive company goes a long way too. I mean, I said we’re about 54% female, our leadership team is the same, it’s about 50% female. But it’s majority female. And then I would say from a race breakdown, we’re 26%  underrepresented minority, 60% people of color. And so, across the board I think people find an inclusive environment here to come to work in. And that’s very much appreciated by the people that initially chose that environment to be in.

Tanya: So, that’s very interesting. What do you value most in an employee?

Mike Teng: It depends on the role a little bit. I think, as a founder myself though, someone who is entrepreneurial themselves in terms of how they approach their job is really great. But we have three core values at Swing, and it’s basically rapid learning, collaborative, and commitments to diversity and inclusion. And so if you’re doing those three things, if you’re kind of constantly trying to figure out how to make yourself better as a worker, how to do your job better, how to make the company better, and you’re doing that rapidly. We used to call it continuous learning and then I was like, wow, that can just be interpreted as slow learning, so we changed it to rapid learning. And I think we want people that want to work with other people to come in and stand on someone else’s shoulders and then do the next great thing, beyond that. And yeah, I mean, I think when we’re approaching the K-12 market nationwide, it is, again, it’s like you’re serving the entire student population of the United States. And so that is a diverse customer base. And so, we have to have basically a diverse employee group as well.

Tanya: I love that. I love diverse, rapid learning. That’s really amazing. So, what sources do you look to, to learn and grow?

Mike Teng: I listen to a lot of podcasts, maybe a little less now, but I try and listen to them at 2X-ish speed, so that I would get more of them in. But sometimes I’ll get in the car and when I turn the car on, and it just kind of starts automatically. My wife just makes this grumpy face like, how can you listen to this? But it makes me feel more productive.

Tanya: That’s fast.

Mike Teng: I had to work my way up. I had a podcast App that allowed me to do increments of one 10th. And so, when I would turn it on, and when I got to the point where I would think to myself, is this really going at the speed I want it to? And it felt normal, then I was, okay, I can bump it up another 0.1.

Tanya: Wow. How long did it take you to get to 2.5?

Mike Teng: No. About 2. 2.5 would be really fast. I don’t know. It’s been six or seven years now, maybe, I’ve been listening to podcasts at a slowly increasing rate.

Tanya: Yeah, I love podcasts too. What do you think is the most important lesson that you’ve learned from your parents?

Mike Teng: Yeah, I think my parents always really cared about education, and in a lot of ways they were somewhat stereotypical, immigrant Asian parents and they pushed us in school. Much to my parents’ dismay, I was not much of a model student. I think actually through that kind of, give and take, with them over the years, especially through high school and college, I think I learned that what they ultimately cared about is for myself and my brother to be happy and fulfilled. And even, I think I’d been to San Francisco for six years when I decided to quit and go into education reform, and take this big pay cut to go work at Rocketship. And I was actually a little nervous. I mean I was 28 at the time, but I was a little nervous what they might think. And I mean they care. They were just like, wow, you know, that’s great. That sounds like you are so sure that that’s what you want to do. You can’t help but be happy. So, that’s amazing. And so I think  I learned that that’s just the most important thing. Family is the most important thing, health and happiness. And I think even as the leader and CEO of the company, that’s the thing to always remember is people are people, and everyone, at the end of the day, wants those same things.

Tanya: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, when you’ve been through a health scare or you’ve lost somebody that you love, it’s in those moments that you really remember that people and health is not something to be taken for granted. And we have this thing where we kind of forget how fragile life is, and we just go about our day and really take so many things for granted.

Mike Teng: Yeah, for sure. Well, my parents are definitely always been, what I would consider to be my role models, so.

Tanya: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So, if you could rewind back ten years and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Mike Teng: Ten years, I’m trying to think what I was doing. Maybe in light of the challenge, maybe we should have started trying to have a baby younger. Although having said that too, I mean obviously I do feel like one of those things is just everything that happens in life happens, and it turns you into who you are. And so, I think that’s what makes it difficult. It’s not to say that there weren’t mistakes that I’ve made in life all along the way. I’d say most of the things probably is I go back and do the same. You know, there’s a few situations that you might encounter and it would be great if you could just be even more of a good person in those moments, and hopefully overall I’m a good person, but there are certainly moments when I’m not.

Tanya: You mean moments when you’re human?

Mike Teng: Yeah, exactly. Or maybe not thinking about other humans enough and I think that  it’s almost kind of sad that in a lot of ways human experience is like, once you’ve gone through something, then you’re much more empathetic for other people to go through it.  I would never ask somebody now, when are you going to have kids? Just knowing that what they could be going through if I were to ask a question like that. And it’s unfortunate that so often it takes people having gone through those experiences, before you can really personally go through it before you can empathize. And hopefully having done that in one situation I think tends to replicate that with others, without having to personally go through them. But really I think that demonstrating that you care about people is just so important.

Tanya: Yeah, it is so important, and actually, I was reading an article in the Harvard Business Review that said, based on research, 80% of why somebody likes their job is based on the people that they work with. And you know, obviously that sort of connectedness and background of relatedness, and feeling like people actually care plays an enormous role in whether you even like your job or not.

Mike Teng: Definitely.

Tanya: Awesome, Mike. Well,  what do you see for Swing over the next three to five years?

Mike Teng: I could not be more excited. I think, one of the things I’m just really, really proud of both as a founder, but also just of our whole employee group, is that we are in this really notoriously difficult industry. But building a business in a way where if tomorrow, our customers both on the schools, the schools deciding that they don’t want to issue a request with us anymore, and substitute teachers deciding that they have better opportunities elsewhere, where there’ll be cared for better elsewhere. We don’t put anything into our agreements on either side that prohibits people from just doing what they think is best at any given moment. And so, in order to be doing 2,500 substitute days per week, that has to be everyone’s decision that this is the best thing for them. And I think that that’s awesome. And we’re doing that across 500 school buildings a week, and there’s over 120,000 schools in the country, US alone. And I think that that’s just an amazing opportunity to be able to bring what we’ve done with these 500 schools, to the entire country.

Tanya: Yeah. So, I mean, pretty much limitless growth, or as many schools as there are in the U.S. And have you even started thinking about growing internationally or U.S. is really sort of a big enough market?

Mike Teng: I think it’s definitely a big enough market. We haven’t really thought about it. I’ve talked to other companies that do similar things in other countries. So, it seems like depending on the country, there’s certainly a need. The education system definitely looks so different in other countries. And I think having been on the operator side of schools for five years, in order to learn what I knew that I needed to learn about school districts and decision making in school operators. I think international, is hard to get my head wrapped around at least at this moment in time.

Tanya: Yeah. Well, Mike, thank you so much. It’s really been such a pleasure, and I really appreciate some of the knowledge that you shared with us today. And thank you so much for being on the Unmessable show.

Mike Teng: Thank you.

Conclusion: Unmessable is recorded in the heart of New York City, and a special thanks to all the team involved in producing the show. Visit Tanyaprivé.com/Unmessable to find a transcript of this episode and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.