Gabriel Gavrilov Podcast Transcript
Gabriel Gavrilov joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:00] Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:12] Brian Thomas: Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Gabriel Gavrilov. Gabriel launched Neuron Education during the COVID 19 pandemic. And during this time, he built a student focused virtual school where K through 12 aged children were connected with vetted college students for virtual tutoring. Neuron Education is not only focused on improving student math and reading scores, but also extends to nurturing student self-confidence, self-esteem, and critical thinking abilities.
Through his innovative approach, Neuron Education became a sought-after corporate benefit, empowering companies to support their employees’ children. Gabriel’s unwavering dedication continues to revolutionize the gap between education technology and the workplace to impact the lives of millions of children nationwide positively.
He has consistently taken the lead in creating transformative tools and technologies that empower young minds and shape a brighter future.
Well, good afternoon, Gabriel. Welcome to the show!
[00:01:06] Gabriel Gavrilov: Thank you for having me, Brian.
[00:01:08] Brian Thomas: Thank you for jumping on. And I appreciate you hailing out of the greatest city in the world, as we call it city of New York City. So, thanks again for jumping on there, Gabriel.
Let’s jump right in here. Let’s get your story out to our audience today. You’ve got quite the career in venture capital, private equity, you are a senior executive, but now you’re the founder and CEO of Neuron Education. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
[00:01:33] Gabriel Gavrilov: Yeah, for sure. I’m more than happy to share my story. I’d say first and foremost. For me, I’ve always been driven by the idea of building technology that can impact the world because I really believe that technology has the incredible power to transform lives, bridge gaps and also to, really create opportunities like never before.
And so, with Neuron Education the genesis of neuron education really comes down to, to my belief that, every child, regardless of their background or location, should have access to, you know, high quality education and also to the support that’s necessary to have that high quality education.
So, for me, that’s really why I’m really passionate about, building innovative educational tools and platforms that can be really leveraged globally and really for me at the end of the day, it’s knowing that my work has the potential to shape the minds of future generations.
And I would say that is really the catalyst for me in my career as an entrepreneur and building your own education.
[00:02:42] Brian Thomas: Thank you. I love that. You’re absolutely right. We all talk about this on the podcast about giving back, helping others, coaching, mentoring, whatever it is. Right. But this is huge.
You potentially have the capability. You may never know this, but you may shape the minds of billions of people in many generations to come. So, I appreciate what you’re doing. This is awesome. Helping out the people that are going to be our future, which are our children. Gabriel, your platform, let’s talk about that a little bit.
You mentioned that Neuron Education, it’s a virtual tutoring and social wellness platform provided as a corporate benefit that gives working parents easy access to tutoring and social wellness programs for their kids, right? Could you maybe briefly walk through the importance of this and
its benefits?
[00:03:25] Gabriel Gavrilov: Yeah, for sure. So about two and a half years ago, as you know, COVID 19 kind of took storm. So, in the post COVID 19 world. 50 percent is according to the IES. gov 50 percent of K through 12 kids year are behind a grade level. That’s a huge, huge problem. So, with Neuron Education. We built a solution, a platform that takes college students, smart college students that are looking to teach and mentor and lead.
[00:04:00] And we start connecting these college students to these children. And they are their mentors and their instructors, and they help them. And they help them be successful in school and on average with our platform, after 20 sessions, we’ve seen better and percent of our students using our platform saw a letter grade increase at the end of the year.
So, what we’ve done is we’ve taken this platform and we figured out that really what we’re doing is we’re solving. So many intricate problems that families face with their Children at home, and we packaged Neuron up as a corporate benefit, right? So that we’ve been able to now provide C Suite leaders the opportunity to directly impact the lives of their employees and their families at home.
I think everyone knows the importance of education, right? Education can be linked in many facets across the world and how fast you can move up in your career or being able to from the most foundational ways of, communicating. So I guess that’s pretty much in a nutshell, our platform and how we’ve gotten to providing this as a corporate solution.
[00:05:10] Brian Thomas: Thank you. That’s awesome. First of all, at the crux of it all. It’s really getting our kids to where they need to be. You talked about COVID, but really the flexibility here. And whether you’re both working parents or single parent this is a huge, huge thing to overcome one of the big challenges within a family unit.
So, I appreciate what you’re doing. This is just awesome. I can’t wait to get this thing edited and out to the audience. So, thanks again, Gabriel. Gabriel, we are a tech platform podcast publication. We love tech emerging tech. And we want to ask you if you’re leveraging any of that new or emerging technology in your business.
And if not, maybe there’s a cool tool or app you found useful. You could share with us.
[00:05:51] Gabriel Gavrilov: Yeah, for sure. Being a technology company, we are and being an individual that’s always looking to innovate and bring new solutions to the world. We’ve been really looking into really from the more the Tech angle on ways on how we can leverage a lot of these AI tools that are built off all these different models, the large language models and start actually using a lot of these tools to start creating our internal AI tutors. So, we have a platform that we’ve been building internally, which is called Elix.
It stands for engaged learning experience. And basically, it’s going to allow our instructors. To convert math problems science problems that they’re working on with their students into stories that can connect to their children; student likes basketball, how do we turn this math problem into a storyline with basketballs?
I think. This is such an interesting time to be alive, such an interesting time to be in the space and the education technology space. And I think as the time goes on, as more innovation is brought to the table, you’re going to start seeing so many technologies just merging together for various use cases.
[00:07:10] Brian Thomas: Thank you. I love that. I can’t remember who said it, but whenever you’re having fun. You’re going to actually learn something, and I just love how you blended that together. And I just, again, really excited about your platform and what you’re doing to get back.
Gabriel, last question of the evening here. Can you share something from your career experience that would be helpful for those looking to grow their career in entrepreneurship?
[00:07:32] Gabriel Gavrilov: For sure. So, I would say there’s really three things. If you want to get into space, if you want to get into entrepreneurship, the 1st thing is networking.
The more hands you shake, the more money you will make, right? You need to build and nurture relationships before you even need anything. Because networking is where trust is built. That’s where your vision will attract people. And being able to help you realize your vision. This goes into my second point, which is have a clear vision of where you want to go and be disciplined and executing the day-to-day tasks.
And one of the most important parts of entrepreneurship. It’s two things it’s sales and happy customers, right? Those two are the lifeblood of any business. So, as you map out your vision of where you want to be, you also have to be very pragmatic. And what you have to do day to day and how does this actually affect the business as a whole.
Right? Now, having a clear vision, all of this, it’s and sales and happy customers. It’s difficult. It’s not necessarily easy when you’re starting off and I’d say the last point for an emerging entrepreneur is you need to find mentors, right? Mentors who can coach and mentor you because it’s inevitable that you will make mistakes.
You’re going to make mistakes but having a coach for specific areas can really help you think through tough decisions. And when you’re building a company, if you’re in a position where you’re raising capital from investors, look at these investors, not as just an area of dollars for your company, but how has this person play a larger role in my life?
And I really think that in the beginning, once you have these three foundations together then you will start to put one foot in front of the other and you’ll start to see success because all of this, all these three points I laid out to you, it all involves people. And you build businesses with people.
And I think that is what I’d like to close it up on is that teamwork makes the dream work and that whatever you do in entrepreneurship it requires teamwork and people to, to support you at, from all different facets.
[00:09:53] Brian Thomas: Love that. Thank you again, Gabriel. That is awesome.
And at the core of everything, again, another kind of theme here in our podcast is people is the center of everything. Whether you’re trying to sell something, you’re selling people, trust people. They don’t trust companies, logos, or corporations. They trust people. And that’s really the core of it.
So, I really love some of the gems you’ve shared with us today. And again, can’t wait to get this out to our global audience. Gabriel, it was a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
[00:10:21] Gabriel Gavrilov: Yes, for sure. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:10:24] Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Gabriel Gavrilov Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
