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1/ I attended a fascinating conference hosted by @lessin @eriktorenberg around ISAs (income share agreements). It’s a topic I’ve been really interested in lately and think there’s a lot of potential overlap with crypto. Some of my highlights from the event lifecapital.com
2/ A major use case is to offer an alternative to students taking on debt for education & provide access to those who wouldn’t have otherwise. Many attend college w/ the goal of getting a job. ISAs can align incentives so schools will only get paid if the student gets a job
3/ There’s been a lot of people thinking about this for decades so why now? Some of the points from @lessin were the world is increasingly connected, there’s more data available, major increase in student debt & the 2008 financial crisis led to more concern about taking on debt
4/ Vemo has been working with Purdue University to offer ISAs to students. The ISA cohorts didn’t have any adverse selection. UCSD Extension is launching their ISA program in July. They are partnering with San Diego Workforce Partnership to provide additional career services
5/ Lambda School which I think many have heard of has a different model where it’s entirely ISAs. The highest cap paid is $30k (not due to regulatory requirements). The goal is to start out with code school but close the labor gap with other industries & countries in the future
6/ One focus of discussion was around transparency in making sure the student understands the terms and what they are getting into. I think crypto can help make the terms more transparent. UCSD Extension also talked about a mini course on ISAs that students take before enrolling
7/ There’s obviously many concerns & risks with ISAs but I’m glad to see so much discussion and experimentation around it. I think it can help so many people if done correctly (even past just education). There’s concern over a PR risk where a bad actor ruins this early momentum
8/ There’s also regulatory uncertainty around ISAs which includes state vs federal regulation, disclosure requirements, how this gets taxed, etc. But there’s some momentum with ISA bills at state and federal levels which has become a bipartisan issue
9/ Some students in ISA programs have raised concerns about data privacy in having to share their employment/income data with schools long after they have graduated. This is another area where crypto can be helpful in offering privacy
10/ Overall I recommend checking out the videos from the event when they are posted and reading @eriktorenberg’s post on ISAs. It’s an important topic to discuss the pros and cons of so we can try to get this right medium.com/@eriktorenberg…
Update: @planetmoney just had a good podcast episode on ISAs yesterday for those interested npr.org/sections/money…
