The K-12 vendors that need Tenet to win deals.

Three waves, sequenced by contact accessibility, gap clarity, and how mechanically easy a co-sell is. Run Wave 1 hard before opening Wave 2.

The competitive frame favors Tenet

Every excluded competitor has converged on the same architecture: cloud/proxy or account-API monitoring that produces transparency and alerts, not real-time, on-device, prompt-level policy enforcement. Securly markets an "AI Transparency Solution" and describes its AI guardrails as block/allow "just like blocking categories of websites in a web filter." GoGuardian markets AI chat visibility for self-harm detection in Beacon. Lightspeed's "SMART AI" is reporting and category block/allow. None describe DOM-level policy injection, on-device sub-5ms classification, response compliance scoring, or a customer-owned analytics pipeline.

Most partnership-friendly vendors have no AI governance answer

Classroom management (Hapara, NetSupport), identity (ClassLink, Clever), MDM (Jamf, Mosyle), and most filters (Blocksi, DNSFilter, TitanHQ, Senso, ManagedMethods Content Filter) treat "AI" as either a website category to block/allow, an internal classifier for URL/image categorization, or a self-harm/wellness signal. Their customers are being asked by Securly/GoGuardian "what's your AI governance story?" and they have none. Tenet is the answer they can resell.

Market consolidation has reduced the target list but raised the leverage per deal

Three notable rollups: Qoria (formerly Family Zone, ASX: QOR) now owns Cipafilter, Smoothwall, NetRef, Linewize, Qustodio, and Pulse. Impero (Investcorp Technology Partners-owned since August 2017) acquired ContentKeeper in December 2021 and Netop in 2021. Gulmohar Capital acquired CurrentWare/BrowseControl in March 2025, though that one is weakly K-12 and lower priority. For prospecting efficiency, one Qoria or Impero relationship buys access to multiple brands.

Channel structure is favorable on Wave 1 targets

Blocksi, ManagedMethods, and the Linewize/Qoria NA channel org all have small, named BD/channel leaders directly reachable. DNSFilter raised $30M Series A led by Insight Partners in July 2021, plus a $15M extension in August 2023, and runs a formal MSP partner program. Jamf's channel-first Global Partner Program drives over 60% of total ARR through partners with a 5-Star CRN rating, mechanically easy to plug into once you have a reference customer.

Kirk does not pitch these as partners. He needs the AI capabilities cold so he can position Tenet against them in conversations with prospective Wave 1 / Wave 2 vendors who face them in deals.

If Securly, GoGuardian, and Lightspeed are smart, well-funded companies sitting on tens of millions of student devices, why haven't they shipped what Tenet does? The honest answer matters, Kirk needs it to defuse the "they'll just build it" objection that will come up in every Wave 1 conversation.

It's not that they can't see the problem. It's that their architecture, economics, and go-to-market all point the other direction.

1. Architecture mismatch

Securly, Lightspeed, and most large filters run as cloud proxies or network gateways. Traffic gets routed through their infrastructure, classified, logged, and forwarded. That works for URL-level decisions ("is this site in the social-media category?") but breaks down inside an encrypted LLM session: a cloud proxy sees that a student opened chatgpt.com and what bytes flowed back and forth, but it can't surgically read and modify a single prompt before it leaves the browser, inject a teacher's "no answers, only hints" rule as a system instruction mid-session, or score the AI's response against district policy before the student sees it. That requires being inside the browser at the DOM level, on the device, in real time. Their entire infrastructure is pointed the wrong direction.

GoGuardian and ManagedMethods take a different route, account-API monitoring through Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 connectors. That lets them see what's already happened (a Doc was edited, a Chat message was sent, a self-harm phrase appeared somewhere in the cloud account) and alert humans about it. It's powerful for post-hoc safety review. It's structurally incapable of stopping a prompt before it's sent.

2. Unit economics mismatch

These vendors sell bundled filter + classroom + safety platforms at roughly $5-10 per student per year, often E-Rate funded. At 20 million students, even fractional cloud compute per AI prompt would crush their margins. Tenet's architecture is the opposite: on-device classifiers (sub-5ms inference, lightweight on-device models) and customer-owned analytics buckets mean ~95% gross margins at the same price point. The cloud-proxy competitors literally cannot match that cost structure without rebuilding from scratch.

3. Go-to-market mismatch

Securly and GoGuardian sell comprehensive platforms to large districts on annual cycles. Their salesforce is trained to renew and expand, not to introduce new technical requirements (browser extensions, on-device ML, customer-owned S3 buckets) that complicate IT deployment conversations. Shipping "AI Transparency" as a free add-on to existing filter customers is the path of least resistance, it uses pipes they already own, requires no new IT install on student devices, and lets them claim the AI box on RFPs without changing their sales motion.

So what they've shipped is exactly what their architecture, economics, and GTM can ship: visibility, alerts, and category-level block/allow. Useful. Not enforcement. Not the same product.

What Tenet does that they don't

We are not trying to replace any of them

This is the line Kirk leads every partnership conversation with, and it's true. Tenet does not do URL filtering. Tenet does not do classroom screen monitoring. Tenet does not do MDM. Tenet does not do identity or rostering. Tenet does not do email/Drive safety scanning. The vendors in this report do those things well, and most districts will keep using them.

What Tenet does is the layer that none of them are architected to do: real-time, prompt-level governance of generative AI inside the browser, with response compliance scoring, DLP on the way out, and customer-owned data on the way back. That layer rides on top of whatever filter, classroom tool, MDM, or identity provider the district already has.

The pitch to every Wave 1 partner is mechanical:

• Your customers are being asked for an AI-governance answer. Yours is "block the URL" or "log the chat." Securly is using its AI Transparency story to win deals away from you.
• Bundle Tenet. You sell the layer you already sell: filter, classroom, MDM, identity, safety. We sell the AI-governance layer on top, at $8/student/year. You take a partner margin. Together you check the AI box on the RFP and win.
• We don't compete with you. We need you. We're a Chrome extension, not a platform. Without your installed base, we're nothing. With it, you're the only vendor in the deal with a real enforcement story.

The priority category. Independent, mid-size filters with weak or no in-prompt AI governance, the kind of partnership shape Tenet is starting to open with Blocksi and wants to replicate.

Distribution rails, not gap-fills. Less "fill the AI gap" and more strategic GTM multiplier, integrate plus co-market for reach across the partner's installed base.

One relationship buys access to multiple absorbed brands. Highest leverage per conversation.

Quick-reference. Priority 1 contacts are the warmest opens with confirmed LinkedIn and at least one verified contact channel. Priority 2 are real targets needing verification. Priority 3 are executive sponsors or fallback paths.

• Deployment numbers are vendor self-reported unless an external source is named. Districts often run several tools simultaneously, so figures overlap and cannot be summed.
• Contact-data confidence varies. LinkedIn-confirmed contacts (Schiltgen, Waugh, Waguespack, Parker, Lee, Klasnic, Carnesi, Petar) are reliable. Aggregator-only items (Warren Frebel, Amir Eftekhari, the Bark sub-leadership names) and the Bob Gagnon employer question must be verified before outreach. Most personal emails are masked on aggregators. The cleanly published ones are Schiltgen (procurement docs) and Klasnic's phone (TIPS-USA).
• Leadership in flux: Impero CEO (Justin Reilly per 2021 acquisition vs. Richard Fuller per Crunchbase 2025), DNSFilter channel ownership, and ClassLink/Clever post-acquisition leadership should be reconfirmed before contact.
• If a Wave 1 partner demands exclusivity, decline and move to the next. Tenet's value is being the neutral AI-governance layer across many stacks.
• If Securly/GoGuardian/Lightspeed ship true in-prompt enforcement (DOM injection + response scoring), the "monitor vs. enforce" wedge narrows. Pivot the pitch to Tenet's pricing moat (~95% gross margin at $8/student because customer-owned buckets bypass cloud-proxy costs) and on-device latency.
• If a partner's own roadmap shows a generative-AI governance product within ~2 quarters, treat them as coopetition and prioritize integration speed over deep co-sell.
• Time outreach to conference cycles, CoSN, FETC, ISTE, ASU+GSV. Blocksi and Linewize both exhibit at CoSN/TCEA; Linewize launched at FETC 2025.
• Excluded by instruction: Securly, GoGuardian, Lightspeed, Dyknow. Saasyan excluded for no US K-12 presence yet. CleanBrowsing and CurrentWare excluded as below floor / weak K-12.
• Scope: US K-12 only, vendors with approximately 50+ districts as floor.