Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt

Joe Liemandt quietly built one of the most successful software empires you’ve never heard of—then reappeared with a $1 billion bet that AI can make kids learn ten times faster and love school more than vacation. At Alpha School, students spend just two hours a day on AI‑driven academics, consistently score in the top 1% on standardized tests, and use the rest of their time to build real‑world life skills: leadership, entrepreneurship, teamwork, and projects they actually care about. There are no lectures, no moving on without mastery, and a very different role for “teachers”—now called guides. Liemandt is the principal of Alpha School and the founder of Trilogy Software and ESW Capital. He dropped out of Stanford to build Trilogy, made the cover of Forbes twice before turning thirty, became the youngest member of the Forbes 400, then vanished from public life for twenty‑five years while quietly becoming one of the most prolific acquirers of software businesses in the world. Now he’s using everything he learned about systems, incentives, and scale to rebuild K–12 from first principles around mastery, motivation, and AI. In this conversation, we cover Joe’s full arc, from sleeping on the floor at Trilogy and being mentored by Jack Welch to deciding that “kids must love school more than vacation” would be a non‑negotiable design principle for Alpha. He explains how the Timeback platform works under the hood, why he’s comfortable streaming student screens to AI in real time, and how he plans to scale this model to a billion kids. You’ll learn: why he thinks the traditional classroom was designed for a narrow slice of students and wastes everyone else’s time, what changes when kids master a year of material in roughly 20–22 hours, how guides coach motivation instead of delivering lectures, and the simple rules he uses to make high‑stakes decisions about people, product, and strategy. ------ Timestamps: (00:00) What’s Broken in Today’s Education System (07:01) What Makes Alpha School Different (11:01) Real Results: 2 Hours of AI, Top 1% Scores (16:55) Who Gets In (23:20) The Everyday Classroom Problems Alpha Is Fixing (26:40) Redefining Mastery: No Moving On Until You “Get It” (35:37) Can You Actually Change a System This Big? (39:19) Teaching Through AI (44:27) Solving the Motivation Problem: Why Kids Love Alpha (57:01) What Makes a Great Guide Instead of a Traditional Teacher (01:01:04) Coaching Kids to Own Their Work (and Their Time) (01:05:17) Teaching Life Skills: Leadership, Teams, and Real Projects (01:08:18) “You Can Do Hard Things”: Building Grit in the Classroom (01:13:25) Streaming Student Screens to AI: How Monitoring Works (01:21:08) Effort vs. IQ: What Actually Predicts Success at Alpha (01:23:36) Rethinking Physics for High Schoolers with AI (01:24:40) After Alpha: What Happens to Graduates? (01:37:08) Why You Should Invest in Yourself (01:38:21) Lessons from Jack Welch: Mentorship and Management (01:45:49) Why Trilogy Didn’t Go Public (01:51:40) Physical vs Virtual School: What Kids Actually Need More (02:03:18) Paying Kids to Learn: Incentives, Rewards, and Risks (02:11:01) What Is Success For You? ------ Newsletter: The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------ Follow Shane Parrish: X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/shaneparrish⁠ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/farnamstreet/ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-parrish-050a2183/⁠ Follow Joe Liemandt: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liemandt/ Tools to help your kids: Math up to grade 7: https://www.synthesis.com/tutor High School Physics: https://physicsgraph.com Math Grade 8-12: https://www.mathacademy.com ------ Thank you to the sponsors for this episode: +Granola AI, The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings: https://www.granola.ai/shane Check out the Granola Notes. +Shopify: https://shopify.com/knowledgeproject Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 02

  This AI world is coming and we're all terrified of what it means.

• 0:08Speaker 03

  Why does education seem fundamentally broken today when it didn't 30 years ago?

• 0:14Speaker 02

  The biggest picture, I think, if you talk to parents of like why there's agitation for change is this AI world is coming, and we're all terrified of what it means. But what we do know, and we don't know exactly what it means, but what we do know is the education system that we all went through isn't going to prepare the kids for that world. Right. And I feel that as a catalyst for people to say the old system wasn't working or the old system needs to change, that's just a huge driver. Like if, you know, I talk to lots of kindergarten parents, you know, and they're just looking and saying, in a dozen years, you know, if I put my kid in standard school that I went through,

• 0:58Speaker 02

  is that going to prepare them for this AI world? And they're like, no, that's not. So there's a drive that we need something different. Um,

• 1:07Speaker 03

  But even 10 years ago it was different. Like your daughter, right before AI even hit the scene,

• 1:12Speaker 02

  yeah.

• 1:12Speaker 03

  uh, I felt it, you felt it, like something is not working with the school system.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and and schools are failing. You know, that if you look at, you know, just pure academic results, just take academic results, independent of AI, you're you're right. Uh test scores keep going down every year.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  How is that possible? We keep spending more and more money.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  It's, you know, uh, you know, there's there's a lot of reasons around it. Um uh it's a comp a school is a complicated bundle. And academic performance is only one element. And it's one fundamentally that schools have basically say it doesn't matter that much anymore. And so everybody's willing to let everybody involved in the ecosystem has been willing to let the standards drop. And I believe part of it is because the way our system is built today, you know, there's basically a couple truisms about, you know, the standard school system. The first is the way it's structured is a time based system where you move up every year and you have a teacher in front of a classroom.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  There's basically you have two attributes for people who do well in that system. One, It's IQ coded, which is higher IQ better is better. And second, it's big five conscientiousness coded. If are you a natural grinder? You know, sort of, and if you have those two attributes, you do really well in our existing school system. But if you don't, you don't do well. Right. And so, and the system doesn't adapt for anybody who doesn't do well in those two, those two elements. Um, and so you you have that as sort of one dimension of why the system's not working, because it's if you're not one of those two. And then the second dimension over here is fundamentally about resources and factually, independent of any, you know, political or anything, is just factually,

• 2:59Speaker 02

  you know, one of the strongest determinations of whether you learn your educational outcome and how much you know is based on your family's income. And the whole system is just geared that way, sort of it's just look at the results. And so you sort of have these just two systems like this, and that's why they're like, okay, we'll spend more money and all these things. But fundamentally it's it's just broken because those elements, right, aren't being changed. Right. If you have a time-based system that's based on IQ and conscientious, you can pour all the money you want into it. And it doesn't change those. Right. It doesn't make kids more I give them higher IQ, give them more conscientiousness. And so it doesn't fix the problem. And uh and so that's that's a lot of the the issues that you have.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Do we admit as a society that there is a problem, or is it just sort of like

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I this is this is I think where it gets complicated. Uh at least in and your views versus globe is a little different, which is as a society, everybody in America's like, wow, our schools suck. You know, it's just there's every article, right? Just constant stream of and there's an unending stream of look at how bad all these school scores and grades go down and everything. And then COVID was even worse. But you know, just everything's bad. Um 80% of the grade inflation, everybody knows, you're like, you know, 80% of people at Harvard get A's now. It's like, oh, just give A's out to everybody. And so we all know that the standards have been dropped, but The thing in the US that's different, especially and if you look globally, is in the US, there's a big disconnect between educational outcomes

• 4:31Speaker 02

  and your earning potential, which is they're not as tightly correlated as they are in the rest of the world. They're very tightly correlated in the rest of the world and not in the US. And so there's a big thing among parent parents who are just like the academics don't matter that much. There's all these other things, the life skills and all these other skills that matter more than the academics. And so I don't really care as much. And I guess a good story about this was when, you know, I became principal three years ago. And, you know, our first product, the way I positioned it, you know, was 2x learning. Your kid will learn twice as much. And fundamentally, I got incredible pushback from parents about that, like surprising amounts of pushback.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  And I was so surprised. I mean, I was doing hundreds of parent teacher meetings, right? With, you know, and explaining it. And I'd be in a meeting, you know, and I'd be like, you know, mom, dad, and Johnny. And I just be like, look, Johnny's not learning 2x because you know, when he misses the question, the video that comes up that explains why he missed it and how he can do the next one right, he skips it. He just skips it, you know? And but he could learn 2x twice as much if he just watched the video.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  and then they're they're probably like, why are you pressuring them? Why are you

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Why are you pressuring Johnny to learn 2x? And I'm like, well, I okay, got it. And it took me hundreds of meetings to realize the parents don't value it. Now, 10% of the market does. 10% of the market totally cares about. Great academics, right? And so those guys, they demand it. Like they don't like two-hour learning because it's not enough learning. But we switched. So that was my our big product market fit. If you had to say the biggest pivot, you know, from a marketing point of view that unlocked, you know, sort of all the all the stuff around alpha was, and I was slow, but hundreds of meetings in, I'm like, I'm going to change this message. And I'd have mom, dad, same Johnny, same mom and dad. Look. I'm trying to get Johnny out of here in two hours

• 6:29Speaker 02

  so he can go do all the cool stuff the rest of the day. Trying to get him out of here. And you know, he skips the videos. And if you just watch them, he'd be done in two hours. And then mom's like, Johnny, what's wrong with you? Don't you want to get out of here?

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Right? People want to get out of the learning, right? They want to get out of the academics. And when it's only two hours, then everybody's aboard. Um, and now we still teach 2x and two hours, right? We just emphasize the two hour part.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  How you question it.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  No, we literally took we it was two X in two hours. And I'm like, let's just drop it and call it two hour learning where you learn two X in parentheses.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Well, let's talk about alpha school. What is alpha school?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  So Alpha School is a uh high-end private school, um, expanding nationwide. We'll have uh 25 campuses around the country uh this year. And the way to think about alpha school is if you could revisit and just say, we need to build an educational system that's going to be ready for when AI comes, you know, when when the this whatever world's gonna be here in a decade, right? What would you do? Just ground up rewrite, ignore everything you and I went through, right?

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Six hours a day in class and homework and all that, and just rewrite it of what are the skills the kids need? How should they spend the day? How do you do that? What would it be? And so that's what we're doing at alpha school. The other part we do is we also say we definitely took off budget constraints. It's a high end private school. We're like, if if money's no object, which is gives us a sort of our high end design. Now we're going to get the cost down and drive it down, but for the first version, this alpha school, it's it's it's the high end. And so we we we have built a school that is totally different than every other school out there. Um, and the principles that we under lie that underlie it. Um,

• 8:09Speaker 02

  you know, first, you know, we said if look, if you're gonna redo school and we're gonna put our kids in this for a decade, the number one rule is kids must love school. They must love school. Right. And, you know, that is our core principle, and it's what makes everything happen. And when I talk about, you know, to principals and superintendents and other heads of school, I'm just like, if you don't believe that, all this other stuff you hear about, you know, to our learning and all this, it's not going to work. You have to believe that core value that kids must love school. And we got our ranking, like I think it was like 96 the last. We survey our kids every eight weeks. And it was, you know, 96% of our kids said yes. But we actually raised

• 8:50Speaker 02

  it, we it got too high. It's not a good metric when everybody says yes. So we added a second question, which was do you love school more than vacation? Right. And we get about 40 to 60% of our kids, 40 to 60% of our kids who say they'd rather go to school than vacation. Which is that's the metric now that we wake up every day is we're like, we have to build a school where the kids want to go instead of vacation. The highlight of my time as principal, three years ago, was when I started in May of this year. Two thirds of our high school kids sent me a note and they're like, Mr. Limont, can we keep the school open this summer? Because we don't want a summer break. And I I hated high school. Like I the school fine. I would never have asked ever the right.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  Billion years. Ever.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  And I was just like, okay, we are, you know, and there's a lot that to unpack why they wanted it and all that stuff. But that's that's the core. If we're gonna put our kids in for right a decade, 12 years of this stuff, we as parents, right, should just say they should love it. Like, you know, and and there's this view that no, it's spinach, you know? And that I I had that view, you know, um, that you know, I wasn't the founder of Alpha, but I was talking to McKinsey and and Brian started it. And I was talking to Brian when I first put my kids in it. And I was like, what are the things I don't know? About education that I should know. He's like, kids must love school. Like, love school. And I'm like, hmm, it's spinach. He's like, you don't get it.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Your kids are gonna come here and you're gonna figure it out. And now I'm like total religion, right? That they absolutely have to, and it makes all the magic happen. And what's interesting is when I talk to b other business executives, You know, about this, no, it should be spinach. I'm like, is that what you think for your employees? Do you like wake up and say, man, you know what? This job just sucks and it should suck. And no, I'm not going to try to make them like this job. Just suck it up. But literally, they turn around to their kids and say the same thing like, dude, suck it up.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Right? No, it's ridiculous that you should like school. That's just insane. Because we didn't like it and we went through the system. But if we're rebuilding it, we just need to totally undo that thought process we have that, you know. Kids should hate school. They should love it.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  I think that was the moment where I started to question the school system, which was just about pre COVID. And, you know, I was made to feel like my kids were the problem. And I was like, I don't like they're not a problem at home. Why are they all of a sudden a problem at school? Like, what's going on in the classroom?

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  And then when it shut down and we all got to peer inside what's going on in the classroom, I'm like, oh my God. Like, 100% agree with my kids, you know, this is crazy. Is this what you're doing all day? Like, is this what they're learning and how they're learning? And um, but before we get to all of what you're doing different, like what are the results

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So let's talk about the results. So the alpha school, um, you know, one, our our kids love school. It's just they're phenomenal results. Uh, when you talk about academically, we're the best academic performing school in the country. Just

• 11:48Speaker 02

  bar none. So you can measure us on we we are big believers in standardized tests because no one, when you hear about the whole how alpha works, nobody believes it'll work. And so even, you know, a lot of parents don't believe in standardized tests when they come in. And I'm like, okay, your kids only doing two hours a day. And they're like, well, how do I know they're learning? I'm like, trust me. They're like, no, I don't trust you.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  And so when they score, you know, top 790 and 800 math SAT, they're like, oh, okay, it's working. Or on stand NA map test is the one we use, NWEA, you know, when they're top 1%, every single class, every single subject is top 1%.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  every single year?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Every single class, yes, every grade, every subject, top 1%. And we publish them. Right, back to we publish all these results. We also, our kids, fundamentally in the two hours, are learning twice as fast as if they sat in school for six and did homework. And so, like, for example, you on the map test, you know, there's it's a 300 point scale. And so if you have like a 220 and you're a fifth grader at, you know, 75th percentile, you know, coming into alpha,

• 12:53Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  you know, it's gonna say you're gonna go up five points. You know, if you're a normal kid, you're gonna go up five points this year.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  At alpha, you're gonna go up 10 points.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Right. And so it's just quantifiable. So the parents can log in

• 13:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  and be like, wow, right? My kid learned twice as much and they only had to spend two hours a day doing it. And so, you know, and so the the part that is just amazing about alpha is, you know, there are a lot of private schools that just select for good students, right? Which is one one way to do it. The other way is to make them, develop them. And so ours is all about growth. We'll take kids, right, and get them from bottom half to top half to top 1%. Um That the growth rate of alpha is what the just unbelievable parts are. Like if you can go download ours off our website, like our results, and you can put it into ChatGPT, and you're like, analyze the growth rate of alpha versus any other school in the country.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  And it's like, it's like four standard deviations off the track because nobody does this. Because we take people who are behind and catch them up,

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  but we take the top 1% and we move them years ahead.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Because it's the same thing. There's, you know, even a GT program at normal school where you get one year ahead. You know, I have third and fourth graders who outscore fifty percent of the high school graduates of this country.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  You know, and the end our products gotten better over time. My oldest daughter was in the school, um, and she's now at Stanford, and she was back and she was beating some of the third and fourth graders, and she was looking at some of their scores, and she's like They are getting the scores I got in seventh and eighth grade. Oh, wow. Right. And she's like, so the we're, we're, we're even improving the product. Like, we're not done. Like when we get into learning science, if you want to talk about that and stuff. Like it's it's human potential is unlimited, and we are tapped in and have that improvement cycle going. So the amount kids can learn in a great environment that they love is just it's going to explode, like what our generation thought was knowing a lot.

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• 16:55Speaker 03

  Imagine the pushback. I mentioned to somebody I was talking to you today, and this is probably common pushback, but they were like, oh yeah, they're self selecting, it's a bunch of rich kids in Austin. Um and you know, so their parents care, they have tutors, they have all these resources, and and I don't have that. So have you like what's the pushback on that argument?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  No, I so here's selection effects are a great discussion. Which is um I'll I'll answer that second part of okay, what if you're not rich? Um uh after it, but before. Uh, you know, in in most education, there's a view, and this maybe as my background because I'm not and I'm a product guy. You know, when I came into education, there's a view that you must serve everybody all at once, or you will serve nobody.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Right. That's that's just sort of the the view around everything that you have to serve everybody all at once. And that selection effects are bad. I am like, as a product guy, I'm like, you must use selection effects to build your product,

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  which is you have to select for the right person who you're designing your product for.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Right. And so, um, so yes, I there's no school that doesn't have selection effects. And yes, at Alpha, we select for those. And we absolutely have, you know, an easier cohort than there's other cohorts that we'll talk about that are harder than with the ones we get. But compare us to every other high end private school in the country. Right. I agree. Don't compare us to Really hard situations. Have us go compare us to the best. Go take other 99% kids and see why ours are learning three times faster than those kids. Right. You can get the score that says we benchmark our 99 percentile kids, not against the average kid. We benchmark them against the top 1% kid.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  And our top 1% kids kill everybody else's top 1% kids. So, so I And design, you know, so selection effects matter. So for example, we have another school that's not alpha. So we have to get this down to everybody. You know, Mike, I'm gonna spend 20 years on this. I got to get it to a billion kids.

• 18:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  So I got to solve all the different demographics and issues. So we have a school rolling out. We have a dozen that we've opened so far, um, Texas Sports Academy, right? And so on this one, back to selection effects, our tuition is gonna be $15,000 for this school. It is $15,000 for the school. And with the vouchers, it's in Texas, and Texas has a new voucher program. That they announced billion dollars of vouchers. So it'll be $12,000 vouchers. So any family who's income eligible for it, rich people can't get it. But if you're income eligible for it, you get a $12,000 check. So it'll be a $300 a month parent pay

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  to go to this school.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  We're gonna have generally people who come in the bottom half academically,

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  right? But they're all people who love sports, right? And it's it's a middle school for D1 aspirational athletes. Right. People who wake up and they're like, I love sports. Because back to us, I have to build a school they love more than vacation.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  So I need to know what like lights them up

• 20:02Speaker 03

  What drives that?

• 20:03Speaker 02

  and what drives them. And so I'm like, great. So we can do that. So we already have, you know, and we'll have a, you know, we'll publish all the results, but uh these kids coming in, they go in to the same app set that you get at Alpha,

• 20:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  right? They do the same two hours, right?

• 20:19Speaker 03

  So now we have a wider funnel of kids coming in from a academic background.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  Different academic backgrounds. And you're going to be able to see, and we'll be able to publish those results, that those kids can learn too. Right. Back to the thing is, you know, we talked about why the

• 20:34Speaker 03

  Bits are learning machines. It's almost like we get in the way of it as adults.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  and the problem with the kids learning isn't the kid, it's the system. Like we talked about that at the beginning, where the system's coded in high acute conscientiousness, and how do you unlock those? We've built a system that breaks those two things, which is if you have a mastery based AI tutor, right, that only allows you to advance after you've mastered the material.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  Right, master the basics, right? Which everybody in sports understands, right? If it that's what our system does, that makes it independent of IQ. That makes it effort based, not IQ based. And we have a ton of results, which is we run a program and we have a school, you know, back to the schools. Every kid can get 100% on their state standardized test. And we run this program called 100 for 100 to teach these kids. So we'll have middle schoolers coming into our sports academy.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  And they'll go into the system and we'll be like, well, we'll pay you $100 if you get 100% on the test. And they're a seventh or eighth grade. They're like, I I can't get 100 on the test. And we're like, no, no, no. Pick your grade level. So like, you're gonna let me do a third grade test and get a hundred. And we're like, absolutely. And so they go take the third grade test and they do get a hundred on the third grade test. And they're like, Can I do fourth grade? And then you do fourth grade. Then on fifth grade, they only get a 75. Because they have holes. They didn't learn all that material in fifth grade. And then the AI tutor, they're like, Do you want the AI tutor to generate the lessons you're missing? And they're like, Let me see how many.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  And they're like, I can do that like in a week or so.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  And you're like, another hundred bucks.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  And so we get more hundreds on state standardized tests in a building of 200 people than a school district of 100,000. And back to this concept that you have to change with parents. If you interview alpha parents or any parents and say, can your kid get 100 on the state standardized test, fewer than 10% of parents say yes.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Because in our generation, like only the GT kids did that, right? None of us got that.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  Right. In if you ask alpha kids, they're all like,

• 22:51Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Of course you can, I got one, right? Because it's effort based, not IQ based. Right. There's nothing like, and if you back to that whole correlation, it's just, you know, there's no concept in US Common Core through the eighth grade that everybody can't understand.

• 23:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Right. It's built that way. So it's just a matter of do if and if you're having trouble, it's usually because you don't have the prereqs. Right. And that's all, and that's the difference between a time based teacher in front of a classroom model and a mastery based AI tutor.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Well, it it's interesting because as you're saying that, it strikes me that part of the problem is for a teacher in a normal classroom who's standing at the front of the room and teaching, let's say, grade sevens. Yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  You have grade sevens who are, you know, effectively in the 1% of each. You have the 99th percentile and you have the one percentile. And you have to teach, not only do you have to teach to that classroom and try to keep everybody's attention, which sounds impossible. I have a ton of empathy for teachers.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  On the flip side, you're supposed to be teaching grade seven, but the student that we you just like said this. Well, they passed grade three, but in grade four or five, you know, they only got 70. So they have gaps in their knowledge that you're not, and and everything is so cum, especially with math and reading, and

• 24:07Speaker 02

  All knowledge.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  it's cumulative. Like, so if you can't do that, you're gonna fail in high school. You're gonna hate math by the time you get to high school, but it's because you didn't learn something in fifth grade.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  That's a hundred percent of the problem, which is you have holes in your knowledge, and knowledge is cumulative. And so when you start slowing down, it's because of your prereqs. And the system is set up. The teacher, it's not their fault. Teachers are awesome.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Teacher in front of the classroom is terrible, right? You have to separate those two concepts. And that's one of the things parents, we all sort of put them together, but those they're two separate things. And that's why everybody's trying to get small class sizes, because you basically want a teacher to give your kid individualized lessons. I mean, for the rich families who hire tutors after school, all the tutor does is give them the fourth and fifth grade lessons. That's all they're doing.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Is they're just going back and saying, oh, you don't know fourth and fifth grade, let's do it. But you're a sixth grade teacher. You have to hand out sixth grade material. Like we're we were working with a school with bottom 10% kids, right? And, you know, back to me being new, I go my first day to see the sixth grade teacher teach. There's a sixth grade teacher. And bottom 10% in America means you can't read. You don't know seven times eight, right? And you know, I go into the classroom and she's handing out sixth grade material. Well, I'm like,

• 25:26Speaker 03

  You know you know that's gonna be ineffective.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  yeah, it's just they can't read. And that kid needs a first grade phonics lesson.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Right. And that guy needs a second grade math question, right? And you can't, but the teacher, they can't sit here and every kid give them a right. It's just that's not, they're a sixth grade teacher. There's actually laws in states, various states, that you must teach at grade level. Like it's illegal for a teacher not to teach at grade level, right? Which is just totally insane. Right. And so you have all these problems that are systemically designed in the system. And it's one now that parents, because they're, you know, and if you talk to people, we we've known this back to learning science. For 40 years, there have been papers written about how kids could learn two, five, 10 times faster, but they don't work in a teacher in front of a classroom model. Bloom's Two Sigma, which is a famous one and everybody fights about it, but it's a good, it's a good paper, which is,

• 26:18Speaker 02

  you know, in this is when I was in high school. It's like if you do an AI to not an AI tutor, a human tutor with mastery based, you get two sigma better performance.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Right. Just crazy better performance. But you know, the problem with that paper is you can't give everybody a human tutor,

• 26:36Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  right? And then second, you also have to enforce mastery, which is hard in a lot of ways. When we get to the

• 26:41Speaker 03

  What does mastery mean?

• 26:42Speaker 02

  mastery means do you do you know the material cult? Like think of whenever I talk about mastery, think about sports. Just move to sports, which is if you're a point guard and you're going down the court,

• 26:56Speaker 02

  what percent of the time is the coach going to let you lose the ball? Right. Right. And whatever that number is, is mastery. Right. Because it's not very often. Right. Versus in academics, kid gets an 80%. You're like, oh, he seems to know it. Gotta be, you know, in this thing. Sometimes an A now, you know. And if a if a point guard was losing the ball 20% of the time going down the court, the coach would be like, master the basics. We're not working on dunks,

• 27:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  right? We're not working on new stuff,

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  right? We're gonna master the basics and you're gonna get up to 99 point whatever. And so do you know it cold? And there's a view, though, in a time-based system, that you're like, look, it's time to move on. And we all grew up in a non-mastery-based system, which is then as you don't have mastery, um, you know, the holes compound. And then all of a sudden, the reason like if you look at the learning curves in the US, they start to slow down in middle school and basically flatline in high school. The average kid in the US, like on this map score, this NWA map, there's a 300 point scale. If you take I can't remember the exact number, but if you take an eighth grader, they will go up one point by senior year.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  How is that

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Median, that's the median. One point. Like they learn nothing in high school.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  that's four years?

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, four years of learning nothing. Now, your top 1%, back to this inequality kind of thing. The top 1% probably go up six points a year, right? So your top 1% kids are still learning like this, but your median person in the US is not learning in high school. It's just based, there's no academic learning going on. And that's why there's a pa paper. Um, I'm trying to think. You, I think UC San Diego, one of the top schools, universities in our country, right? Uh, just published a paper that like 50% of their freshmen can't answer fifth grade questions. Like back to holes and all this kind of stuff. Like the fact that how bad it is. It's like, you know, the the the learning and the holes that are in the system. Because once, you know, in the part of what happened with COVID,

• 28:57Speaker 02

  you know, everybody's waiting for the bounce back on COVID. There's gonna be no bounce back on COVID. Because what happened to your point was. The span. It used to be years ago. Okay, I'm a teacher and I'm a sixth grade teacher. I got this GT kid who needs some seventh grade material, and I got someone who's a little behind, needs some fifth grade material. Post COVID, you're like, now it's a seven year span,

• 29:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  right? You have people in middle school who can't read.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  It's crazy.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  I mean, you can't, if you can't read, you can't, it's just a going to school is a waste of time,

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  right? Unless, you know, if you're not, if you're in middle school and can't read, all that matters is that somebody's teaching you to read.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  And and everybody got uh socially passed too, right? So it's like, oh, you're another year older, therefore, instead of addressing the actual issue, we're gonna kick the can to somebody else and we're gonna start fresh with these different groups.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Well, and that's and the the pressure I I totally feel if I was a I could not do the public school job. I could not be a principal at a public school because it is really hard. Because the product you have is this bundle, right? And

• 29:57Speaker 03

  And it's political and it's

• 29:58Speaker 02

  there's political and all just it's totally impossible. And, you know, and you do, you have so there used to be rules that you couldn't pass third grade if you couldn't read. Right. And the problem is social promotion, where the your people are just like, okay, you are gonna psychologically damage my kid if you hold him back. Right. And so then you just promote them to fourth grade for all these other reasons.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  which is

• 30:21Speaker 02

  With the concept

• 30:22Speaker 03

  damaging.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  with this concept of, oh, okay, someone's going to teach them. Right.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  But the problem is the system, the fourth grade teacher's not set up to teach third grade reading.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  They stop teaching reading in grade three.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  Right. Because K K through three is learn to read.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  And then fourth through twelfth is read to learn. Right. That's the flip point where you're like, okay, I'm learning, I'm bootstrapping to learn how to read. And then in fourth grade, you're like, okay, we all know you read now. So now you're going to learn social science and social studies. And You know, you're gonna get word problems on your math test because you can read.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  And if you can't, if you miss that bar, then all of a sudden you're all of a sudden all this material and it's just you know, it could be it could be like me handing out Greek to you.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  And then it's like a negative flywheel, right? Like every year it gets worse and worse. And then you probably feel like I want to give up. There's nothing I can do. So like why bother? Why try? And then I'm disruptive to the class. I start skipping class. You know, my life takes a very different path.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Exactly. Exactly. And it with a mastery based AI tutor, you can go to those kids, right, and just say, I'll make sure you get the third grade phonic.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  So explain the mastery-based AI tutor. It's basically like, okay, we're gonna start, everybody's gonna start in sixth grade. We're gonna figure out what you're strong at, what you're weak at, and then we're gonna go teach you the things you don't know. Uh, and we're we're gonna maybe not get you ahead in the things that you do until we've caught up in the things that you don't know.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you should think

• 31:46Speaker 03

  You don't know we're teaching you at third grade level, so there's like no social stigma to it either. Yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Correct. So you just think about You know, the back to learning science. There's 10,000 papers written about learning science about how kids can learn better. The zone approximal development. Like, give them questions where they're getting them 80 to 85% correct. Where if it's like 99, they're not learning because they already know it. If you get down to 50, like they disengage because it's too hard.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  So you want this crate zone. Every video game developer knows this. Keep the kid engaged. And so you what you really want in a perfect world, you know, and sort of what is imagine. And a AI tutor, an app, whatever you want to call it, giving your kid an unending stream of questions at 80 to 85% accuracy. Right. Where if it gets harder, they're gonna tune it up, down. And it's gonna be, and think of the knowledge graph of everything they need to know. Here's the third grade curriculum. You can ask AI tutors are good at figuring out what you know and don't know,

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  right? Assessments, so are tests, right? And so you can just have the kid take a test and be like, oh, you don't know this stuff over here. Let's give you these lessons until you know it.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Right. And then you can, then once you know it, we'll move you on to the next grade. Same thing at the next grade and just keep progressing you up at whatever rate you go at. Right. And this is the, but the here's the part that's just crazy town.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Kids can learn 10 times faster. So if you take, like just here's a metric for you our subjects, like take seventh grade science.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  In a normal standard school, you have 180 school days.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  So an hour a day, maybe some homework. Couple hundred hours, right? The average kid in our system with Time Back, which is our app, learns it in 22 hours to mastery, to mastery. Math, science, right? Between 20 and 30 hours for if you're thinking K through eight,

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  you should think between 20 and 30 hours per grade level per subject.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  That means you can basically be done school in September, like based on the current model.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  If you were gonna now, part of the problem is if you put kids in it six hours a day.

• 34:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  They're going to disengage and we'll talk about why we designed the two hours and how we came up with that. Um, but the material is just not that much. And that's why our kids can do 2x, right? Because everybody's like, that's just too much to know. And you're like, it's really not that much. And when you get it, right? Um, you know, for parents, you know, anybody who's looking, you should go. There's a there's a great math app out there called Math Academy. They wrote a 500 page book that you can download, Justin, who wrote it, that goes through all the learning science. They also publish how many hours it takes. Their app, I think, starts in fourth grade. Um, you know, but from how long fourth grade math, fifth grade math, sixth grade math, right? And

• 34:40Speaker 02

  it's, I mean, it literally is, it's like 28 hours and 22 hours and just not many hours to master material at these subject levels. And so that, when you talk about the unlock, it's just, you know, when you say, why do kids, and we we, you know, think of your kid, you know, where he's bored out of his mind in school.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  We waste 90% of their time.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Like we know that teacher in front of the classroom is the least effective way to teach. You know, you can argue whether it's 5% retention, but literally we're wasting 90% of the kids' time because we're teaching them in a very ineffective manner. Now, back to the thing, we didn't have a better way for the last 40 years. You're like, you know, if you're head of you're like, you know, school, you gotta have a teacher in front of a classroom because I can't give everybody a tutor, right? And so there was nothing better. So let's not just tell everybody like you could learn 10 times faster, but sorry. Now, now there's no excuse for it. We can get everybody learning that fast.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  And I guess the the hitch is like, well, we've always done it this way. So there's an aversion. And then starting something from scratch, you're like, well, I have no sunk costs in the way that teaching should be. So I can experiment with something different and head these results are off the charts and we're crushing everybody else. Look here, we should all be doing this. So why aren't more public schools reaching into this and going, like, we should be experimenting with this, even in one subject, if we don't do it for everything? Maybe math class looks like synthesis or math academy or something like that, where you're using an AI based learning system instead of a teacher. Why don't they do that?

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Um it's really hard to change the system, right? Which is the first off, first off, nobody believes it. Right. You so the first thing you do when you look at alpha, right, and see our results is you're like selection effects. It's only rich kids, and that's it. Um, and so you you sort of reject it and don't seriously consider it. Um but even in places that do, there's a lot of high end private schools. Who their largest donors are like, I want my kid to have this two-hour learning. Go take a meeting.

• 36:47Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Right. So I spend my time like there, I definitely do. I've met a lot of boards and heads of school of the top schools in this country, private schools who charge, you know, $50,000, $75,000. And they really struggle to sort of believe

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  that this works because fundamentally, learning science, this concept of learning science. They're not trained in it. They haven't read the 10,000 papers. They haven't built and seen it. They don't know the world's, they don't have a team like we do of seven of the 10 best learning scientists in the country working on it, right? Who have all these unlocks. And they definitely don't have the data loop that we have. Like we know, because we measure every single thing

• 37:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  how long the kid took to do it and what the scores are and what are the results and you know that whole closed loop. And so there's just massive skepticism. You know, around it. And they're, you know, it's a classic disruptive problem of,

• 37:41Speaker 03

  I wonder if I'm less skeptical by default because my kids grew up playing Prodigy and I watched how much of an impact that had on their math skills. And actually more importantly, their love of math.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  yeah.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Like they they loved playing that game and you had to answer questions to like cast spells and stuff. And

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  And

• 37:59Speaker 02

  There's a there's a group of people, and those are our early adopters, right? Who comes to an alpha? It's going to be, you know, families like yours. We call them founding families, you know, because they're like, I th I think I've seen enough. Homeschool families, like if you ask the average homeschool family, they know two hours is all you need.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  right.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  There's actually that's all they've ever done. There's two groups, actually, um, when you talk about who believes the two hours versus not, traditional school just doesn't believe it. They just they just don't believe it. The people who do homeschool people, absolutely, or whatever. Their view is why is alpha so expensive? Because I do homeschool.

• 38:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did the same thing.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so, and and absolutely. The other group actually is athletes, which is IMG, which is our head of high school actually came. He used to run academics at IMG because it for big time athletes like at IMG, you do the academics in the morning, you play sports all afternoon.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Right. And that's why our sports academy is all is being designed. It's just they know it too.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Because that's how they catch up, right? Because they got all this time already used. And so, so there is a small set of groups of people. There's others, you know. If you, you know, taught there's a couple, you know, real experts of learning science. You know, Dean Schwartz, who runs Stanford School of Education, he's published a book on learning science.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  What do we know like about learning that so so AI customized? Um, I want to get into like how you know kids are doing effective behaviors versus ineffective behaviors. But like what do we know about teaching them through AI? Like what makes

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  like I'm not just giving you a same math lesson that I would give somebody else. Yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's well, it it's important that more important than the AI is the learning science. Like if I had to pick the two, but it's the combination of the two that really online.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  How do they

• 39:43Speaker 02

  But let's let me be clear. Let's let's dive into what I don't mean by AI. Chatbots is I am not talking. Our school does not teach people by giving them Chat GPT. Chatbots are cheatbots. 90% of kids who are using

• 39:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  chatbots for academics are cheating and not learning. And, you know, in our schools, you know, we do the academics in the morning and then we do all these great life skills in the afternoon. And, you know, for that world, we say if you're using a chatbot in the morning, you're probably cheating.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  And if you're not using it in the afternoon for your life skills and all that stuff, you're probably failing. So AI needs to be chatbots have a use, just not on the academic side.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Now, how we use AI in the morning to teach is what AI, it's the generative AI part, not the chat part. It's we generate personalized lessons for every kid. Right. That's the part. And so imagine if you had an LLM and you fed it the following. You fed it the curriculum you're trying to teach. Right. You fed it the kids' knowledge graph. What do they know and what do they not know? You also feed it the kids' interest graph.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  What do they like? Oh, they like baseball. Because then, right, one of the fastest ways to learn is analogies, right? Back to engagement. If I'm teaching you in something you love and that you're good at, you learn both faster and more engaged. It's sort of a combo effect. Uh, and then there's a fourth one, which is we're adding it. It's it's not in our current one, but it will be in 26. Which is cognitive load theory, which is a whole set of learning science of how your brain works. And you should think your brain's like a chip, a register, where you have these working memory slots, you have a certain, and everybody has a different number. And so, you know, you have four working memory slots, and then you every person needs a different number of reps to take something from short term memory and put it into long term memory. Think of how many times do you have to look at a flashcard?

• 41:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  An easy way. But each person's different. But you could imagine an LLM that sits on top of all that data. And generates the perfect next next lesson for you. Right. And so that's that's where we use the generative AI, not to have kids do a Socratic, you know, tutoring thing, because they're just, you're instead saying, I'm going to generate a perfect lesson. And those lessons are all based on learning science. So I'm going to make sure that they're engaging and not passive. Right. It's going to be a worked example in math because that's actually the best way to teach kids. You know, I'm going to be measuring if it's too hard. If it's, you know, and you get it wrong, I'm going to go back. You know, and I can tell from the other questions. You know, even if it's multi choice,

• 42:22Speaker 02

  the AI is going to make them so that if I'm unsure if you really know it, I'm going to put some questions in there

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  that'll tell me whether you know that prior knowledge or you don't. Right. All of those things are all baked into what we're generating and creating as a lesson. You know, we can do it. As a video, right, with text and audio overlay, right? Make sure it's short so it's not, you know, passive and disengagement. So we can do all that as generating those lessons. And that's that's the key to the unlock. And you might be getting that second grade lesson,

• 42:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  and I'm getting the first grade lesson, you know, because we're in the same class because the AI is just giving us whatever we need. Or maybe you probably need the 12th grade lesson. And I need the I need the first grade lesson. Um, but you know, it's it's it's it's generating that. Now the second, so that's one element. And then there's a second element, and this is actually the most expensive part of our AI. And one of our limitations right now is we burn a lot of.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  10,000 bucks a kid right now. And we'll get it down to less than a thousand and then a hundred. We're we're driving it down. But think of basically streaming the screen to a soda model, to a one of the best ones, and having, and then we have set things up to prompt the kid. How to learn. It coaches. It's a coach. So it's like, look, kid, you're skipping those videos. You keep skipping the videos, right? You're not learning as effect as effectively as you could. Yeah. And so literally in the bottom of the corner, there's a little waste meter where it tells the kid you're wasting time.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  And so this is back to the whole product design you have to do. Right. Where, you know, when we our product name is Time Back. The most, the most important part to educate a kid is motivating. Yeah. So to educate a kid, every educator will tell you you need a motivated student and you need to put them in lessons of the correct difficulty. Now, AI does that second part well. It knows what you know and don't know, and I'll give you second grade or fourth grade. It'll put them in your left the right difficulty. But how do you solve motivation? Yeah. Right? How do you solve motivation? So on my first week as principal, you know, I have to make the kids love school. And so I went up to the fifth graders and they were brand new to school too. And I was like, do you love school? They're like, no. And I was like, well, what would make you love school? And they're like, less school.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  I'm like, how much less? And they're like, none. And I'm like, okay, that's right. And we basically negotiated two hours. I was like, look, if I would you engage in the apps, because I need you to engage in the app. If you don't engage and you're spinning your chair, you're not going to learn. Would you engage for two hours if I gave you the four hours back to go do awesome stuff? And they're like, okay, that seems pretty fair. And I went to my team. I went, great, we got two hours. Right. Let's get every learning science paper. Let's read the crap out of them. Let's figure out exactly what we need to do so they can learn all the material in two hours. Right. And so that's sort of the design of how we got the engine. And the waste meter. So for if you're a student, and when you first come in, you're sort of screwing around and you're not really as engaged.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  And so all of a sudden, your two hour learning is three hour learning. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought this was two hour learning. And you're like, your waste meter is at 50%. You're wasting 50% of your time, dude.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  And then all of a sudden it's like, well, go change these behaviors and you'll get out of here in two hours. So the unlock is like at the sports academy, right? It's a little meter and they have to be in the lessons until it goes green.

• 45:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  And then they get to go play basketball or soccer or whatever. Right. You know, whatever the sport is. And

• 46:00Speaker 03

  And you can go do the other

• 46:01Speaker 02

  their coach, their coach is like, guys, stop screwing around, like, get it done so we could all go play.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  And their friends are playing. And so all of a sudden you have motivation

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  where they want to go do what they want to do. They just have to, and it's not hard because we keep them at 80 to 85%.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  They just can't screw around. Stop waiting. Just use effective techniques. Every kid, like they scroll, you know, if they have a lesson, they're trying to read.

• 46:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  They scroll the bottom, look for some questions, search, you know, they try to skip reading the article. And you're like, look, you got you actually have to read the article if you want to learn how to read.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  You know, and and, you know, we also now can generate the article so they're interested back to engagement and interest levels. You can take that second, third grade boy who's like, I hate books. And then you're like, no, no, no. What's your favorite movie? The Avengers, who are your buddies? And all of a sudden, you're doing a choose your own adventure where you and your buddies are saving the world. And that kid will click page by page for an hour.

• 46:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  And you keep the Lexile level within 10% of his difficulty level. So he's, he doesn't get, it's not too hard. You can funnel new vocabulary words to him, right? All these kinds of things where you can, these, these AI tutors, when you solve the motivation problem, can fill these kids' head with awesome knowledge, right? And you know, one of our design principles is we we're given 12 years, right? Parents give us 12 years to fill their kids' head with awesome knowledge because we we think. We should make kids' heads an interesting place to hang out in because they have to hang out there for the rest of their life. Right. Right. And that's we're we've we've reserved as societies, right, this amount of time.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  And it is great to fill it up. And the kids actually are engaged, and if it is interesting and applicable, right? They do like it. And then there's also just a learning science concept that the more you know, the faster you learn. So acceleration curves, like where the average American in a time based system, right? Or it's not even American, global, slows down.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Ours accelerate. Like if you actually took our high school kids,

• 48:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  right, and set measured them on how fast they're learning versus 2x, one, because the denominator is going way down because the other kids aren't learning, but also how much our kids learn. Right. We'd be like, we have, we'd be at five to 10x, like at high school. Because it's sort of you have this effect going. Right. And that's why you can see some tweets I did where I have all these kids like 790, 790, 790 math, 800 math S A T. You know, and it's it's it's all very doable. And it's just you and I in our world are like, this all sounds like magic and hocus pocus and all that stuff. And that's what sort of my job now is, and why we're getting it out and opening the alphas and getting this everywhere. is we have to educate everybody that this is possible. Like, you know, if, if,

• 48:47Speaker 02

  you know, if I to your, if I was, if you have a parent in your audience and there's three things that I could put in their brain, right, that they don't believe today. Like with their, if they have a kid in school, I need them to think A, not B, right? A is

• 49:04Speaker 02

  your kid can love school, must love school, like more than vacation. That should be the standard you hold. Right. Second, they can crush, crush their academics in just two hours a day. This six hours a day in homework, it's not necessary. Right. We have the highest test scores in the freaking country, two hours a day. Right. If you're gonna go more than that, it's because you have to really catch up because you're behind. Right. And, whoa, okay, you got to do three to catch up. You know, two hours a day, crush it. And then third is the key to your child's happiness is high standards. Right. And that is one that, you know, it's a hard one because I I struggle with it as a parent too. I have two daughters, right? And, you know, you want to hold high standards, but when they're struggling, it's hard.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Right. But that high standards is why our kids love school so much.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  Talk to me more about the high standards part of it.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. So generally, you know, if you're trying to build a school around

• 50:04Speaker 02

  that they love, there's this view of, oh, just let them play all day. Right. But that's actually not going to make them want to come during the summer, right? They have to be working on things that are ambitious, right? And significant. To be able to do that. If they're just scrolling TikTok or playing Fortnite, they're not going to come, right? They can do that at home. Right. Kids wanna do awesome stuff. They do, right? Kids are awesome and they want to do awesome stuff. And we need to give them an environment. And we start in kindergarten, like our kindergartners, like here, the you know, the thing that freaks everybody out, right? And we do this like on a shadow day, because we have we're like, come test it, right? No one's gonna just drop their kid in this weird thing. Come test it. And so we do a shadow day, and one of the things we do is like we have a 40 foot rock wall.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  For kindergartners. And parents are like, oh, my kid is not doing that. Right? That seems scary. I'm kindergarten. It's all safe. It's, I mean, they're all right in

• 50:54Speaker 03

  Harnessed in.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  harnessed in and stuff. But and you know, we teach the kids growth mindset, right? And they can, and then you mic them up, you know, they're climbing up and they're like halfway out, then they start to struggle. And you can see the parents, but our guides, right? Our guides and coaches, who this is what they do all day, right? Our guides and coaches, their whole job, when you say what's the different role of the teacher, because we don't sit in front of the classroom. Think of a mentor who's going to guide and coach you. And their job is to hold high standards, but give you high support,

• 51:24Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  right? To help coach you through it, just like a great coach. And then they'll see the kid get to the top. And when they that kid gets down, they're beaming. They're beaming because they accomplished something hard.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Right. And every child development expert in the world will say the struggle, the the cycle of you need to struggle and fail. I add in as a principal, sometimes cry. Yeah. On your road to success, supported by a caring adult. That loop is what child development is, right? And it builds self confidence. It builds resilience, right? It's what why people, 50% of America puts their kids in after school sports, because everybody expects that cycle to be run in sports. But in schools, it's just not run. Right. And we're like, every kid needs this, right? This shouldn't just be in sports. We should just they want to go to do hard things. And so, like, we start in kindergarten, but we'll talk middle school is like when we talk about middle school.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  You know, we have a middle school epidemic of scrollers, what we call consumers, right? They've been caught in the dopamine TikTok or the Fortnite playing,

• 52:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  right? Loops. And they're just not engaged, right? And so when you come, when you move into an alpha middle school, we run a program, right? Which is well, what, what, what, what are you interested in, right? How are we going to engage or how are we going to get you out of that? And, you know, as a society, we create a world where all those kids sort of get stuck in it. So we do a values chart, a Japanese Ikagai, right? Think of a vision board at, you know, fifth or sixth grade, where you're just like, who do you want to be? And if you ask all these kids, they want to do awesome stuff.

• 53:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  They want to do awesome stuff and they diagram it out, right? And it's just like, I want to be this. And it's awesome. Right. And then you say, okay, we make them do a 168 hour project, track every hour of your week.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  And then they're like, oh. And then, because you are what you do,

• 53:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  you are what you do. And so literally they then come in and they're like, oh, I guess I'm going to be the world's best TikTok scroller. And they're just so disappointed because they realize this is who they want to be, but this is what they're doing.

• 53:31Speaker 03

  This time I'm spending my time.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  And I'm just like, well, that's our job as a school, right? Our guys and coaches. This is what, because you're not spending all your day in academics, we have afternoon workshops where they're able to go figure out their passion project where they can get out of it. You know, and I why the world has to change and why everybody wants to change education is because we have too many people. There was a kid who came in and he was talking to our high school, because he went through our program, but he was talking to the the next set. And he's just like, you know, if you had told me, like when I first started, you know, the whole program,

• 54:06Speaker 02

  and said, I'll pay you $100 an hour for the rest of your life to play video games and just till you're dead. And like literally just like plug into the matrix. He's like, I would have sold my soul for that. And he's like, and then I went through the program. And he's like, now I don't even have time to play video games. Right. And he's like, because he's engaged on stuff of who he wants to go be, right? And that's what's happening to a lot of our kids, right? In society. And then you totally can break them out. Right. But that's what we have to do as a school and back to high standards. The kids want to do it because it's hard. That guy, kid, has never worked harder, right? On that project that he's doing that's transformed him to pull him out of the video game, you know, loop. And the kids want to do it. We have, you know, our second graders,

• 54:51Speaker 02

  you know, our afternoons are all these great project-based workshops that teach life skills, right? And our life skills are leadership and teamwork, storytelling and public speaking, grit and hard work, entrepreneurship and financial literacy, and socialization and relationship building. So there's five categories of those. And, you know, our our second grade teacher, right, Faith, this was a year ago. She's like,

• 55:19Speaker 02

  All my second graders can run a 5K. And I was like, oh, I don't that. She's like, kids are limitless.

• 55:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  I'm like, oh. Because parents, right? Back to the standards, you don't want to see your kid fail. Parents naturally, it's right protective. You don't want to see him struggle and fail. I'm like, oh, the parents are gonna really not like this. She's like, don't worry. And I'm like, how are you gonna get me to run 5K? First of all, she's like, we're gonna teach atomic habits. And you know, most of us as adults read it, what, 25 or whatever, you know, after college. But she's like, second graders understand 1% better

• 55:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  every day. They do. And so she gets all the kids, you know, we teach growth mindset, right? And so she's like, How many of you think it's impossible? And all the kids are like, oh, it's impossible, Miss Faith, you know, can't do it. And she's like, Well, I signed you up for the jingle 5K at Christmas. This is in August. Signed you guys all up. We got to go run it. And she brings them out to the track and they're all, oh, this is impossible. And she walks the track the first day with them all. And every single one finishes. And she's like, okay, so we've all established we're all going to finish the race, right? And then she comes out the next time and they run a quarter of the lap, walk the rest. And half a lap, walk the rest every time. And by December, they're all running 35-minute 5Ks. And when they cross the finish line, you know, at the jingle 5K to their parents, they're just like, oh, look.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  So proud.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  They're like, Dad, I can do anything

• 56:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  because I can just 1% better every day. I can do 50 push-ups. I'll do one today and two tomorrow. Right. And they just learn these life skills that we don't learn till late because school doesn't teach them. But when you have all day, When you're not sitting in class, you can teach these things and you teach it via hard things that the kids love, right? That they're engaged in doing things that they think are impossible and learning how to do the impossible.

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• 58:01Speaker 03

  It sounds like guides and teachers are very different. What makes for a good guide?

• 58:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. So teach, you know, when I think of a spec, you know, we have there's a huge teacher problem, right? Teachers are burned out, they can't hire enough. You know, it's just, it's, it's tough, right? Um, you know, and it just once again, me coming from the outside, right? General HR, you know, HR 101 if I'm a business person. You know, okay, you can't hire a spec. You know, what's the problem? Either the spec's too hard, you're not paying enough, whatever, you're targeting the wrong one. So there's five things, really, if you're going to be a teacher in a standard school, right? Standard teacher in front of a classroom model to do well. First, you have to be a domain expert in seventh grade science. Second, you actually have to be good at teaching. Like, what are the effects of teaching? We all know researchers who know a lot, but they're really bad teachers.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Right. Third, you have to connect and motivate with kids. Fourth, you have to deal with parents. And then fifth, in a lot of our schools, you have a lot of administration and,

• 58:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  you know, uh school systems. And those are five hard things to be good at, right? And so when you have a hard spec, then we go and say, okay, let's underpay them. And you're like, and it's a surprise that no one applies for the jobs, right? And that's why there's huge to fall and all this stuff. And so in our world, I'm like, okay, well, how would I fix that? Right. We're re envisioning school. So which how do we re envision the role of a teacher? Well, we take, you know, we've what do teachers really want to do? Right. And if you go talk to teachers, teachers did not become teachers to grade seventh grade science quizzes. They became teachers to connect and transform kids' lives. And we all had one or two teachers who did that for us.

• 59:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  And they, and it wasn't because she marked your paper up well.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  It was because she connected with you and got you to go see a bigger picture, right? And just inspired you to greatness. And pushed you, right? And that is what great teachers do. And that's what they want to do. So we just narrowed the scope where we're like, nope, you don't, you don't need to know seventh grade science because AI does that. You don't have to know the 10,000 papers that are written on learning science of how to teach kids well. And all that's AI tutor, learning science based will do that. Connect and motivate kids. Okay, you need to be the world's best. Are you the best at connecting and motivating kids? Can you hold high standards and high support? Right. And if you're great on that, we want to hire you.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  And then the parent side, we actually have a dean of parents. So we designed the school where they don't have to do that. Because I, when I first got in, the guy who is going through the teachers, he's like, oh, this, this teacher's great with kids, but not good with the parents. So don't promote. This person's not as good with the kids, but they're great with parents, so they should be promoted. And I was like, okay, no. I'm gonna, we're gonna build a school where the kid they're great with kids and we'll find a way to deal with the parents, right? Because they're different skills.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  Um and then and the more important

• 1:00:59Speaker 03

  Skill is the kid.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  kids. No, all you care about is kids. I mean, and parents obviously wish they were good about it, but you really care that these kids connect, right? That these guides connect with your kids. And we call them guides and coaches because they're not doing academic teaching. Right. Um

• 1:01:13Speaker 03

  So what's their background? Is it like coaching and sports or

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  it's a set of a one, they're the best. We get the top one percent of teachers who want to move over and You know, come on over. So we get those, and we're just like, you're not going to be teaching. And, you know, that's always the biggest surprise of like, this is what I want to do all day. During those two hours, you know, since you're not in front of class, they're pulling the kids out one-on-one, you know.

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  what do those conversations look like?

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  So those conversations are going to be like, you know, back to connecting. Hey, how was your weekend? How was the softball tournament? Did you win? Did you not win? You know, we've been working on this goal setting about your, you know, vision. You don't seem to be engaging in it. Is do you really not like it? Is it too hard? You know, they connect with the kids and then sit there and help them understand, you know. Uh, what are you trying to do? How am I helping you hit your goals? Just what you would call coaching. It's absolute coaching.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  So how much of the kid's success then would you describe to I don't want to disappoint this person who's now paying attention to me? Versus like if you go into a a classroom of 30 kids, it's like I can get away with almost anything.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Speaker 03

  You know, I can like sort of like check in a little bit. But now this person knows my name, they know what I'm doing on the weekend, they I'm gonna get questions on this.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, there's, I mean, our guides have great relationships with the kids. I mean, if you really want to get into it, like at high school, when we we ask quite, we measure everything because if we're going to scale, I need the metrics to make sure the quality stays high. You know, so in in middle and high school, we actually ask the parents. Do you trust your alpha guy so much to hold high standards? So you, as the parent, can provide, can only have to provide the unconditional love and support. Right. Because you want to hold high standards, but you also want to provide support. And as kids get to adolescence, it gets hard for a parent to be both. When you're holding high standards, they rebel against you. Right.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  And I'll just take myself as a personal example. So my oldest daughter, you know, she's putting her Stanford application in. And I'm like, can I read it? And she's like, no. Right. She does not want to be judged by parents. Kids, adolescents do not want parents judging on them. And I was like, okay. And I just gave her a hug. I'm like, good luck. Because I knew Chloe, her guide, was going to hold high standards. And, you know, Chloe, back to we get really the best in the world, right? She's a Harvard grad. And I know she knows the standard, you know, to get in. And Kate, my daughter, has a great, such a relationship with Chloe. She trusts her.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  And she trusts her to get her in, right? And, you know, even now she's in college, and when she comes back to to Austin, she goes to lunch with Chloe still. Right. So she has you build these great relationships with them. And it's, you know, the everybody when they think of AI Tutor, they think of robot terminators and all that. And the answer is, you know, in 20 years, you know, predict the future, what's going to be the same in 20 years? Parents are going to drop their kids off at a building. In the building are going to be other kids and adults. Right. There's we're not you're not

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  getting rid of school. School is gonna be there. Now it's gonna we do our job as we what happens in those six or seven hours is totally different. And the roles are different and it's 10 times more awesome. But you're gonna drop your kid off at school because you want them around other kids. And you need kids don't grow up on their own. They need caring adults who are going to mentor and coach them, right? And help, you know, uh build, hold high standards. And so that whole loop is is going to continue. And when we talk about building schools, that's gonna be the future. It's just right now, the whole day is six hours in class. Right. And this where we waste 90% of the kids' time and we're like, okay, let's just stop that.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Let's just stop that. Right. And so that's what back to our thing of how we designed school. The first part was, you know, they must love it. The second part was they need to learn 10 times faster. They can't sit in class all day. Right. And so that's this engine we built that teaches kids 10 times faster.

• 1:05:14Speaker 03

  That's the time back.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  That's time back, our time back engine. That's 10, and today it's at alpha. You know, in 2026, everybody in the world's going to be able to access it. And so everybody who wants to build a school based on time back is going to be able to next year. Um you hear that development team? The whole

• 1:05:30Speaker 03

  I'm gonna hold you to this.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  world's waiting.

• 1:05:32Speaker 03

  My kids are waiting.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  Everybody's waiting for that. So that's the second part, the time back, right? The engine where they learn 10 times faster. The third is there's a set of life skills that we think really matter to kids that aren't just pure academics. And we went through it, but you do care about leadership and teamwork and entrepreneurship and financial socialization and relationship building. Those skills, socialization and relationship building, right? They matter so much. And we don't teach kids. Now, you experience socialization in school, some good, some bad, right? If you're at Westlake High School and you're the quarterback and the homecoming queen, it's really great.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Right. You mean girl high school, right? Cafeteria, there's tons of movies made about it, right? But you can teach kids skills, right? You can teach them all these relationship buildings.

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  Teach the life skills. Are you doing anything different there than we would think?

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  You would think these great project-based workshops in the afternoon to teach these skills. So we're like, okay, how do we teach 1% better? How do we teach atomic cabbage? Like, okay, let's have them run a, you know, 5K. Uh, you know, we teach financial literacy. It really is like our fifth and sixth graders launching food trucks, running Airbnbs, right? And so you can teach them when you have all afternoon, you have all this time to teach them. Now, the biggest thing we do versus probably most others is we try to quantify everything. A lot of life skills are very soft,

• 1:06:56Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  right? And that I I can't run a scalable system if everything's, hey, you know, maybe it works. So like we talk grit. Everybody wants their kid to have grit, right? You can't read like Angela Duckwork's book.

• 1:07:11Speaker 03

  Okay, great. Yeah. Oh

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Right? That doesn't mean anything. So every third grader in our school can do a Rubik's Cube. Every kindergartner can do a 100 piece puzzle. And so we, right? Every eighth grader has passed a teamwork puzzle. Grit test, which is they all run a tough mutter. If you know

• 1:07:29Speaker 03

  wow. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  tough mutter and pass cross the finish line at the same time.

• 1:07:33Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:34Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  And and you know, and back to bonding and hard things. You know, and parents back to they're like, you know, and especially at a high end private school, some of these moms are like, my daughter's not rolling in the mud. That's never happening, right? And then at the end of the race, they're all covered in mud. And, you know, there's they have all the pictures of they all, you know, bonded as a team to go through this really hard challenge. Um, and so you're teaching, so we have metrics where, and we try to make them quantifiable. All our fifth graders, fourth, and fifth graders can pass Wharton's um uh leadership and teamwork simulation challenge that Wharton MBAs take.

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  Amazing.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  Right. And so

• 1:08:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  we have all these, you know, quantifiable metrics across those skills, right? Entrepreneurship, can you make $1,000? Can you go raise $10,000? You know, all those kind of things. Um, you know, character building, which is character building is always the hardest one because it's really hard to measure. But it's the only thing parents care about is my kid a good kid, right? But like our example, we just we have examples, which is our, we have middle and high schoolers who are building an app uh where they're trying to convince a hundred million teenagers the key to their happiness is contributing to their community, right? And just that whole concept of how contributing to your community is a great character building exercise. They all have been experiencing. They're like, oh, we can build this into an app and get this out to everybody.

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  So you have people learning how to vibe code with cursor, right, in their afternoons, or those are those are the kind of apps, right? And they're working with some of the biggest influencers on the planet to do this, right? Where they're like, okay, I'm I want to come in this weekend, or I, right, I don't want to go on summer break because I'm working on something hard and significant.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  The the hard thing is really interesting. That when my kids went back to school after COVID, I switched schools and I put them in a different language. So they didn't speak it. They went to a French school and they had so for grade seven, they started and they didn't speak very much French at all. And if I had to sum up the difference of that school from the one they were in previously, it would be high standard.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:37Speaker 03

  And it was, they were consistently on the kids and they would be like, No, you should be getting 100. I'm gonna teach you how to get a hundred. Uh and it was, you know, small classes, but it was a very strict old school French school. Uh, and I did that because I wanted my kids to wake up. Like they were sort of like sleepwalking through school a bit. And I was like, oh, well, you're gonna go learn a different language. And for three months, my oldest kid came home and he was crying like almost every night. This is so hard. Like, I got the word right. I'm like, but you missed the accent. He's like, Yeah, well, they give me a zero. They should at least give me like three quarters of a point. And I'm like, well, you have a choice, right? Like you're they're telling you what the standard is. You can choose to live up to that

• 1:10:21Speaker 03

  and push yourself, or you can choose to fight it for the next two years. And which of those do you think is going to result in a better outcome? Anyway, by the end of December, so they have exams. So they test the kids like crazy.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:33Speaker 03

  So these kids have never taken a test before. And by the time they're done these two years, they've done over 200. Uh, so they just like there's no stigma around testing or anything. By the end of December, he's going into exams. He's like, oh, I love this school. Like this school's amazing. I know exactly what's expected of me. And I know exactly how to accomplish what's expected of me.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  Exactly. So I love that story. That is now, if every parent thought like you, we would have a different school system today. We would not have this academic results. At our schools. One of the things I've learned as principals is your mindset that you just described is very rare. That parents in general want low standards at their school. And part of why schools, even private schools, right, react. Why does Harvard have grade inflation? Harvard, right? And it's because there is pressure from parents and students to lower standards,

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  and that it is hard to keep high standards.

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  That's the participation award that, you know, everybody seems into these days.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  And the problem with that is it doesn't, you know, when I where it really starts to manifest is in middle and high school, where you're like, these kids are disengaged.

• 1:11:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  They are addicted to TikTok and Fortnite, and they have mental health problems and all these issues that are are occurring. And they're the outcome of low standards, not high standards. People think it's, no, it's too hard. If kids don't engage, if humans don't engage in challenging things, right, that they love, that they can go do and accomplish, right, they do lose meaning. There is no meaning in a TikTok loop. And eventually it catches up with you. You just can't eat sugar all day, right? It just eventually is going to catch up with you. And instead, right, we need schools where we show kids. It can be so fun. Like, you know, if you took out our core, our first one, kids must love school more than vacation,

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  parents would not send their kids to the school because they'd be terrified of the high standards. And it's only because their kids come home every day and they're like, this was the greatest thing ever.

• 1:12:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  I I don't like, you know, they do. They're like, parents are just like, my kid used to never like, you know, these middle school sports kids, they're like, they used to skip school all the time, never on time, all these things. All absenteeism is a huge thing. They're like, they wake me up and they're like, we better not be late.

• 1:12:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  Like alpha kids are like, is it Monday yet?

• 1:12:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. I wanna

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  Why do we have to go to school on week? Why don't we go to school on Saturdays?

• 1:13:00Speaker 03

  that's incredible.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  And that's and that is one. There was, there was one where that those stories are just they they do love doing hard things.

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  And you know,

• 1:13:09Speaker 03

  And they can do hard.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  and they can do hard things. They love it. They have to be supported by an adult. So you have to have a guide who's awesome. You can't, if you just throw them in the deep end, that's not going to work, right? But get a guide who's going to bond with them, right? And we spend enough money, right? We pay teachers, right? Just let's shrink, let's refocus their role around what they want to do anyway. Transform kids' lives, right? Let's get them all focused on transforming kids' lives where they're supporting them, high standards. Right. Exactly the one or two that we knew, right? That transformed ours and just get that going in all the schools. But to do that, you know, back to it's it's a tough one. Now that's why we have to go build, we're gonna go build 10,000 schools, right? We're yeah, I'm in the

• 1:13:52Speaker 03

  I want to talk about scaling in a second. Um I I should I do want to come back to my son for a second. So when he was coming home crying, I was also very supportive. I'm like, you can do hard things. I don't want to be reported to child services or anything like that. From people listening,

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  totally.

• 1:14:06Speaker 03

  you know, this is me and my life, no judgment about how you raise your kids. Um

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:14:11Speaker 03

  the video monitoring thing sounds super interesting. I want to come back to this for a second. As a parent, I'm like, this is amazing. You're teaching my kids effective behaviors, ineffective behaviors. As an employee, I'm like, oh, wait, what?

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:24Speaker 03

  Talk to me about that.

• 1:14:25Speaker 02

  So let's talk about the monitoring, which is it's actually really interesting, which is um uh I just went through this with uh some of our middle schoolers, which is kids.

• 1:14:37Speaker 02

  Like the monitoring and the coaching because I want to get better.

• 1:14:40Speaker 03

  Sort of parents.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  Parents don't like AI monitoring. They're terrified of it.

• 1:14:47Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Right? There's this boogeyman of AI monitoring. Kids, they're like, I want a human to do that, not an AI. The kids are like, I don't want a human to look at me ever because I'm judged by adults. Kids, kids don't want to be judged by adults. They're like, let me talk to the AI.

• 1:15:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  Like if you tell, like, we have an app that grades your public speaking. And you're like, do you want to practice with the human to give you the feedback? Or do you want to practice with Ourai, this app, you know, till you get to 90%? And it does, you know, filler words and, you know, pacing and all that. And they're like, give me the OI.

• 1:15:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, my kids would 100% choose that.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  They because they all want the AI because it's not judgmental to them. They don't feel all that pressure. Parents are the opposite. And so it's this very dynamic where I'm like, guys, I the kids want this. And I know you don't like it, but you got to get over it because your kid wants it. And it's, let's do what they want. And so the kids love the AI tutoring, right? They love the feedback. They love the monitoring. Okay, I'm wasting time. How to do better. Right. And now the second part is if you don't have a motivation on the coaching, like on why they should do it. Like I, cause I tell like other school districts are like, great, I'm gonna go put this in my class. Let me give me this time back thing and get magic. I'm like, if you put this in a standard school day of six hours, it's not gonna work. Like ed tech generally has failed.

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  And it's generally failed because the kids aren't motivated to engage with it. If you don't give them their time back, they're not going to engage. And that's why it might be part of the problem with like normal schools adopting it. You know, you're the principal of a school, head of school, and you're like, what am I supposed to do? Like two hours a day, and they're not really teaching. And what do they do the rest of the day? It's a whole re it's a it's a rebuild.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  Sounds like a lot of work.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  It's a lot of work. It's, you know, and there's not enough proof yet. And you have a bunch of parents who are like, I don't want screen time anyway. And so you have all these good excuses to slow it down. Now, If you look at Alpha's like, we're the most talked-about school in the world, right? It's just give us one more year, right? Give us one more year, and everybody's just gonna be like, okay, we we need to do this stuff, right? And so we're we're that's part of our job, and that's part of why I I I'm out there, is just educating parents, right? Our schools educate kids, our marketing department, we have to educate parents that this is all doable. Um, but

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  Uh but that's that's when you look at the sort of this whole loop is you know, it's it it's hard to put it in a normal school right now because you do have to do a rebuild. They need more proof and data.

• 1:17:18Speaker 03

  But why don't they babysit? We were talking about this a little bit before we started recording. Like, why don't they just say, oh, we're going to do math tutoring? Uh, we're just gonna do that. So math class now is gonna be an AI tutor, whether uh, you know, whatever product that is, and then we're gonna see how that goes. Yeah. We don't have to switch the whole curriculum. We're just gonna take the 30 minutes or 40 minutes we've assigned a math class.

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  So there's there's a few different reasons on that, just tactical, practical reasons. First is they've been lying to their parents. So I and I I don't know public schools much, but let's talk about high end private schools, right? I know the high-end private school market. The high end private schools are all lying to their parents by giving kids A's when they don't deserve them. So, like we pulled in, you know, so we had hundreds of kids joined, you know, whatever, a couple months ago, across the country, right? And these are people coming from $40,000, $50,000, $75,000 private schools. And we give them our assessment test, right? And if you had an A, if your transcript was an A coming into alpha, you are from there's some students who are one grade level ahead, super awesome,

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  all the way, and more, many more of them were three years behind.

• 1:18:27Speaker 03

  Oh, what?

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Three years behind. So this is seventh graders who, when we give them the fourth grade test, are missing a significant number of problems. If you got B's, you are from three years behind to seven years behind. So these are high schoolers who are like, okay, I need to have you in third grade. There's third grade material you're missing. And that's a B. And so the problem is parents in our world, A's and Bs, like A's are good. B's, okay, do better next time, but they don't give out C's, D's, and F's anymore. So A's and B's have to cover the whole range. And so parents basically are being lied to because they're using their old point of reference. 80% of kids at Harvard get A's. Just they've had such grade inflation

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  that the school is like, oh my God, I can't do the AI tutor because I'm going to show the kid needs fourth grade material. And the parent doesn't know that. And as soon as they put it in, it's going to be obvious the assessment's going to show them, right? That's actually what causes lots of people to move to Alpha.

• 1:19:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  Just give them the assessment. And they're like, what's going on? Like if you go to our website, we have testimonials of people, you know, we open San Francisco. Right. And this guy's like, I've had my kid in a $50,000 school for eight years.

• 1:19:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  And he couldn't answer some fourth and fifth grade questions. It's not the kid's fault.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  Right. And the parent didn't know because the school's giving him A's is good brand.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  Good brand thought he knew it.

• 1:19:51Speaker 03

  Everything's working.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  Everything's fine.

• 1:19:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  And so you have that. That's number one. Let's get over that one. Now let's get to the second one. There, and this I fought. Like this was at 100 for 100 we were talking about. I went my first year to the seventh graders, and I'm like, guys. You have holes. I got to get you to do earlier work. You got to have some fourth and fifth grade holes. You got to go fix it. And let me tell you about motivating a kid and making him love school. When you tell seventh grader they have fourth and fifth grade material,

• 1:20:22Speaker 03

  Non-starter.

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  non starter, there's only one person who hates it worse. They're parents. Oh my God. I was yelled at so many times by parents. My kid must be at grade level. Why are you putting him in earlier stuff? Every parent's been trained my kid must work at grade level. Which is just the learning, that is not, right? They just don't know learning science. That is not what the learning science says, right? You got to go back and fill, right? Mastery the basics, master the basics. But the parents hate it. That's why eventually I still to this day don't know how to fix the parents. Like so I sort of went around them. And that's when we came up with 100 for a hundred. I'm like, guys, I got to get you to do it.

• 1:20:58Speaker 03

  That's that's how

• 1:20:59Speaker 02

  That's how we came up. That's how it came out. I'm like third grade, they did it, fourth grade, and then, and then they moved up. Right. And that does, it also has this other real thing about academic performance the the self confidence it does. All these kids are like, okay, I can get any, I can get 100 on any standardized test back, like your son. The same thing where once you show them how to do it, you give them the ability, they're like, oh, I can get 100. Like, so we always we have a thing now where we'll advance you at 90% to the next grade level. So when you score 90% on a standardized test, you know, your state standardized test that shows you you have mastery, we'll let you go to the grade above it. But you get 100 for 100. If you get 100. And so all the kids are like, okay, that's a couple extra. Right.

• 1:21:43Speaker 02

  And you're like, oh my God, a couple, an hour or two, and I'll get the extra questions. Because even if you miss them, you can go back and learn them and then retake. And so, but it just sets that mindset of every kid's like, of course I could get a hundred. The reason we get so many 790s and 800s on the SAT is all our kids are like, of course I could get a perfect score on the SAT. I just, it's just how many hours is it? It's an hour question, not a capability, which is that unlock we did about IQ.

• 1:22:08Speaker 03

  I think

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  Most people think it's IQ, and I'm like, it's effort.

• 1:22:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  It's effort, not IQ.

• 1:22:12Speaker 03

  Well, this is the the fundamental thing, right? Because a lot of people just look at that and they're like, some kids are smarter than others. And I think we you I think my hypothesis is that we could get ninety percent of kids, if not more, to effectively perfect SAT scores.

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  Totally. There's a little SAT has a little bit of IQ coding. Any time test has a little bit of IQ coding. But yes, fundamentally, you should think 1350, which is top 10%, no problem. 1550, which is your top 1%, it gets it gets a little dicey on, you know, what

• 1:22:47Speaker 03

  To ninety percent then.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  for 90% for sure. Like just off the charts. And we're right, we measure all this. And we're like, well, how many can we get to 1550 plus, right? If you're on our honors, our high school program, non honors is 1350 minimum.

• 1:23:01Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:23:01Speaker 02

  Honors is 1550. And the difference is it's three hours a day to do honors, which is 1550 plus fives on your APs.

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:10Speaker 02

  1350 and a four or five on your AP, that only takes two hours. So it's just and to kids, it's an effort issue. You want two hours, you want three hours? Just pick, it's extra time. That's it. Um, and so uh, but anyway, but that whole thing, you you change their mindset. But back to this this why a standard school can't do it. The kid, how do you you have the parents screaming at you if you try to put your kid to do, you know, the the hole filling, as we call it, right? To go backward and do fourth grade. They're like, I want the teacher to teach my kid seventh grade. Because that's, you know, and it's just so you have that problem. The schools are just like, we don't,

• 1:23:44Speaker 03

  I want the outcome. I want my kid to be educated, right?

• 1:23:47Speaker 02

  and the problem is a lot of parents are like, my kids get just give me the A. It's an A, right? And then what happens is then when they take their PSAT or SAT, it's not as high as they want it.

• 1:24:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:00Speaker 02

  But then it's like the school's like, well, too late. And then some parents hire, you know, massively expensive after school tutoring, right? I mean, the after school tutoring market is like $50 billion. It's insanely, it's insanely huge because schools, parents, even at high end private schools, like the percent of kids at a high end private school who also have a tutor,

• 1:24:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  right? When I looked, I was like, this is insane. Aren't you sending your kid to the school to like learn?

• 1:24:25Speaker 03

  Why do they have why do they

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  Why do you have why is there a huge after school tutor market? I'm like, we commit that your kid will learn during the day. They don't need that time and you don't have to hire a tutor. That's insane.

• 1:24:36Speaker 03

  I was asking my kids last night what questions I should ask you, and they came up with two. So one one asked, How do you teach physics to high schoolers?

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:24:45Speaker 03

  And what program you use? And let's tackle that one and then we'll talk about

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  Great. So there's a great, so Math Academy is the best math app out there for the

• 1:24:51Speaker 03

  physics.

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  12. There's a um a a new one called Physics Graph, who they they're online, and uh they are the physics version of Math Academy.

• 1:25:04Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  Um and so I would go get it. I don't know, um, I think you know, f back to AP. I'm trying to remember exactly their product. There's like physics, uh, I always ABC one, two, three, whatever it is, on the AP test. The first one is based on algebra, and then the third one is based on calculus.

• 1:25:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  And so I don't know if they've released the calculus one yet, but on the algebra of the other, you just use physics graph.

• 1:25:29Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Physics graph is is is the way to to go. I know a couple other products that are about to be released next year. Um, but if you're in it right now, if you're if

• 1:25:38Speaker 03

  That's the one. Great.

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  then I would do that.

• 1:25:40Speaker 03

  And then the other question was, what happens after? You've had a couple years now of students graduate, they go to university or grow out in the real world or whatever it is they're doing, college. Um, what happens? Because now they they go from the structured environment, high coaching, high standards, a lot of hands on to

• 1:26:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:00Speaker 03

  good luck.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, well, one of the things, even though we have high support, these all our kids are self-driven learners, right? They have to during the two hours learn how to be able to learn on their own. Right. And so that's one of our tests of are you a self driven learner? Our eighth graders all know how to get a five on an AP on their self. Like every eighth grader actually knows everything I want to learn is on YouTube.

• 1:26:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  Everything.

• 1:26:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  And so you're just like, okay, pick some random AP that you're interested in. You know, not one of the core hard ones, but just pick one. Right. And uh go learn

• 1:26:37Speaker 02

  it and go figure out. And there's all the resources are available. And then, you know, so that's our, that's how we show okay, you're a self driven learner. You can learn anything for the rest of your life, you know, without somebody spoon feeding you,

• 1:26:50Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  you know, the material. But at the college level, so we had um, let's see, here's one where uh where do people go? So our first class was we had 12 graduates, um, 11 of them went to college. Uh, the 12th is one of the world's best water skiers. Uh, and so he's building his media empire while he water skis. It was like, I'm not going to college. The other ones all got into their first choice colleges. We get into, you know, Stanford or Vanderbilt or NYU Shanghai or you know, wherever you want to go. Because our academic scores are just through the roof. Then we also have these crit killer alpha X projects in the afternoon where kids have four years to work on a passion project. We didn't even get into this. And so they look just they look like a completely different character

• 1:27:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  than the average college grad. So they

• 1:27:33Speaker 03

  They stand out.

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  Huge contrast and super impressive, right? I mean, this one, I she'll probably kill me because I'm not supposed to talk about it. But you know, we may have no high school um student has ever been the lead researcher on something published in nature. And we have an alpha kid who's submitted it hasn't been accepted yet. Um, and so that's why she doesn't want to mention it, yeah, in case it doesn't. But literally, like Kai's, no one, right? That's usually, I mean, that if you if if she was a PhD. That would consider be considered like one of the most impressive things of her career. And she's literally 17 years old in high school. And it's because they're a lot, they have four years to work on awesome things and do just amazing things. Um and so uh

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  anyway, so in college, I don't

• 1:28:20Speaker 03

  No, it's not two hour learning, no, it's college center.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  know what they did. No, so they do. So we went, so um I I met with them at Christmas after they all, the eleven who went, and uh it was six or seven of them. And I was like, okay, guys, how are we doing? Everybody had a 4 0. Um, they were crushing it. They loved college, the whole social environment and stuff, and you know, some are in sororities, and you know, they're doing all the different things and they loved it. And I was like, well, what's the worst part? They're like, okay, those lectures are a total waste of time. They are a complete waste of time. Literally, I sit in there and they're just terrible. Four of them had written editorials to their school papers about can we stop the charade that are these lectures? Literally, there's 200 people in a class, none of them are paying attention. They're all on their computer, like scrolling TikTok or just doing other stuff.

• 1:29:06Speaker 02

  Right. The teacher is terrible, is not a good teacher. Right. And this is just a waste of time. And I'm, they all learn, you know. So, like back to my my daughter is a math English major, you know, and she's like, I just use math academy. She's like, she's, you know, she I used to skip classes when I was, I didn't like school. I was not like my older daughter. And she always had disdain for me, where she's like, you should go to class, dad. And now that once she finally went, She's like, okay, I get it. I get why you skip class because it's totally a waste of time. And so I believe in college, you know, Harvard published a paper that their best teaching class is their physics 101 class, one of their best, you know, teachers.

• 1:29:50Speaker 02

  And they did an A B test with AI tutors versus them. And they published that Harvard, you know, there's a great paper. Harvard says AI tutors better than Harvard teachers. And, you know, they learn twice as much using the AI tutor as going to class. And so it's just it's it's just facts, right? And so hundred series classes in university are gonna go away. Like as soon as everybody figures out the say I teacher stuff, they're just gonna go away. Now, small group seminars, they love it, right? You know, small group writing seminar that's super awesome, like when in her writing classes and stuff. So it's it's not like universities are gonna go away because some kids still need time to grow up, right? And they need the socialization and all those other things. But the big lecture classes,

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  those are gone. Those are a waste of time.

• 1:30:38Speaker 03

  What were you like as a student?

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  The world's worst student.

• 1:30:42Speaker 03

  Tell me more about this.

• 1:30:44Speaker 02

  I was um, you know, uh academically, uh, you know, people would definitely say, I can't believe Joe's doing education if you knew me in in at Stanford. I dropped out. Um, you know, it this is, you know, back to every kid has a passion for learning. It's just not always academics.

• 1:31:05Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:06Speaker 02

  And that was me, right? I just, I didn't care.

• 1:31:09Speaker 03

  I hated school.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  And I'm just like, I don't care about these classes. Right. And, you know, when I dropped out, you know, and I started my company, I went from I used to do the minimum amount of work. I mean, I literally, like in my high school, the way our grading system worked is you you got four points for an A, but there's no A minus, no A plus, no nothing. Just right. And an 89.5 rounds to a 90, which was an A. And I literally would do the minimum work to get an 89.5, like not an 89.6. I remember one time I didn't turn in, I didn't answer all the questions on a test

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  because I knew I didn't need to finish the test to get the 89.5 in the grade. And my teachers look just like, what, right? I was just a nightmare because I just, whatever the minimum was. And, you know, my parents weren't really excited about. Now it was a minimum bar of, okay, I'm still going to get in Stanford because I want to go there. But I wanted to go there because I wanted to start a company, right? I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And so I go, and then I'm in class at Stanford. I'm like in some Spanish class. And I'm like, okay, what am I doing? And so anyway, I drop out. So I there's nobody who thinks I was a good student, including I wasn't a good student, but there wasn't like, oh, I was like nobody. Everybody.

• 1:32:24Speaker 03

  Just misunderstood.

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  No, no, no. I was definitely not a good student. And then I drop out. And then I started working 100 plus hours, sleeping under the desk, right? Super passionate.

• 1:32:33Speaker 03

  Because you were motivated

• 1:32:35Speaker 02

  I got I loved it. I'd found my spark. I found what I loved. And I'd never worked harder in my life. Like it was insane. And my dad, who, you know, there's this he was not happy that I dropped out. Right. But 18 months later, when we were talking, he's like, God, I'm so glad you dropped out. He's like, you know, and he's like, you know, I was so worried that you were a lazy little shit. Your whole academic career, you were just a shirker, right? You just didn't, you never engage in anything. And you know, as a parent, like, you don't want your kid to be just a, you know, a slacker. You want, and he's like, and you found it. You found what you love and you're working your ass off on it. And it's just great.

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

  Right. And our my view of that is that concept, what I found after dropping out of college, we want to get that into kids in middle and high school. Like, what do they love? Like as they hit an adolescence, who do they want to be? What do they love? And let's get them started on that. Right. Now, there's some minimum academics you have to do, right? You want to start a business plan, you got to know some math. You want to write good proposals, right? You have to be able to write. So it's not like you can skip all the academic side. But you do it motivated by stuff that you love, right? Um, and back to if we want to get kids, we're competing with TikTok and Fortnite. But kids' vision of who they want to be is awesome. So let's go get,

• 1:34:01Speaker 02

  right? Associate with what they want to be there, right? And that's what's going to drive and motivate them to, you know, learn all the skills they need. Um, if you, you know, if you look at our kids doing these huge Alpha X projects that are so impressive. Right. It's because they're working on stuff. I mean, it's harder stuff than we ever worked on in high school.

• 1:34:23Speaker 03

  for sure.

• 1:34:24Speaker 02

  They don't think it's work because they love it. You know, no, we have a we have a girl. She's

• 1:34:28Speaker 03

  And you didn't think it was work when you were sleeping on the floor.

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  exactly works on it's like my now job, which by the way, just as a sidebar, everybody should go into education. If you're like wondering like what you should do the next 10 years, come into education. It's awesome. But because it it is fun. But we have a we have a high school. She's doing a Broadway musical. Right. Launch all team produced Broadway musical. She sourced all the singers off TikTok, million streams the first week when they went. They can fill, they filled like four times they filled a venue. It's not big enough to be on Broadway. It's still like not quite big enough, but they're they're doing it. And you know, you listen to her, and she's like having to learn about music rights, right? And legal content. Right. And all her stuff. I mean, it's hard, it's harder than any high school class.

• 1:35:12Speaker 03

  But that's how we should teach.

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  And this girl will spend endless hours on it because she loves it, because she's putting on her musical. It's hers, right? And the team and all. And just think of those projects for all kids, right? Everybody can do that. Right. And so, and that's where when we talk about what this, if we're going to get them ready for this AI world that's coming, that's what we need to get them ready for, not bore them for six hours a day in class where we waste 90% of their time, you know, learning a bunch of material that is becoming commoditized. Right. LLMs are reducing the value of that knowledge. Now, AI also, it's taking it away on that side, but it's also letting you learn 10 times faster.

• 1:35:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:52Speaker 02

  So, you know, it's sort of this balance of just you gotta you figure out what parts you want to learn.

• 1:35:56Speaker 03

  I remember Elon in an interview said something that made a ton of sense to me. He's like, traditional schools teach you like, here's a wrench, here's when you use it. When they should be like, here's an engine, let's fix it. Oh, you need a wrench to like take that off. So like we got to figure out what it's used for. And like it's sort of like that's the approach that you're taking.

• 1:36:13Speaker 02

  Exactly. You take so like and let me, I'll give you an example, like our sports academy. Like we want to teach public speaking, right? Storytelling and public speaking is such a great skill, right? For kids or for adults, everybody. And but you go to a 10 year old boy and you're like, we're gonna teach you public speaking. You like, okay, they have turned off. But at our sports, excuse me, at our sports academy, postgame press conference.

• 1:36:37Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 1:36:37Speaker 02

  Are you ready for it?

• 1:36:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  And these kids are like, okay, like, right? And you're going to learn all those skills, those same public speaking skills where a Rye is going to grade you and do it. Of course they want to do that, right? Or you're going to learn financial literacy. Roll the eyes. We got to work on your Nike $5 million contract. All of a sudden they're ready to, right? They're going to learn, they're going to dive in and become the world's experts in all those skills. And so the thing that when you talk about stuff, associating it with stuff kids love. That's in their interest, right? Back to I understand their interest graph. Kids will, kids will love it and work because it's, and everybody knows this, right? If it's related to what your interests are, you'll spend endless time on it.

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  There's kids, like, just think of how long they spend on YouTube on some obscure thing where you're just like, oh my God. Like, no, we have we have a kid who can like he he knows everything about World War II battles. And you know, like those geolocators who know anything in the whole world and it's a little picture and it's there. This kid knows it for every World War II battle. Like you can show him any picture from a battle. He's like, oh, that was in Poland in 1943.

• 1:37:49Speaker 03

  Crazy.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  I mean, it's just insane.

• 1:37:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:51Speaker 02

  Right. But the c he's interested in it, right? Kids will learn endless stuff if they're interested. And what we have to do as schools is say, okay, this is what we want them to learn, because these are fun, there are fundamental things you want to learn, but we need to do it where they're doing projects that are hard and have meaning to them.

• 1:38:08Speaker 01

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• 1:39:07Speaker 03

  You mentioned your father. Is it true that he didn't invest in your company?

• 1:39:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that's totally true. He um yeah, my my dad very much was worried about me being a spoiled kid. Um uh, you know, he grew up with nothing and then got to success later in his life. And so was terrified of that. And so, you know, he's like, look, if you have a good idea, other people are gonna invest in it. And if I'm investing in it, right, it just means no it was it was such a crappy idea, no one else would give you money. He's like, So go convince people that it's a good idea. Um, you know, back to the standard, which is a true statement, right? If if it's your parent, you know, you know, if if your parents leading, right, or giving you money, then uh

• 1:39:49Speaker 03

  If they're leading you around, maybe it's

• 1:39:51Speaker 02

  don't have a good idea. You don't have a good idea. Go convince somebody else.

• 1:39:53Speaker 03

  and so he used to work for Jack Walsh. Yeah.

• 1:39:56Speaker 02

  Yes, he did. And so he was Jack's strategic planner. Um uh Mark, his son, you know, we'd play hockey, go skiing together. Um, and so I had a business background upbringing, which is maybe why I knew I wanted to

• 1:40:08Speaker 03

  Tell me more about that because I remember reading one anecdote. Actually, you had two conversations with Jack Walsh. One when you were 12 about gross margins. Do you remember that one?

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  I I I had a lot. I spent a lot of time with Jack. So Jack, you know, my dad passed when I was 25. And so there these will probably be the later ones you're talking about. And Jack called me and is like, look, I'll be your mentor going forward. And so every year I would actually fly up and spend a couple of days at G E and at Jack's house with him uh coaching and and helping.

• 1:40:38Speaker 03

  What's the most memorable conversation you had with him?

• 1:40:41Speaker 02

  Oh, God, there was a lot. So, you know, uh between he and my dad, they they uh there's a there's a ton of them, if you want them, which is, you know, one was uh Mark and I were playing hockey and we were small for our age, and both our dads played hockey. Um uh Jack and my dad. And uh so we weren't good at it. And so we're like, we want to switch to skiing. Don't tell a hockey dad that you want to be a skier. Okay. There my dad was from, I was born in Minnesota. And so, you know, hockey is

• 1:41:13Speaker 03

  I'm from Canada. That's like religion for us.

• 1:41:15Speaker 02

  it's the religion. And he's like, oh. And so Jack's like, okay, I'll only do this. There's a there's a uh race at the end of the year. Jimney Peake was the name of it. He's like, you two need to come in first and second. And if you guys are willing to do that, I'll let you switch over to skiing. And he gets, he's on the phone with my my dad. He's like, Greg, our kids are going to be first and second in the race. So they're going to have to work really hard. So buy your kids some skis. You know, literally. We would literally, uh, you know, during the summer, like you'd run up the mountain. Literally after school, they drop us off weekends, drop us off ski. End of the year, Mark came in first, I came in second. And Jack's like, wasn't it worth it?

• 1:41:59Speaker 02

  You know, and just back to high standards, like I crazy high standards. Um, gross margin, you brought up that one, you know, where they had sold their um, they'd swapped their business with uh, I think it was Thompson Medical at the time, where they had TVs. G had TVs and Thompson, they swapped it for their CAT scanners because they had G Medical and as, you know, one of these deals. And I was like, dude, like TVs are the only cool thing you guys make, you know, when you're young, right? CAT scanner, really boring. And Jack's like, let's talk about gross margin. Right. Because TVs have none and CAT scanners make a lot of money. And so I was learning about gross margin. And I'm going to bring that back. I'll go back to the story, but I'm going to bring it to a related one. So we have kids who launched a food truck. Our fifth graders launched a food truck at Alpha.

• 1:42:44Speaker 02

  And so I was talking with them and I was like, why did you guys, you know, pick breast breakfast foods? You know, on for your food truck. And they're like, have you seen the gross margins on a breakfast food? And I was like, okay, pitch is the most awesome thing ever, which is because they're building a real business and you got to know gross margins, right? And these are fifth and sixth graders, right? And and so kids loved it, just like I learned and loved it young. Everybody can learn this stuff if you're if they're interested. We have other kids who don't like, you know, uh launching food trucks. But for those who do, it was awesome. Uh and then once I, once um, you know, back to my 20s when I was building my business, you know, Jack, Jack was both super, you know, harsh,

• 1:43:27Speaker 02

  you know, when you talk about high standards, high support. It's both where he would just be like, I I remember this particular story was I was the youngest uh self-made member of the Forbes 400, right? I'm with the cover. And so I'm flying up to uh, you know, where my annual mentoring thing that I was gonna do with them, and I'm all like,

• 1:43:51Speaker 02

  right? Check this out, right? I'm all that. And I

• 1:43:55Speaker 03

  Do you want a signed copy?

• 1:43:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly, Jack. I'm sure you want a psychop of this, right? And I mean, I full of myself, obviously. And um I get there and you know, he's we're talking about stuff and he's trying to understand because he's astounded by, you know, how much my company was worth and all that stuff. And um uh so at the end of it, he's like, okay, so I guess if I had to classify you, you you're like a I'm trying to remember the G levels, you're like a level eight project manager product manager. You know, like that's my like he's like, that's sort of like your skill set, right? And At the time, realistically it was, right? I I I had other I had this set of skills, but fundamentally that's that's what I was. And he's just like,

• 1:44:40Speaker 02

  you know, Joe, you have to decide whether you're gonna sit here and, you know, be full of yourself and decide that you're awesome. Or if you're gonna decide you are now at the case where you can go spend the rest of your life and freaking crush it, right? Is this your first step or your last step? Right? Are you done? Have you just declared victory? And hey, everybody, look at me. I won the race. Or are you like, oh my God, I'm only on the first step of the race?

• 1:45:07Speaker 02

  And then he is the most inspirational person because he sort of had to, he shocks you a little bit with the who are, you know, and then inspires you to greatness. Right. Where I remember I was flying back from that trip. And I, that whole plane ride back, I had a, I was writing a hundred things down that I had to go do. Right. That I was on the, I was sure I made sure I was going to be on the first step, not on my last step. Right. And so just that kind of great inspirational, um, he was amazing at. And other level setting, like this was a big one for me, was in '97, we won e-commerce product of the year. And 97 went SpectaBotcom. It was a big e-commerce year. I'm like, I won the e-commerce product. That's why we were very successful in other things.

• 1:45:51Speaker 02

  And, you know, GE had used it, G Medical had used it in Meltz Group. And literally, I met with Jack and he's like, Yeah, I hear Med doesn't like your product. I'm like, dude, it freaking won e commerce product of the year. And I he literally was like, Joe, I don't care if it comes from heaven above. If GE doesn't get an ROI, your product, you, and your company suck. That where's our ROI? And

• 1:46:25Speaker 02

  it was like an eye opener to me where I was literally just a product guy where it's like, I delivered a good product. And he's like, if your customers don't get value, nothing matters. Right. And I was just like, huh. Right. And it totally reset my whole view of like what a company would have to do. And You know, I if I had to apply it to education now. Education thinks their job is sort of just to put kids through school. Ours is to actually have learning, right? Kids have to love school and they have to learn, right? And when we designed our educational system, I think we're the only school in the world who, if a kid's not learning, it's our fault. It's the system's fault. It's not the kids.

• 1:47:09Speaker 02

  Right? If if our kids aren't learning 2x, you know, in two hours that they're failing. It's my fault. What did I do wrong? How do is my motivational model not right? Do I need a different guide? Was the lesson I gave them not the right level? Was it not a good lesson? Was I not coaching them the right way? But what did I do wrong versus a lot of school systems like, uh, kids' fault? Right. And that can you can draw it sort of back to his resetting me of are they getting value out of what you're doing? And I'm like, oh, it's my responsibility to make sure all the kids learn. Uh these days. So anyway, so yeah, I had all those kind of things. It was, it was awesome.

• 1:47:46Speaker 03

  What a crazy experience. Um, at one point you were gonna IPO trilogy and you IPO'd pcorder.com, right?

• 1:47:53Speaker 02

  Yes, we did.

• 1:47:54Speaker 03

  And then you ended up buying it back. I want to hear the story about that. And then when you changed your mind about being public with trilogy,

• 1:48:01Speaker 02

  Uh the PC Order story helped me realize I didn't want to be public. So PC Order was um actually one of the trilogy co founders, Christy, you know, had this idea of okay, I'm going to build PC Order, um, which was online selling computers online back in dot com days. And, you know, built it up, super successful, had all the biggest resellers aboard. Um, and then she went public. And then basically Dell put her customer base out of business. And so then she her business went terrible. And so the stock went from 50 to 5% or something. I can't exactly remember, but you know, down 90, 90 plus percent. So it went public, uh, you know, ran up in all the hype and then imploded.

• 1:48:45Speaker 02

  Uh, and then we bought it back and just, you know, said, okay. Um, and, you know, for me, uh, I so I've kept trilogy private, you know, to this day, it's still private. And a lot of it is just um

• 1:49:01Speaker 02

  I prefer just to be 100% in control,

• 1:49:04Speaker 03

  yeah.

• 1:49:04Speaker 02

  frankly. Just my my daughters give me T, you know, Marcus Lamonis on uh The Prophet, if you know that TV show. He has, I'm 100.0% in charge. That's pretty much my attitude. Um

• 1:49:18Speaker 03

  Is it like that with everything, or the things you're completely hand off? Like are you hands off or completely hands on, but nothing in between?

• 1:49:24Speaker 02

  correct. Yeah. I'm I am I'm in charge, or hey, I'm the your biggest supporter. Good luck. Um, around it. But yeah, I don't do well on the 50-50 consensus kind of stuff. Um, I'm my just I I push the edge on radical stuff. And I I'm like, I don't want to vote. You don't get to vote on this, right? We're gonna do this.

• 1:49:48Speaker 03

  It's not a democracy.

• 1:49:49Speaker 02

  That's not democracy. We're gonna do this. And if you want to come board, we're gonna do this. Like if you want to come and start a school, right, on time back, you're gonna do two X in two hours. And there's a whole set of people who are like, well, how about we do one X in one hour? Because one X is as good as every other school. And I'm like, well, go do that with somebody else's software. You're not if you're gonna use mine, you're so all these coaches who are setting up these sports academies, they're like, well, some of the parents don't care. I'm like, sorry, we're gonna do it this way. We I delivering awesome academic outcomes, right?

• 1:50:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:21Speaker 02

  That's just it's who I am. And that's just I I don't want to vote around that.

• 1:50:26Speaker 03

  It reminds me of something Alan Malale said, which is like when he was turning around forward, he was like, here's how we're going to do it. And if you don't want to choose to be a part of that, that's on you.

• 1:50:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:36Speaker 03

  Uh but if you're here, this is how we're gonna

• 1:50:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. No alignment. Like we like, you know, we do the three commitments to the kids. Your kid will love school, they'll learn two X in two hours, and then life skills. Those, those, those three commitments. Every kid, every kid, we have to do that for every kid. And if you're in my organization, you wake up every day and say, I'm going to deliver that. And you can never blame the student, you can never make an excuse around that. And if you don't like that, just don't come because that's what we're going to be about, right? We lose about 50% of our educators when we tell them they're accountable for the kid learning because they're not used to it. Right. And they're like, no, it's a kid's fault. What if he doesn't do this or what about that? I'm like, our guides are measured on do they deliver the three commitments to every kid? Every kid,

• 1:51:24Speaker 02

  right? And that's, you know, it's just really important. Um, and you have to have that, you know, focus. Now, I one of my public school, one of my there was a teacher, when I first came in, you can imagine there was skepticism, you know, because I would say crazy stuff. There'll be no adults academic teaching in this building. You know, it just if now with hindsight, you're like, well, duh, it works. But before that, That's crazy talk, whether you're a parent or a teacher, right? It's just, it's, it's, and, you know, but the set of teachers and parents who stayed, you know, who were like, okay, I'm in. I was, there was one who was, you know, basically from public school, and I was like,

• 1:52:04Speaker 02

  you know, and I'm an evil billionaire, you know, and so educate every evil billionaire does education, all those, all those, you know, uh appropriate memes. And I was like, eventually, what was it that won you over to stay and be part of it? And she was like, it was because uh your just constant focus that it had to be every kid. That we'd come in and we'd be like, okay, we got 90% of the kids there. And you're like, let's focus on the ones we want. And what do we have to do and what do we have to fix to get that for every single one? And that's back to building a system that if we're going to get this out to a billion kids, that's the mental, that's the model we have to have.

• 1:52:44Speaker 02

  And that's, you know, um, back to being 100.0% charge that makes it so great is, you know, if you're gonna be on time back and using this system, it's gonna be every kid.

• 1:52:54Speaker 03

  What's the biggest problem with scaling?

• 1:52:58Speaker 02

  There's a lot. So scaling's hard. This is, you know, this is sort of back to your Elon example. This is, you know, building your first prototype is really easy. And how do you build the factory that churns it out? And so a lot of what I've been doing in the last three years is how do I build the system that's going to allow this to scale? And so time back's, you know, a key element on the academic side.

• 1:53:17Speaker 03

  But that sounds like it would scale pretty easy. Once you figure out the compute uh and bring the cost to compute down, like totally it's

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  That's the part's going to be easy.

• 1:53:26Speaker 03

  that's easy. You could add a billion people to it effectively if you had the compute power for it.

• 1:53:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:53:31Speaker 03

  Uh and that wouldn't be

• 1:53:32Speaker 02

  Exactly. So that part's I we've commoditizing how the six hours a day down to a couple hours. Got that. Now, let's talk about all the other hard parts. Let's talk about there's physical and then virtual. So, on physical schools, how do you measure guides? And how do you have the metrics so as you open new buildings, right? New schools, that you're sure what happens in all the other schools. Right. So, you know, we we we call them painfully insightful metrics. So we We wake, you know, our our org, you know, every summer when we're redesigning, you know, for the next year, we sit down and we say, what are the painfully insightful metrics that we need to know

• 1:54:17Speaker 02

  such that we know that new school we open that we've never visited is as good as our Austin flagship, right? And all our guides, you know, and everybody in the org is like, we can't every year they get better. Like, how do I know I don't have a bullying culture, you know, somewhere? Right. What's the question? What's the survey question? What's the metric I can collect to know that? So obviously on the academic side, right, we have the best closed loop system in our, you know, that collects all the data. So I know on a daily basis if you're learning.

• 1:54:49Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:54:49Speaker 02

  Right. And so I have all that. But how do I know if my culture is good? How do I know if I've hired the right guide? What if I have a wrong guide? Right? How do I measure all that? So we have the same level of metrics that we do around our school and our system that we do around our academics.

• 1:55:05Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:55:06Speaker 02

  So I know. Within eight weeks, whether my guide's good or not. And a lot of this, so a lot of it comes from results. Are they delivering three commitments to all the kids? But it's everything, also surveys. We ask the kids. Every adult had one or two teachers who transformed their life. Is your guide that for you? Right. To the parents, do you trust your guide to hold high standards so you can provide unconditional love? Right. You know, a kindergarten, you're like, do you love your guide? But we ask, you know, so you just are asking these questions, right? To get the data that you need. We have quantified all the metrics on the life skills.

• 1:55:46Speaker 02

  So I know it's not just, oh yeah, our kids have grid or oh, they're good public speakers. I'm like, no, everybody in our class scored 95% on our eye. And every fifth grader beat a Wharton MBA in teamwork and leadership. And so we we quantify everything, right? So that we and measure it and then can react to it if we have a problem. Because you do, right? You Every guide's not perfect, but then can we swap one out uh quickly?

• 1:56:13Speaker 03

  So part of scaling it sounds like is uh quickly identifying uh servicing problems so they can be addressed while they're small, uh not letting them fast.

• 1:56:22Speaker 02

  Exactly. And it's it's asking the hard question. It's easy to ask easy questions, right? It's why we move the question from do you love school to do you love school more than vacation? Because do you love school? My comparison, when you say that to a kid, it's like, well, it's better than my old school. My old school sucked,

• 1:56:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  right? But you're like better than vacation, though. That's a harder standard. Your old school, if you're comparing to your old school, it's too easy. Better than vacation, that's a hard standard.

• 1:56:45Speaker 03

  As a parent, I would also feel like I'm not giving my kids a very good vacation if they want to go

• 1:56:49Speaker 02

  Well, but that's that back to our thing, right? Your kids are with their friends all day doing awesome stuff

• 1:56:55Speaker 03

  on the stuff they love.

• 1:56:56Speaker 02

  and they're doing the stuff they love that's hard and challenging with a guy who's supporting them, right? It is hard to beat. That is why on Saturdays they're like, God, I wish I could go to school. Just building all that kind of stuff. So, so, but you're always trying to figure out what is that extra question, right? Like, how do we know if the parents really love the school? Right? What is it? Like, will the parent create testimonial videos?

• 1:57:17Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:57:18Speaker 02

  You know, of their school, because it's totally crazy, right? Of because people are always like, you go to that weird school where they don't have teachers and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so, like, we went through back to our standard, which is we opened all these schools, all these new locations. I'm like, how do I know if they're good? Well, we have six and a half hours of testimonial videos from people families who joined the last 10 weeks about them saying, you know, it's only been 10 weeks and my kids' life's transformed. And so you just, you're out there trying to figure out what's the hard question to ask. You show it publicly. We show all our grades publicly. We give all the, you know, uh all these testimonies, we see everybody uh around it. And that's our control group, right? For that. And then the other part's just core culture, right? Just your core culture of

• 1:58:05Speaker 02

  do you believe in delivering the three commitments to every kid? And if you don't believe in that, don't come and everything's based around it. And if you're a guide, you have to deliver it to your students. But if you're on my academic team creating lessons, you do too.

• 1:58:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  So, like if a kid is struggling and can't get through your lesson, the guy who did the lesson is going to get on a call with them.

• 1:58:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:27Speaker 02

  Right. Back when I lose 50% of them, when you have some of these learning science researchers and they realize they have to deal with kids and are accountable.

• 1:58:35Speaker 03

  Much easier on paper.

• 1:58:36Speaker 02

  Exactly. And you you lose some because they don't want to do it. But you build that culture of, you know, and back to even growth. So, like our growth team, right? Because we're expanding, you know, they wake up every day and the first thing they work, the, you know, we have three concentric circles. The first is Is there something you need to do to deliver three commitments to every existing child in the school? And if there is, go do it. Like if there's a problem in an existing campus and you can fix it, don't worry about some new campus. Go fix it.

• 1:59:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:02Speaker 02

  Then the second is have we filled every school that we already have? Because the number of classmates is an important part of school, right? And when you start a school, it's smaller and then you want to grow it. And so the second thing we're doing is we want to make sure for our existing students that we're giving them awesome classmates. Right. And then and only then, after you do those first two circles, do you say, should we open to a new location? Right. And building that culture is hard, especially we have we're the most talked about school in the world. We have demand, you know, through the roof. We're called from every country. Secretary of Education's down here. I got 10 governors who, you know, are coming down. Everybody wants this model.

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  And I'm like, high quality at all times, right? Never relent on quality because we have to deliver every kid, and we'll get it to everybody. So those are our physical school rules, right? Now, I'm not going to be able to get to a billion kids next year if I have to build the schools. And so then I get to the second when we talk about virtual. How can I, you know, scale it without that? So one way

• 2:00:08Speaker 02

  is you know, the the the time back software works. So we're going to let people build on it, right? And so anybody who wants to build a school, now's the time, right? If you have an idea of what the afternoon should be,

• 2:00:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. Right?

• 2:00:20Speaker 02

  right? Come do it. We're hiring a thousand coaches, right, through Texas in Texas for Texas Sports Academy for these middle schools, right? We have, you know, 500 GT schools for gifted talented kids. I have somebody who's loves Montessori. So we're going to have a Montessori school. We have a wilderness school, right? Where if you think the wilderness in the afternoon. So there's all these great opportunities for entrepreneurs, right, who want to go then build schools. So we're, there's just going to be a think of Shopify for microschools or for schools, right? That's what time back's going to be, and it's going to explode it. And then there's the the pure virtual, which is, well, homeschoolers,

• 2:00:55Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:00:56Speaker 02

  right? And everybody else.

• 2:00:58Speaker 03

  That's what my kids want. They want the two hours on the weekend.

• 2:01:00Speaker 02

  Right. Well, so here's what they're going to get. So here's what they're going to get. And or here's our problem and what we've been working on is you know, if 10% of it is the ed tech, you know, the time back, how are you, if I let it out of my environment, I I no longer can give the kids a time back. If I own all six hours and I give you four,

• 2:01:19Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:01:19Speaker 02

  I got the motivation. I got the motivation. But at homeschool, I don't have that. Or after school, no one wants, you know, I can't tell you how many. My daughters are like, no one wants to go to school after school,

• 2:01:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. My kids will. I'll

• 2:01:31Speaker 02

  right? You'll make them, right? But no, I need to make them love it more than vacation, right? Not just there's a set of parents who will make them for sure.

• 2:01:38Speaker 03

  I know what'll happen. They'll start doing it and then they'll be like, why do I have to go to school?

• 2:01:41Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that's what I want. Which is so how do we 90% motivation? So how do we solve it? So we've spent all our time, and when we release time back next year, the set of motivations for these kids are going to be awesome. Right.

• 2:01:56Speaker 03

  Like give me an example.

• 2:01:57Speaker 02

  So, well, Let's just take what let's take middle school boys. Their number one motivation is video games.

• 2:02:05Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  So imagine if you got some of the world's best video game designers, like the best, not your prodigy guys, right? The best ever who made the world's best video games. And you got 150 of them in a building and said, go build the world's best video game on top of this, where the kids are going to play it two hours a day and become top 1%, right?

• 2:02:28Speaker 02

  I bet your kids, if they're video gamers, are going to love to play that.

• 2:02:32Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:32Speaker 02

  Right. And be super interested in that. Or let's talk about like an after school for kids who need after school tutoring. We just ran this uh as a test. Imagine they like Kumon, if you know some of these students, everybody hates it, right? Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's all terrible.

• 2:02:51Speaker 03

  They're in dingy building.

• 2:02:52Speaker 02

  What if you just went to Dave and Buster's?

• 2:02:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:55Speaker 02

  And then in the Dave and Buster's, like in the little, you know, birthday rooms or whatever, they did their hour with the tutor.

• 2:03:01Speaker 03

  And you earned like

• 2:03:02Speaker 02

  And you earned your little card and then you went out in the afternoon. Or what if online after you did that, you were able to go into a 10,000 person Twitch stream with some of the best video gamers in the world, right? Who's your famous, who's the streamers you like? Right? Who are the influencers you like? So imagine there's influencers, right? Where you're getting social cred, right, based on being able to do this. Now, and if you want as parents, what if I allowed you to do 100 for 100? So just take our system and you as the parent could put in the money. Right. And all of a sudden the kid gets it. Right. And what if, especially when I took that money and I didn't let them spend it,

• 2:03:47Speaker 02

  it went into the Robin Hood for Kids account to teach them financial acumen and investing and financial literacy.

• 2:03:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:54Speaker 02

  What if it was that? Right. Or what if I had an associated life skill project where it funded your trip to New York so that you could go meet the producer for your musical, you know, or it funded your robot war that you were going to do, all ideas. Or just more mundanely, what if it was what manage your screen time? So every parent struggles with how much screen time. Well, what if there's just the time back that's like, guys,

• 2:04:22Speaker 02

  let me be in charge of your kids' screen time? Because I'll make sure they get to top 1%.

• 2:04:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:04:27Speaker 02

  And if they're top 1%, you're going to give them some more screen time?

• 2:04:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:04:30Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:04:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:04:31Speaker 02

  Right. And so it's going to manage all that for the parents. Right. And the parents are going to be like, oh my God, my kids top 1%. And they're super happy because they hit this. And then, oh my God, I got some gaming time or I got some TikTok time or whatever it is. I was able to control, you know, uh, those kind of elements. So wrapping in all the motivational stuff. There's just there's a hundred ways to motivate kids, right? There's going to be social peer gaming. Like we have a multi user version where the kids are just competing, right? Think of video games, but just, you know, you're competing on academics. And, you know, the 10% of kids who really love academics.

• 2:05:05Speaker 03

  They love that.

• 2:05:06Speaker 02

  I mean, oh my God, those kids, you know, they're they're they're they just run out of curriculum. There's just not enough to teach them. Like they're just, you know, they just they blow uh blow through the top of the charts.

• 2:05:16Speaker 03

  What does the science say? I I can imagine this would be controversial about paying kids to learn.

• 2:05:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. External, extra external and extrinsic motivation versus intrinsic. There's a huge debate about it. And I believe we'll have the biggest real data set in the world. Um uh

• 2:05:35Speaker 03

  What what are the

• 2:05:36Speaker 02

  and so here's there's there's both. There's there's there's both sets of papers, which is um there's a paper that literally that you should you could look up that says there's no such thing as intrinsic motivation. Because even if you're intrinsically motivated, it's because of something.

• 2:05:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:51Speaker 02

  You know, even a good student, they want the accolades of being a good student.

• 2:05:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:56Speaker 02

  Is there a true love of learning or is there a true love of accomplishment?

• 2:06:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:00Speaker 02

  And what's the accomplishment getting you? And so you can go read that paper and have a very strong view of there's no difference between paying kids and booting them. It's why in sports parents often hold their kid back a year.

• 2:06:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:13Speaker 02

  So they're bigger. So then they win a little bit. And then once they win, they get jump started and then they're good. And now they like it because they keep getting accolades that they're good at it. Academics is the same way. You just need to jumpstart them on paying. And then, like those kids, so in our middle school, we'll pay any kid $1,000 to become top 1%.

• 2:06:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:31Speaker 02

  You know, so when they transfer in, oh my God, top 1% is too hard. You pay them $1,000, they get to top 1%. It changes their internal view of themselves.

• 2:06:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:40Speaker 02

  That I'm like, oh, I am a good student. Then you don't have to pay them anymore.

• 2:06:44Speaker 03

  Well then

• 2:06:44Speaker 02

  And all of a sudden they're going to do it themselves because they change their internal view. And so part of all of this stuff is when you talk about extrinsic and intrinsic, is if you can change the kid's internal view of their capabilities, it's worth using whatever motivation you can, right? Back to our guides. They use whatever lever they need to pull with the kid to break through. Kids have part of education is kids have blocks about what they can do. I'm not a math science girl.

• 2:07:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:07:14Speaker 02

  Right. And you're like, that just doesn't exist. There's no like brain chemistry that like I'm a I'm a middle school girl, I can't learn bad science, right? You yes, you can. So I have to, so our guides have to break through that. And they'll do whatever it takes. And if paying them $1,000 is it, or bringing them out to an event or letting them go to an off-campus lunch. What's do an off-camp? Oh, you guys want to do an off-campus lunch? You know, whatever the currency is, social peer pressure. Oh my God, all the other girls are there, or whatever it is, our guides will use to get them there. Then once they're top 1%, Right. Boom. Right. They're there forever. Our kids at college aren't getting paid. They're all 4-0 students.

• 2:07:53Speaker 02

  Right. It's just you change kids' capability to become self-driven learners to do that. But there is a fear of it. And there is, I'm sure there's a bad way to do it. But, you know, starting in kindergarten, our kids earn alphas.

• 2:08:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:07Speaker 02

  Because our if you want to teach financial literacy, which every parent wants, you know, you earn alphas, you learn how to save, earn, save, spend, invest, and donate. And they start that cycle in kindergarten and then move it all the way up. And it gets bigger dollars as you get older. But you want your kid in seventh grade, like if you give them some phantom stock thing to teach them to invest in seventh grade, I can tell you that's terrible.

• 2:08:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:35Speaker 02

  Because one, it's not real money, they didn't earn it, and they're going to YOLO it

• 2:08:39Speaker 03

  Oh

• 2:08:40Speaker 02

  and just it's like a casino. It's not investing, it's just gambling, right? Versus

• 2:08:45Speaker 03

  no

• 2:08:45Speaker 02

  Wait, I just earned this $1,000.

• 2:08:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:48Speaker 02

  That's mine. And it was hard.

• 2:08:50Speaker 03

  Uh

• 2:08:51Speaker 02

  And it's mine. And I'm going to invest it. Right. Now, we do let them YOLO it and do something stupid and lose all their money.

• 2:08:59Speaker 03

  yeah.

• 2:08:59Speaker 02

  And

• 2:08:59Speaker 03

  But then they've lost real money.

• 2:09:01Speaker 02

  it's the best lesson. And it's better to learn that in seventh grade than 27 years old. Right. And so all those things around it where trying to take out, you know, one of the things is. There's a bunch of Montessori, right? Maria Montessori in Montessori schools, she very much believed that kids should be involved in real-world things. She actually has things where she's like, kids, adolescents should earn money,

• 2:09:24Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:09:24Speaker 02

  right? And, you know, that this having them do work and the value of work and that their work has value is a good thing for child development. And we find, you know, I think if you the best thing you can do is ask alpha parents. They're like, no, this is all really good. This isn't, we're not poisoning the kids and getting them to be this coin addicted person who, if they don't get paid, they won't do any learning. Right. Instead,

• 2:09:51Speaker 03

  That's not how it works.

• 2:09:52Speaker 02

  it's just not how it works. I mean, and you could get kids on this, and it's not like there aren't times where the kids like, okay, I'm gonna do some extra things because I want something.

• 2:10:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:10:01Speaker 02

  Right. And so, you know.

• 2:10:03Speaker 03

  But that's life.

• 2:10:04Speaker 02

  Correct. No, the the the um uh musical, Maddie, who's doing the musical, she wasn't wanting to do the 790. She got a 790 her math as AT. She was below it. And sorry, Maddie, I just outed you. Um, you know, she was below it. But she wanted, she needed money to go fly to New York to meet the producer so she could get money to do her whole thing. And I was like, well, what's what what does time back tell you how many hours, right, it's going to take you to get to 790? We were actually trying for 800, right? And she, it was like X. And I'm like, okay, go do it, and you'll earn the money and we'll buy your plane ticket up there, right? To to do it. Right. And so she did. And then she got her plane ticket.

• 2:10:49Speaker 02

  Right. And it was just, and it's just this concept of, oh, it was work. And, you know, she was happy at 750 or 760 or whatever.

• 2:10:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:10:56Speaker 02

  And then you just move it up. But

• 2:10:57Speaker 03

  It's worked, but she also knows and learns that she's capable of doing more if she pushes herself, puts in extra effort.

• 2:11:04Speaker 02

  it's just, it's effort based. Do you want to do it? And and back to just how life is. She's like, yeah, I want this thing. And now I have the world's best Broadway musical. I'm going to change my world. Right. Change what, you know, she's going to go back in college and she's like, I'm going to go, you know, be arts theater forever. But that and that's why the math. She was like, it was enough on her because she's an arts theater girl.

• 2:11:22Speaker 03

  It also sounds like a small enough effort, you know? Like whereas before, even with a a teacher or guide, it's like this ambiguous thing. It's huge, it's big, it's far away.

• 2:11:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:33Speaker 03

  I'm not even gonna try because it's it sounds like

• 2:11:35Speaker 02

  It's 200 hours.

• 2:11:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:37Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, we're 20 hours, not 200, right? We're 10 times faster. And so there's the two parts. There are two, both things you said were totally correct. It was ambiguous. So I could just put a bunch of time in. And if you don't have an AI tutor, you can study for a long time and your SAT scores don't go up. Right. And so the first is we're not ambiguous. We're like, here it is. You're 17 hours away. You're four hours away. Like in our dashboard, it literally says, You know, you're six hours from finishing, you know, six or six weeks from finishing it. If you go do an hour of homework, you're like a week away.

• 2:12:12Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:12:12Speaker 02

  Right. So it literally can just tell you based on your work how long, you know, to get there. And when you put the goal setting in, it'll tell you, you know, all of that. And so not being ambiguous, right? And being definitive to the students, critical. And then the second, the numbers are small.

• 2:12:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:27Speaker 02

  It's definitive and small,

• 2:12:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:29Speaker 02

  right?

• 2:12:29Speaker 03

  Manageable.

• 2:12:30Speaker 02

  And super manageable.

• 2:12:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:31Speaker 02

  Math Academy, every parent, go look at Math Academy. It's going to be like, oh, 28 hours away. I want to say they've just released like their SAT program. They've been updating it. And I want to say it's 180 hours.

• 2:12:45Speaker 03

  We're gonna we're gonna try that this weekend. My kids wanna explore it.

• 2:12:49Speaker 02

  Well, you should. You should totally look at it, but I want to say it's like 180 hours.

• 2:12:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:53Speaker 02

  Matt, like that's it.

• 2:12:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:56Speaker 02

  You know,

• 2:12:57Speaker 03

  And then you're you're it's crazy. Uh Joe, this has been a fascinating conversation. We always end with the same question. And I think I have an idea of what you're gonna say here, but what is success for you?

• 2:13:08Speaker 02

  um, that we transform education for 1 billion kids. So that's nothing like what we had. And the the tagline, if I had to give my tagline, is Our job is to make this the best time in history to be a five year old.

• 2:13:26Speaker 03

  That's incredible. That might be the best answer ever. Thank you for taking the time today. This was a fascinating conversation, one that rings true to me. So I really appreciate it.

• 2:13:36Speaker 02

  I loved it. Thanks for the time.