#552: Chrisman Frank on Teaching Critical Thinking & Problem Solving

Chrisman Frank is the co-founder and CEO of Synthesis, a new educational experience for children aged 8-14 that focuses on teaching problem solving and critical thinking skills. In this conversation, we discuss the industrial education system, why students are suffering, how teachers fit into the system, why the old model doesn’t work, how Synthesis works, the current traction of the business, and what parents are saying. ======================= BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Products include high-yield interest accounts, USD loans, and no fee trading. To start earning today visit: http://www.blockfi.com/Pomp ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp ======================= Gemini is a regulated cryptocurrency exchange, wallet, and custodian that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin, ether, and other cryptocurrencies: https://www.gemini.com/ =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast. Simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Chrisman Frank is the co-founder and CEO of Synthesis. A new educational experience for children aged eight to 14 that focuses on teaching problem-solving and critical thinking skills. In this conversation, we discuss the industrial education system, why students are suffering, how teachers fit into this system, why the old model doesn't work, how Synthesis works, the current traction of the business, and what parents are saying. I really enjoyed this conversation with Chrisman. I'm a proud investor in Synthesis, so I hope you really enjoy this one.

• 0:42Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:12Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:20Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Simple and secure and the Winklevoss twins ain't playing around with that security. So go check them out at Gemini.com/pomp. All right, let's get into this episode with Chrisman. I really hope that you enjoy this one.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:36Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Chrisman here. Today, we are going to tell you about the future of education. How are you?

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Doing well. How are you?

• 3:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm doing great. Let's first start with the problem in the education system, which I think is plentiful. There's two ways that we can do this. We can either say the politically correct stuff and explain how the school system does a great job educating students, or we can go down the truthful path, which is they actually might be doing more damage than good. Which path do you want to go down?

• 4:06Speaker 02

  I think it's, you know, it's important to state that you have basically like a bad system here, that systems are separate from people, that a lot of people, you know, I met a ton of people working in the system. I don't actually know anybody who defends the system. People who work in it don't like it. They're as much trapped as anybody else. But I do agree, it's maybe less politically correct to say, but this... This, uh, what I call the industrial education complex.

• 4:33Anthony Pompliano?

  What is that?

• 4:33Speaker 02

  A system that we have now. That's, that's the system that looks like, you know, it's set up like a factory, right? It's, it's set up to, many people say this, like meet the needs of the industrial age. So you get kids in there, you teach them to follow rules and procedures. Most people say that's, uh, that, that is to train them to work in factories and that's only half the truth, actually. Part of it is to get kids to be ready to work in factories and learn to obey the rules and operate by a bell. So you can keep the machines running. And the other part is to teach them to operate large bureaucracies before digital age. Like bureaucracies are essentially distributed computers. Every person in that bureaucracy is like, like a chip. They have no agency. They're just meant to follow out, follow instructions, follow procedures, obey the rules.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Obey the rules is the number one, the number one, uh, kind of raison d'etre of that system. And now we're transitioning into the, the information age and we just, we need a new system. The, the old one is not going to adapt. I mean, I think it's, people have been talking about changing it for a hundred years now. It's maybe, you know, been a little bit, uh, off, but, uh, it, it needs to change and it needs to change quickly. Uh, I have kids, you know, I, as soon as they were born, it was like, I started kind of scheming on like, how am I going to keep them out of this system? And, uh, and what does a new system look like when we have, you know, unlimited access to information? And so, yeah, that's my-

• 5:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Before we talk more about the education system, you've been working on this stuff for a while. Explain kind of your background and some of the work that you've done so that people don't think that it's just two dudes up here sitting, you know, bashing a system that we don't understand.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So I, um, you know, before, before synthesis, I started a, I started an online tutoring company. This is about, about like eight, eight years ago or so. So it was a little bit, uh, world, world was not, not quite ready for that yet. You had to, most of the work was just like convincing people that you could learn online. Once they did that, it worked. But it was just, it was this big, you know, mental hurdle, which, which COVID has kind of wiped that out now. So now the timing is, is much better to do something in online learning. I had, uh, after starting that, that really wasn't going anywhere. I met, uh, I met the guys at ClassDojo, the founders of that company, which is now, you know, like a couple thousand users at the time.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  And it's since grown to like 51 million. It's an app for, uh, teachers to communicate with parents. And so through doing that, you know, you're working on basically like, you know, plugging into the existing system and, and, and trying to make it a little better. And, and you know, it does that, right? Like teachers can communicate with, with parents, like that makes the kids and the families like more individuals to the teacher and not just like, you know, cogs in this giant machine. So I think that was, uh, you know, that's like an important step. And, uh, you know, through doing that, I got to talk with probably, you know, thousands of teachers, principals, administrators, parents, and really kind of, you know, wrap my head around the problems with the system and, and, you know, the opportunities. And, you know, eventually kind of came to the conclusion that I would be,

• 7:34Speaker 02

  it just didn't, didn't really fit my personality, right? Like I, I'm more like, let's, let's blow things up and start over. Let's rethink this from, from first principles. Uh, so I spent about eight years there and, uh, ended up meeting Josh, my co-founder, when I went down to, uh, visit at Astra School, which is the school that he built with Elon Musk on the SpaceX campus. And, uh, that kind of started the process of, you know, getting my mind rolling on the next thing.

• 7:57Anthony Pompliano?

  So ClassDojo is in a generalized way, an evolutionary approach to improving education. What you're doing now is much more revolutionary, right? It's much more disruptive and kind of changing of a paradigm versus just simply improving in small steps, the existing system. Um, inside these schools, it's pretty insane. Like, I don't think people realize, again, like what happens on a day-to-day basis. And, um, you know, when you and I first started talking, like, the first thing that hit me in the head was, I always joked that like, I don't know, first grade through like, maybe they still get you to do it in like eighth grade? It's literally you put a finger over your mouth and you put a finger in the air and you walk down the hallway, right? Uh, and it's just like this weird thing of like, be quiet, sit still, do what we tell you.

• 8:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, and the entire purpose of you being here is so that at the end of the year, you pass a end of year test. And if we do that, that's successful. Uh, it doesn't matter if you actually learned anything, doesn't matter if you had fun, nothing, like. Why is that the model?

• 8:57Speaker 02

  It's the logic of the industrial era, right? Where human beings are just kind of like items to be processed, right? And it's dehumanizing to everybody involved. But particularly, I think the real damage is done to the kids. Because you're essentially like trying to grind down their humanity so they can operate within this larger industrial system. And now the world's changing. Like that path might have actually worked for people. Like it did work for people. If you put your head down and you follow that path and you went to a good college and you get a good job at a consulting firm or on Wall Street or as a lawyer or something like that, it's not a bad way to go. You could do well like that. You could buy a home, you could raise a family. And maybe it's not that bad.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  But the world's not that way anymore. It's actually, you take you, what you're doing. You're an individual. No one can do exactly what you do. You do this weird mix of things that like nobody predicted. And there's more and more, that is the way, that's the direction of the economy.

• 9:56Anthony Pompliano?

  It feels like the old system is built to teach people what to think, not how to think. Is that a fair kind of framing of it?

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's really, they're trying to get you to rely on authority, right? Like there is some authority and they're going to be able to give you the truth. And independent thinking is not something that's valued. Because that blow up the industrial economy. You need people to kind of buy into this thing where you're like a cog that's going to go work in a factory or bureaucracy. And so it's, they're there. It's going to be hard to kind of unwind that set of ideas within the existing system. I think we need to just rethink it based on what does the world look like now that the internet is kind of coming into its own?

• 10:41Anthony Pompliano?

  So in a normal day for, I don't know, I think the average age of a kid in synthesis is like 10 years old, like third, fourth grade.

• 10:50Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about their day, the kids are free to do whatever they want for 30 minutes a day? An hour a day?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is crazy because I'll tweet stuff about the existing system and like my kind of problems with it.

• 11:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that you're way too nice. You should dial up the tweets a little bit.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  It does seem like the more what you call controversial ones seem to do better. People, you know, there's at least some people that resonate with that. But the comments I get is crazy, which is like, kids need school to be socialized. And I just, it hit me the other day because my son, because we moved during COVID, so we didn't have a lot of friends in the area we moved in. So we put him in a school, like a normal, normal kind of school. It's a private school. But even private schools go by the same kind of logic. And he's in there and he just like, you know, he hates it. He like fakes a stomach ache to like get out of going to school. At least initially. And then, then he starts kind of, he starts being a little more eager to go. And I'm like, well, what's your, why do you want to go to school now? And he's like, you know, today's a PE day. So we get PE today for 30 minutes.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Or I want to go, you know, I have lunch with my friends and there's like 30 minutes where I can like talk to my friends. And so it just occurred to me like this, we're doing this horribly evil trick on kids where the thing that they crave most is like that social development, that's social interaction. And we gated, we give them 30 minutes a day. And then we gated behind like sit in a chair for another seven hours and just kind of listen to someone talk at you and do this work that you're not interested in and you don't want to do. But we entice them with like, this is the only way that you can be around other kids. And it's horrible. And I think we will look back, you know, once, when we, when we blow that system up and we'll be like, I cannot believe that we institutionalized our children like that. I can't believe we did it. That's the way I feel.

• 12:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm going to say this and people are going to get mad, but that's okay. Uh, because I think it to be true. Schools are essentially acting as, uh,

• 12:48Anthony Pompliano?

  The same way that a prison would act for a nonviolent offender, right? Meaning that there is segregation of them from people that they want to talk to, hang out with. They are allowed to interact with each other for certain periods of time. But other than that, it's basically what the top-down hierarchical structure wants them to spend their time doing. So in a prison, go to recess or go to the yard. Go eat. Go here in the classroom. Like you follow this very regimented process and it's desire to engineer an outcome, right? One is a control-based outcome, the other is a hopefully rehabilitation outcome.

• 13:32Anthony Pompliano?

  It almost feels like in some weird way, what we're doing is putting kids into the same similar regimented environment. And we're trying to engineer a rehabilitation of them from a normal human, a normal child, and get them to conform to what we want them to do at the end. Is that crazy to think of it that way?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  I think that's, I think that's right. I mean, it's important to realize that there's this continuum, right? Between individual freedom and liberty and kind of conformity. And we need, there's some degree of conformity that's good, right? And I would just say it's, prison is kind of the extreme end of the spectrum where you're trying to control someone's every movement. And you know, you have like kind of anarchy on the other side, which is, that's not great either. You need some kind of like rules and norms to get, to get things done in the world. There's incredible benefits to coordination. But you know, my view, the schools, maybe you needed to do it that like to get this industrial economy

• 14:32Speaker 02

  that we have that produces goods incredibly cheaply and has raised the standard of living globally. But now I'm not, I'm not sure we need that. I think computers have kind of taken on a lot of like the rote repetitive work. And you know, there's, there are fewer jobs where you can go be told what to do and do it and like be considered to be doing a good job. And so we need to rethink that approach. Like it is, it is like a prison. In some sense, and and we need to, you know, I think we just need to like push it a little bit far in the other direction.

• 15:03Anthony Pompliano?

  So one thing you keep bringing up that I think is important is it's not so much that uh this is broken because it's always been broken. It's almost like the goalpost moved, right? In terms of the skill set that's needed, the um the way that people needed to think, like all of that has changed. And therefore you can't use the system that got us here to get us where we need to go, right?

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's right. And I think also also I I do think it has gotten worse. Like all the teachers I talk to. They're like, this has gotten worse. It wasn't it wasn't like this like 10 years ago. So you had these things where the system starts to break down a little bit and you'll be kind of familiar with this with the financial system and like Bitcoin and everything. It breaks down a little bit. The authorities respond by trying to control things even more. And so that's where you get these, you know, there's in in the US, you have programs that come from the Department of Education. Uh and they're Republican, they're pushed by Republicans and Democrats and they're like raise standards. Let's have a common core. Like let's let's let's do what we've been doing, but let's do it better and faster.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  And that's made things much worse. The testing has gotten much worse. And I think that is that's a sign that that that this this kind of facade is starting to crumble, right? It's like people are aware of it. The teachers are aware of it. They don't want to be doing what they're forced to do. The kids realize it. I think kids are pretty smart. They can see they they they could see that this is not going to get them where they want to be in life. Even from a young age, I really believe that they they're just like, why? Why am I doing this? The the world looks nothing like what I'm doing here. Even from like a really young age, I think they can tell that.

• 16:40Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the analogy of like sand in someone's hand? And as they go to like grab the sand, it actually pushes it out. And so you start squeezing it more and more, right? The sand escapes faster. Um and so.

• 16:53Anthony Pompliano?

  I think it's important to separate, like you said, the system from the people. The teachers, for the most part, from what I understand, and the administrators, they want to do the best they can for the kids.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  They're not doing it for the money. Everybody knows, like, it doesn't pay a lot of money to be a teacher, right? So they're not doing it for the money. I mean, you meet some people who are just like, you know, they're just phoning it in, and they're just like, this is, you know, this is like a job where I get summers off or something like that, right? I mean, there are those people, it's just, it's, there's 3 million teachers in the US, right? Some of them are gonna be bad people. But for me, like, the vast majority I met, like, they wanna do this because they wanna have an impact on kids, they care about kids, and they basically just don't let them do what they wanna do. Like, instead, it's like you're forcing these kids to learn math, you're grading them, you're not really, you don't have the time to treat them as individuals, or see them as individuals.

• 17:43Anthony Pompliano?

  So would the teachers change the system if they could, for the most part?

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. It's a really funny thing, there's just, I think the biggest enemy, I wrote an essay about this, like, what comes after the industrial education complex? I think the biggest enemy is just inertia. I think no matter how high you go up the chain, you know, you find very few people who believe what we're doing now is a good idea, and that we should keep doing it, at any level.

• 18:07Anthony Pompliano?

  What about, like, the actual education? So we've talked a lot about, like, structure and regiment, and essentially making kids not be kids by telling them to shut up and sit down, and, you know, don't move, and all this stuff. Are they actually learning important information? Like, 2 plus 2 still equals 4, and I think that'll happen for a long time, so kids need to know that, right? So like, math and science, to me, feels like, that's like the most objective thing in terms of, people think that there are certain topics within those disciplines that should be taught, and it's pretty easy to know, hey, you either know 2 plus 2 equals 4, or you don't. But then there's a whole bunch of other stuff that goes into an education, where, do we feel like they're actually learning the information?

• 18:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Or is it simply just rote memorization, get to that final test at the end of the year, basically regurgitate it all on the test, and then like, literally come back a month after the test, and they don't know any of it?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think Paul Graham, just, I think he pretty recently wrote an essay about this, like, you know people aren't learning because you study for tests. You don't need to test to just be like, okay, what did you learn? Over this course, right? The fact that you're studying for it means like you don't, you don't really know it well enough in that form. And so it's like your mind is like a sieve, like all this information that's not relevant, just wash it, just goes right through, right? And yeah, so that's, that is going to be very difficult to fix in the existing system. One of the things I could say is we, the world's like evolving. Since we've gotten to the information age, evolution, evolution of our ideas, evolution

• 19:46Speaker 02

  of like what's important is taking place much faster than it ever has. And so you'll see it with like the Bitcoin community, these institutions that are kind of, you could start an institution and run it kind of more or less the same way for, you know, a couple of decades or like a century and it would be all right. Now, things are changing much too quickly and this, this like giant system that we have, it's just not going to be able to change quickly enough, just never going to happen. So we need like an internet native education system, something that can change as quickly as the world changes, something that can evolve as quickly as the world is evolving now.

• 20:21Anthony Pompliano?

  So somebody else who realized this was Elon Musk. Walk me through the story of what was his realizations or your understanding of his realizations and then like what did he do to build this school on SpaceX's campus?

• 20:34Speaker 02

  I think it just started with like, you know, I don't want to, I don't know if his kids do well personally, but I think they're, you know, you might be able to infer that they're, they're quite intelligent, right? And so.

• 20:47Anthony Pompliano?

  What would give you that idea?

• 20:50Speaker 02

  So, so I think that's, that's not like revealing too much to say. And, you know, he had them in this school, which was, which was a gifted school in Los Angeles and just, I think started with like an intuition, like this just isn't working. Like, I don't know exactly, you know, what, what to do, but like this isn't working. And so Josh, our, you know, co-founder of Synthesis was a, was a teacher at that school. And if you can imagine this, like you're, you're a teacher, you know, Elon walks in like parent teacher conference night and it's like, hey, I really don't like this school. I don't think it's doing a good job. You're like. Sorry Elon Musk. And uh, but Elon follows us up with like, let's just do our own thing. Like, what would you do if you, if you know, we just gave you the resources and you could just create it from scratch?

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Cause you know, my kids like you, like what you're doing, like what would you do? You know, let's, and Josh like that, you know, that sounds amazing.

• 21:40Anthony Pompliano?

  A billionaire just walked in my classroom and said that I could start a new school.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and do what, and you know, Josh has the same point of view, right? He's like, this system, even when you're at this, you know, you can imagine Elon's got all the resources in the world. He's got access to any school that he wants. LA is one of the biggest cities in America, right? And he just can't find what he's looking for. Uh, because these, you know, it's all kinda like the same system. They're just doing what the public schools are doing, doing it faster and you're calling that innovative. And so he gave an interview with um, with Chinese television station, you know, I think that's like seven or eight years ago now, before they started the school. And uh, two, two main, you know, Elon's famous for this first principles approach, right? So those first principles in education are just stop doing the industrial system thing. Stop treating the kids like everybody's gonna learn the same thing at the same time.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Stop segregating them by age and, and forcing them through this like linear curriculum. So that was number one. And number two was make it problem focused rather than tool focused. So school tends to divide things up into subjects and they're teaching you like a different tool in each subject. So his analogy is if school's gonna teach you to be a mechanic or an engineer, they'd say, here's a course on wrenches, here's your course on screwdrivers. And the way that you should do it is here's an engine to take apart, right? So there's a problem. How are you gonna solve it? Well, you need to learn how to use this tool. You need to learn how to use a screwdriver and a wrench. And that is much more meaningful and engaging to kids, but to, to everybody. Like we're engaging problems. Uh, the analogy I always use, like, I don't like accounting.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Accounting is not really attractive to me, but like I, I know a lot. I actually, actually kinda do like it because you need to do accounting to, you need to know a little bit to solve this problem of like, how do you build a company? How do you bring your ideas out into the world? And so I think, you know, people are the same way. If you try to teach these things in isolation, just much harder to learn. It just, it doesn't stick with us. And so Josh took that idea of being problem focused and started creating these games and simulations. Cause it's like, okay, what are, what are kids gonna be engaged with? If you say engagement is the most important thing, they're gonna like, they like games, you know, they like simulations, things they can play with, things that are like interactive. And so he starts creating these. For the school and he adds this element of like team sports to it.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Right. So it's like you collaborate on a team and then you're competing with the other teams. And you started operating the school like that. I think I went down in year, year three or four to visit. And you know, it was like I turned a little tour of the school and it was lunchtime. We're sitting outside, you know, it's California, it's warm, the kids are playing like dodgeball outside. And then there's a group of kids that's inside, gather around a table, like standing up, the computer's in front of them. And just shouting these really complex arguments at each other. And I turned to the teacher, I was eating with her, I was like, what, what's going on here? And she's like, oh, I'm sorry, that's, that's synthesis. The kids get a little bit obsessed with it. I was like, this is a school thing? They've never seen kids act like this. And then what they're saying is just sounds like really complex.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  They're like 10, 11, 12. And I'm like, they're, the way they're speaking with each other. The quality of their analysis is, you know, it's equivalent to what we're seeing in the office. Like building this tech company, which is like scaling remarkably. And I, and I had just had this feeling like this is, this is the future. Like I'm seeing the future of education. I've been to all these schools, like as part of my work at, at Dojo. And, you know, I wasn't even excited to go down to AdAster because I was like, I just, I feel like I've seen it all, right? But this, this thing, this synthesis like stuck with me. And you know, my son was two at the time. And so when the initial kind of shock of it wore off, my stomach just like sank because I'm like, I can't get this for him.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Right. If you're not, if you're not a billionaire with your own rocket company, or you're not like a rocket engineer. There's no way to get your kids in there. And even if you were an engineer at SpaceX, it was like a one in 25 chance, right? Because everybody wanted to go there. And so got, got like a little bit depressed because of like seeing the, the promised land of education. There's like no way to get to it. So I started, I started, you know, Josh and I kept up like a conversation, friendship. We connected over this idea that kids crave complexity. Right. The, what you do in school is try to remove that complexity, make everything rules based. Break it down into tiny chunks. And he was like, you give them more complexity, they crave it, like they want it, they can, they can feel their minds like leveling up through that.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  And so we kind of built a friendship and would, would talk about like, you know, what the future should look like. Tried to get him to move to the Bay area where I live to start a school. And, you know, you're working for Elon, you can't take on side projects for the most part. So. Right when the pandemic hit, actually, that kind of, you know, there's this wave of like online learning. People were open to it because they, you know, are familiar with doing it, you know, Zoom classes at their school. And so it wasn't a thing you had to sell people on anymore. They believed that you could learn that way, even if the schools are not doing it well. And also Elon's kids finished and they graduated the school. And so Josh became like a free agent. And it's like, hey, like, why don't we, why don't we put this online? Let's see if it works online. And let's see if it works with the kids,

• 26:49Speaker 02

  people who are not rocket engineers. And, uh, yeah.

• 26:52Anthony Pompliano?

  So when a kid goes in here, and I've seen it, and I invested in the last round, today, we're going to announce a new round. Uh, so I'm a big believer in this. But what exactly do the kids do? They come in and is it on Zoom? Like, how does the product work? And what are they doing when they're quote unquote, in class?

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a little different. Uh, one of our, our kind of slogans is embrace the chaos. And kids sign up, we're like, you know, get ready, here's the Zoom link, just get ready, get ready for chaos, right? So they come in and a lot of them are used to the existing system. There's, you know, where there's rules, there's instructions, you're kind of told what to do. And we have a facilitator there, it'd be about 15 to 20 kids on a, on a Zoom call. And the facilitator's like, welcome, we got a prop, we're here to learn to solve complex problems together. That's the critical skill. That's what we're going to teach you guys. So you can build the future, whatever it looks like. And we're

• 27:52Speaker 02

  going to put you in breakout rooms on Teams, and you're going to have a problem to solve, figure it out. And then every hand goes up and they're like, what, what's the problem? Like, what, what do we, what do we do exactly?

• 28:04Anthony Pompliano?

  What are the rules? What am I not allowed to do?

• 28:06Speaker 02

  We're going to give you the problem. It's going to be chaos, and you're going to figure it out. So you put them in breakout rooms. There's a, there's a game like, or simulation that kind of comes up on the screen, and they've got to figure it out. And it's, uh, and it's crazy. It's chaotic. Our first couple sessions, we had kids, uh, some of the kids would like be in tears because it was so frustrating. But then they they get through it and they figure it out and it builds this confidence where like you took on the unknown, you took on the chaotic and you made sense of it and you figured it out and now you just want more. And so those are the parents that write to us, the kids that were like the most upset, the parents are right to us and be like, this has changed her mentality now. Like she's now and she's these problems. She's

• 28:49Speaker 02

  like, she's attacking them. She's on offense. Like she's not afraid anymore. Like it's pretty incredible that you can do this just through these like simulations on Zoom, but it's a, you know, it mirrors life, right?

• 29:00Anthony Pompliano?

  The legacy system that we talked about in the beginning is all about rote memorization, no critical thinking, no problem solving, like literally sit down, shut up, don't move, two plus two equals four. Okay, end of year. What's two plus two equal four? Great job. Go to the next grade.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  You know what's crazy, by the way, is that when I've visited so many classrooms and my realization was that I think kids are learning about 30 minutes a week. If you go to school for, you know, like 35 hours or so, I think they learn what they could learn in 30 minutes. I think it takes a week to give them 30 minutes. Yeah, I know that sounds extreme, but you know, if you're, if you, if you have kids and they're doing like Zoom calls, just go listen in on the Zoom calls or go see if they'll let you visit the classroom and look at what they're doing. And I, that's like my, I've been to a ton of class, I'm talking, not talking about like only like really, you know, kind of underfunded public schools. I'm talking about like private schools, like top notch

• 29:58Speaker 02

  public schools. The kids learn very, very, very little in school. So anyway, I wanted to interject that.

• 30:05Anthony Pompliano?

  That's good.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Carry on.

• 30:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Because the exact opposite of that is what Synthesis is doing, which is saying, we don't care if you know what two plus two equals four is in terms of like the memorization. What we want to do is give you a problem. And by the way, if at any point you have to do math, you're going to figure it out because you need the math to solve the problem, right? And it's much more focused on this like problem solving, critical thinking, independent thought, leadership, communication, teamwork, like, you know, I could go on and on and on in this litany of. Different skill sets that I'm going to describe sound a whole hell of a lot like what anybody who runs a business wants to hire for.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Is somebody who's got problem solving, complex thinking skills, you know, first principles, leadership, teamwork, communication, et cetera.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 30:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And so just on the face of like the structure.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  It's complexity, right? It's that industrial systems, you're trying to simplify things so that humans can act as parts in this, in this bigger machine. The machine itself is complex though. And now, you know, where the world is going is like the more you're able to handle complexity, to manage complexity, to manage, to make sense out of chaos, to synthesize. You know, those are, those are the valuable jobs. That's the, that's the valuable skill. It's humanity's most valuable skill, working together to solve complex problems. That's Elon's the canonical example, right? He's, and it's good at individual level and good for the civilization. Elon, you know, arguably he's done more for, to move civilization forward than anybody alive.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  And, and he's also, you know, the richest man, like kind of incidentally, right? So it's a, it's the most valuable skill, I would argue, that you can give to your kids. And, and if enough people do this, it will actually move the civilization forward. Like we will be able to accelerate human progress.

• 31:51Anthony Pompliano?

  So what I think has blown me away is you can design all the best games. You can get kids to sign up. You can build a great business, whatever. It's hearing the kids talk. These kids talk better than literally people I worked with at Facebook.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 32:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And when I first started talking to you, you said something to me and I didn't believe you. You said that you took some kids from synthesis who had played these complex games and you put them in competition with, I think it was Berkeley computer science kids?

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Uh, engineering, engineering graduate students.

• 32:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Oh, engineering graduates. And so even better than just.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Like mechanical engineering, something like that, yeah.

• 32:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And they played these games. And it was a slaughter.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a massacre.

• 32:38Anthony Pompliano?

  But it wasn't in favor of the engineering graduate students. It was in favor of 10, 12, you know, 13 year old kids.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 32:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Why is that? Why is it that somebody who has reached the pinnacle of the traditional education system? And, you know, by all kind of traditional metrics has, you know, achieved everything.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Because what are you good at? Right? If you're, if you're, if you've done really well in that system, what are you good at? It's not necessarily solving complex problems in chaotic environments. Quite the opposite. You're really good at following the rules and solving these problems that are scoped for you. And so they have the same problem that kids have, you know, when they're transitioning into synthesis for the first time is they're used to the way things working being like, let's be told what to do. You know, get the right answer on this. And with the chaotic environment with no one, which is the way life works, right? No, no one can really tell you precisely the rules or precisely like how to win the game of life. Like you, you need to figure that out for yourself. And so the kids who've gone through synthesis, they're, they're used to that.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  And these, you know, people who are at the pinnacle of the existing system are kind of, you know, they're, they're the opposite.

• 33:44Anthony Pompliano?

  It almost is exactly what Paul Graham is talking about with like learning to unlearn. Right? And his whole thing, I think, is, uh, I think he uses the example of Y Combinator. When people show up who are really good at school, they say to Paul, like, hey, what do I do to fundraise? Right? And what they're expecting him to say is, okay, send 100 emails, have 20 meetings, say, you know, this script, and then you get a million dollar investment. And they say, okay, thank you, Paul. Right? And they go and they 100 meetings or 100 emails, whatever. And they go through the system. Instead, what he says is like, no, like dummy, right? Like, that's not the way to do it. Instead, the way to do it is like build a product that works. Right? And like that people want, and then like every investor will come to you and they'll be knocking down your door to give you money.

• 34:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it's very much like a prescriptive type, you know, again, just rote memorization. Here's what to do. Go follow the rules and do it versus actually getting at from a first principle standpoint, what is the goal of the investors and what is going to elicit their interest? And so he says that a lot of times the people who are good at school have to unlearn what they've learned over the last however many years. It feels like you guys are almost getting to the kids before they actually learn some of that stuff, right? Like you're almost like cutting them off and saying, hey, before you go down this path and get, you know, kind of indoctrinated into the industrial education system, we're going to teach you a different way. And kids really gravitate towards that.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's right. I think we're, I think it's a little bit of like dose of freedom and the kind of confidence you get from like, whoa, no one told me the answer. I just figured that out, that out. And then you get the meta lesson. Oh, I can just figure things out on my own? That's crazy. School basically just grinds that idea out of us and it takes a long time because it's really counter to human nature. And you give kids a little bit of dose of like how things could be and that that sticks. I think, I think even just a little bit might be enough inoculation against the kind of indoctrination that you'll get in school to keep your, keep your mind open and just, just internalize the idea that you can solve problems. And this is, this is what innovative people do. They figure

• 35:51Speaker 02

  things out for themselves. They figure out how the game works on their own and they figure out how to, how to break the rules in a way that, that benefits other people. And that's, that's what we want more of. That's what society needs more of.

• 36:02Anthony Pompliano?

  So this works. And as the founder, you can't say that. I can say that as an investor. And we can just use metrics to prove it, right? So you have the idea, once the pandemic kind of hits, you guys do a little testing, you really launched the subscription based product that we know today in November of 2020?

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Yep. Yep. First week in November. Yeah.

• 36:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. So November 2020, how long does it take you from November to a million dollars in annualized revenue?

• 36:32Speaker 02

  I think it's, I think we hit it, you know, like December 31st, like about two months.

• 36:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. So two months from zero to a million dollars in ARR. If we then look and you raised a seed round, right? And it was myself, others, I don't know who wants to be said who not.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Pomp and friends.

• 36:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Let's say.

• 36:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Some, some friends, some of you will know, but all individual checks.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And then we announce it. We did it in a very specific way. We'll talk about that in a second.

• 37:04Anthony Pompliano?

  You now, fast forward to May, are now doing over $3 million in annualized revenue.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 37:11Anthony Pompliano?

  So, when you do that, you've raised $5 million, Series A, $50 million post-money valuation.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 37:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And when we look at this, why is it that you're able to go from zero to millions of dollars of annual recurring revenue in such a short period of time? When it seems like every other business in the world struggles to find product market fit and scale revenue? Like, that all happened in six months, and you're very quickly continuing to scale and sign up more people, like, why is it working?

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Well, on the product market fit side, I mean, you have to remember Josh has been a teacher for 10 years. It's actually kind of rare for an ed tech startup to have an experienced teacher and like a founder role from the outset. And what was he doing? He's inventing new things for Elon School. So for seven of those years, you know, he's working for Elon, which is a pretty hardcore job, right? Like, you get a lot of anxiety and you're just trying to make sure that you keep that job and like, and do a great job with it. So for seven years, he's running these like experiments with the kids there and refining the ideas and he's got this, you know, intuition about what kids need and want.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  And so, it's, we did not, we didn't not exactly start, you know, just six months ago. We had all that background knowledge and the challenge is like translating that to an online environment, right? Taking it from in-person, kind of like on paper, maybe using Excel spreadsheets to keep score, to like, put it online in the software. So that's the first part of that. And then second, you know, I think we go back before November, we, Ana Fabrega joined us. She's our chief evangelist and she's got this, you know, I think the world's biggest Twitter following may be focused on new ways to educate kids. So she was a teacher as well, like spent four years as a teacher.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Face to face with kids every day, you get that intuition for what works when you do that. And when she, we met on Twitter, brought her in to check out some of the sessions and she was like, wow, like this is, this is it. So she wrote like a thread about the company announcing it on Twitter. That brought this influx of customers. That's how we got from zero to a million in the first two months. And also, you know, connected with, with you, which is, uh, which was, which is, you know, just, just kind of move, access to more of these like networks, people on Twitter. So I think it's like, if you were going to do this and you're going to go sell it to schools and sell it to the existing system. One of the problems is, you know, the, the, as much as the administrators, like district administrators would want to do the right thing for kids, you know, it's, they don't have the same

• 39:58Speaker 02

  kind of anxiety that a parent has, right? Like if you're sending your kids to school and you feel like this is not the right way to educate your kids, you're looking for something else and you're eager for solutions for that. And so when we tap into these networks on Twitter, it's, you know, people who follow you or people who follow Anna, they're looking for new ways to do things. They're used to turning to the internet to solve their problems and just get the right thing out in front of them. They're like, it clicks and uh, off to the races.

• 40:27Anthony Pompliano?

  I want to talk about fundraising strategy. Um, as far as I know, you have zero institutional venture investors in the company.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  We have a little, um, we have, uh, Sam Teller, who's Elon's former chief of staff during, during like the model three days, which had to be one of the craziest jobs in the world. Um, so he's, he's a venture partner in their, he works at Valor and so Valor Venture Partners are in, but like as, not as part of the fund, right? It's like seed and, you know, angels effectively. So yeah, apart from that, all angels.

• 40:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And the reason why I think you and I kind of saw eye to eye almost immediately, I think we literally have like a five minute conversation. We were like, yeah, we shouldn't take any venture money. We should just go take it from all these angels.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  You just ruin, you ruin us on traditional VCs, right? Cause they're like, call you and you're like, all right, like how much, how much you need? And I'm like, well, you know, we're, we're looking to do X and you're like, okay, done. Like send me the paperwork. I'll sign. I'll give you the money. And it's like, all right. And also by the way, here's a bunch of my friends that are going to invest too, and are going to help you with the narrative. So it's, uh, it'll be tough to go back.

• 41:26Anthony Pompliano?

  So we essentially have prioritized people with, I would categorize it as three things. People who co-invested in this round are folks with large online audiences.

• 41:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Have very specific companies that they have built and run that have very large distribution or are very well versed, usually as founders, in things that you as a CEO, as you continue to build the business are going to go through.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 41:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it feels like distribution was never a thing that investors brought to the table. Now they do. Advice usually was, but it usually wasn't directly from the investor in many cases. A lot of times it was them just connecting you to these people.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 42:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And then when it came to hiring and these other things, it was just a numbers game. Like, hey, how do we get you in front of enough candidates and you find the best one and you hire it? And so it almost feels like in some weird way, because now all of these people either have personal capital or they have their own like angel funds or whatever. We've been able to assemble, how many investors on this last round?

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Oh, I think it's something, something like 45.

• 42:33Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So 45 people, give or take, plus or minus 10 or 15 on either side. Forty-five people that, as we announced it today, are likely to drive way more impact than what a traditional venture investor could do.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 42:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Is this gonna just be the norm? Or is it specific to companies like yours that are consumer focused, that have a very kind of outlier type story where it's when people hear it, just say, oh, of course, like, that's a thing. And so you kind of need almost like a company needs product market fit. Here, you almost need like investor product fit. And so yours company is specifically aligned with this type of strategy, whereas others might not be?

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think that that's right. I mean, it's, of course, the story, the backstory is helpful for attracting attention. But we were inspired by, by primarily Mateo at Eight Sleep and what they'd done on Twitter to promote the product. And then Austin Allred at Lambda School. And they're both investors in this round now. So you could, you could see what they'd done. You could see that it worked. It's, it's, you know, you're effectively... We cannot always, as humans, just like think through everything from principles ourselves. We have to rely on people that we trust. And so you can think of the kind of shorthand for the round is like, who has trust at scale? Like, it's not that you have an audience that's so valuable.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  It's that you have an audience who trusts you. So, and you have skin in the game. You cannot mislead them. You'll lose your audience or they're not going to follow you anywhere. So you have this skin in the game and all the other investors who have audience, they have this skin in the game. Where like if they're recommending something to you, right? It's something that they actually believe in because the incentives are aligned there. And it's, you know, I just think it's the most obvious thing in the world. These VCs are essentially selling cash, which is a commodity and it's not scarce. The scarce thing is that trust at scale. And so VCs are sort of getting unbundled the same way the education system is going to get unbundled. And, uh, you know, it's a, it's an interesting kind of new world. I don't think we're going to be the last company to, uh, to do it this way.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  I think this is going to be the norm.

• 44:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I'm betting my career that you're not going to be. I think another interesting part of this, and I don't want to say any names, uh, they can say if they want, uh, is we've got some very, very helpful venture capital investors. They just did it personally rather than through their funds. And that was kind of the thought process, right? Was they individually could be very helpful. Let's get them in. The fund itself is almost added bureaucracy that's unnecessary.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I just think increasingly people don't know who the, who the VC funds. Those, those names don't matter as much as the individuals, right? The individuals, if you look at people who have companies and then in like the founders are on Twitter or, you know, the principals are on Twitter, uh, it's the person. That gets most of the attention, right? People want to connect with people, not institutions. And so that's, uh, you know, I, to me, it doesn't seem like particularly insightful. You can just look at Twitter and like, see what's going on. It just feels like the most obvious thing in the world to me.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  There's another factor with us specifically where we've, we've been cash flow positive like pretty much since the beginning. Like I started off, I wasn't sure if it was going to be, yes, we didn't know. Like it's only like rocket engineers, kids doing this in the, in the whole world. Like 30 handpicked like rocket engineers, kids. And so I'm like, I just have no idea if this is going to be like a venture business. Like, is this going to, is this something that's for everybody? We had no clue. So I kind of like funded it myself initially and wasn't, didn't want to raise the money. Cause didn't want that pressure before we kind of figured out the shape of this thing. And so that helped because we were cash flow positive. So when we go to raise money, it's not about the money. Like we, we would have gotten you on the cap table for free.

• 46:28Anthony Pompliano?

  You only told me that after I had signed.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  I mean, the money's nice, but it's, it's, you know, it's basically the seed round is set in the bank and like we've, you know, we've just got a little bit more money than, uh, than we originally raised because it wasn't about the money. Like you cannot buy the kind of like, the kind of trust, like the kind of audience, that you have and that some of our other investors have, right? It's, it's much more like a world based on trust. And I think it's a, that's a more honest, like truthful world to live in. And yeah, I'm excited about it.

• 46:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I think you're the first or second call we ever had. You literally were told me, you're never going to raise money. And I was like, all right, I'm going to have to convince this guy to raise any money. Like that, like usually founders are like begging for money, right? They're like, you know, I'm going to raise a ton of money. And you were just like, yeah, we don't need the money. Like we're profitable, like this thing's just going to go. And so I think that like, it's very obvious. Look, the product, the way that you're approaching the education, like everything is very different. The fundraising strategy has been very different. We can layer in one other aspect that's very different, which is the way that we've announced this stuff. So in the seed round, did you talk to any reporters? Or was it just the investor base and podcasts essentially that did all the distribution?

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't even consider it. That's kind of, I think you, you brought it up one time or maybe, maybe a little bit after the seed round, like, all right, we'll get some mainstream press. I think I was like, why? Why? And you can see, right? Like, we should share this chart, right? I've texted it to you and texted it to some of the other investors. There's like, there's the pomp effect, right? Where I show people the graph and I'm like, tell me where pomp made his announcement. It's like the most obvious, just this massive spike that's like, you know, it spikes and then it comes down, but it's at a permanent higher level, right? And it's, it's completely insane. Whenever I show it to people, they're like, yeah, wow, okay. Like traditional VCs are, you know, there's no one that's going to be able to do this for you.

• 48:17Anthony Pompliano?

  It's Austin Reeve, uh, who is an investor, uh, texted me. I guess you had sent him the chart and all he responded, I think, uh, was, he said, saw the chart lol. Right? Just like, it is crazy. Just like, okay, like, yeah, this works. And I think part of it also, you go back to like this trust aspect is when you lose control of the narrative, you actually can lose control of the trust with the audience or with the potential customer base as well. Right? Because to me, it's, uh, you get one shot in, hey, here's what it is. Here's how it works. Here's why you should care.

• 48:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And actually that's not what the goal of traditional press is. Traditional press is you're trying to get legitimacy, right? The distribution comes with the legitimacy, but you're trying to get validation and legitimacy. And hey, we were featured in X or Y publication.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:15Anthony Pompliano?

  But I think you're right in that, like, on the internet, would you rather get featured in a mainstream press? Or mentioned by the person in your industry who's got the largest audience and the most trust with that? It's actually almost like that individual now is the same thing as like the trade publication used to be. Right? Like they have the audience and they have the trust and the engagement. And therefore, if you look at it almost like, rather than just general distribution, but targeted distribution.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 49:43Anthony Pompliano?

  They have more targeted distribution than the mainstream organizations.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  The mainstream is like, I mean, I don't, I don't think I read, I don't read anything in the mainstream, except like people post on Twitter to like dunk on it and show you, show you how they're lying or like misinformed. Right? So there's this, uh, Audience, because there's kind of like a psychological alignment with the audience. I wasn't sure when we, when we brought you on as a seed investor, like I knew Anna's audience, like it's okay, people who are interested in the future of education, like I think that's going to work pretty well to drive in customers, but what about an audience that's primarily like investors, like Bitcoiners? But I had the hypothesis that Bitcoin is like, there's just energy behind disrupting this legacy financial system.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  So you kind of have to be, you know, a free thinker to, to consider, you know.

• 50:32Anthony Pompliano?

  If you don't trust the banks, you definitely don't trust the schools.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. That's the most succinct way to put it, right? So, so I thought there might be some psychological alignment with the audience there and that's, that's proven right. And then those are the people we want. Like, we don't want the people who are like, you know, wins the test, can you give my kid a grade on this? Can you, you know, can you make it basically more like this, the principles of this existing system? Like, we don't, we're not going to do that. And Josh's been really helpful there because he's used to dealing with like, people who want that, like very wealthy people who are like, you know, wanting to do things a certain way. And he's just used to being like, it's not the place for you, right? Like, you can join, or you can not join, I don't care, but like, we're going to do it this way. And by, this is the way Elon wants it done. So like, if you don't want it that way, then you go do your own thing, that's fine.

• 51:20Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about where this is going, right now, most of the students, not all of them, but most of them are between the ages of, let's call it eight and 14, based in the United States or North America. Is that fair to categorize at all?

• 51:35Speaker 02

  Most.

• 51:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, the students are from all over the world.

• 51:38Anthony Pompliano?

  I was gonna say, there are students though, when I made the seed investment announcement, I literally had a dad who messaged me from India and said, "My kid is in the course." And I love it. This is amazing, right? And I remember thinking to myself, based on when I know the courses are run. That's not a normal time that a kid is awake in India, right?

• 52:02Speaker 02

  No, yeah, yeah, that's right.

• 52:04Anthony Pompliano?

  And so like, it's just a data, it's just one piece of data out of a whole plethora of them. But this idea that like, wait a second, this is so important that kids are staying up or waking up earlier, whatever, to go do this in other parts of the world. Makes me think that actually, if you can figure out logistically, you can go serve a very high percentage of children in the world with this type of education. And you don't have to replace school, it can just be supplemental for a very long period of time, but from a pure like ROI, you're going to get way more out of this than you are out of traditional education system. Is that fair to categorize how you think about it?

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, you know, Josh, one of his principles is like you, you, kids have a limited amount of time, just like anybody else. If you're going to, you know, if you're going to do something for their education, you're going to be the best possible use of their time, right? If you, if you do that, um, throughout their kind of childhood, they're just going to be in a much better position compared if you do something where it's like sitting in a desk and you're, you're wasting hours and you're not learning anything useful. Like it's, it's criminal when you, if you really think about it, I really do think this is, you know, you might disagree, you might say it's the financial system, but I think this industrial education system is the single largest bottleneck, holding back human progress. I think people in the future are going to look back and be like, I cannot believe we

• 53:27Speaker 02

  institutionalized kids this way. And as you said, it's, it's, it's global, right? Different places, they have different school systems, but they're all for the most part kind of built on this industrial model. And your audience is from all over the world and, and our customers are from all over the world. And I don't know if we're talking about the same guy, but that's, there's at least one parent in India that's like, yeah, this kid wakes up at 4:30 AM and I'm not forcing him to do it. He's just like, I really want to be in synthesis. I'll get up at 4:30 AM before school and, and take the synthesis courses. So that's, it's pretty amazing for people to have that kind of excitement about it.

• 54:02Anthony Pompliano?

  There are two problems in the world today that every other problem can be drawn back to, and it's money and education. And that's it. And the people who control or influence the money system are super bureaucratic. Frankly, they are full of shit as a system and their internet has exposed them.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 54:26Anthony Pompliano?

  The system that teaches education is super bureaucratic. They're full of shit, right? And the internet has exposed them. And what I think we're getting is we're essentially getting disruption in a very unique way. Because I think that what's really made me be, you know, kind of so positive on this and just like, yes, this is a solution. It doesn't have to be the solution, but a solution.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Is you can look at the school system and you can be like, this is broken. And you can do one of two things. You can be the victim or you can be the person on offense trying to fix something. Right? And a lot of parents, I think, actually like just go search it on Twitter. Like I literally did it. I went and I searched and like, school sucks, right? And like type that in Twitter. You will find a bunch of parents being like, school sucks, right? My kid doesn't learn anything or like, you know, you just go use these phrases. And then you're like, okay, well, what are you doing about it? And to me, it's almost worse. Like they know that it doesn't work, but they're not doing anything. And some of them just don't have another option, right? Like literally, that's what they have to do. They have to go to work. They don't have any other options in their hometown, whatever.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  It's hard. I mean, even, even for me, like we've, we were, you know, we're doing fine financially. My wife, you know, is a stay at home mother. And so we've got the time and the resource to figure this out and it's hard. It's still hard.

• 55:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Completely agree. But you, Josh, others are choosing to go do something about it. Right? And I think that like, that's where you actually get solutions. The other thing actually almost makes it more bureaucratic in a way. Cause now a school spends, you know, what used to be 1% of their time dealing with like customer complaints, really like parent complaints. Now it's 3% of their time, 5%. Like at some point, it's actually 20% of the school administrator's time is spent with like, parents complaining that it doesn't work. And it redirects energy from actually like teaching the kids. Whereas with this, you basically just say, hey, we have a different option. Like, you know, don't complain, like vote with your feet and vote with your dollars, as Balaji always says.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  I think, yeah, biology is like concept of, of exit is like something I think about a lot. I'm calling this like the, there's sort of like a soft exit from the system right now where, you know, there's myself included for this year. Like we have our, have our one child in a tradition. School, um, but you know, I, I, I tell them just like, don't, you know, bring a book and like, read when they're doing the lessons, like, so you can get something out of it and then we'll do synthesis and we'll learn. Like, there's no way I'm leaving your learning, your cognitive development up to just who happened, the people who happened to live, you know, within a 30 mile radius of our home, like, the, the best of the, the best is going to be on the internet and like, that's, that's what I want you doing. So I, I do think that that's kind of like how things are

• 57:06Speaker 02

  going to evolve. There's obviously, it's important to get kids together in person, but what's really exciting is if you unbundle these things, you can get them together in person to be kids, like, school could just be recess, like, four or five hours a day. I think that'd be fine. If you then spend some time reading, some time doing things like synthesis that are really kind of compressing your, the time that you're spending, like, focused on learning specifically, just, just compress that time and, and then you've got time to be a kid, time to explore, like, all, all the things that we want our, our kids to do. Um, so yeah.

• 57:43Anthony Pompliano?

  It's crazy to think about how different the world would look if everyone was able to learn independent thinking, problem solving, critical thinking skills early, rather than 90 plus percent of society literally just being told what to do and what to think and not how to think.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  It's impossible to imagine. I mean, literally impossible to imagine, right? Because all these kids, like, some people, their psyche kind of survives the existing system. Like, you, you, you survive with some innovative ability intact and like, obviously people do, right? But it's-

• 58:14Anthony Pompliano?

  It was a nightmare for the teachers that dealt with me while I was in school.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, me, me too. And I, I, I feel bad for, for a lot of the trouble I caused in school. But, uh, but, but yeah, you know, it's, some people kind of, you know, they're, they're able to maintain that kind of spirit, like, human ingenuity in spite of the system. Like, what if you have a system that encourages that? Well, you, you literally can't imagine. When you start getting, you know, a million kids a year, like, educated in this way, or 10 million, 100 million, the things that they will create to improve the society. Literally unimaginable.

• 58:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  Incredibly exciting time to be alive.

• 58:50Anthony Pompliano?

  You have three children?

• 58:53Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 58:54Anthony Pompliano?

  What age?

• 58:55Speaker 02

  There's seven, almost five, and almost two.

• 58:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Two older ones are boys and then a little girl.

• 59:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you gonna take them out of traditional education? And put them in synthesis exclusively? Is that a possibility in the future that synthesis is a replacement? Or does it stay supplemental? Like, how do you just think about the evolution of this?

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're exploring it. So I like, I announced this on Twitter that my oldest, who's, uh, who's seven, is going, we, we, you know, canceled the, uh, tuition for the following year and he's doing synthesis with, uh, we call it synthesis junior. So that's like six and seven year olds. It's traditionally been, you know, only, only up, you know, eight, age eight. So we're, we're experimenting with doing it a little bit younger. We had, I think, thirteen hundred applications for, for about fifteen spots. Um, when we, when we put this out on Twitter. And I just kinda told everybody like, alright, you know, look, skin in the game, like, I'm burning the boats behind us. Like, this is, this is how I'm gonna educate my kids. So you can at least know if you enroll your kids, like, it's, I'm not selling you something that, uh, I don't believe in myself.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  Like, this is, my kids are gonna be in this, so I'm paying attention to it, right? I'm paying attention to the experience. And, uh, and yeah, it's, uh, we don't have it figured out yet, but it's, uh, but it's thrilling. And I think there will be, there will be at least some part of synthesis, like, anybody can do for like an hour or two a week. And then there'll be some part of it that's like, uh, more like a full stack online school.

• 1:00:20Anthony Pompliano?

  You're not gonna wanna answer this, but, uh, would we be better off? Like, does school do more damage than it does good? The traditional, like, industrial education system? Is it a net positive or net negative for students?

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Compared to what? Right? I mean, like, there's, I think, maybe you just, you know, you just let kids roam free on the streets. Is that going to be better? Like, probably in some places that'd be better, and probably in some places that's going to be worse. So, you know, you're always trying to compare these things. The real question is, like, can, can we do better? Is there going to be progress? Or is this just the way things are? And I think what I, what I tend to think about there is, uh, there's this idea, like, the Lindy effect, right? So, the ideas that have been around for a while will, will tend to survive a little, like, a while longer. Uh, new ideas will, you know, just statistically are more likely to die out quickly. I think it's important people realize, the system is 100 years old.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  That's it. It's not been like this for all of human history. It's 100 years old. And, you know, maybe, I think it probably passed the midpoint of its usefulness, maybe sometime in, like, the 1960s, 1970s, and I think it's, like, on the decline now. So, I, I think we're, we're going to see progress. Like, and it's funny, even Silicon Valley, like, investors are supposed to be investing in the future. We'll have this idea that, like, no, it just, it just feels like, same way the financial system feels. It's like, it's going to be this way forever, because you grew up with it that way. But if you take a longer view historically, this is, this is unnatural. It's, it's a new idea that we should, you know, segregate kids by age and have them learn as if they were machines. And it, and it's not going to last. So, I think there's going to be progress. And, uh, yeah.

• 1:02:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I just thought of this idea, so I'm just gonna say it. We should livestream me playing against some of the kids and see who wins. And I say livestream because if I lose, I'll never admit it, so you'll at least have it, so other people know. But I think, like, that is part of it, right? Is that's how you teach people, like, this works, is you could literally bring in, like, bring in the venture capitalists who thinks it doesn't work, like, cool, play the 13-year-old. Yeah. Right? When the 13-year-old smokes you, you're gonna walk away with your pride kind of hurt a little bit, but also, like, oh, wait, maybe my kid should be in this.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Well, it's, this is why we start with younger kids, right? So, something I think about pretty often is, there aren't any, there aren't world-class athletes or musicians who start, like, in their 20s, right? But that's the way. All of us are when we start, you know, if you're starting like building companies or innovating, creating things like most of us, just the early part of our life is just, is just kind of wasted. And then we have to pick it up later. And, uh, you know, the, your, your brain, your body just don't, they don't adjust the same way after, after childhood, like adolescence, like there's famously, like you, if you don't acquire language by a certain age, like you, you can't do it, right? So your brain is more plastic. So it's kind of like frightening that these kids are kind of like,

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  uh, they're raised in complexity. If you're going through synthesis, like you're there, this is just going to be the norm for them. And the more complex we make it, it's kind of like this in Ender's Game, like they, they keep, uh, increasing the difficulty of the games until the kids are just like way beyond what the adults could do. Cause they realize, you know, the kids' brains are more plastic. They can, they can pick up the new ways quicker than we can. So.

• 1:03:43Anthony Pompliano?

  It's compounding too, right? Like, I think if you take two, you know, eight-year-olds and you start them out in year one, and the eight-year-old that goes through synthesis is 5% better than the eight-year-old who went through the traditional system. Okay. It's 5%. Some people are like, who cares? Right? But if you extrapolate that out and that continues, right? And you get compounding in synthesis that you don't get in the kind of traditional system. By the time they're 15, that's not even close. Like that's the difference between Harvard and community college, right? Like, I mean, in the old system, like that's literally the complete opposite ends of the spectrum on just pure time and kind of persistence in a different system that ends up being better.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think that's, this is, we're going to start sharing more of this stuff. Like we've brought on this new round of investors. So we've got kind of like a good, a good solid platform to reach people. Uh, we've shared just like one video so far of a 10-year-old called Emmett, right? He's only, he's been in synthesis for like six months, right? It's not, not like.

• 1:04:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And he sounds better than a lot of people on Twitter.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and the comment we get a lot is like, well, you've just, uh, this is like just some, some rich kid or something like, so this is like, they picked like the one genius kid, like, like, no, you, you just, you have no idea what kids are capable of. And we're going to start putting more of this. Stuff out there from a variety of kids like we're, you know, we're not cherry picking. It's just that, you know, they, they pick things up quickly. And if you give them that, that's sort of like playground for the mind to, to play around in. They stay engaged with that, the results are shocking. And that's what I saw when I was at Ad Astra. I was seeing these kids in like year four of doing synthesis. And I was just like, what the hell is going on? Like I, I couldn't imagine it.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  I remember sending, sending some like audio of that to my friend and him being like, these are, these are like second year law students, right? There's no way these are like 12, 13 year olds. And it just like, like literally just couldn't believe it. And yeah, it's that, that's that compounding effect, right?

• 1:05:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that it is exactly what the world needs, which is why I'm excited to invest. And I think the craziest part for me is like, forget all the company building stuff. Forget all of the like excitement around building a team and scaling it and all that. It's just like when you teach kids this, like even if you said to me, hey, we're only going to teach a hundred kids. That's all we're ever going to be able to impact. There's a very good probability of those hundred kids go on to do some pretty crazy shit in the world that we all end up pointing at and being like, you know what? Like that person's special and it's not because you're doing anything or you've got some special power. You're just literally teaching them a different way of thinking that actually ends up lending itself

• 1:06:26Anthony Pompliano?

  to being very, very effective in this kind of chaotic, uncertain, you know, problem ridden world. And so in some crazy way, I think most people are going to make the mistake of evaluating the value and the impact of synthesis from a, how much money do you make? How many students came through the program, like whatever. But instead you can look at it as like, what is the increase in productivity in the world from the students that went through the program? And we won't know that for a long time, but if it goes the right way, you know, if the next Elon Musk goes through the program. And you end up, you know, building a very, very successful business. Is it more important that the business was successful or the next Elon Musk was taught how to think the right way and do it?

• 1:07:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, actually, the student's impact is going to be, you know, it's going to weigh outweigh anything that a business can do by itself.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I think all of our other problems are downstream of education, right? So if you can fix that, you can solve, you know, clean energy, access to clean water. We can get flying cars finally. We can get, uh, we can get all, all, all, and the future can be, um, can be amazing and like kind of unlimited in, in infinite ways. And it's, it's like, things have gotten better in human society over the centuries since, since the Enlightenment began. And, you know, we can, we can improve on that though. We're not, we're not done. Like, things can improve in a limitless fashion. And I completely agree with what you, what you say about like the, the value of it is in, we don't, this, the, we'll go back to what I said earlier, solving complex problems together. That's what makes humans unique.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  That is the most valuable skill. We know there's some general component to it because people like Elon or like Jack Dorsey can succeed in multiple domains. We don't know how to confer that skill or cultivate it at scale yet. And if we can figure that out, it's, to me, it's like a game changer for human society. It'll be like a before and after moment.

• 1:08:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoiners like to say, fix the money, fix the world. Synthesis may just start saying, fix the education, fix the world. So it's basically the same thing.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:08:32Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Where can we send people? If you're, if you've got a kid between the ages of what, eight and 14?

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Uh, you can, you can, so you can apply now if you're, if you're six, uh, six or seven, but there's just know that there's like a waitlist. So if you want to get in, I'd recommend like going ahead and getting your application in now and we'll be accepting on a rolling basis. But yeah, if you're between eight and 14, you can, uh, you can enroll. Um, there's a little bit of a waitlist, but you'll get in fairly quickly. And the website is synthesis.is.

• 1:08:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Synthesis.is.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:09:01Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Go sign up and when they ask you where you found it, say pop, just so they keep thinking that I'm smart, even though they're doing all the hard work. And then they'll be like, oh, look at this big spike. And I'm like, that has nothing to do with me, but yeah, I appreciate the credit. Uh, and then where can people find you on Twitter?

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Uh, Twitter, I'm, uh, at Chrisman Frank.

• 1:09:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Thank you. Please keep going.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thanks for the help.