The Exchanges

Q How do you do grit plus love Because doesn't, doesn't grit imply there has to be something difficult going on?

A Well, and so I'll give you one, one other thing that you have to believe to think Alpha's model is going to work, and this is probably the most controversial thing I'll say today, which is the key to your child's happiness is high standards. And many parents are very worried. They, they think low standards is the key to my child's happiness. But for the same reason, people came to Trilogy University because it was going to be the hardest thing they ever did. They do that. Kids want to do hard things. They want to do awesome things. And it starts in kindergarten. Now, parents naturally are like, I don't want to see my kids struggle and fail. I don't. But every development expert in the world will say the key to your child's development is that they struggle and fail. On their road to success, supported by a caring, loving adult, right? That loop is what you just want. That drives self-confidence, it drives resilience, all those good things. It also, and this is the most controversial thing, I can't make a school that kids love so much they'd rather go on it than vacation if I don't have high standards. If kids are scrolling TikTok and playing video games all day and just doing stuff, they're not gonna say, they're not gonna say, they'll just do it on summer break. They have to be working In a team with other people on awesome, challenging things. And my best analogy outside of s…

AI assessment note: “they struggle and fail. On their road to success, supported by a caring, loving adult”

Q This is interesting, I think my friends and I had to create this for ourselves outside of school when we were young, otherwise it would have been miserable, so we had all these things we were doing that were very, very hard, and you'd fail, and then you'd succeed. Did you have that in your life too, where you push yourself outside of it?

A This is back to changes in my life, and back to re, this might also affect my views of school. You know, after I dropped out of school at Stanford, my dad had the famous quote of, you're a moron, and you're an idiot, and all that. 18 months later, We were talking, and he's like, you know, I'm so glad you dropped out. I, I changed my mind. And, ah, he's like, you know, before you dropped out, I thought you were a lazy little shit. Always shirking the work. You never really engaged. You were always trying to do the minimum to sort of get through. He's like, since you dropped out and found what you love, I've never seen you work harder. You work, you know, we were working, sleeping on the desk, hundred hours a week, the classic startup stuff.

AI assessment note: “since you dropped out and found what you love, I've never seen you work harder.”

Q How do you do grit plus love Because doesn't, doesn't grit imply there has to be something difficult going on?

A Well, and so I'll give you one, one other thing that you have to believe to think Alpha's model is going to work, and this is probably the most controversial thing I'll say today, which is the key to your child's happiness is high standards. And many parents are very worried. They, they think low standards is the key to my child's happiness. But for the same reason, people came to Trilogy University because it was going to be the hardest thing they ever did. They do that. Kids want to do hard things. They want to do awesome things. And it starts in kindergarten. Now, parents naturally are like, I don't want to see my kids struggle and fail. I don't. But every development expert in the world will say the key to your child's development is that they struggle and fail. On their road to success, supported by a caring, loving adult, right? That loop is what you just want. That drives self-confidence, it drives resilience, all those good things. It also, and this is the most controversial thing, I can't make a school that kids love so much they'd rather go on it than vacation if I don't have high standards. If kids are scrolling TikTok and playing video games all day and just doing stuff, they're not gonna say, they're not gonna say, they'll just do it on summer break. They have to be working In a team with other people on awesome, challenging things. And my best analogy outside of s…

AI assessment note: “they struggle and fail. On their road to success, supported by a caring, loving adult”

Q a you where a society, there's dialectic. We need our best and brightest to get way ahead because they're going to fix everything for us. You also, from an ethical perspective, want to make sure the bottom are taken care of and that you have classes for the least fall off. Alpha is probably more about the average and the top, or is it also doing things for the bottom?

A Everything. So we're, we're going to get this out back to my thing is I took a billion dollars and I'm a, Get this out to a billion kids. So I'm gonna have the whole range. And so, and we do, we have ones where academically, right, the, the, the, the way to solve kids who are behind, right, in a time-based system, it, once you fall behind, you never get to catch up. And for me, it was back to being new in the job. I went to one of the worst performing, you know, academically performing schools, and I sat down and I watched the sixth grade teacher. And the sixth grade teacher is handing out sixth grade material. But I'd seen the test score, which is if you're bottom 10% in this country, you can't read. You don't know seven times eight. And she's handing out sixth grade material. I'm like, they can't read. I'm like, that's like giving me an MCAT. Like, there's, this is, I don't even know the words on the page. Like, this is, and you can tell me to have grit and hard work. It doesn't matter. You can give any, it doesn't work. Instead, what they need, what that class needed was first grade phonics. Right? Second grade phonics. And a teacher who's a sixth grade teacher needs to hand out sixth grade material. Right? They're teaching sixth grade. And this is where the why the AI tutors do so much better.

AI assessment note: “Everything. So we're, we're going to get this out... I'm gonna have the whole range.”

Q This is interesting, I think my friends and I had to create this for ourselves outside of school when we were young, otherwise it would have been miserable, so we had all these things we were doing that were very, very hard, and you'd fail, and then you'd succeed. Did you have that in your life too, where you push yourself outside of it?

A This is back to changes in my life, and back to re, this might also affect my views of school. You know, after I dropped out of school at Stanford, my dad had the famous quote of, you're a moron, and you're an idiot, and all that. 18 months later, We were talking, and he's like, you know, I'm so glad you dropped out. I, I changed my mind. And, ah, he's like, you know, before you dropped out, I thought you were a lazy little shit. Always shirking the work. You never really engaged. You were always trying to do the minimum to sort of get through. He's like, since you dropped out and found what you love, I've never seen you work harder. You work, you know, we were working, sleeping on the desk, hundred hours a week, the classic startup stuff.

AI assessment note: “since you dropped out and found what you love, I've never seen you work harder”

Q a you where a society, there's dialectic. We need our best and brightest to get way ahead because they're going to fix everything for us. You also, from an ethical perspective, want to make sure the bottom are taken care of and that you have classes for the least fall off. Alpha is probably more about the average and the top, or is it also doing things for the bottom?

A Everything. So we're, we're going to get this out back to my thing is I took a billion dollars and I'm a, Get this out to a billion kids. So I'm gonna have the whole range. And so, and we do, we have ones where academically, right, the, the, the, the way to solve kids who are behind, right, in a time-based system, it, once you fall behind, you never get to catch up. And for me, it was back to being new in the job. I went to one of the worst performing, you know, academically performing schools, and I sat down and I watched the sixth grade teacher. And the sixth grade teacher is handing out sixth grade material. But I'd seen the test score, which is if you're bottom 10% in this country, you can't read. You don't know seven times eight. And she's handing out sixth grade material. I'm like, they can't read. I'm like, that's like giving me an MCAT. Like, there's, this is, I don't even know the words on the page. Like, this is, and you can tell me to have grit and hard work. It doesn't matter. You can give any, it doesn't work. Instead, what they need, what that class needed was first grade phonics. Right? Second grade phonics. And a teacher who's a sixth grade teacher needs to hand out sixth grade material. Right? They're teaching sixth grade. And this is where the why the AI tutors do so much better.

AI assessment note: “Everything. So we're, we're going to get this out... So I'm gonna have the whole range.”

Q I love it. Let's talk a little more about like incentives and accountability. Like I think at one point I heard like the kids are ranked in different ways, which some people don't like, but obviously it's part of the holding them accountable. Like how do you, how do you, how do you engineer these incentives? How do you do it?

A Yeah. So motivation's 90% of the solution. So we spent a lot of time on the motivation part. And the thing about motivation you have to understand is, uh, every kid is motivated a different way. And, you know, understanding that motivation and sort of the hierarchy and framework and changing them over time is critical to, to building it. And our guides, when we think of our, what our guides do all day. So, um, that is their number one job, which is You know, they're not teaching seventh grade science, because the AI tutor's doing that. So what do our adults in the building do all day? What they do is motivational and emotional support, right? They are either motivating this kid, they are getting to know this kid so well, so that they know what does matter. And then second, how do I support them through that struggle loop we, we talked about earlier. And so when we talk about motivation, let's, let's, let's sort of give you a stack rank of the ones that really matter. Um, there's an Astral Codex article that is out there that talks, that's from an, uh, alpha parent, who's like, I think the money's the most important. And we actually, we'll, we'll get into it, but I actually don't think that's true. Which is, Uh, the name of our product is called Time Back. Time Back. Give kids their time back. That's cool. And that is by far the most motivation.

AI assessment note: “name of our product is called Time Back... that is by far the most motivation”

Q And you helped build this school for them originally, right? As well.

A Yeah. Well, actually how it started. So how, how we got into the, how I got into education really in, in a big way was a decade ago, a Stanford grad, Mackenzie Price was a co-founder of Alpha School. And, you know, one of the things I've learned as a principal now, and I've been principal for three years, is parents want their kids to be educated the way they were. And, you know, I went to Catholic school, and I didn't like it a lot, but my kids are at Catholic school. And Mackenzie's like, oh, come to my new school. And I'm like, I'm not going to your weird school. This is so weird. This is so different. Like, no. And it took her two years, right, of convincing me and selling me and all these things to get me to move my kids over. But, The other problem with education is education's not scalable. There's all these pockets of education where you get really good results, but they don't scale. And I very much viewed Alpha and McKinsey School as that way, which is great for my kids, great for the other kids in Austin who do it.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Well, actually how it started. So how, how we got into the”

Q I love it. Let's talk a little more about like incentives and accountability. Like I think at one point I heard like the kids are ranked in different ways, which some people don't like, but obviously it's part of the holding them accountable. Like how do you, how do you, how do you engineer these incentives? How do you do it?

A Yeah. So motivation's 90% of the solution. So we spent a lot of time on the motivation part. And the thing about motivation you have to understand is, uh, every kid is motivated a different way. And, you know, understanding that motivation and sort of the hierarchy and framework and changing them over time is critical to, to building it. And our guides, when we think of our, what our guides do all day. So, um, that is their number one job, which is You know, they're not teaching seventh grade science, because the AI tutor's doing that. So what do our adults in the building do all day? What they do is motivational and emotional support, right? They are either motivating this kid, they are getting to know this kid so well, so that they know what does matter. And then second, how do I support them through that struggle loop we, we talked about earlier. And so when we talk about motivation, let's, let's, let's sort of give you a stack rank of the ones that really matter. Um, there's an Astral Codex article that is out there that talks, that's from an, uh, alpha parent, who's like, I think the money's the most important. And we actually, we'll, we'll get into it, but I actually don't think that's true. Which is, Uh, the name of our product is called Time Back. Time Back. Give kids their time back. That's cool. And that is by far the most motivation.

AI assessment note: “The name of our product is called Time Back... that is by far the most motivation.”

Q Especially the young kids, but like, does like a seventh and eighth and ninth grader need structure?

A No, so actually we, we change that. So where are, if you look at where money goes, you know, in, in, in an alpha school, The, how much do you pay your guides? We pay our guides more. Number two, at kindergarten, we have a, uh, much, uh, many more guides per student. Uh, when you move up to middle school or the kids are like, dude, I don't need all these guides. Like I'm an adolescent, like, you know, but we take the money and we put them into life skill workshops. And part, part of the thing is we'll, we'll talk about different schools that we've started, but alpha, which is sort of our high end is a high end private school where in our design goal, when we were doing the product management around it, we said, What can kids do if money's no object? If you just, can you turn a kid up to 11, give them everything, what can you really get out of it so that we can set sort of an exemplar around that? Now, we're coming out with schools at half the price, and we're hitting, we're- Even at half the price, you're getting kids to like the very top results. Academically, it's actually funny, because school's a bundle, and actually the easiest and cheapest things to fix is actually the academics, right? Because that's tech-driven. Versus the rest of the day is all very human driven.

AI assessment note: “No, so actually we, we change that... when you move up to middle school”

Q Especially the young kids, but like, does like a seventh and eighth and ninth grader need structure?

A No, so actually we, we change that. So where are, if you look at where money goes, you know, in, in, in an alpha school, The, how much do you pay your guides? We pay our guides more. Number two, at kindergarten, we have a, uh, much, uh, many more guides per student. Uh, when you move up to middle school or the kids are like, dude, I don't need all these guides. Like I'm an adolescent, like, you know, but we take the money and we put them into life skill workshops. And part, part of the thing is we'll, we'll talk about different schools that we've started, but alpha, which is sort of our high end is a high end private school where in our design goal, when we were doing the product management around it, we said, What can kids do if money's no object? If you just, can you turn a kid up to 11, give them everything, what can you really get out of it so that we can set sort of an exemplar around that? Now, we're coming out with schools at half the price, and we're hitting, we're- Even at half the price, you're getting kids to like the very top results. Academically, it's actually funny, because school's a bundle, and actually the easiest and cheapest things to fix is actually the academics, right? Because that's tech-driven. Versus the rest of the day is all very human driven.

AI assessment note: “No, so actually we, we change that.”

Q And you helped build this school for them originally, right? As well.

A Yeah. Well, actually how it started. So how, how we got into the, how I got into education really in, in a big way was a decade ago, a Stanford grad, Mackenzie Price was a co-founder of Alpha School. And, you know, one of the things I've learned as a principal now, and I've been principal for three years, is parents want their kids to be educated the way they were. And, you know, I went to Catholic school, and I didn't like it a lot, but my kids are at Catholic school. And Mackenzie's like, oh, come to my new school. And I'm like, I'm not going to your weird school. This is so weird. This is so different. Like, no. And it took her two years, right, of convincing me and selling me and all these things to get me to move my kids over. But, The other problem with education is education's not scalable. There's all these pockets of education where you get really good results, but they don't scale. And I very much viewed Alpha and McKinsey School as that way, which is great for my kids, great for the other kids in Austin who do it.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Well, actually how it started. So how, how we got into the”