The Exchanges

Q Huh. Meanwhile, as you mentioned, I mean, you, you're still with Dan at this point at the hedge fund, and then I guess at some point he decides to move the fund to California, right?

A Yeah. Yeah. Um, we had moved out to Silicon Valley. Dan's wife had become a professor at Stanford, which is why we had moved out here. And, uh, so my wife was able to finish her fourth year at med school doing a bunch of rotations out here in the Bay Area. So we, you know, and now that we were on the West Coast, I was working from five AM till about two in the afternoon. So before our first child was born, I had a lot of time on my hands. Uh, you know, so I was spending about, you know, that four hours, four to five hours that I was spending after work I was spending about half of it making videos and about half of it continuing to write code, right? That software, that practice software for my family that, that other people were now using. And by. 2007, 2008, it was in the tens of thousands of people. And by 2009, it was in the hundreds of thousands of people were using it on our, on a regular basis.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Yeah. Um, we had moved out to Silicon Valley.”

Q Alright, so remotely sounds fine today, like in the era of Zoom and Slack and stuff, but how did you do that in 2004? Was it, was it over the phone?

A Yeah, it was over the phone, um, and we'd use Yahoo Instant Messenger to type messages or to type questions, and Yahoo Instant Messenger at the time had this feature called Yahoo Doodle, where you could actually, with your mouse, scribble something, and someone on the other side could see what you scribbled, and you could imagine writing math equations with a mouse was pretty painful, and so I got myself and I got Nadia a A, uh, you know, like a, I think it was 60 dollar, uh, pen tablet so that you could write, but it was on a little, little part of your instant messenger window, but that's still enough that you could write things like three X is equal to six. You know, what is X equal? Uh, so that's, that's how we did it.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it was over the phone, um, and we'd use Yahoo Instant Messenger”

Q Cause she's thinking you're a big shot. You're, you're like doing TV interviews and, uh, hundreds of thousands of people using this, like, right?

A Yeah. No, I mean, I had been on CNN and I didn't realize there was actually, there was a buzz about Khan Academy in Silicon Valley at the time that I didn't know about. No one, they weren't put, I wasn't in the know. I wasn't even in the right circles to be experiencing the buzz. And so anyways, you know, she, she, she offered to pay the bill, and I, I said, oh, if you insist. And, um, and, you know, 10 minutes later, I'm, I'm driving into my, my driveway, and I get a text message from Ann, and it says, you really need to be supporting yourself. I've just wired you a 100,000 dollars. That was just, you know, it's like one of those moments where you just like stare at the phone and you sit in your driveway for like the next half an hour.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. No, I mean, I had been on CNN and I didn't realize”

Q And meantime, you were still working at a hedge fund, right?

A Right. I was, and I have to give extra credit to Dan, because in the early days when I was working for Wool Capital, Dan's startup hedge fund, it was just me and him, I had bought into the stereotype that you have to work 80 hours a week to make it in finance. So I was ready to do that, and I remember this by a month or two into starting my job, Dan's like, why are you still here? Why aren't you going home? I was like, no, no, Dan, I'm, I'm ready to, you know, I'm, I'm gonna look for more investment ideas. He's like, no, no, go home. I was like, okay, I was like, okay, I'll go home and I'll look for investment ideas. He's like, no, Sal, you're not going to help anybody by just, you know, having the appearance of motion. It's not about just churning yourself and tying yourself out, because then you're just more likely to make bad decisions. Our whole goal is to avoid bad decisions, and the best way to do that is when you're at work, you know, have your game face on, have your game energy, but to do that, you're going to have to have other things in your life. You should read interesting books, you know, recharge, and actually that recharging is going to Keep your mind open and, and, and keep you creative and not fall into the group think that a lot of people do. And so Dan kind of forced me to have a life, and that's what gave me the space in, in my life to, to offer to Nadia. S…

AI assessment note: “Right. I was, and I have to give extra credit to Dan”

Q So I guess your mom was pretty happy because you wound up going to MIT and, and, and when you got there, was it just so exciting?

A It was for me. You know, when, when I got there, I was, it, it did feel like heaven on so many levels for me. You know, it was the first environment that I had been in that really are like, you know, you shouldn't be ashamed if you're getting excited in an organic chemistry class. I still remember one of my friends, Narendra, who I actually met in the organic chemistry class. Like I literally saw him getting excited. About what was being talked about. He was having epiphanies as, as we were talking about like the Aldol reaction. And, um, it's the closest thing to Hogwarts in the real world where, you know, science is magic and you can walk down, you know, the, the main hallway in MIT is called the infinite corridor. And you're just seeing, you know, people with like, that some of them are a little bit unusual in their affect and all of this, but they all have these magical superpowers and there's professors who are inventing things and building things. And this is right in the late nineties where the internet and computer science was, was starting to become very, uh, relevant to, to broader, to society as a whole. So it's, it's, it's, MIT was, and I think continues to be an incredibly exciting place.

AI assessment note: “It was for me. You know, when, when I got there, I was, it, it did feel like heaven”

Q So now you've got to grow. You've got to build. You've got to get office space. You've got to hire people. You've got to really turn this thing that was just you into a thing. So what did you do? I mean, that's kind of overwhelming, right? I mean, isn't it?

A Yeah, it was. I mean, you know, I immediately call, um, One of my closest friends, Shantanu Sinha, he was someone I first met actually in Louisiana. He beat me at a math competition in 10th grade, and then we were on the same team representing Louisiana at National Academic Games, so that's how I got to know him. He ended up becoming my roommate freshman year at MIT, so, you know, we're, we're, we're pretty much like brothers, and I, I said, hey, Shantanu, I need help. Uh, like, I know this wasn't on your career path to, to start, to, to help me kind of get this thing off the ground, but like, I need your help, and I think it'll be fun. And, uh, you know, I, he, he took a couple of days to think about it, and, um, he decided to, to take the plunge with me, and so he quit his McKinsey job and, uh, joined Khan Academy as, as a president and COO, uh, to essentially help me Turn into a real organization. At the same time, there were these two engineers. I mean, it's, once again, it's really eerie how these people came out of the woodwork. These two engineers that summer, ah, Uh, Ben Kamens and Jason Rosoff, they had volunteered for Khan Academy, and I just assumed there were some young kids who were looking for some experience, but when they were volunteering, I'm like, these, these guys are incredible. Like, these are some of the best engineers and designers I've ever worked with …

AI assessment note: “I immediately call, um, One of my closest friends, Shantanu Sinha”

Q Right, right, and initially, all the videos were, were Sal Khan, but Sal Khan is not scalable. You cannot make, uh, Tens of thousands of videos. Was that clear to you pretty, pretty soon after you started, the funding started to come in that you needed to get other people to make videos to your standards?

A Um, now, you know, we, we don't have a lot of folks making videos. I still make A lot of them. I, I pretty much make all of the math and science video. And then we have a few other folks who are doing some history videos and some language arts videos. Um, and, and one of the reasons why we, we were, we became a little sensitive of like, not just outsourcing it to 500 folks is we got a lot of feedback that, you know, education, even when it's done in this kind of distance way or asynchronous, you have to really trust your teacher. You have to trust that they're, they're going to get me to someplace that I, I know is going to be insightful and there's going to be an aha moment. That you're willing to invest in it. And we've had moments where, you know, there's a video from me, a video from me, and then there's a video from someone else. And it just, even though they might be explaining that better than I could have, it could be dissonant for the student where they're feeling, wait, I really got connected that my teacher and now a substitute showed up. So, but we've been trying to, um, balance that.

AI assessment note: “we don't have a lot of folks making videos. I still make A lot”

Q Huh. So when it came time to apply to college, were you encouraged to aim pretty high, like, like to a prestigious school?

A Yeah, I give a lot of credit to my sister. You know, she was always a little ahead of me. And, you know, I looked at the schools that she was applying for when she was graduating from high school. I was in middle school or a freshman at the time. And she was applying to places like Brown University. And I was like, Farah, have you looked at the tuition at Brown University? There's no way we're going to be able to afford that. And she's like, no, there's something called financial aid and you can get loans and, and all of this. And she ended up going to Brown and that completely opened up my mind of what's possible. And, and to give my mom fair credit, she definitely, you know, I think South Asian culture, Indian culture, whatever you want to call it, you know, there is this very, you could call it positive or negative peer pressure of like, oh, so what are your kids doing? So-and-so's kids going to med school. What, you know, someone's kid got a, has a, has a, has a perfect GPA. He's a valedictorian. Is your kid only the salutatorian? So she kind of would often tell us stuff like, you know, you should be valedictorian just like Thuheen. Thuheen was this kid we knew who was 10 years older who had, I think by the time he was 18. He had a PhD from Tulane. So, you know, it's, I think he now has two PhDs and an MD. So, so I remember there's a lot, I heard a lot about Tulane.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I give a lot of credit to my sister.”

Q Huh. Meanwhile, as you mentioned, I mean, you, you're still with Dan at this point at the hedge fund, and then I guess at some point he decides to move the fund to California, right?

A Yeah. Um, we had moved out to Silicon Valley. Dan's wife had become a professor at Stanford, which is why we had moved out here. And, uh, so my wife was able to finish her fourth year at med school doing a bunch of rotations out here in the Bay Area. So we, you know, and now that we were on the West Coast, I was working from five AM till about two in the afternoon. So before our first child was born, I had a lot of time on my hands. Uh, you know, so I was spending about, you know, that four hours, four to five hours that I was spending after work I was spending about half of it making videos and about half of it continuing to write code, right? That software, that practice software for my family that, that other people were now using. And by. 2007, 2008, it was in the tens of thousands of people. And by 2009, it was in the hundreds of thousands of people were using it on our, on a regular basis.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Um, we had moved out to Silicon Valley. Dan's wife had become a professor”

Q When you think about, um, this, just this incredible journey and, and the amazing success of, of Khan Academy, how much do you think it has to do with, um, you know, your skill and how hard you worked and, and your intelligence, and how much do you attribute it to luck?

A It's all, all of the above. I mean, it's, you know, one person can call it luck. One person might call it benevolent aliens working in your favor to prepare humanity for first contact. But yeah, there's something, you know, that I, I, I, I can't, I mean, there's a lot that I can't take credit for. I mean, and, and above and beyond luck, there's, I guess it's luck where I was born, where I was born. I had the teachers I had, had the, the friendship supports that I had. And then, um, you know, Fell into things at the right time and, but every now and then you see a door crack open and you say, I think there's something interesting on the other side of the door and you've got to sprint through it. And so I try not to overthink when, when there are signs in my life that like that door is open. Don't, don't, don't make someone have to force you through the door, like run through that door.

AI assessment note: “It's all, all of the above.”

Q come back, Sal discovers that YouTube is not just for cat videos. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So, it's 2004, and after a couple of months of Sal helping his cousin with her math, she gets bumped up from a remedial class to an advanced one. So, what's his secret?

A I would love to believe that I'm some type of super tutor or something, but I think the reality is, and there's actually a lot of research to back this up, that if, if you do have one-on-one tutoring, um, and that tutor is able to identify what your gaps are, and fill in those gaps, especially in subjects like mathematics, that most kids can actually, probably all kids could be accelerated dramatically, and, uh, that's all that was happening with Nadia. I mean, there was, some of it was just motivational. She had almost given up on herself, so I had to just re-motivate her a little bit, and I think a little bit of the secret, you know, this might sound a little bit of like a, once again, a tiger cousin or tiger parent thing to do, but when you get, when you allow a student to get a little ahead of their class, two things happen. One, when they see it in class, they're like, oh, I've seen this before, so they, it builds a little bit of cushion, and it also builds confidence. There's just, you know, once you start to realize that you can actually get a little ahead of your class, you're like, oh, maybe this is my thing. Maybe I'm a math person.

AI assessment note: “able to identify what your gaps are, and fill in those gaps”

Q Were you like, what is going on? Who's, who's watching this?

A I was hoping that something like that would happen. I mean, you know, when I put it on YouTube, and it asked whether I want to make it public, I was like, yeah, I guess it would be pretty cool if other people could, could Could benefit from this. Uh, but then when you start getting, you know, not just the views, but for, I would say the comments, especially, you know, people like opening up on the YouTube message boards or opening up on, you know, they'll, they can do the private messaging on, on YouTube and they'll tell you their life story and how that one video unlocked their perspective. I'm like, oh my God, this is, this is a, for that person, that video is a big deal. And I didn't really have to do anything extra for that person. Uh, it's really inspiring. And, and I just got more and more hooked on it.

AI assessment note: “I was hoping that something like that would happen.”

Q Wow. Was there a community of, of South Asian families in, in Metairie when you were growing up?

A Yeah, my, you know, when my parents separated, we actually lived with my young uncles at the time. They were in their twenties, and so they all were kind of like father figures and, uh, almost like older siblings to me as well, and in a lot of ways, they were not your stereotypical, um, you know, just come to the U.S., study, you know, get a job, save money, uh, kind of prudent immigrant story. They were, they were much more embracing of New Orleans, uh, Uh, culture. And I would say they're the most New Orleanian South Asians you will ever find in your life. Um, I had a very colorful childhood, you know, late night parties, people singing and dancing. You know, for, for me, it felt like a, uh, I remember my third birthday that my uncles got a belly dancer. I still remember Habiba, you know, uh, so it was definitely a different type of childhood, but it was, uh, in some ways a really rich one.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, my, you know, when my parents separated, we actually lived with my young uncles”

Q Sal, was your mom, um, did she have very strict expectations for you? I mean, she had come from India to the United States, made a lot of sacrifices. Did she sort of, you know, would she say, you have to be an engineer, doctor, lawyer, like, was there any kind of talk like that at home when you were a kid?

A You know, my mother, uh, definitely did instill some really strong values or, you know, just seeing her operate. My mom is a very courageous person. And, you know, we were the only family that, that in our friend circle where, you know, we were kind of not well off, uh, or at least not middle class. Uh, but I think that was helpful too, because the family friends we had, many of them were the stereotypical, uh, doctors and engineers, uh, And, you know, you obviously can see where you live, and you see where those kids live, and you can see kind of our financial insecurity. I still remember, I must have been eight or nine years old at, at Kmart, and I was being a brat. I really wanted to be, you know, buy this Hot Wheels set, and I was throwing a tantrum in the Kmart, and I remember that was the first time that my mom kind of just kind of broke down a little bit and says, don't you realize we have no money? And, um, you know, one of my uncles, they had a, they had a, a Food store in a really rough neighborhood in New Orleans. He got shot. Um, you know, people, you know, we thought he was gonna die. I think I was about eight years old at the time, so I was just like, I don't, I don't want that life. I'd rather have the life of, of my other South Asian friends who are, whose parents are, um, you know, who, who are professionals.

AI assessment note: “I don't want that life. I'd rather have the life of, of my other South Asian friends”

Q Wow. Was there a community of, of South Asian families in, in Metairie when you were growing up?

A Yeah, my, you know, when my parents separated, we actually lived with my young uncles at the time. They were in their twenties. And so they all were kind of like father figures and, uh, almost like older siblings to me as well. And in a lot of ways, they were not your stereotypical, um, you know, just come to the U.S., study, you know, get a job, save money, uh, kind of prudent immigrant story. They were, they were much more embracing of New Orleans, uh, Uh, culture. And I would say they're the most New Orleanian South Asians you will ever find in your life. Um, I had a very colorful childhood, you know, late night parties, people singing and dancing. You know, for, for me, it felt like a, uh, I remember my third birthday that my uncles got a belly dancer. I still remember Habiba, you know, uh, so it was definitely a different type of childhood, but it was, uh, in some ways a really rich one.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, my, you know, when my parents separated, we actually lived with my young uncles”

Q All right. I think it's fair to say that you are a true believer in this, and your team basically developed an AI that you call Conmigo. And so this is now, I think, in beta, but still integrated into Khan Academy. So tell me how, how this works. What, what is it?

A So first was the guardrails. Like what, what, in what context would we even feel comfortable doing this? And what's interesting is we were starting to do all this in earnest in September and October, then end of November, chat GPT comes out. And I remember the day that it came out, I slacked Greg Brockman at OpenAI, and I said, hey, Greg, we're under NDA, and I thought we weren't launching anything until March of twenty-twenty-three. What's this chat GPT thing? And Greg says, it's, it's nothing new. It's based on GPT-III.V, which had been out for many months already. No one really took note when they released GPT-III.V and OpenAI just decided to publish a bunch of apps that use GPT-III.V. One of them happened to be ChatGPT, and then being able to interface with the model in a chat interface, I think made everyone see what the power of it was. And at first I was a little bummed. I was like, oh, this is going to steal the thunder. I've been telling all my friends at dinner parties, something's big's coming in 2023. Just, you see. But then I was, I think it was actually a blessing because as we know, chat GPT goes out there. It amazes people, but it also scares people. And then immediately it creates huge issues for education. Like kids are cheating using this.

AI assessment note: “So first was the guardrails... then end of November, chat GPT comes out.”