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Episode 828: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) talk to billionaire Joe Liemandt ( https://x.com/jliemandt ) about the experiment he’s put $1,000,000,000 of his own money into.
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Show Notes:
(0:00) Joe, the total man?
(08:09) fighting bill gates for talent
(13:14) intensity
(16:18) choosing hard over easy
(19:00) how to be a magnet
(21:34) high standards
(23:29) being persuasive
(29:23) simplicity: 3 ines, 3 words
(34:41) is 2x faster really better?
(36:23) making kids run a 5k
(38:45) why be public now
(41:01) why put $1b into the lowest roi thing?
(50:03) buying SaaS companies
(51:06) cloning Warren Buffett's brain
(53:00) changing your brain lift
(57:19) is AI going to make everyone dumb?
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Links:
• Alpha School - https://alpha.school/
• 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People - https://a.co/d/048Cfexh
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Check Out Sam's Stuff:
• Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm
—
Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com
• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.
• Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies!
Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC
• I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out:
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My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /
Reinventing K-12 Education Using AI with Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt
What if kids could master their academics in just two hours a day and spend the rest of their time developing real-world skills they’re passionate about? Joe Liemandt, founder of the software company Trilogy, is doing just that. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil are joined by Joe Liemandt, principal of Alpha School, to discuss his AI-driven vision of reinventing K-12 education. Joe talks about the strategies that Alpha School employs: reducing the traditional six-hour school day to two, replacing teachers with “Guides,” using financial incentives as motivation, and dedicating the remainder of the school day to project-based workshops that reflect the students’ passions. Together, they also examine Joe’s plan to scale Alpha School, the youth mental health crisis, and why edtech so far has failed.
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Chapters:
00:00 – Joe Liemandt Introduction
00:27 – From Trilogy to Alpha School
02:45 – How Joe Changed His Mind About Alpha School
04:16 – Reenvisioning the School Day
09:06 – An Example Day at Alpha School
20:13 – Educating Based on Motivations
22:56 – Incentives-Based Learning
24:40 – Standards for Guides
26:39 – Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivators
35:12 – Tackling Learning Differences
39:13 – Alpha School Pricing Structure
43:08 – Education Tech at Alpha School
44:54 – Rebuilding Education in the AI Age
48:43 – Reforming Education Policy
56:25 – Ed Tech as a Product
58:58 – Fixing Gaps in Education
59:45 – Why Education is Joe’s Mission
01:01:49 – Conclusion
A.I. School Is in Session: Two Takes on the Future of Education
This week, we check in on the state of artificial intelligence in education. We talk with a co-founder of Alpha Schools, MacKenzie Price, about how her private K-12 schools are using A.I. to generate personalized lesson plans and enabling teachers to spend their time motivating rather than teaching students. Then, the Princeton historian D. Graham Burnett joins us to discuss the existential threat that A.I. poses to the traditional humanities degree and why he believes we’ll see thousands of new schools emerge outside the university system to carry on the exploration of what it means to be a person in the world. And finally, we hear directly from students who are on the front line of technological change.
Guests:
MacKenzie Price, co-founder of Alpha Schools
D. Graham Burnett, historian of science and technology at Princeton University
Additional Reading:
A.I.-Driven Education: Founded in Texas and Coming to a School Near You
Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence?
OpenAI and Microsoft Bankroll New A.I. Training for Teachers
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Joe Liemandt - Building Alpha School, and The Future of Education - [Invest Like the Best, EP.439]
My guest today is Joe Liemandt. Joe is the Principal at Alpha School and the founder of Triliogy Software and ESW Capital. He became the youngest member of the Forbes 400 in the 1990s before vanishing from public view for two decades—only to emerge with a $1 billion bet that he can make kids learn 10x faster using AI. Joe has built an AI tutoring system so effective that students at his Alpha School literally beg not to take summer breaks, achieving 2x learning outcomes in just 2 hours with standardized test results that compete with the best of them.
We dive deep into why this could be the most valuable product he's ever built, his contrarian thesis that traditional SaaS is facing AI-driven obsolescence, and how his experience buying 100+ software companies prepared him for this moonshot in a trillion-dollar market that hasn't innovated in 200 years. For investors, this is a masterclass in deploying patient capital to rebuild broken systems from first principles, with insights on everything from regulatory moats to the intersection of AI and human psychology.
As your excited skeptic, I push hard on the technology readiness, parental adoption hurdles, and whether this audacious vision can actually scale to a billion kids. Additionally, in a Colossus Profile released last week, our editor-in-chief Jeremy Stern reported, for the first time, Joe as the product guy behind Alpha School in a can’t miss piece of writing. And now please enjoy my conversation with Joe Liemandt.
Joe Liemandt’s Colossus Profile by Jeremy Stern.
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.
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This episode is brought to you by Ramp. Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to Ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus.
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This episode is brought to you by Ridgeline. Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Head to ridgelineapps.com to learn more about the platform.
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This episode is brought to you by AlphaSense. AlphaSense has completely transformed the research process with cutting-edge AI technology and a vast collection of top-tier, reliable business content. Invest Like the Best listeners can get a free trial now at Alpha-Sense.com/Invest and experience firsthand how AlphaSense and Tegus help you make smarter decisions faster.
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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).
Show Notes:
(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best
(00:06:08) How Alpha School Is Revolutionizing Learning
(00:12:47) Personalized Tutoring with AI
(00:19:59) Measuring the Impossible: 2x Learning Outcomes
(00:25:39) All Educational Content Is Obsolete
(00:35:51) Motivating Students: The Key to Success
(00:42:06) Life Skills Workshops: Real-World Lessons
(00:47:47) The Key to Happiness: High Standards
(00:52:33) The Role of Guides and Coaches
(00:58:22) Feedback Loops and AI in Education
(01:04:20) The AI-Powered Classroom Experience
(01:18:06) From Self-Doubt to Limitless Learning
(01:28:20) Challenges in Public School Systems
(01:41:56) Gamified Learning and Technology
(01:49:46) From Trilogy to Trillion-Dollar Markets
(01:55:05) Why Software Companies Fail
(02:01:21) Trilogy University
(02:10:39) Lessons from Mentors
(02:17:25) Pushing Limits and Finding Passion
(02:27:12) Joe's Kindest Thing
Alpha School: A New Approach To Education - MacKenzie Price - #981
MacKenzie Price is an entrepreneur, podcaster, and co-founder of Alpha Schools.
Just how broken is education? For fifty years, lofty promises in education have yielded dismal results. Now, with AI, infinite knowledge at our fingertips, and personalized one-on-one learning, how radically different could the school of the future look?
Expect to learn what is fundamentally broken about the current education and school system, what kills motivation to excel in school for kids the most, if the issue with addiction to screen time and technology is to blame for lack of performance, how AI will revolutionize the education sector and which schools are already ahead of the curve, How Alpha school convinces skeptical parents that this radically different system will benefit their child, and much more…
Timestamps:
(0:00) Why is the School Model Broken?
(8:54) Why Has the Education System Resisted Innovation?
(11:23) Why We Need to Reinvent Our Education System
(18:58) How We Can Reimagine the School Day
(25:54) A Day in the Life at Alpha Schools
(35:08) Using AI in Education
(38:43) The Effectiveness of Using Technology in School
(43:29) How Learning is Measured at Alpha Schools
(51:20) Criticisms of Alpha Schools
(01:02:05) Where Will the Education System Be in 5 Years?
(01:06:28) Find Out More About Mackenzie
Sponsors:
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Episodes You Might Enjoy:
#577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins
#712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson
#700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman
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Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact
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2-Sigma in 2 Hours: How Alpha Schools are Using AI to Revolutionize Education
MacKenzie Price, founder of Alpha School & 2 Hour Learning, discusses her revolutionary educational model that uses AI to enable students to master traditional academics in just 2 hours per day while achieving 2.3x faster learning rates than statistical models predict. The conversation explores how Alpha School combines adaptive learning apps with personalized curriculum systems rather than giving students direct chatbot access, and how this frees up afternoons for field trips, independent projects, and interest exploration. They discuss the transformation of teachers into "Guides" who focus entirely on motivation, mentorship, and emotional support rather than content delivery, creating transformative relationships with every student as the rule rather than the exception. The episode reveals how this AI-powered approach maintains rigorous academic standards while potentially revolutionizing education without disrupting the teaching profession.
Sponsors:
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is the next-generation cloud that delivers better performance, faster speeds, and significantly lower costs, including up to 50% less for compute, 70% for storage, and 80% for networking. Run any workload, from infrastructure to AI, in a high-availability environment and try OCI for free with zero commitment at https://oracle.com/cognitive
The AGNTCY: The AGNTCY is an open-source collective dedicated to building the Internet of Agents, enabling AI agents to communicate and collaborate seamlessly across frameworks. Join a community of engineers focused on high-quality multi-agent software and support the initiative at https://agntcy.org
NetSuite by Oracle: NetSuite by Oracle is the AI-powered business management suite trusted by over 41,000 businesses, offering a unified platform for accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR. Gain total visibility and control to make quick decisions and automate everyday tasks—download the free ebook, Navigating Global Trade: Three Insights for Leaders, at https://netsuite.com/cognitive
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(04:01) Introduction and Welcome
(04:26) AI Revolution in Education
(06:45) Two Sigma Effect Explained
(10:49) Understanding Two Sigma Results (Part 1)
(16:28) Sponsors: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | The AGNTCY
(18:28) Understanding Two Sigma Results (Part 2)
(18:28) AI Scalability and Efficiency
(22:39) AI Tutor Experience Design
(30:48) Technology Evolution at Alpha
(38:29) Early AI Implementation (Part 1)
(38:36) Sponsor: NetSuite by Oracle
(39:59) Early AI Implementation (Part 2)
(45:43) Fifth Grade Math Investigation
(49:51) Future of Personalized Learning
(54:48) Multimodal Learning Experiences
(58:52) Role of Guides
(01:05:25) Hiring and Teacher Transformation
(01:10:27) Economics and Scalability
(01:18:03) DIY Education Advice
(01:22:10) Outro