The Elite Private High School Where Students Earn A Million Dollars: [Nat Eliason of Founder School (via Alpha)]

Nat Eliason is back on the podcast.​

After a decade of entrepreneurship, Nat made a surprising decision: he took a job.

He's joining ​Alpha School​ to help launch ​Founders School​, a new high school with an audacious promise: students will either build a million-dollar business by graduation or get their tuition refunded.

It's awesome.

Founder School combines Alpha's AI-powered education with focused business training from world-class mentors. Students complete their academics in just a few hours each morning, then spend the rest of the day building businesses, learning sales, working with mentors, and developing real expertise in real-world skills.

This conversation explores a much bigger question than entrepreneurship: what happens when we stop treating ambitious teenagers like children and start giving them the tools, responsibility, and freedom to build something meaningful immediately?

If you're interested in education, AI, entrepreneurship, or unlocking human potential, this episode is for you.

We discuss:

  • Why traditional schools fail ambitious students

  • Compressing the academic day with AI tutors

  • The vision behind Founder School's million-dollar guarantee

  • Why teenagers may have unique startup advantages

  • Teaching sales before coding or business plans

  • Building expertise instead of chasing trends

  • Philosophy, writing, and raising thoughtful founders

  • How Alpha School could reshape education over the next decade

Quotes from Nat:

  • “We're going to remove every bottleneck and barrier possible to their success.”

  • “Nobody else is doing four years of hands-on development, training, coaching, mentorship, and community for entrepreneurs.”

  • “Far and above, the best way to learn is direct instruction from a one-on-one with a tutor who knows exactly where you are.”

  • “Most kids don't jump out of bed excited to do math, and that's fine.”

  • “Nobody really doubts that a Stanford sophomore dropout could start a multimillion-dollar or a billion-dollar business. There's no reason that you can't reproduce those reasons in a high school.”

  • “Teenagers can do this too, especially when you add AI into the mix.”

  • “The years of fumbling around in the dark without somebody to tell you you're wasting time can be compressed dramatically.”

  • “Teenagers see the culture in a way many of us aren't seeing it.”

  • “If you can't explain it in 250 words, then you don't really understand it.”

  • “This isn't just about making a million dollars. This is about making the world better through entrepreneurship.”

Want to invest in early-stage startups together?

When new technologies meet the market, the world changes for the better. That's why we invest in obsessive geniuses building utopian technologies.

We write small checks to 15-20 very different startups each year. Previous investments include ​​Aalo Atomics​​, ​​Ouros Energy​​, ​Stell Engineering,​​ ​​Airship​​, ​​Terraform Industries​​, ​​Longshot​​, ​​Dirac​​, Occam (stealth), ​​Atomic Industries​​. and more.

Our ​​Website​​ has background on the fund, our past deals, and more.

*Startup investing is risky, illiquid, and not for the faint-of-heart. Be warned.

Learn more about Nat Eliason:

Additional episodes:

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Nat Eliason: Nobody really doubts that a Stanford sophomore dropout could start a multimillion-dollar or a billion-dollar business. What is it that they're getting there that gives people the confidence that they could go do that? One part of it is just the selection effect of getting into Stanford, right? Like, they're of a certain intellectual caliber.

[00:00:20] Nat Eliason: Another is the co-founders or the other people they're around, like being in that community. Another part is the, the mentor network, the speakers who [00:00:30] come to Stanford and talk to the students and show them what's possible, right? Like, there's basically no reason that you can't reproduce those reasons in a high school, especially if the goal is just to make a million-dollar company.

[00:00:41] Nat Eliason: If we can recreate the network effects of being around incredibly competent peers, if we can bring in amazing mentors to show the students what's possible and help coach them, if we can give them, like, the right bits of education to help shortcut the learning process, then yeah, obviously teenagers can do this too, [00:01:00] especially when you add AI into the mix.

[00:01:14] Eric Jorgenson: My friend Nat Eliason is back on the podcast with some big news and an incredible story. He just joined Alpha School specifically to help launch Founder School, which is a new high school with an absolutely wild promise. Students [00:01:30] either build a million-dollar business by graduation or get their full tuition refunded.

[00:01:35] Eric Jorgenson: He's moving his whole family from Austin to New York to pursue this. I know there's been a lot of talk about Alpha School, rightfully so, and the founders have been on a podcast tear. But Founder School, I think, is the frontier and will end up being one of the crown jewels of Alpha. I think this is a really fascinating movement in education, and the results [00:02:00] of this school and Alpha generally will define education for our next century.

[00:02:07] Eric Jorgenson: There's something really important about how we educate our kids, and I think everyone has a sort of dawning realization that we're maybe a little outdated, um, and that this is a system that is sort of de-defying accountability in some really tragic ways, and one that's really important [00:02:30] to fix. And I just think it's really interesting to explore this, and hopefully, this is one of many experiments that can help get us moving in the right direction again.

[00:02:41] Eric Jorgenson: In this conversation, we talk about the failings of traditional schools, uh, in particular for these really ambitious, high-potential kids. We talk about how AI tutors can compress the academic day into just a few hours while not just maintaining quality but improving it. This personalized AI tutor is an [00:03:00] absolute revelation.

[00:03:00] Eric Jorgenson: It's something that we've been theorizing about for a long time that is all over sci-fi tropes, and the technology's really here, and the results are starting to show, in particular how some of these kids are able to make huge strides in short periods of time. It's unbelievable. And finally, what happens when teenagers get to spend most of their day doing real work and building real businesses, um, instead of sort of killing time moving their way through the system.

[00:03:27] Eric Jorgenson: So I think this is a fascinating [00:03:30] conversation. Uh, there's a lot to learn from Nat. I'm really excited to follow along with him and with Founder School. Please enjoy the episode. So as not to bury the lead, Nat's made some very big life decisions, which is really the center of the conversation today. And I'm-- I-- Like, this is actually our first time, like, getting deep into it.

[00:03:49] Eric Jorgenson: I know the headline, but this will be an exciting thing to unpack 'cause it's something I'm very passionate about, and I know that you are on an absolute tear and, like, turning your life inside out to chase something incredibly new and [00:04:00] exciting. So- 

[00:04:01] Nat Eliason: Yeah ... 

[00:04:01] Eric Jorgenson: let's have it. 

[00:04:02] Nat Eliason: Let's do it. Here we are. 

[00:04:04] Eric Jorgenson: What are you chasing?

[00:04:05] Eric Jorgenson: Where are you going? 

[00:04:06] Nat Eliason: Well, yeah. I- What's going on? That was at you. Sorry. 

[00:04:08] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. 

[00:04:11] Nat Eliason: Yeah, so after, after 10 years of entrepreneurship, I've taken my first job in a decade. I joined Alpha School, which some people might be familiar with, some people might not. We'll, we'll get into all of that pretty quick, but we're opening a new high school specifically for aspiring entrepreneurs with the promise that they'll make [00:04:30] a million dollars by graduation or get their whole tuition refunded.

[00:04:34] Eric Jorgenson: That's so sick. 

[00:04:36] Nat Eliason: It's pretty sick. It's crazy. 

[00:04:39] Eric Jorgenson: Is there any, like anything similar that's like ever existed? 

[00:04:44] Nat Eliason: No. No, there, there's- Okay ... there's really nothing else out there like this, which is very exciting and obviously very challenging because we can only model so much off of other things out there. But much more of what we're modeling it off of are studies [00:05:00] in how entrepreneurs became entrepreneurs, right?

[00:05:03] Nat Eliason: Mm-hmm. And, you know, it'd be great if I could like talk to somebody who had studied that, like how the greats, you know, got so great- David Sabra ... 'cause he's probably a really helpful person. I was talking about you, dude. 

[00:05:13] Eric Jorgenson: Oh.

[00:05:17] Nat Eliason: It's like, I just need a couple books I can give these kids on how they can think more of, you know, like people like Elon. Um, no, because y- y- you think about, like, the, the other models out there, right? Y Combinator would obviously be, like, a, a, a [00:05:30] huge one, but they only get kids for... or not kids, they only get founders for three months, and they get a lot done during that period.

[00:05:37] Nat Eliason: But they're, they're getting people for about three months. They're accelerating somebody who has already done the hardest part of figuring out how to get started, and they're getting people later in life, right? Mm-hmm. And then you have undergraduate entrepreneurship programs, which, you know, no disrespect to the people who work on them, but they're kind of a joke, right?

[00:05:56] Nat Eliason: Like, the great entrepreneurs out of a college are usually the dropouts [00:06:00] who are figuring it out on their own. They might have a couple classes that really help them, but it's not like they're doing a four-year entrepreneurship degree and then going out and starting a business. And then you have some of these other programs or, or funds.

[00:06:12] Nat Eliason: You have fifteen17, obviously. You have Thiel Fellows. But again, nobody is doing this combination of four years of hands-on development, training, coaching, mentorship, everything that we believe we can give to a teenager to [00:06:30] set them up as much as possible for success, combined with the social environment of being around other people like them who are motivated by this goal, and then creating, like, a central place in the country.

[00:06:44] Nat Eliason: Like, planting a flag and saying, "If you're an entrepreneur who wants to give back to the next generation, come by Founder School. Come talk." Mm-hmm. "Like, come take someone on as a mentee, because we're, we're gonna go find these students, and we're gonna give them the first place [00:07:00] in the world where we're removing every bottleneck and barrier possible to their success and letting them cook."

[00:07:07] Eric Jorgenson: And w- what about the whole world, I don't know anything about this world, of, like, elite private high schools, boarding schools or, or otherwise? 

[00:07:16] Nat Eliason: Yeah, so I, I went to, I went to one of them, actually. So I, I, I went to Choate Rosemary Hall, which is, you know, usually at the, you know, towards the end of the sentence when you talk about, like, Exeter, Andover, and, like, that whole cadre of the New England boarding schools.

[00:07:29] Nat Eliason: And- [00:07:30] You know, that was actually where I discovered that I was really interested in entrepreneurship because my AP Micro professor was so incredible. And taking AP Micro was what made me realize that business was just fascinating, and I wanted to go deeper on it. And unfortunately, that was kind of where it capped out.

[00:07:47] Nat Eliason: There wasn't really anything else there. There, there was an entrepreneurship class, but y- you know, again, no offense to my teacher because he was phenomenal. I loved him, but he just wasn't, like, an experienced entrepreneur, [00:08:00] and the class wasn't structured around actually helping you start a business. It was more about teaching you some of the concepts and doing, like, school projects that were entrepreneurial.

[00:08:09] Nat Eliason: And then we had an FBLA, Future Business Leaders of America club on campus, which is like, you know, a popular high school organization for kids interested in it. But it's... You know, FBLA and DECA, they're kind of like playing entrepreneurship. You're doing these competitions and these business plans and stuff.

[00:08:27] Nat Eliason: You're not really, like, starting a business, and there wasn't, [00:08:30] again, anybody really there who was teaching it. So we kind of had to, like, figure bits and pieces out on our own, and I just ended up not really making any progress on it in high school, despite being, you know, in one of the most prestigious, most funded, like, best high schools in the world.

[00:08:48] Nat Eliason: There just wasn't that kind of support there for it. 

[00:08:50] Eric Jorgenson: And so what's the vision, like how different is what you're going to work on now? Is it, it's called Founders Academy? 

[00:08:57] Nat Eliason: Founder School. 

[00:08:58] Eric Jorgenson: Founder School. Yeah. 

[00:08:59] Nat Eliason: So got a sick domain, [00:09:00] founders.school. And, you know, so there's a couple, there's a couple things here where it's like, one, this wouldn't be possible without Alpha School and what Alpha School has figured out.

[00:09:09] Nat Eliason: And because this whole thing is built on the Alpha School model, where, you know, uh, Alpha School is basically a, a new take on K through 12 education, where we're using the best of learning science, going to kind of like the fundamentals of what we understand about how people learn best, which we've known for a long time, and are just not [00:09:30] used in the school system because they, it doesn't work for a mass market public or even private school system.

[00:09:37] Nat Eliason: Because far and above, the best way to learn is direct instruction, one-on-one with a tutor who knows exactly where you are in the learning process on the subject and can tailor the exercises, the material, and everything to exactly what you need to learn next in order to advance, you know, through the mastery of the curriculum.

[00:09:57] Nat Eliason: A teacher in front of a room of 25 can't do [00:10:00] that. They have to teach to the middle or often to the bottom. And anybody who's kind of ahead of that or wants to go further, they just don't have really any way to support those students. And this is why people will often, you know, exceptional students will get bored.

[00:10:13] Nat Eliason: They might become disruptive. You know, parents get told they're problematic because they're just not being stimulated at all in the class. And so what Alpha has developed is an AI-based tutoring system where the students do all of their academics in two hours in the morning for K [00:10:30] through 8, three hours in the morning for high school, and it's one-on-one with an AI tutor covering all the subjects that you're studying, and that tutor knows exactly where you need to go next, what you're deficient in, like which gaps in your knowledge of math or history or science need to be filled in, and can serve you exactly the bits of curriculum you need at that moment to get you closer to mastery.

[00:10:53] Nat Eliason: And what's crazy about that is you, you can have something like fourth or fifth grade math, [00:11:00] which can actually be mastered in, call it, 30 hours of this kind of instruction. So instead of a whole year of one to two hour lectures every day on math, it's 30 hours with this tutor. And so if that's all you're doing for your, your, your work session for a few weeks, that you're getting 10 hours a week, so it's like three weeks and you're done with math for that grade level, right?

[00:11:22] Nat Eliason: Like- It's, yeah, it's wild ... it's just so much more efficient. Yeah, yeah. And, and so we have that, and that allows us to take the normal high school [00:11:30] day and compress it to three hours. And so the kids can start at 8:30, be done with academics by 11:30, and then the question is, like, well, what do we do for the rest of the day?

[00:11:40] Nat Eliason: And in the current high school model, the students get a lot of freedom to pick a passion project that they are excited about and then go work on that. So we have students who are putting on a Broadway play. We have a student who's, like, an incredible social media marketer, he works with Al Pacino on his films.

[00:11:56] Nat Eliason: We have a student who's getting published at Nature. Uh, you know, [00:12:00] like, there's just this whole mix of what kids are going after, but a lot of them were really interested in entrepreneurship, and that was where this idea came from, is they told Joe, our principal, like, "We want a more dedicated entrepreneurship program."

[00:12:12] Nat Eliason: And then he kinda like took us to the next level and said, "Well, what if there was a whole school, and the whole promise of the school was this is where you come if you are a teenager who wants to do entrepreneurship, and we're going to move heaven and earth to help you succeed as fast as possible." And again, it just, like, wouldn't be possible except that we [00:12:30] get five hours every afternoon to work on it with them, which is 1,000-plus hours over the course of a year, and that only works because we've compressed the rest of the academic day so much.

[00:12:40] Eric Jorgenson: There's something really cool about this that I think is, uh, is part of the meta that isn't talked about that often. Like, I, I've been... I've read everything I can find on Alpha School, uh, and I recommend if people aren't familiar with it, go check out... Like, Joe has done really good interviews with both Patrick O'Shaughnessy and Shane Parrish.

[00:12:57] Eric Jorgenson: I find both of those- Yeah ... like extremely- They're both fantastic ... compelling, [00:13:00] great episodes. And Mackenzie Price, who's the, the co-founder, founder, co-founder? Founder, yeah. Um, with... uh, did one with Chris Williamson. She's done a ton of press, but, like, the, the interview with Chris Williamson is the one that I listened to.

[00:13:11] Eric Jorgenson: And all of those I find, I find this whole sort of theory incredibly, or process incredibly compelling, and it, it reveals something that I think was very obvious historically that we've all forgotten about, which is like people, some people start to become outrageously [00:13:30] Productive, but powerful, capable at like age 13.

[00:13:34] Nat Eliason: Yeah. 

[00:13:34] Eric Jorgenson: Or sometimes younger. Like- Yeah ... the amount of people who could be what we now consider precocious if they were just given the context to do more is so high, so high. Like, we have some of our most energy in our whole lives when we're teenagers. 

[00:13:48] Nat Eliason: Oh, yeah. 

[00:13:48] Eric Jorgenson: And apprentices- And- ... started in trades when they were, you know, 13 years old historically, and like, i- i- there's just so many ways that environments like this I think can, like, give kids space to do incredible, [00:14:00] incredible stuff.

[00:14:01] Nat Eliason: Yeah. Mo- most cultures have their, like, rite of adulthood or their rite of initiation into adulthood around that age of 13, 14 for a reason. 

[00:14:11] Eric Jorgenson: Hmm. 

[00:14:11] Nat Eliason: Because that was when you could start giving back as a member of the community, when you could start that transition into adulthood. And I think that we're really wired for that.

[00:14:22] Nat Eliason: I think that that's where a lot of the angst, frustration, misbehavior, anger that happens in those teenage years [00:14:30] comes from, is that a 14-year-old, a 15-year-old knows they are capable of quite a bit. You know, they hopefully have the humility to understand that they're not a, a 45-year-old with all the experience, but they know that they could be going after something more challenging and more demanding of them.

[00:14:46] Nat Eliason: But instead they're told that they have to sit down and just do algebra and then, like, do nothing else, right? That no, you're still a kid. You don't get to go work on, like, these other things that you wanna work on. You can do that in 10 years, right? Yeah. [00:15:00] And, and some students love the school system, right?

[00:15:02] Nat Eliason: They love academics. Some students aren't quite ready to take on that responsibility yet. I'm, I'm not taking away from any of that. But for the students who are, like, they should be able to do that. They, they should have those opportunities, and there's just not enough organizations taking them seriously right now.

[00:15:19] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So, so Alpha School is this, or is this, like, platform, right? That allow... The Alpha School is kind of a confusing thing. There's two things going on. One is like- 

[00:15:27] Nat Eliason: Yeah, there's a lot of things going on. [00:15:30] 

[00:15:30] Eric Jorgenson: There's, there's, there's many, many things going on. There's at least- Yeah ... two very distinct things going on, which is, like, there's the academic, the software that drives the academic platform that you're talking about, which, like, gets through the academics to an unbelievable degree of mastery.

[00:15:41] Eric Jorgenson: You know, they're, they're, all these students are top 1%, I think, in the, in the nation using this tutoring platform or something like that. 

[00:15:48] Nat Eliason: Yeah, the, the last batch of MAPS tests, the, the students were all top 1 or 2% across every subject and every grade level, which is wild. 

[00:15:56] Eric Jorgenson: For two, in, in two hours a day.

[00:15:57] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks to this, like, AI-aided [00:16:00] tutoring platform and a bunch of clever- Yeah ... sort of structures and incentives around how they do it. And so that platform sh- is going to be applied to a bunch of different things, right? There's people who are kind of taking this platform and building, like, academic, uh, institutions on it.

[00:16:12] Eric Jorgenson: There's people who are building athletic institutions. Founders School is one of these that is, like, focused on entrepreneurship, which is, like, what we're kind of going deep on the beginning of and what Nat's joining. But there's, there's infinite capacity, right? You could imagine, like, a musical version of this, an artistic version of this, you know, an [00:16:30] environmental, like, na- nature focused version of this, a travel focused version of it.

[00:16:33] Eric Jorgenson: There's just so many. Yeah. Like, you can imagine a religious one, like, whatever. Anything you can do- Mm-hmm ... with those other, like, you know, five, six hours a day that kids are interested in that wants to form a community around it. 

[00:16:43] Nat Eliason: Yeah, the, the core thesis is that our software, which is called TimeBack because we give the kids their time back, that only works if the kids have a reason to focus during those two hours and to stay locked in.

[00:16:57] Nat Eliason: It, it doesn't work as well if you just [00:17:00] give it to a student without the rest of what comes with Alpha or these other programs accompanying it. Because, you know, in ice... If, if, if there's no kind of like reward for being very focused and getting those two hours of work done, students will, you know, they'll look at distracted and they'll...

[00:17:16] Nat Eliason: Because like in, in school, your reward for getting your schoolwork done is usually just more schoolwork or sitting in the back of the class or like getting in trouble because you've read ahead, right? 

[00:17:26] Eric Jorgenson: Mm-hmm. 

[00:17:26] Nat Eliason: And so all of our models are basically based on this idea [00:17:30] that every student has something that they are more motivated by than studying math, right?

[00:17:36] Nat Eliason: And I think we can be honest about that, right? Like, most kids don't jump out of bed excited to do math, and that's fine, right? Like, they don't have to be. And we have a school for the kids who are. We have GT school where it's like, "No, if you wanna finish high school by eighth grade, like, we will get you there.

[00:17:50] Nat Eliason: Like, you can cook." But for most students, they would rather do other things. So for Alpha, we have all these really cool workshops in the afternoon where they're learning life skills through these hands-on activities, [00:18:00] and often kind of crazy ones that the parents don't really believe the kids can do until they do, though.

[00:18:04] Nat Eliason: So my daughter's starting kindergarten in the fall, and one of the kindergarten workshops is that they climb a 40-foot rock wall Which sounds wild, right? You have like five and six-year-olds going to the climbing gym every day after school and, you know, getting more comfortable climbing and like being in a harness and doing all that.

[00:18:22] Nat Eliason: But they're all cheering each other on, and like that's one of the workshops that they do throughout the year. And so that's kinda like the Alpha model, is you're gonna get to do these [00:18:30] really cool things after you get your schoolwork done. But we also have sports academy, where you do your two hours in the morning, and then you get to go to basketball court, volleyball court, baseball field, and you just play sports all afternoon.

[00:18:44] Nat Eliason: But in order for you to unlock your five hours of sports a day, you have to get your schoolwork done. And that model is really incredible because you have these kids, and most of them are in much lower income areas. That's a, it's a much less expensive school than the like [00:19:00] normal Alpha school is. And so these are kids who are in some of the poorest parts of Texas, and they don't have a good public school near them, but they're getting an Alpha level education remotely, but they're getting it done because they get to go play basketball in the afternoon with their coach.

[00:19:14] Nat Eliason: And, you know, for them, they, they might be in seventh grade coming in at like a third-grade reading level, but they're getting caught up really quickly through the software because they have that really strong motivation in the afternoon. You mentioned nature. Like we actually have a nature school. 

[00:19:27] Eric Jorgenson: Oh, I didn't know that.

[00:19:28] Nat Eliason: Yeah, yeah. It's, it's called [00:19:30] Waypoint. It's, it's here south of Austin. And yeah, the kids get their academics done in the morning, and then they get to do archery and horseback riding and hiking and stuff in the afternoons, and like that's their motivation to get the schoolwork done. And so for us, we're saying, "Hey, you're not motivated by school.

[00:19:44] Nat Eliason: Like, that's okay. We're still gonna get you elite academics. You're gonna crush your SAT, and you're gonna get a ton of AP credits, and you're gonna get a like top 1% high school education. But the thing that is going to motivate you to get that done is that you get to do all the [00:20:00] entrepreneurship stuff in the afternoon.

[00:20:00] Nat Eliason: We're gonna be bringing in these crazy mentors. You know, Eric Jorgensen's gonna do a book club, right? Like you're gonna get this kind of like access and support that you could never get on your own, but you still gotta get your academics done, right?" And that part is still really important part of this.

[00:20:14] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So what's the s- the status of Founder School now is like it's a baby. It's nascent. It's emerging. Nascent. Um, okay. Yep, 

[00:20:22] Nat Eliason: emerging. 

[00:20:22] Eric Jorgenson: Are, a-are you joining like... I mean, it's, it feels like close to day zero, right? You're- Yeah ... this is, this project was just kind of emerged. And [00:20:30] did, did you join Alpha School for this or did you join Alpha School and then this emerged and your role kind of changed?

[00:20:35] Eric Jorgenson: I 

[00:20:36] Nat Eliason: joined, I joined for this. 

[00:20:37] Eric Jorgenson: Okay. 

[00:20:38] Nat Eliason: And but sort of when I joined, it was smaller. So basically, they, they had this idea last fall, and then when, when Joe had this idea, he looked to hire someone to lead it. He hired my business partner on all of this stuff, Cameron, who, uh, previously ran a company called Praxis, which is like a college alternative program that, you know, helped people who didn't wanna go to college develop [00:21:00] life skills, work skills, professional skills to go straight into the workforce.

[00:21:03] Nat Eliason: And he led that for 10 years. And then, you know- Stepped away from that and, and joined Alpha to start this school. And so he was... He had reached out to me early on, this was, like, last December, because he was looking for somebody who was very deep in AI and entrepreneurship to come do some workshops for the current high school students to just, like, help them level up with, like, building with AI stuff in particular.

[00:21:26] Nat Eliason: And he, he brought me in to do that. He started telling me more about this program that he [00:21:30] was working on, and we were just talking about it for a couple of months until he said that he was trying to hire somebody who was, like, like me. You know, this, like, AI native entrepreneur to help him build the program, who could really lead more of the, like, curriculum and development and, okay, how do we actually build a program that can deliver these outcomes at scale?

[00:21:50] Nat Eliason: And as soon as he asked that question, it just, it felt like a light bulb went off, right? Where I'd been trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. I'd been planning to go after something, like, a lot bigger, not, not do [00:22:00] the solopreneur thing anymore. And then this opportunity showed up, and it was just immediately like, "Oh, I have to come do this."

[00:22:06] Nat Eliason: Yeah. Like, this is just so cool. And the more we started talking, and the more we started talking to Joe and kind of building up our idea for what this could be, it very quickly went from, this will be a program at the current high school to this will be its own high school to this will be a high school in New York City that we wanna grow to 1,000 students that is, like, the hub for aspiring entrepreneurs in the world.[00:22:30] 

[00:22:30] Nat Eliason: And just, again, like, you know, nothing like this has ever existed before, but we believe that it can happen now, in a big part thanks to AI and technology, and we're, we're gonna go build it. So it was very fun, like, feeling that evolve as we just, like, kept thinking about it and kept talking about it. And now where it is today, it...

[00:22:48] Nat Eliason: Yeah, it just feels like the most exciting thing in the world I could be working on right now. 

[00:22:51] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I mean, you keep kind of pushing on that ceiling and find out that it keeps going up, it keeps going up, and you're like- Oh, yeah ... there is so much to do. 

[00:22:58] Nat Eliason: Yeah. 

[00:22:58] Eric Jorgenson: That is really cool. So what is [00:23:00] the... The vision for it expanded a lot.

[00:23:02] Eric Jorgenson: You know, so now 1,000 students in New York City. H- how do you go about, like, starting a school? It feels like kind of a unique and interesting Challenge as far as businesses to get started. 

[00:23:15] Nat Eliason: Yeah, I mean, thankfully, we, we have so much of Alpha's expertise around starting a school to lean on, right? I mean, it- th- nobody...

[00:23:25] Nat Eliason: I don't think anybody else could really go after something like this right now, just [00:23:30] given how much Alpha has already invested in learning how to open a school, how to operationalize a school, the, the TimeBack software itself, right? Like, all of that is what makes this possible because we have most of the, the base layer figured out, and now we just need to figure out, okay, how do we do this entrepreneurial layer on top of it?

[00:23:50] Nat Eliason: And so that, that's, like, a really cool position to be in because on the one hand, it feels like we're starting a startup, right? It feels like, you know, right now he and I are the two, like, [00:24:00] main people on the team, and we have one engineer that we work with for a lot of, like, building out some of the initial tooling, but it's kinda like just the three of us, right?

[00:24:07] Nat Eliason: Mm-hmm. And so in, in that sense, it feels like we're this little, like, team starting something. But on the other hand, we have all these other incredible people within Alpha who we get to work with as we figure this out, just amazing admissions people, an amazing ecosystem guy, fantastic engineers, and we get to kinda, like, draw on their knowledge or bring them in for bits and pieces of what we're working on.

[00:24:29] Nat Eliason: And that's just, like, [00:24:30] such a neat position to be in because Alpha somehow manages to be a school, which, like, if you were gonna pick an institution that's the opposite of a startup- ... like, number one would probably be a government, and then number two I think would be a school, right? Yeah. Like, those things just don't feel like they go together, but Alpha's kinda figured it out.

[00:24:48] Nat Eliason: Like, we're gonna open another... We, we have 25-some schools open right now. We're gonna have more than 50 in the next year because we've, like, figured out how to go into cities and open schools that start as micro schools [00:25:00] of 25 to 50 kids and then can grow them from there as the demand grows. And there's like...

[00:25:04] Nat Eliason: there's no other school doing that. 

[00:25:06] Eric Jorgenson: Mm-hmm. 

[00:25:07] Nat Eliason: Right? Like, Exeter isn't opening 20 Exeters a year, and it would seem insane for them to try to do that. But we, we have this model decently figured out now that we can, and so we, we get to, like, lean on that as we figure this out. So thankfully, I don't have to spend a ton of time on, you know, like, teacher accreditation or, or things like that that you would have to think about if you were just completely [00:25:30] opening a high school from scratch.

[00:25:31] Nat Eliason: We just get to focus on delivering the best entrepreneurship education possible. 

[00:25:35] Eric Jorgenson: Okay, so that's the focus now. When... Do you know, like, when it opens yet? Do you have a campus locked down? What's the... what's kind of the go forward? 

[00:25:42] Nat Eliason: So we're, we're recording this in May of 2026, and- We're going to be starting the first class in September.

[00:25:50] Nat Eliason: Yeah. So the goal for the first class is, like, 20 students, and we have people in the admissions process right now. We're working on getting [00:26:00] just the n- getting the news out there more that this is available. And, like, obviously, it's, it's late in the admissions cycle, right? So a lot of students have figured out where they're going to high school.

[00:26:09] Nat Eliason: But for the right students, this is such a awesome, exciting opportunity that they're going to just, like, say no to the high school they were planning on go to and wanna come do this. But we also don't want, like, a massive freshman class to start. Mm-hmm. We wanna keep it pretty small, targeted. That allows me to be really hands-on with them and to really just, like, [00:26:30] iron out this curriculum and this program so that I can then teach it to the other...

[00:26:34] Nat Eliason: You know, we're calling them EIRs or fellows or guides who are gonna come on and help run the process as we have it established and as we scale it up to more students. But the cool thing with Alpha is that we do take students throughout the year. So even in the high school here, students will transfer in in, like, October or January or March.

[00:26:53] Nat Eliason: Mm-hmm. And we're not going to prohibit that with founders either. I think, like- Being the first student at a new [00:27:00] school is a scary thing. 

[00:27:02] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. 

[00:27:02] Nat Eliason: Right? Because it's new. And obviously, like Alpha's not new, right? So there, there's, there's some establishment there. But Founder School is new, and we haven't gotten any kids to the million-dollar outcome yet.

[00:27:13] Nat Eliason: Like, nobody knows from the outside if this is going to work. We're obviously super confident. We feel great about it, but people are going to wanna see some of that, those initial proof points. And so our goal is to find those initial students and families who are the most aligned and the most excited about it, bring them [00:27:30] in, and then just like absolutely crush it for them and get to share those stories.

[00:27:35] Nat Eliason: And I think that the students are going to do so much more than parents expect. Mm-hmm. And they're gonna be capable of so much more than parents expect, that, uh, as we start sharing these stories, then it's gonna be like, "Oh, wow, okay, yeah, this is, this is real." And that's gonna drive even more of the interest going into next year.

[00:27:54] Nat Eliason: So it's, it's cool and it's exciting because, like we get to build this really focused initial [00:28:00] class, and then we're gonna be putting a ton into, like, content and media- Mm ... with the school. Because kinda like you said, Joe does these podcasts, and that's a big part of our marketing. Mackenzie does all this media, and that's a big part of our marketing.

[00:28:12] Nat Eliason: And we get to do that too with Founder's School. And it's, it's a benefit for these students' businesses as well because they're not, like, completely figuring it out on their own. If one of these students builds something cool, like I'm gonna be posting about it on X. Joe is gonna be- Yeah ... posting about it.

[00:28:27] Nat Eliason: Like, we're gonna be making videos. We're gonna be helping them as [00:28:30] much as possible to get these things going. And so just, you know, going back to, again, why we think this is possible, like they're gonna kinda have this marketing arm supporting them. They're not completely starting from scratch, and, uh, it, it's just gonna be a ton of fun.

[00:28:42] Nat Eliason: Like, I'm super excited to like get that part of it going. 

[00:28:44] Eric Jorgenson: Let alone like the rest of their cohort, right? To be able to- Oh, yeah ... like, I feel like so many people spend their high school, especially people who would be most excited about a program like this, spend most of their high school years like wishing there were people who shared the same interest around them or trying [00:29:00] to find them or fi- and finding them outside school in most cases, or spending a tiny fraction of their time on the thing that they're, like, most passionate about.

[00:29:07] Eric Jorgenson: It's like, you know, yeah, two hours a week I get to go to robotics club where, like, all my people are, and the rest of the time I'm just kind of like muddling along, like with all the- Yeah ... academics, being told, doing what I'm told. And this is just- No, I mean- ... the inverse of that. 

[00:29:21] Nat Eliason: Yeah. One, one thing, one thing Joe likes to say is, 'cause he, he went to Stanford and he dropped out after his sophomore year.

[00:29:27] Nat Eliason: And nobody really doubts that a [00:29:30] Stanford sophomore dropout could start a multimillion-dollar or a billion-dollar business. 

[00:29:35] Eric Jorgenson: Mm-hmm. 

[00:29:36] Nat Eliason: Like, that just feels like, oh yeah, that, that's totally possible. So- What is it that they're getting there that gives people the confidence that they could go do that? One part of it is just the selection effect of getting into Stanford, right?

[00:29:49] Nat Eliason: Like, they're of a certain intellectual caliber. Another is the co-founders, or the other people there around, like being in that community. Another part is the, the [00:30:00] mentor network, the speakers who come to Stanford and talk to the students and show them what's possible, right? Like, when Joe was there, like, Steve Jobs came and spoke.

[00:30:09] Nat Eliason: Bill Gates came and spoke. He, he was getting some access to those people. 

[00:30:12] Eric Jorgenson: Mm-hmm. 

[00:30:13] Nat Eliason: And then another part of it is just that there is, like, a little bit of the learning in classes. There are a couple classes that do actually help students get some, like, technical foundations or business foundations to have the confidence to go do it.

[00:30:25] Nat Eliason: But you, you break it out like that, you, you think about that list of reasons, [00:30:30] and there's basically no reason that you can't reproduce those reasons in a high school, and especially if the goal is just to make a million-dollar company, right? Like, we're not talking about launching a billion-dollar com- I would love that.

[00:30:41] Nat Eliason: I mean, that would be incredible, right? But it's like, if we can recreate the network effects of being around incredibly competent peers, if we can bring in amazing mentors to show the students what's possible and help coach them, if we can give them, like, the right bits of education to help shortcut the learning process, then yeah, [00:31:00] obviously teenagers can do this, too, especially when you add AI into the mix, right?

[00:31:05] Nat Eliason: Like, you don't have to spend two years learning programming anymore. You can whip up an MVP so much faster, and you can do that for a lot of the skill stack that goes into the base of starting a business now. It's just so much more possible. 

[00:31:18] Eric Jorgenson: And you have, like, there's a few interesting things happening here.

[00:31:21] Eric Jorgenson: Like, you would absolutely imagine somebody like MrBeast, who, like, knew who he wanted to be with, like- Great intensity even when he was 13 years [00:31:30] old, right? Like, he basically started his grind there and he was just lost for many years trying to kind of- Yeah ... find his people and find the learning curve and, you know, make it out of where he was to the, the culture and figure out enough of the playbook to kind of get his initial traction.

[00:31:45] Eric Jorgenson: That took a really long time in his case. But the combination of a global market like that, which I'm sure a lot of these business models kind of will accidentally be or inherently be- Yeah ... because these kids grew up on the internet. And the other is, [00:32:00] like, the sort of competitive differentiation of, like, there's just not that many businesses started by high schoolers.

[00:32:04] Eric Jorgenson: And so, like- 

[00:32:05] Nat Eliason: Totally ... 

[00:32:06] Eric Jorgenson: if that's, if you, you have a unique perspective as an entrepreneur in the market or a unique offering that, like, by the time somebody's starting a company at 25, they wouldn't start, wouldn't care about, wouldn't have that perspective, wouldn't see, wouldn't be able to reach the market.

[00:32:19] Eric Jorgenson: Like, I think, I think some of these businesses are gonna be, like, very surprising quick takeoffs would be my guess. 

[00:32:26] Nat Eliason: Yeah. I, I think that's totally right. I mean, one of [00:32:30] the, one of the things that we've thought about or that I've thought about a lot and that I'll, I'll often tell people, and I know you'll appreciate this 'cause this is, like, straight out of Poor Charlie's Almanac, is like, okay, you know, let- let's just invert it, right?

[00:32:42] Nat Eliason: Mm-hmm. Like, why wouldn't a teenager make a million dollars by graduation? And it's like the number one thing that comes to mind is what you just mentioned, of the years of fumbling around in the dark without somebody to tell you, "Hey, you're wasting time on this thing," or, "Hey, you need to go, like, talk to a customer," right?

[00:32:59] Nat Eliason: "You need to actually try to [00:33:00] sell this. You can't keep hacking on it in the dark." Or somebody to say, like, "This strategy isn't gonna work, but you can, you know, move 5% in this direction and this is going to work a lot better," or at least, like, "Go try this." And that alone can shave years off the entrepreneurial learning process.

[00:33:16] Nat Eliason: Like, I think about when I was trying to figure it out, and I didn't have any good mentors to rely on at the beginning. I didn't have any good programs to enroll in. I didn't have any peers around me who had done it. And so I was trying to piece it together from books and blog [00:33:30] posts. Mm-hmm. And I was trying to hack on it in my free time outside of school, right?

[00:33:34] Nat Eliason: So I didn't have that much time and I didn't have good resources to learn, and that really quickly stretched into, like, three years before something got any kind of traction, right? And so, like- You can compress that to a few months very quickly just by having them in the right room with the right people to give them feedback- Mm-hmm

[00:33:50] Nat Eliason: and with the time to, like, test things out, right? And then another one is, like, okay, so we, we can think of a lot of reasons that they would fail, but, like, [00:34:00] what are the reasons they would succeed? And you mentioned a really great one, which is, like, they are aware of markets and interests that many older people are not, right?

[00:34:09] Nat Eliason: Like, they're seeing the culture in a way many of us aren't seeing it. And so that, especially if we can get them out of the, like, selling to their peers mindset, but thinking a little bit outside the school walls, that's gonna reveal a lot of opportunities. They're also fearless in a way- Mm-hmm ... adults are not.

[00:34:27] Nat Eliason: And this was a really incredible experience for [00:34:30] me, uh, working with the current high school students, where once I gave a couple of them a little push to start getting in front of people and trying to, like, sell what they were doing instead of just working on it in the dark, they were completely unafraid of just, like, continually ratcheting up their prices until they found a resistance point.

[00:34:47] Nat Eliason: Right. Like, once they had that permission to ask for money, they were just off to the races. It was just like they were so confident. Or we, we went to an event here in Austin for, like, OpenClaus stuff, and we had a couple of students who were just, [00:35:00] again, very fearlessly going up to all these, like, es- very established adults, people from, like, IBM and Northrop Grumman and just, like, crazy institutions, and pitching them on hiring them to help them with AI implementation work.

[00:35:13] Nat Eliason: And, you know, I, I'm not embarrassed to say, like, I would still be very nervous about that. I'd be like, "Oh, I can't do that. Like, that's, that's inappropriate to do here." But they were just, like, full steam ahead, and it led to a lot of cool opportunities, right? And so they, they do bring a lot of advantages to the table that are easy to miss [00:35:30] when you just focus on the, the reasons that it won't work.

[00:35:33] Nat Eliason: And you can, you know, you can kind of, like, you, you can... It, it's a lot easier to take somebody who's, like, overzealous with sales and pull them back a little bit- Mm-hmm ... than to take somebody who is completely afraid of doing sales and, like, push them to make that, that first call or something. 

[00:35:46] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. It's actually interesting thinking back of, like, how many things would the average high schooler have been dead right about that would've made a ton of money over the last, like, 10 years, 20 years.

[00:35:56] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Like YouTube- Yeah ... esports, [00:36:00] Roblox, crypto I'm sure I'm missing, like, big whole categories 

[00:36:05] Nat Eliason: No, ga- gaming was definitely the big one for me. Like- Yeah ... I was just so into it, and I was in sixth grade or seventh grade, and I was making custom maps for Warcraft III- 

[00:36:15] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah ... 

[00:36:15] Nat Eliason: in my free time. And I mean, that's a huge market now, right?

[00:36:19] Nat Eliason: Yeah. Like, I was a few years too early for making Minecraft servers and monetizing them. Now people are making tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on like Roblox and Fortnite custom maps and stuff. It's like [00:36:30] that's a huge business. Streaming is a huge business. But, you know, I was told that video games were bad and a waste of time, and I should feel bad about spending so much time on them.

[00:36:37] Nat Eliason: And so that, like, interest never really got fostered, right? And I, I'd never even considered that that was a career opportunity, right? I was told I had to kind of give that up to go do real work, and you know, now that is real work. And so there's gonna be a lot of other things like that too coming down the pipe that'll be easy to miss from our, our, our old people perspectives.

[00:36:59] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I, I [00:37:00] think my, my era was there was like MySpace skins. You know, people were like- Yeah. Oh, yeah ... selling like whateverlife.com That was a big one too. That woman made-- She's, she's from where I grew up. She made a ton. I think she sold that company for like tens of millions of dollars just like making HTML skins for MySpace pages.

[00:37:12] Eric Jorgenson: Um- That's awesome. Yeah. There's, there's just so much cool, so much cool opportunity, and it'll be a really fun seat for you to sit to like see, see all these things coming. Okay. So, so what is the like curriculum design exercise look like? Like, how do you go into not knowing, you know, you've got 20 kids coming in the fall.

[00:37:29] Eric Jorgenson: You don't [00:37:30] know exactly what companies they're gonna start yet necessarily, and you're like, "Okay, how do I increase the odds of success for 20 13-year-olds?" Are they all freshmen coming in? 

[00:37:43] Nat Eliason: Ideally, we'll take- Okay ... sophomores and stuff too. You know- Okay ... we can't do the guarantee for sophomores 'cause we have less time with them.

[00:37:48] Nat Eliason: Okay. But there won't be like a freshman year, sophomore year, junior year curriculum. 

[00:37:54] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:37:54] Nat Eliason: There'll basically be like the year one curriculum, which is whatever year you come in, and then [00:38:00] there's the stuff that's after that. So like, the year one curriculum is basically like all of the, establishing the foundational skills that we think you need to have some familiarity of in order to be set up for success with like getting your first thing going.

[00:38:15] Nat Eliason: So the whole first two months is on sales, and it's basically just on like sales and basic financial management for a business. And the reason we're doing that is that far and above, like the main bottleneck we have seen [00:38:30] with all of the aspiring teenage entrepreneurs we've talked to, is just this desire to like build things in the dark- Mm-hmm

[00:38:37] Nat Eliason: and not put them in front of customers. And so by getting them extremely comfortable doing sales, face-to-face sales, right? So I think like week one we're probably gonna take them out to the pier in New York City and have them like sell water bottles and candy and stuff, and just get completely fearless with all of that.

[00:38:53] Nat Eliason: Because then it's gonna be so much easier to sell something that you actually care about to a real customer and not like a stranger, [00:39:00] right? But we, we really wanna dial that in early, as well as dial in some of that like initial financial management and responsibility where they're gonna have a fixed budget and a basket of goods that they can use that budget to like purchase items from, to go sell, and then they're gonna have to track their P&L and their margins on everything, and do those reports every week.

[00:39:20] Nat Eliason: And actually kind of have like leaderboards and shared knowledge amongst the class on what's working and what's not, so they can keep iterating on what they're doing through those early days, and start to [00:39:30] like get in that habit of tracking everything, measuring what's working, what's not, trying new things, iterating quickly, but in a like much more sandboxed environment.

[00:39:40] Nat Eliason: Start to like get those reps in. From there, we're moving into a lot of the basic digital skills we wanna make sure they have. And so that's like one, the building with AI, right? Like whatever idea you think you have, how do you build the basic version of it? The, and that could just be as simple as like a landing page for something [00:40:00] that's coming soon, that you can actually start to go get validation from.

[00:40:04] Nat Eliason: And once you've built something The way we'll probably do it during this period is, like, you'll get two weeks to, like, hack on something, but then after those two weeks, it'll be locked, and you can't touch it for the next six weeks. And then the whole next six weeks, you have to work on distribution or direct outreach or earned media or, like, anything to try to get traffic and interest to what you made to see if anybody is interested in what [00:40:30] you've built.

[00:40:30] Nat Eliason: And then coming out of that, we start to get into these, like, validation loops, where you're coming up with an idea or identifying an opportunity, you're building a way to test the, like, interest in that idea as quickly as possible, and then getting out and trying to validate whether or not you should invest more time in it as quickly as possible to start to get them into those loops.

[00:40:50] Nat Eliason: Because once they get really dialed in on that, they could be testing something every... I mean, it could be a couple days, it could be a couple weeks. It becomes a pretty quick process where [00:41:00] we feel very confident that as they get better and better at that, by the end of freshman year, they will have found something where they're starting to see some traction that they can feel more confident going all in on.

[00:41:11] Nat Eliason: And then kinda like running in parallel to that, there is this element of it's hard to build a business when you don't, like, understand a topic area- Mm ... when you don't really, like, know what the opportunities are. And so Alpha already does this very good job of teaching expertise building, right? So helping [00:41:30] them and, like, letting them be honest about, you know, if you love video games or if you love BMX or if you love photography, like, we're not gonna say, "No, that's a dumb topic area."

[00:41:41] Nat Eliason: Like, you need to be interested in HVAC maintenance, right? Like, j- pick something, right? Like, pick something you're actually going to keep studying, and then become an expert on it. Create content around it. Build an audience, like, in that topic area. Because the deeper you develop expertise in this area you are interested in [00:42:00] and the more you get enmeshed in that community outside of the school walls, like, with other adults, with professionals, that is where you're going to find these opportunities.

[00:42:09] Nat Eliason: And so there is going to be this, like, expertise building, content creation, writing, social media layer going on throughout all of this because that is what's really going to help them find these things that are worth going after instead of just getting on X and saying, like, "Oh," like, "This app type is going viral this week."

[00:42:29] Nat Eliason: Like, "I'm just [00:42:30] gonna make a reskin of that app and see if I can, you know, get it to 10K a month." Like, we don't really wanna encourage that type f- of just, like- Kind of extraction entrepreneurship. It's like, no, no, no. Figure out the topic areas that you're passionate about and then find the best opportunity to build a business that you can build in that area.

[00:42:48] Nat Eliason: And I think, like, with those things combined- 

[00:42:51] Eric Jorgenson: Mm-hmm ... 

[00:42:52] Nat Eliason: the odds are exceptionally high that we will get them to something by the end of freshman year where they have real traction and a real opportunity, and then the [00:43:00] education becomes much more targeted. Yeah. Where the role of the, the EIR, the guide, me, is working with them, you know, weekly, daily to figure out what the bottlenecks are in their business, and then coordinate the resources within our network to help them get through it.

[00:43:15] Nat Eliason: So we're gonna have basically, like, experts in any problem they could be running into, right? Like, if this is a cash flow management issue for an agency, like, we're gonna have people who can work with them on that. If this is, like, an ads optimization thing, if this is, like, [00:43:30] a factory production issue, right?

[00:43:31] Nat Eliason: Like, we can get experts to work with the students on whatever issue they are running into and make the education very targeted to whatever problems they're hitting in their business at that time, and then give them the rest of the time to just, like, keep working and keep learning and keep pushing forward until they hit, like, the next problem that we can help them on.

[00:43:50] Eric Jorgenson: This is super interesting. And I, I mean, if you can get people on a good track, I think a million dollars, earning a million dollars by graduation seems like this crazy goal. But, [00:44:00] like, four years is a long time if you are compounding on a good track, right? Like, you know, to earn bottom line a quarter million dollars a year on average out of a business, like, that, that thing stacks in very interesting ways, especially if the institution has skin in the game, right?

[00:44:19] Eric Jorgenson: Like, that's one of the things that, you know, I have always felt as a student is like, this school, whether it's a public school or a private school or a, a college, it does not actually give a fuck whether I'm [00:44:30] successful or not. Like, they can, they can say that they're putting the resources in front of me, but, like, there's zero n- not just accountability, there's no accountability for a downside, but there's also no incentive for an upside.

[00:44:42] Eric Jorgenson: And- 

[00:44:42] Nat Eliason: No, that's really true ... 

[00:44:43] Eric Jorgenson: I, I think, like, to be, you know, one of a handful of kids in a situation where there's, like, real financial skin in the game from the institution's point of view to be like, "You are gonna have to give me back hundreds of thousands of dollars if we don't collectively figure this out and help me get [00:45:00] over this incredibly high bar that will change, you know, my pot- mine, potentially my family's life," like, that is a, that is a very unique animal.

[00:45:08] Nat Eliason: Yeah, yeah. I, I don't, I don't think there's any other school or just educational institution that has this kind of skin in the game. I guess the closest would be Gauntlet AI, which is, like, Al- Alpha affiliated as well. Yeah. Right ? Yeah. Uh, because they're, you know, they, they need to get the engineers good enough at programming to get hired by their hiring [00:45:30] partners at the end of it.

[00:45:31] Eric Jorgenson: Which is much more like a trade school kind of model for software programming and AI programming. Exactly. Exactly. Um, although, uh, also a really cool model. Like, I encourage people to check that out. Uh, Austin Allred is a, is a genius. But, like, this is just a different level of sort of involvement and, and a, and a younger focus for kids.

[00:45:46] Nat Eliason: Yeah. And, and on top of that, we need to get them good SAT scores . Yeah . Right? It's like, it's like, "And we're doing the academics, too," right? And I, I feel like I do have to continually mention that in, in interviews and stuff because it's, it's easy to lose sight of the fact [00:46:00] that this is also a high school.

[00:46:01] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. 

[00:46:02] Nat Eliason: Right? Where we are also trying to deliver, like, top 1% academic outcomes. And, and again, feel very confident that we can do it, but yeah, like, it's, it... Again, we're just super aligned. And, like, you know, I want every week, you know, basically, like, every week I'm gonna wanna look at what every single student is doing, right?

[00:46:20] Nat Eliason: And, like, what problems they're running into. And we're developing these incredible internal AI tools to help us do that, to maintain, like, these micro level views of what [00:46:30] every student is doing and what problems they're hitting, so that me and the other people in my team can help coordinate the best resources possible to get them through whatever challenge they're running into.

[00:46:40] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. 

[00:46:41] Nat Eliason: What there's- And going back to what you said about, like, having that support, I mean, uh, there's just, like, all these things. Like, when I was running my agency, it took me, it took me so long to learn about, like, cashflow management, and about, like, hiring, and just, like, the internal resource allocation, and pricing, and all of these [00:47:00] things because Like, there was nobody looking at my books every week and saying, "Hey, you should really think about this."

[00:47:06] Nat Eliason: And there, there are lessons that took me a year or more to learn that I could have learned in a month if, if I'd had somebody providing that support for me. So again, it's like I, I don't really know any other organization that is taking, like, this long of a timeframe on aiding in development of entrepreneurs.

[00:47:25] Nat Eliason: I don't think it's been done before. And so that, that's why, again, just going back to, like, [00:47:30] feeling very confident that we can actually do this, that we can get these kids to build a million-dollar business by graduation. Like, that you, you remove those bottlenecks faster, and things can just go a lot quicker than you expect.

[00:47:41] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. It's very interesting. I, I wonder if there'll be, like, a common framework you end up sort of aligning on for kids to, like, manage their, their scorecards so that it can kind of ladder up into, like, a, like, a green, yellow, red sort of operating system- Yeah ... or anything like that. 

[00:47:54] Nat Eliason: I-- Dude, the data that we're gonna have- 

[00:47:57] Eric Jorgenson: Mm-hmm

[00:47:57] Nat Eliason: and the, like, knowledge base we're gonna build on [00:48:00] building businesses, there's not gonna be anything like that in the world. We're gonna have more insight into what works and what doesn't for learning entrepreneurship and starting out as an entrepreneur than anybody else has ever had. 

[00:48:11] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Okay, so very unfortunately, my audience is probably more parents than, than 13-year-olds.

[00:48:16] Eric Jorgenson: So, so what is the... What, what do you think it-- Have you-- I'm sure you've started to have conversations with, with some of the parents and families sort of coming towards this or evaluating this. What are those conversations like? 

[00:48:28] Nat Eliason: I mean, I think the biggest thing that I [00:48:30] haven't touched on too much, but that's really important to say, is that we don't wanna just create, like, TikTok entrepreneur hustle bros, right?

[00:48:40] Nat Eliason: If, if we get to freshman year and all of our seniors are, like, posing on Lamborghinis and, like, wearing massive watches and stuff, then we have kind of failed as, as an institution, right? Like, f- and this is why the, the philosophical side, the reading side, the, like, holistic [00:49:00] education is such an important part of what we're trying to do here, right?

[00:49:03] Nat Eliason: Freshman year has an incredibly aggressive reading list, because we think it's really important for them to understand why building businesses is good. Like, this isn't just about you making a million dollars. This is about you making the world better, solving problems for other people, like enriching other people's lives, and business is th- one of, if not the best ways to do that.

[00:49:27] Nat Eliason: And so we really want to try to instill that [00:49:30] as much as possible in these students, because, like, we're trying to cre- or we're trying to help foster the types of founders who go out and change the world and make it better, not just, like, sit on a bunch of cash and, you know, go party on yachts. And so that, that I think is, like, one of the, the things that, you know, I as a parent would be concerned about, right?

[00:49:49] Nat Eliason: Like, is my, is my kid still gonna be a good kid after this program, right? Like, are they gonna be a good person, or are they just gonna be, like, completely money obsessed? And we would really feel like we, we had failed [00:50:00] if they were just, like, completely money obsessed. And, you know, I, I think to, like, the 13-year-old who's super motivated about this kind of program, the, like, "We're gonna instill an appreciation for philosophy and writing and thinking in you," is, like, a less sexy hook than the, "We're gonna make you" or "We're gonna help you make a million dollars."

[00:50:18] Nat Eliason: But we think it's, like, it's just as important. Because also, like, learning how to think and learning how to, like, move beyond your immediate surroundings or what's, like, immediately salient on social [00:50:30] media and whatnot, that's how you find these really big opportunities, right? Like I know you talk about this in Book of Elon and in Almanack.

[00:50:37] Nat Eliason: Like, you have to learn to think at these both higher and deeper layers- Mm-hmm ... to understand where the real opportunities are in the world and just how much change you can actually create. And it's kinda like, you know, it, it's easier to do a big thing than a small thing in some ways. There's just, like, all of these aspects to it that, that are, that [00:51:00] are gonna be really, really important.

[00:51:01] Nat Eliason: And, like, we, we have a, a writing program as part of the school. Like, every week the students are gonna be writing essays. Mm. And they're gonna have to do it without ChatGPT. They're gonna have to- Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let them use Microsoft Word or Google Docs in the beginning, but I probably have one of the best noses for AI writing of almost anybody out there.

[00:51:19] Nat Eliason: And so if there's, like, the tiniest hint that they're using AI- ... like, they're gonna be writing longhand, right? They're, they're gonna get pencil and paper. Because it's like if you learn how to write really well, you learn how to think [00:51:30] better. If you learn how to, like, take ideas from books you're reading and explain how they're relevant to what you care about and what you're working on, or just explain them so that other people can understand them and benefit from them, you're working on those muscles that are gonna make you a lot more effective at, again, just, like, thinking about problems at a broader scale and not just what's gonna make me the most money, um, in the shortest timeframe.

[00:51:55] Nat Eliason: And on the one hand, it's, like, scary to take time away from the [00:52:00] entrepreneurship to, like, do all of that stuff because we have this promise, right? We have this goal. But it's also, I think, just, like, extremely impor- e- extremely important, again, going back to, like, it's a high school. Yeah. It's still a high school.

[00:52:12] Nat Eliason: It's a high school with this crazy, amazing goal attached to it, and we need to help foster, like, amazing students going into adulthood as well. 

[00:52:22] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. That, that kind of, like, captain's log would be so interesting of, like, a, a, you know, a 13-year-old starting off on this journey, and then being able to look [00:52:30] back at that at, at 15 and at 17.

[00:52:32] Eric Jorgenson: I- if y- if it is an honest reflection of their, their thinking at the time, like, it's an incredible opportunity to see, reflect on your own growth and how quickly, you know, you change over those years. 

[00:52:42] Nat Eliason: Oh, totally. And I, you know, and we'll let them pick if they wanna keep it as, like, a personal reflection thing or an audience-building thing.

[00:52:49] Nat Eliason: I love the idea of a bunch of these students having Substacks where they're talking about- Mm ... these industries that they are really passionate about. And it's gonna be a, it's gonna be an insane amount of work for me. It's gonna be more work [00:53:00] than almost anything else. But, like, reading those every week and giving them feedback and helping them sharpen their thinking and writing, it's like, that is very meaningful to me and very exciting.

[00:53:09] Nat Eliason: And I'm gonna have to figure out tooling to help with that and stuff down the line. But with the 20 

[00:53:13] Eric Jorgenson: students 

[00:53:14] Nat Eliason: to 

[00:53:14] Eric Jorgenson: start- You, you, you 

[00:53:14] Nat Eliason: wanna install a 

[00:53:14] Eric Jorgenson: word maximum rather than school's normal word minimum 

[00:53:17] Nat Eliason: Yeah, yeah, word minimum, exactly, right? Like, if you can't explain it in 250 words, then you don't really understand it.

[00:53:22] Nat Eliason: I'll, I'll, I'll figure it out. But I, I'm, I'm legitimately excited about that part of the program, too, on top of all the entrepreneurship stuff. 

[00:53:29] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. That'd be very [00:53:30] cool. I w- I wonder what the, um- I, I'm thinking about like other extremely accomplished teenagers, right? Like, you know, every Olympics it feels like there's somebody whose story is, you know, d- doing two-a-day practices and achieves this like world-class level of excellence.

[00:53:45] Eric Jorgenson: And I imagine- Yeah ... these will be something like Olympian level entrepreneurs, uh, i- by the end, if not by the beginning. And I'm curious kind of what the expected lifestyle is. Like, are, are these gonna be like... [00:54:00] Do you think these will be maniac schedules who are like, you know, answering emails at 5:00 AM and then like working 12-hour days because they're so passionate about it?

[00:54:08] Eric Jorgenson: Or are they like normal kids who build incredible businesses in the five hours a day that they're at school? 

[00:54:13] Nat Eliason: Yeah, I mean, my It, it, it's tricky because I, we certainly won't require them to be doing 12-hour days and, and 12-hour weekends, right? Because, I mean, one, that'd be unsustainable. I think that would be bad for them, it'd be bad for us.

[00:54:28] Nat Eliason: We- we're actually thinking that we [00:54:30] might have everybody, like, wear a Whoop- 

[00:54:32] Eric Jorgenson: Mm-hmm ... 

[00:54:32] Nat Eliason: and you need to get, like, a good sleep score in order to, like- That's a really interesting idea ... do your entrepreneurship for the day. Yeah. You can't be, like, staying up until 4:00 AM every night. You gotta take care of your body so that you can, like, do good work.

[00:54:43] Nat Eliason: But at the same time, if, you know, some of the, like, most impassioned periods of my life have been when I was on those schedules, right? Yeah. Where I was just so lit up about what I was doing, that that was all that I wanted to do. And so we don't wanna necessarily take that [00:55:00] away either. But I, I think it is important to encourage the students to find balance, right?

[00:55:05] Nat Eliason: Like, we can't have sports teams, obviously, 'cause we have 20 kids, but we can set up, like, a local padel league or, like, something for the students to do that is not business related outside of school- Mm-hmm ... or, you know, ways for them to get together in the evenings or on the weekends. And we really do wanna encourage that because again, going back to, like, it's a high school, right?

[00:55:24] Nat Eliason: Like, we want to give them as much of the social experience as possible [00:55:30] while understanding that this will also be, like, pretty demanding, um, time-wise. I mean, the, the one big benefit we have is that there's no homework. Like, all of the learning happens during those three hours in the morning. So, like, when I was in high school, I was spending a few hours a night on homework.

[00:55:47] Nat Eliason: I was spending a lot of time on homework on the weekends and studying for tests and things like that, and we don't have any of that. So that gives them a lot of time back for academics and other things. That definitely helps with keeping this more [00:56:00] balanced, even if the academic day is longer. But even if, like, they only work during those five hours, five days a week, I think you could still get pretty incredible outcomes 'cause that...

[00:56:14] Nat Eliason: I mean, that's 1,000 hours a year. Like, that's a lot- Yeah ... of time. 

[00:56:17] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. 

[00:56:17] Nat Eliason: Especially if you have AI cooking on some stuff outside of that time period. 

[00:56:21] Eric Jorgenson: So it's, it's still very early. I mean, you just opened up the f- very first admissions process. But what is-- I'm curious what the-- [00:56:30] Like, who's showing up for this?

[00:56:32] Eric Jorgenson: Who's kind of first in line? Are these, like, iconic entrepreneur families? Are these, like, people with, you know, normal families with kids who sort of show proclivities towards starting businesses early in their life? Like, what's the, what's the mix so far? 

[00:56:49] Nat Eliason: So far, it's mostly people who are already interested in the Alpha ecosystem.

[00:56:55] Eric Jorgenson: Okay. 

[00:56:55] Nat Eliason: And they're hearing about this through that ecosystem. Because, [00:57:00] you know, if you're coming in completely cold, it's, it's a lot to get bought in on, right? It's 

[00:57:05] Eric Jorgenson: very, yeah. 

[00:57:05] Nat Eliason: It's like, you know, the, the, the doing the whole high school academics in three hours a day, that already sounds pretty insane to somebody who doesn't have some familiarity with Alpha school.

[00:57:18] Nat Eliason: And that's almost like a footnote in our program. Mm-hmm. It's like, well, yeah, well, obviously we get the academics done in three hours, and then they're gonna make a million dollars by graduation, right? Like, that is just [00:57:30] bananas. 

[00:57:30] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, yeah. And if you don't have that- And- If you don't keep that... I, I'm glad you do keep pointing that out because it is very easy to just, like, hear the headline and be like, "Oh, wait, so my kid's gonna be, like, a rich idiot?"

[00:57:41] Nat Eliason: Yeah, yeah. Like, they'll not be 

[00:57:41] Eric Jorgenson: able 

[00:57:42] Nat Eliason: to do anything else in life. Like, they're, they're just gonna get a GED. Yeah. Like, we don't care about the academic. It's like no, no, no, no, no. They're, they're probably gonna do, like, 10 or 15 APs- Yeah ... and they're gonna get, like, a 1450 plus on their SAT. Like, they're gonna get excellent academics- 

[00:57:55] Eric Jorgenson: And 

[00:57:56] Nat Eliason: they might still go to college

[00:57:56] Nat Eliason: and they're gonna do all this business stuff. 

[00:57:58] Eric Jorgenson: Like, 

[00:57:58] Nat Eliason: they- Yeah, they could still go. I mean, these kids are gonna have [00:58:00] incredible resumes for college, right? Yeah. Like, it, that, that's, th- that's all still on the table. But so yeah, somebody coming in cold, if somebody knew nothing about Alpha- 

[00:58:08] Eric Jorgenson: Mm-hmm ... 

[00:58:08] Nat Eliason: and they just heard this podcast, like, that would be a pretty challenging sell, I think, for them to encourage their kid to...

[00:58:16] Nat Eliason: I mean, now granted, if you wanna do that, do not let me stop you. Like, I would love to hear from you, right? Like, please. I just, I understand that that is a big ask. That is a big leap. And so a lot of the people who are reaching out are people who are already in [00:58:30] Alpha or have already been exploring Alpha, um, for high school, and now they've heard about this and they're like, "Oh, that is like, that is the model that would be best- Mm-hmm

[00:58:38] Nat Eliason: for, for my kid." And so s- you know, in, in some of them, the kids have already started doing some entrepreneurship stuff, or they've just expressed a lot of interest, and they're middle school or their parents don't really know how to direct them on it. And I think, like, you know, to my parents, I think this would've been kind of resonant because it was, like, always clear that I was smart, right?

[00:58:58] Nat Eliason: Like, I could do the [00:59:00] work when I needed to. I was just completely unmotivated by anything in school. And especially after I had a little bit of that exposure to entrepreneurs, whi- which I didn't have at home. You know, like- Yeah ... this isn't a criticism of my parents. They were just both lawyers, right? Like, they weren't entrepreneurs, and so I, I didn't grow up in that.

[00:59:16] Nat Eliason: But if you have- And if you're kind of entrepreneurial and your son or daughter grew up in that, and you can see bits of yourself in them, and you remember how just, like, sad you were in the normal school system, and you had [00:59:30] kind of accepted that, like, your kid was going to have to go through that same, like, suffering, for lack of a better word, that you did, and then they'll get to, like, have fun and be free later.

[00:59:39] Nat Eliason: And then you get presented with this, and it's like, no, no, no. Like, they could actually enjoy high school. They could have a great time, right? They, they could actually get to do all the things that you didn't get to do because these options weren't available. I think that's a really compelling pitch. Like, that would be super compelling for me.

[00:59:53] Nat Eliason: And we're just, we're just trying to find all those families right now. 

[00:59:56] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. E- especially the New York area, that's gonna be the first campus, right? It... Like, [01:00:00] Manhattan? 

[01:00:01] Nat Eliason: Yeah, yeah. 

[01:00:01] Eric Jorgenson: Okay. 

[01:00:02] Nat Eliason: And then we'll probably open SF next year, 'cause that's the other- Mm ... like, most obvious city to have this in. I mean, it's big up there.

[01:00:08] Nat Eliason: Miami is the other, like, really, really big one. There's a lot of demand for Alpha in general, but also just, like, alternative schools in Miami, too. 

[01:00:15] Eric Jorgenson: Okay. So if you're in San Francisco, don't move to New York for this school. Like, there might be another one soon. Uh, we have boarding. Okay. We have boarding. Oh, oh, yeah.

[01:00:21] Eric Jorgenson: Interesting. 

[01:00:22] Nat Eliason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so I should actually mention that, too. Like, i- you know, if you're living in Kentucky and you think your kid would be a great fit for this, like, we actually have [01:00:30] boarding fig- uh, set up for it. Mm. And so, like, you're... Then it's with another school in New York. And so your kid can be in their boarding program but come to school with us.

[01:00:41] Nat Eliason: Because yeah, we don't want location to be a barrier for this. And we have scholarships available, too. So it's like we're just looking for the most ambitious teenagers in the country who are really lit up about the idea of getting to start entrepreneurship now, and we wanna do everything we can to help [01:01:00] them come do this program, 'cause we're just excited about seeing them succeed more than anything.

[01:01:04] Eric Jorgenson: Incredible. W- where do you see this going I don't know how far out you wanna look, 10 years, 20 years? Like, give us the, give us the big picture vision. 

[01:01:15] Nat Eliason: I mean, our 10-year plan is 10 campuses. Yeah. 10 campuses of 1,000 students each. And so I can't give you the exact cities, right? Like, we know the first few that we'd wanna target, but I think that, you know, the, you know, when we really dial [01:01:30] this in, when we feel, you know, when we're 100% confident saying that like, "Yes, if your student comes here and does the work, they will build a successful business by graduation.

[01:01:40] Nat Eliason: They won't have to go to college if they don't want to 'cause they can keep cooking, or they can go and they can come back to business after. They can go straight into industry. They can keep working on their business. And like, yes, it's expensive, but you're setting your student up for that financial independence at, like, 18."

[01:01:58] Nat Eliason: I mean, that's a very strong pitch for a [01:02:00] school, 'cause if you think about what parents spend right now on private school and college and tutoring and, like, all the things that go into it, right? There's a lot of families in New York City who spend 75K on high school and then another 50 to 75K on tutoring, which- Whoa

[01:02:17] Nat Eliason: to me is kind of insane 'cause it's like What is the school doing right? Like, forget the school, just hire the tutor, right? Like, a- and, and so, okay, if you could spend that same amount and [01:02:30] not have to deal with the tutoring, and your kid gets to, like, build a business in the afternoon and make a million dollars by graduation, like, that's a very strong pitch.

[01:02:37] Nat Eliason: And so I, I, I think, you know, one, we wanna expand the, you know, the elite founders school to every market that wants it because we believe that this is going to be one of the best high school models in the world, right? Mm. This is going to just unlock so much human potential at a young age. And we wanna figure out what are the more [01:03:00] productized software-driven versions of this that work at much lower price tiers.

[01:03:06] Eric Jorgenson: Mm. 

[01:03:06] Nat Eliason: Right? Because obviously, if we wanted to figure out a $10,000 a year software-driven version of this, we can't have these elite entrepreneurs, like, on staff supporting with everything. But we can probably build software and AI tools that teach a lot of the same skills and give a lot of the same feedback that require a lot more self-motivation and would require [01:03:30] more, like, decentralized networks to build community and things like that.

[01:03:33] Nat Eliason: But that would provide options for people who, you know, don't live in Manhattan or who can't afford to send their kids to this school or who don't, you know, qualify for scholarships or something like that. Like, we don't want this to just be education that is, like, gated to rich people, right? Like, we want to bring the education down market, and it's kinda like the Tesla model, right?

[01:03:53] Nat Eliason: Like, build the Roadster first. Yeah. Build the top market first, really figure it out there, and then we can figure out how to bring it to more accessible [01:04:00] layers after. 

[01:04:01] Eric Jorgenson: Okay, so t- the, the tuition for this to start with is high. 

[01:04:05] Nat Eliason: Yeah, yeah. 

[01:04:06] Eric Jorgenson: What, 

[01:04:06] Nat Eliason: a hun- Tuition's $150K a year. 

[01:04:08] Eric Jorgenson: 150K a year, but you get that back if you're not, if you don't make 100, or make a million dollars by graduation.

[01:04:13] Nat Eliason: Exactly. So it's, uh, 600K for a million dollars. 

[01:04:17] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, fair enough. Okay. 

[01:04:18] Nat Eliason: W- Or you get the four years of school for free, which, pretty good deal too. 

[01:04:21] Eric Jorgenson: S- also a good deal. Yeah. What, what is the- Where does that go? Like, what, what is that... That, that's a very expensive, right? Like, if the other high-end- Yeah ... [01:04:30] s- most high-end schools in the world are, you know, or in New York, are 50k to 75k a year.

[01:04:34] Eric Jorgenson: Like, where are you spending all of that, that the, the kids are gonna see value? 

[01:04:39] Nat Eliason: Yeah, yeah. I mean, so to be clear, it's not like I don- nobody else should start this business. Like, we're, we're spending all of that. Um, and it's, it's really just on the, like, the, the teachers and the resources and the education and everything that we want to, like, give to these students.

[01:04:56] Nat Eliason: I mean, like, token budget is part of it because we're [01:05:00] going to teach these students how to be, like, the most AI native people in the world. Not just the most AI native teenagers, but they're gonna be able to go into a Fortune 500 business at graduation and teach those executives how to use AI better.

[01:05:12] Nat Eliason: They're gonna be some of the best in the world at it, and that requires a decent amount of investment in software and tools on our part. If a student's hitting some supply chain issue and we wanna hire, like, an executive from Amazon to come in and work with them for a week, like, we're gonna do that, right?

[01:05:28] Nat Eliason: We're trying to give [01:05:30] them the best resources in the world to figure this out. And then the, the staff that is going to be in there with the students are gonna be paid more than really any other teachers in the world because we're trying to hire people who have that entrepreneurial experience, who could be out building businesses of their own, but are down to come do this for a couple of years to help accelerate the next generation.

[01:05:53] Nat Eliason: And so it's, it, it's a very expensive program to run. And again, going back to probably, like, why no one else has [01:06:00] done this, like, it's a lot to marshal those resources, and it's very exciting. Yeah. And it, it works out at scale. But we're, we're really, we're taking all of that tuition and more and putting it right back into the students and the program.

[01:06:15] Nat Eliason: And what we're not putting it into is, like, facilities and flashy stuff, right? Like, there's no $100 million aquatic center. There's no 200-acre campus. There's none of that, like, bloat that the tuition is [01:06:30] funding. It's all going back into the education to make it as valuable as possible for them. 

[01:06:36] Eric Jorgenson: Which it- it's kind of an interesting, like, you're almost bundling A lot of what you paid in tuition will come back in the form of value added to the businesses, right?

[01:06:45] Eric Jorgenson: So whether that's- Yeah ... like tokens that you're spending in order to, to like learn AI or build a product, whether it's like an expert that you're bringing in, a consultant, uh, you know, something like that. You know, y- you're, you're bundling like these kind of like the capital, the [01:07:00] advisory, the, you know, some of the vendor spend, like a lot of this stuff will come back to that business or that student through this venture.

[01:07:07] Nat Eliason: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you, you could, you could almost think of it as like trusting us as the best capital allocators for getting their businesses started and getting their educa- you know, with the addition of the great education- 

[01:07:21] Eric Jorgenson: Mm-hmm ... 

[01:07:21] Nat Eliason: because it's so easy to burn much more money than that trying to figure out entrepreneurship on your own, right?

[01:07:28] Nat Eliason: Or you compare it [01:07:30] to like an undergraduate business degree, which now would probably run you like 300 grand at least, and- 

[01:07:37] Eric Jorgenson: And be largely 

[01:07:37] Nat Eliason: trash ... none of that's going back into your 

[01:07:39] Eric Jorgenson: business. It's going to lectures. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, lectures, administration. Yeah, like just- Yeah ... to, yeah, the undergrad business programs, at least outside of a few highly specialized ones, I think are absolute catastrophes.

[01:07:53] Nat Eliason: Yeah, yeah. In terms of like ROI on tuition into the direct like [01:08:00] business support, yeah- Yeah ... there's nothing that's anywhere comparable to how we're doing it. 

[01:08:04] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Amazing. Where should people go to like learn more, follow along, get smart, aside from obviously, like, if you're not familiar with Alpha, definitely get a fundamental understanding of Alpha through some of those Joe podcasts.

[01:08:16] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I'll link them in the show notes, but like highly recommend as a, as a 101. I would call this a 201. 

[01:08:22] Nat Eliason: Yeah, yeah. It kind of 

[01:08:23] Eric Jorgenson: builds on top of that as fundamental knowledge. 

[01:08:24] Nat Eliason: That, I think, like you said, his interview on Invest Like The Best or Knowledge Project are both fantastic [01:08:30] places to start. If you want to learn more about Founders school, it's just founders.school, or honestly, just email me directly.

[01:08:36] Nat Eliason: I'm just nat.eliason@alpha.school. And you know, I'm, I'm honestly happy to talk about this with anybody who's been listening to it, answer any questions, and yeah, admissions are open right now for fall '26, but if you have a seventh grader or a sixth grader and you're interested in talking about '27, '28, like love to chat with you too.

[01:08:55] Nat Eliason: So we're just- Awesome ... getting the word out there, sharing what's going on. Yeah. I mean, I love talking about it, [01:09:00] so 

[01:09:00] Eric Jorgenson: just happy to. Yeah, I, I'm glad we get to do this. I've been a huge advocate for Alpha School among like the f- the friends and families that I know. Kansas City is now kind of on this, like it's, it's opened up for indications of interest, so if we get a critical mass- Yeah

[01:09:12] Eric Jorgenson: like we'll, we'll come out and they'll do a shadow day. So I've been, I've been taking over some dinner parties with this, uh, this conversation- Awesome. ... and I will continue to, but no matter where you are, you can sort of go check it out and indicate interest and at least start poking your nose into it. I, I think this Alpha and Founders both kind of [01:09:30] fit They, they like clicked into a thing that has felt obvious to me for like 10 or 15 years, which is like sooner or later there'll be a tipping point around AI and personalized tutors and the quality, the, the potential quality of education of like every human being on earth can- 

[01:09:47] Nat Eliason: Yeah

[01:09:47] Eric Jorgenson: 100X basically. And I think this is the organization and the technology and the system that is doing that, that is gonna be, is, this is gonna take over the world over the next hopefully decade, but it [01:10:00] might take 30 or 40 years depending on how quickly we can get rid of some bad ideas and install some new ones.

[01:10:05] Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So, you know, please, uh, new ideas are hard and change is uncomfortable, but like rip some Band-Aids and go read up on this stuff. 

[01:10:14] Nat Eliason: Yeah. And you know, there, it's like there, there are bad ways to use AI, but we're trying to use it in the best and most responsible way possible to create the best education outcomes possible to, you know, fill kids' heads with knowledge and turn them into these philosopher [01:10:30] builders and give them everything they need to really succeed in whatever the world is turning into.

[01:10:37] Nat Eliason: It feels like it moves at a mile a minute, and it's ki- it feels like it's changing every few months. And it kinda feels like we're the only school that's agile enough to stay on top of it, and we're just like doing our best to build what that program is gonna look like to help all these kids succeed no matter like where they are and what they wanna go do after.

[01:10:56] Nat Eliason: So it's exciting to be a part of it. 

[01:10:57] Eric Jorgenson: Love it. Thank you for, thank you for sharing. Thank you for [01:11:00] like upending your, your life to go build something so cool. I'm very confident it'll, it'll put a dent in the world and accelerate a lot of people who will now put even bigger dents in the world. It's gonna be awesome.

[01:11:10] Nat Eliason: It's gonna be awesome. Appreciate you, man. I'm excited to be, you know, we're doing this together, right? Yeah. Like- 

[01:11:14] Eric Jorgenson: Yes, we are. I will be 

[01:11:14] Nat Eliason: there ... you're gonna fill them up with the books. 

[01:11:17] Eric Jorgenson: I will be there, and I hope you'll come back and update us as you get more, more stories and things unfold. This is gonna be a really cool thing to track.

[01:11:23] Nat Eliason: Absolutely. Thanks, Eric. 

[01:11:24] Eric Jorgenson: All right. Cheers.

Eric Jorgenson