
Husband @KatieMay, private credit CIO @PierAssetMgmt. @AlphaSchool parent. My opinions. Past performance no guarantee of future results. See link for more info.
Los Angeles, CA
Joined December 2008
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Lots of new friends; here’s what we do and how you can get involved.
We invest in small dollar loans (<$250k) and contractual cash flows.
Examples: small business, consumer loans, bridge real estate, music royalties advances, litigation finance, etc.
Wheels up to Vegas for @money2020 for the day.
Friends, give me a shout if you’re there and want to catch up.
Replying to @Alphaschool
@Alphaschool High School already exists in LA. Will be 9-11 grades next year. Interested to learn more? The Head of High School, Chris Locke, will be in town this coming Tuesday. See you there?
My son informed me that every @Alphaschool High School graduate has gotten into their top college choice. Except one. That student got rejected by Harvard, and had to settle for acceptance into MIT and Stanford.
I know the sample size is small, and the rumor might not be perfectly accurate, but it is impressive nonetheless.
If you're in the South Bay and interested in learning more about the @Alphaschool here, there is an open house this Thursday evening. Tour the school, hear from staff, students, and parents, and enroll for next session! Register and more info below.
events.alpha.school/register…
This is what learning looks like at Alpha School South Bay LA. My 7th grade daughter started off with a 3rd grade reading test to start off school. Passed (90%+). Then passed 4th.
But she must have had a gap at 5th grade (tested at 80%). So she spent 6 days catching up and filling gaps, and then passed 5th. Passed 6th the next day.
Now she’s working on 7th grade reading. It wouldn’t surprise me if she gets up to 8th or 9th in reading this year.
That said, she’s still way behind in the other subjects. Our supposedly blue ribbon public schools failed us.
Opening and progress this year:
Math: 4th
Fast Math: 3rd / TBD - she has passed every level so far
Reading: 5th -> 7th
Language: 4th -> 5th
Vocabulary: 4th -> 6th
Science: 3rd -> 4th
This is what learning looks like at Alpha School South Bay LA. My 7th grade daughter started off with a 3rd grade reading test to start off school. Passed (90%+). Then passed 4th.
But she must have had a gap at 5th grade (tested at 80%). So she spent 6 days catching up and filling gaps, and then passed 5th. Passed 6th the next day.
Now she’s working on 7th grade reading. It wouldn’t surprise me if she gets up to 8th or 9th in reading this year.
That said, she’s still way behind in the other subjects. Our supposedly blue ribbon public schools failed us.
Opening and progress this year:
Math: 4th
Fast Math: 3rd / TBD - she has passed every level so far
Reading: 5th -> 7th
Language: 4th -> 5th
Vocabulary: 4th -> 6th
Science: 3rd -> 4th
If you're in the South Bay and interested in learning more, there is an open house this Thursday evening. Tour the school, hear from staff, students, and parents, and enroll for next session! Register and more info below.
events.alpha.school/register…
Listened to @astroteller interviewed at @moonshots_pod Live. Education is one of the biggest moonshots he hasn’t seen solved yet, but wants to. Also says Moonshots have to be efficient to work at scale.
@Alphaschool is the closest thing I’ve seen yet to a revolutionary change of education. It has started as a high cost private school, but @jliemandt wants to bring it to a billion kids. I think this model has the best shot at efficiency for growth.
Deal Catalyst ABF was awesome! Great conversations, and even the quick hellos, were incredibly valuable to do in person. I did lose my voice, but I'll take that as a measure of success.
Back to LA tonight to go to the Moonshots conference tomorrow. Will I see anyone there?
Saying AI in schools is bad is like saying phone apps are bad. A calendar, calculator, health monitor...they're not all Tik Tok.
First week of @Alphaschool South Bay LA is in the books for my three kids. I'm super impressed already, but I drank the Koolaid long ao. Here's a spattering of updates if you're interested.
* Transparency - night and day between this summer. We were honestly scared the location search would die, but now that school is open, the comms from the school is almost overwhelming. And, through Timeback, I'm already tracking daily learning.
* Earn everything - I've heard this multiple times from my kids this week. They are blown away by what they can earn, but realize they have to earn it. My middle daughter came home one day and immediately told me she wanted to make goals with her guide so she could earn a set of headphones that's available.
* Field trips - The kids were informed they will go on 50-60 field trips this year, which 3-4 on domestic flights, and 1 Int'l. All, only if earned. The 1st field trip happened on day 4!
* MAP testing only in mornings so far, so no screen learning yet. Setting a baseline. My son tested at 99% on Math 8th grade MAP test, while my 7th grade daughter tested at 3rd grade science and reading. Both don't really care...they know that all that matters is how well they improve from here.
* The Playa Vista building is huge and decked out. Kids and guides are planning use of all sorts of empty rooms (they have to earn each) - 3d printer room, woodworking room, gaming room, movie room, garden, drone room, futsol field/team/room, maker space room, art room, science lab, etc.
* "How was school?" All 3 kids are already responding "good, great, fun". Huge step up from last years' answers "boring, sucks, ugh".
* Enrollment: 25 kids a week before school, now already at 28. (I believe we'll be at 60-100 by year end.) No complaints about the number of kids of friends or anything like that yet.
* Carpools are amazing already. Interesting conversations among kids K-8. Partially just great kids, partially due to their excitement around school. 10x better than previous year carpools.
* First workshop is learning to surf, 2x/wk. Learning independence, goals, tools, safety, grit, etc.
A week from today, all three of my kids (4th/7th/8th grade) will be starting at the brand new @Alphaschool South Bay LA.
I could not be more excited that this has come to fruition after a 10 month journey of getting this off the ground. We have 2 amazing campuses launching and a ton of awesome founding families.
I truly believe the trajectory of our family is about to change significantly this year. If you're in the South Bay, come join in this amazing journey!
The new Huberman Lab episode is out: How to Accelerate Learning & Improve Education | Joe Liemandt
0:00 Joe Liemandt
3:16 History of Traditional Classroom Model; Education Milestones
8:08 Sponsors: David & Lingo
10:25 Alpha School, High Standards & Support
22:33 Effective Support, Academics vs Athletics; Homeschooling
30:03 AI, Individualized Learning & Mastery
34:31 Teacher Education, Standardized Tests, Role of School
40:52 Sponsors: AG1 & Helix Sleep
43:42 AI, Scaffolding Learning, Mastery; Working Memory & Fluency
52:41 Working Memory, Focus; Gifted Kids
1:00:30 Basics Mastery, Grade Level Catch-Up, Individualized AI Lessons & Pace
1:06:57 Sponsor: LMNT
1:08:17 Shame, Motivation, Growth Rate; Overcoming Mental Blocks & Paying Kids
1:20:55 Suffering & Motivation, Kids Goals, Sports; Doing Hard Things
1:31:21 Founders High School, Life Skills; Kids' Goals
1:42:44 Reimagining Classroom Education
1:47:21 Importance of Building & Creating, AI & Humanity
1:58:04 Science & Redesigning Experiments, Kids' Interest-Led Projects
2:05:26 Huberman Lab Live Events
2:06:14 Learning Predictors, Gender, Income; Redesigning the School System
2:18:32 Success; Sports Academy, Alpha School Expansion
2:28:36 Acknowledgements
2:31:07 Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Sponsors, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter
Includes paid partnerships.
Conor Neu retweeted
Data centers barely use any water, barely use any land, and they lower electric bills.
Conor Neu retweeted
You have a bunch of former math teachers trying to dunk on alpha school. Basically alpha school opened a free charter school in Arizona called Unbounded. Now they are saying it failed based on a google slides from the board of directors. I just read it and the Unbounded board of director slides show the opposite what @ddmeyer is trying to show.
The key number is that Dan is showing the Unbounded students underperforms on AASA based on comparsion against Arizona public students. But the slides show that actually it's the opposite, the students are learning extremely rapidly based on MAP 1.8, which is extraordinary. Just for context charter schools typically are at 1 to 1.1 and just public school is at 1 or below 1.
What likely happened is the school got a bunch of underperforming students. But now they are learning rapidly. The slides show that at the end of the year the students have a 1.8 MAP, which is a measure how fast a student is learning as compared to the base line. The reason why charter schools are famous is that they are at 1.1 MAP which is equivalent to 16 days ahead in rading and 6 days ahead in math. Alpha school shows 1.8 MAP overall end of the year, which is equivalent to being ahead 144 days. The mid year report reports that the students have a 3.75 language (275% faster than normal), reading 3.18 (218% faster than normal), science 2.43 (143% faster than normal) , math 1.15 (15% faster than normal). Overall 80% faster than normal with a map of 1.8.
This is the substack danmeyer.substack.com/p/does…
This is the board's slides: docs.google.com/presentation…
Alpha School opened a charter school, where they cannot charge $45-70k for tuition and screen for gifted students
The results? 10 percent math proficiency and scores worse than traditional public schools
As I've been saying, all this hype has just been selection effects
Today’s WSJ front page shows a kid crying as he heads back to school.
Meanwhile, my kids are counting the days until Alpha School starts here in the South Bay of LA in September.
And, tonight, they start a three day Founders Weekend where they launch their own business.
#DivergenceInEducation
We’re launching a new @alphaschoolatx high school for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Our promise: Make $1m by graduation, or receive a full tuition refund.
Yes, this will be the coolest high school in the world.
And we're building the best team in the world to make it happen.
We’re looking for 2-3 exceptional coaches to help us guide the students towards achieving this aggressive but achievable goal.
You won’t be giving lectures or assigning homework.
You’ll be grilling them on their P&L, driving them to the car wash they bought, critiquing their email funnels, pushing them to do things 99% of the world doesn't believe is possible.
Job posting is live and DMs are open.
Conor Neu retweeted
153 students have applied for the upcoming Founders Weekend event in LA. 🤯
That’s a lot of new entrepreneurs launching their first business this weekend.
Can’t wait to watch the kids cook.
This has to be one of my favorite charts of all time. Unfortunately, it's hard for humans to comprehend exponential growth beyond here.
The better way to think of it going forward is in the inverse. Assume AI has static human intelligence. In a month, we will be the equivalent of a monkey compared to AI as a human. In 2 months, we'll be an ant. In 6 months, we will be a single cell organism.
We will have no comprehension of the work it is doing and its intelligence.

















