Joe Liemandt on Alpha School, AI, and Redesigning the School Day

Joe Liemandt argues that learning science and language models can dramatically accelerate academic instruction. In conversation with Erik Torenberg and Gagan Biyani, he asks what schools should do with the time that becomes available and how they can help students build skills for an AI-shaped world.

Liemandt describes Alpha as an attempt to redesign the K–12 school day. He claims its learning engine can teach much faster than a conventional classroom, making it possible to reconsider how students spend the six or seven hours they are at school.

He says Alpha makes three commitments: children should love school, learn more academics in two hours, and spend the rest of their day developing life skills. He reports that more than 90% of surveyed students said they loved school and roughly half preferred it to vacation; these are his account of the school's surveys.

Liemandt claims students learn twice as much in two hours as in a conventional day with homework, and reports strong standardized-test results. He presents these as the school's results and argues that time saved can compound into opportunities to practice other skills.

The afternoons are devoted to group projects with adults, covering leadership and teamwork, entrepreneurship and financial literacy, relationships, storytelling and public speaking, and grit. Liemandt says the question is how to prepare children for a changing world, not simply how to send them home earlier.

According to Liemandt, Alpha grew from an Austin school to around 50 campuses, after adding 12 the previous year. He acknowledges that wider adoption requires more scale and evidence, and predicts that educators will reconsider the school day if the two-hour model proves persuasive.

Biyani recalls visiting Alpha before Liemandt worked there full time. He says the significant shift has been making the model believable to families. Liemandt, whose background is in products and entrepreneurship, describes the challenge as packaging the approach so it can be understood and scaled without losing quality.

Torenberg asks what makes children enjoy school and how motivation affects results. Liemandt says technology alone will fail if it is simply inserted into an unchanged school day; the more basic question is whether leaders will redesign the experience around students wanting to attend.

Liemandt rejects the assumption that an enjoyable school must be undemanding. In his view, children like challenging work with friends and take pride in meeting high standards. He contrasts that with group projects where one person does the work and the others disengage.

He describes a teamwork exercise in which third graders wear microphones in an escape room. The school analyzes their language, then repeats the challenge after an eight-week workshop. Liemandt says the school looks for a much higher share of supportive behavior and observes faster completion; he presents these as internal observations.

Liemandt says older elementary students also attempt a teamwork simulation used in a Wharton MBA challenge. His point is that social and collaborative skills can be taught deliberately at a young age, with clear practice and feedback rather than leaving them to chance.

For academics, Liemandt says failure can become self-reinforcing when a time-based class moves ahead before a child understands a prerequisite. Alpha instead gives a student work matched to their current level, even if an eighth grader needs material normally taught in fifth grade.

He describes an intended success rate of about 80–85%: too much success makes work trivial, while too much failure discourages engagement. The system is meant to add scaffolding when work is difficult and move faster when it is too easy, so students experience progress alongside challenge.

Biyani says Alpha inspired the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, but the design cannot simply be copied from elementary school into college. Each age group needs a different approach, he argues, and university leaders should organize the institution around students' success rather than the demands of surrounding adults.

Liemandt, an investor and adviser to the academy, says universities still have an important role but need reinvention. Alpha needs places for its graduates to continue learning, and he sees an opportunity to build a university experience suited to a different age and set of needs.

He recalls asking more than 70 interns from universities including MIT and Stanford whether their education was preparing them for the world after graduation. He says only one raised a hand, while others worried that entry-level jobs might disappear as AI advances. This is an anecdote from his internship cohort, not a broad survey.

The interns worked on an educational language-model project intended to make learning tools more widely available. Liemandt says they researched learning science and worked long hours because the project was difficult, collaborative, and meaningful to them.

Biyani says ambitious university students need to build, make mistakes, and deal with practical challenges before entering the workforce. Liemandt emphasizes that the interns did study, but their research was connected to an application they were trying to build.

Biyani argues that motivation can drive study: students may want to create things people use, earn revenue, or find work. He recalls disliking the format of university lectures and says colleges should rethink the format if students are not engaging with it.

Liemandt recounts meeting Alpha's first high-school graduates after their first university term. He says they reported strong grades but criticized large introductory lectures, while valuing small seminars, clubs, and other activities. He describes the university as a bundle whose components have different value to students.

Liemandt also reflects on his own time at Stanford before dropping out. Meeting visitors such as technology founders, building with friends, and forming relationships mattered to him more than sitting in lecture halls; some of that work eventually led to his company.

Biyani asks how parents respond to unfamiliar educational options. Liemandt says some still want a clear path to an Ivy League institution, while other parents who attended elite universities themselves are looking for a different way to prepare their children for the future.

In his experience, parents of older teenagers may be reluctant to change course near college applications, while parents of younger children have more time to consider alternatives. He expects a new institution to make a separate case to parents even when students themselves are enthusiastic.

Liemandt offers a historical analogy: as mechanization changed agricultural work in the early twentieth century, communities invested in schooling they had not experienced themselves. He uses that story to argue that parents today may likewise need to consider an unfamiliar model. The historical figures are his characterization, not independently established in the discussion.

Asked why a family should risk choosing a new institution over an established university, Liemandt says early adoption begins with families already dissatisfied with the existing path. He expects visible results from the first cohort to make later families more comfortable.

He recalls warnings that his daughters would struggle to enter college if they attended Alpha, and says some families who chose a conventional high school later regretted their decision. His conclusion is that families evaluate risk through the outcomes they can see, not just an institution's established reputation.

Liemandt says he was himself a slow adopter. His children attended Catholic school, and he initially thought the alternative founded by MacKenzie Price and Brian was too unconventional. It took about two years before he moved his children, despite his own history of leaving college to start a company.

He describes information sessions with large audiences but only a handful of families willing to be first at a new campus. In his account, the New York campus began with about a dozen students and later filled. Early examples, he says, can reduce uncertainty for families who follow.

Torenberg observes that early participants can form a community of people with strong conviction. Liemandt adds that a new school will have hiccups, so it benefits from families who understand and want its particular model. He says it should be clear about its use of AI and screens instead of promising to suit everyone.

The academy's leaders discuss keeping the first cohort selective and making it a one-year experience with no tuition in the first year. They suggest students can defer or return to another college afterward. Liemandt argues that a motivated student's interest deserves serious weight in the decision.

Biyani recalls resenting schoolwork that he did not believe in as his sense of agency grew. He says the shared educational philosophy is to design around the student so that buy-in replaces some of the rebellion that arises when learning feels imposed.

Liemandt tells the story of dropping out of Stanford. His father initially feared he was making a mistake and would be lazy, but changed his view after seeing him work intensely on a company. Liemandt uses the experience to distinguish disengagement from a lack of capacity for hard work.

He argues that students often change quickly when they are doing difficult things they care about. As another example, he describes Alpha's world-school program, in which students commit to a demanding year of service in Africa and approach it with enthusiasm.

Biyani says the academy has allocated a $5,000 travel budget per student, with students deciding how to use it. He hopes many will travel independently to less wealthy countries because unfamiliar environments can provide personal perspective and lessons useful in business.

Torenberg contrasts students who appear unmotivated in conventional school but work intensely on something they love with high achievers who struggle once external structure disappears. He hopes the new programs help students discover their interests and develop self-direction earlier.

Liemandt says grades alone do not describe a well-rounded person or predict success in the real world. He wants relationship building and other life skills to be part of the curriculum, rather than optional activities left to clubs after class.

Biyani says employers often emphasize interpersonal skills, maturity, and systems thinking rather than a narrow technical skills gap. Students learn these by working with people, building complex things, experiencing rejection, and creating structure for themselves. Liemandt adds leadership, ownership, teamwork, and receiving feedback.

Torenberg asks what an 18-year-old should study in a world where AI is changing coding, mathematics, and physics. Liemandt argues that AI makes it faster to acquire domain knowledge and gives students tools to build, citing high-school students working on learning-software projects.

Liemandt predicts that students will increasingly build educational software for other students. He cites a student-built history curriculum using a guessing game and an AI character, and says participants achieved high AP scores. These are his examples and predictions, not a demonstrated outcome for all schools.

Biyani suggests replacing the question 'Which field is safest?' with 'What am I interested in?' He believes students who learn to use AI within a field they care about can create new possibilities, though this is his outlook rather than a guarantee of future employment.

He points to his own choice to work in education, a sector he describes as historically difficult for founders. Even without maximizing financial returns, he values the field and the life he built around it. The academy, he says, seeks students motivated to act rather than merely defend against change.

Liemandt wants students to see themselves as builders of the future rather than passive subjects of technological change. He describes the educator's job as helping a generation use AI optimistically and develop the character and capability to shape what comes next.

Biyani asks about Alpha's Founder School for high-school students. Liemandt says entrepreneurship and financial literacy begin in kindergarten with earning, saving, spending, investing, and giving, because he regards entrepreneurship as a set of teachable skills.

Liemandt describes the school's offer: students are promised a business earning $1 million in profit during high school or a refund of tuition. He says the program opened in August and builds on previous Alpha students' businesses. The statement is his description of the offer; the discussion does not establish its terms or outcomes independently.

The program breaks the goal into steps: first earn $100, then $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, and eventually $1 million. Liemandt says early students are moving quickly through the sequence and are already thinking about what they might build next.

Beyond business skills, Liemandt emphasizes relationships and access to experienced people. He remembers the value of meeting accomplished visitors at Stanford and discovering that, despite their achievements, they were people students could talk to and learn from.

He recounts a 14-year-old student cold-calling Jensen, who returned the call and gave the student a brief chance to pitch. Liemandt says the feedback praised the initiative but criticized the preparation: basic qualification questions could have been answered through research before using the opportunity.

Biyani says the academy is assembling people from different disciplines to support students, while Founder School is also bringing in speakers and mentors. Both see access to experienced adults and honest feedback as especially valuable for young people.

Torenberg recalls Max Levchin describing how working alongside ambitious peers raised his own expectations. Liemandt says teachers can similarly help students raise their ambitions by making role models and a supportive culture part of the educational experience.

Torenberg closes by saying that both K–12 and higher education have seen relatively little disruption in their basic models. Liemandt returns to his central belief: children can do much more than adults often expect, and education should help them discover that capacity.