Marc Andreessen recently tweeted “In our new era of AI: Every child will have an A.I. tutor that is infinitely patient, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful.”

That era is here.

Try it yourself 👉 synthesis.com/tutor

1/n Wealthy elites have always known tutoring builds exceptional people.

Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle.

The holy grail of education technology is a superhuman personal tutor.

That is what we are building, starting with mathematics.

theintrinsicperspective.com/p/why-we-stopp…

Tech twitter is arguing about employee stock options because @theryanking wrote a thread.

As both a founder and former employee, I mainly agree with him.

Thought it could be helpful to share my experience and the approach we take @synthesischool...

https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390167461224451

I believe @theryanking is right that offering early exercise is a “no-brainer” for **early** stage startups.

I’ll go further: I find it appalling that every early stage company does not offer early exercise.

https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390190970351617

Hiring more won’t make you go faster because the output of your projects follows a power law.

When constrained by people, you focus on the 1-2 most critical bottlenecks.

When you have extra people they work on non-bottlenecks, which does nothing to increase overall speed. So yes, you could do more projects by hiring more people, but those projects won’t matter.

This is why Steve Jobs was so maniacal about focus. Was much smarter for Apple to nail the iPod than to make printers, even though printers made money too.

I want to share a principle at the core of @synthesischool.

We call it “No Speed Limit.”

👇🏼🧵 While some schools are cutting advanced programs, our goal is to give students as much of a challenge as they can handle.

Every student, even the most advanced, needs the experience of being pushed beyond their comfort zone.

Here's an education conundrum I've been noodling on:

I bought an old Jeep a few years ago, which gave me a chance to practice my mechanic skills.

To my surprise, I was good at it right away...often better than people with 10 years experience.

Why?

👇 My hypothesis is that problem solving is a meta skill, at least partially independent of domain knowledge.

So although I had zero mechanic experience, I had 10 years as a software engineer.

Different specifics, but the process of *thinking* is the same.

@synthesischool has raised a Series A!

$5M at $50M post from @APompliano and a syndicate of ~50 angels, founders, and influencers.

Here's the story of how the synthesis approach was born at SpaceX, how I got involved, and how we got to here...

https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/1392101036848988172

In 2014, Elon started a school at SpaceX for his kids. He tapped @synthesischool cofounder @josh_dahn to build and run that school.

Here are the 10 books & essays that have been most valuable to me so far in life (building a family, tech companies, and keeping good health).

This represents the top 0.1% of what I've read.

More or less in priority order in terms of how often I find the ideas useful.

/0 Incerto by @nntaleb, particularly Antifragile and Skin in the Game.

Taleb's books are all riffs on the same theme: how do we best live with uncertainty?

In the process of answering the question, he exposes an astonishing variety of modernistic bullsh*t.

/1

Here's what Josh and I are doing for our own kids...

1/ Forest school 3-4 hrs/day

Wander in the woods or beach. 10-15 kids w/ a teacher or two. Socialize and observe ecosystems. Foster joie de vivre. Avoid spirit-crushing modern school environment. 2/ Synthesis 2 hrs/day

a) Games/simulation challenges with other kids for analytical and collaboration skill. Math and coding eventually integrated to simulations.

b) "How It Works" sessions to study complex systems from many angles. Example: How does StarLink work?

Physicist @DavidDeutschOxf perfectly describes the rationale for @synthesischool in a 1994 article about video games:

“Why is being interactive so important? Because interacting with a complex entity is what life and thinking and creativity and art and science are all about.” “Video games do not really impart a new kind of physical skill; what they impart is the fundamental mental skill, of understanding a complex and autonomous world.”