Austin Scholar #92: Y-School

(the Y Combinator-inspired high school)

Hey, y'all!

This week from Austin Scholar...

1. Y-School (the Y Combinator-inspired high school)

Super exciting update: I got an interview at Oxford!! I’ll let y’all know how the interview goes, but I’m just beyond excited to be one step closer to my college dreams.

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Y-School (the Y Combinator-inspired high school)

Y Combinator, the legendary startup incubator, has given thousands of founders the opportunity to change not only their lives, but the world as a whole. What if there was a school that could do the same for your child?

I propose that we create a high school modeled after Y Combinator, made possible by taking advantage of 2 Hour Learning.

I’d call the project Y-School, and here is how I would design the program using Y Combinator’s ideals:

01. Olympic-level Projects (the Billion-dollar Businesses)

Students would come to Y-School to spend four years of afternoons (and, of course, nights and weekends) building an Olympic-level project. 

I love the term Olympic-level simply because Olympic means “best in the world,” not just "good for your age." Most adults–and parents–consistently lower their child's expectations to keep the kid from failing. But, the most important thing a teacher can do is help kids raise their standards and set ambitious goals (love this from Tyler Cowen). 

High school students can be the best in the world at something. The Y-School program will help them achieve it. 

02. Passion and Purpose (the Company Mission Statement)

I’ll be honest: most 13 and 14-year-olds don't have a passion and purpose. The first stage of the Y-School program would be to help kids find what they really love to do, what they're willing to work hard at, and what helps bring purpose to their lives. 

Some kids would come to Y-School knowing all of this and would be off to the races, while others would dabble as they try to find their passion. It's important for the program to recognize that some kids might change their Olympic-level project every few months as they explore and change and grow up. 

Parents should be relaxed about their child’s changing projects. What could be better than spending four years with your child experimenting and exploring to find their life's purpose?

A great exercise for finding your passion is the Ikigai framework. I've seen teens at Alpha work through and think about the four items (what they love, what they’re good at, what the world needs, and what they can make money from) for the first time. The world makes so much more sense when they think about things through this framework. While the Jay Shetty video and structure are mostly built for adults, I've seen many kids and teens work through the exercises and have true "a-ha" moments.

03. Become an Expert (the Industry Knowledge of Great Founders)

13 and 14-year-olds are not experts in their area of interest. 

But to accomplish their goals, they need to be. 

They need to become the world's experts in their field so they can have new, innovative ideas and be taken seriously by other experts. They have four years to build this knowledge, so there's plenty of time. 

There are two sets of tasks that help a student become an expert. They are:

1. Building a Second Brain

The first thing students will start building is their Second Brain (thanks Tiago!). For thirty minutes per day, they’ll research their field and compile their learnings. 

Yes, everything you need to know is available on the internet or in an AI, but the key is to compile a Second Brain repository of your own expertise. 

Our “test to pass” for a student’s Second Brain: when loaded into a GPT, it gives better answers than ChatGPT does alone (credit, of course, to Sam!).

2. Finding Your Spiky POV and Personal Monopoly

As a student builds their Second Brain, it allows them to define and develop their Spiky POV and Personal Monopoly (one of my favorites of David’s). (Shout out to my favorite newsletter, I'm a Sheep God.) The other key thing these exercises do, alongside being an expert and being the world's best, is push kids away from the old-school path and towards the frontier of knowledge (thanks to Paul Graham himself for this one).

04. Build an Audience (the First Customers)

Most teens fall into one of two camps: creator or distributor. Creators are kids who want to write books, build a video game, score a musical, or create a movie. Distributors are kids who want to post six times a day on TikTok, build Roblox clans, or give speeches–networkers extraordinaire. 

Creators are interested in the artistic side of a project, while distributors are interested in getting content in front of people.

Teen creators almost never want to show their work to anyone. When I was a freshman, I was super happy to just write my stories and save the file to my Google Drive. Distributors, on the other hand, shy away from the deep work required to become a true expert. When my sister was a freshman, I always felt I had to double-check the facts she was claiming in her speeches. 

But to be Olympic-level, you must be both. As one of my guides at Alpha constantly tells us, you can't run fast in your backyard and call yourself an Olympian. You need to do it in front of fifty million people. 

And this leads to our next exercise, which is to build an audience. We’ll divide this into two parts: 

1. Build an audience of experts 

Twitter is the best platform for this, because no matter what the domain, the experts hang out on Twitter. Spending just fifteen minutes a day interacting with a highly curated Twitter list helps keep us at the forefront of our fields. 

2. Build an audience of customers

The second audience teens need to reach is their customers – and the best place to reach them can vary depending on the project. Kids targeting other teens would focus on TikTok, while I go after parents with my Substack. Sometimes audiences aren’t even on the internet. I have a classmate who built a bike park from his in-person network of mountain bikers. 

Building an audience allows teens to continually refine their ideas and thoughts, because they’re working out loud and getting feedback. By nature, teens think they know everything. Having to build an audience shows teens where their ideas are strong, and where they're nonsensical.

I have to admit: when I was just writing for myself, I was mostly writing teen angst. Once I decided I wanted to build an audience, I had to start putting myself in my audience's shoes. When I did that, my writing (and critical thinking skills) got ten times better.

04. Build in Public (the Public Launches)

As you become an expert and build an audience, you’re also able to build in public. Unlike Y Combinator, where participants can start coding up their app on day one, 13- and 14-year-olds don't have the skills. 

So while they’re becoming an expert and building an audience, they also need to develop their skills, whether that’s learning to program a video game, doing the basics of a movie shoot, or writing the fundraising pitch for a bike park. 

And there is no better way to get better than to publish their work for feedback. Successful adults are often willing to "overinvest" in ambitious teens, and our program relies on that. 

Grandmasters are willing to help teens build a program to teach a million kids how to play chess. Broadway producers review musical scripts of a group of teens trying to write their first musical. I've been helped by countless (David Perell, Sahil Bloom, rebelEducator, Austen Allred, and so many more – even Elon Musk liking one of my posts was really helpful). Teens will listen to third-party adults. 

Parents hesitate  to criticize their child's work for fear of the impact on their already tenuous relationship. The internet has no such qualms.

Building in public is also important because no teacher in school can know everything about all things. I've watched my guide Chloe talk about teen dating, the dirt at a mountain bike park, and ways to solve teen anxiety in one two-hour afternoon session, but she isn’t an expert in all of those topics. Kids need to be talking to the true experts in their field. Real-world expertise is in the real world. It can't be a requirement of being in the classroom.

05. Monetize

While all Y Combinator projects are meant to be businesses, that's not true of Y-School projects. My first thought when I thought of Y-School was that most kids in school don't want to build a business. What about them? 

Well, the skills mentioned above are useful for anyone. My friend Grace is trying to save the world from cancer, not build a business, while Tovar Friedman is trying to become the youngest congressperson in the US.

But for those who are interested in building a business, you will be surprised at how motivating making money is. While I'm definitely a writer whose drive for finances is low, I have to admit, the excitement I feel when someone subscribes to my newsletter is super motivating.

In addition to the program, here are additional life skills we would also teach:

• Ambitious goal setting

• Public speaking

• Raising money

• Giving and receiving feedback

• Learn to learn

• Copywriting

• … and so many more

Why Y-School will be better than a standard school

Kids on AP tracks spend a seemingly infinite number of hours – both at school and after school – on academics, and they don't have the time to do what they love.

With the 2 Hour Learning revolution, having kids spend their afternoons working on ambitious projects is so much more fulfilling than sitting in a classroom.

Parents agonize that teens waste their days scrolling TikTok and playing video games. We have the power to change that – to show kids how to stop wasting their high school years. Let’s help them explore, discover, and deeply engage in things they love. 

If you are interested in helping build this program, please reach out.  If you think your child would be interested in this, join us at Alpha High.

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Thanks for reading. Go crush the week! See y'all on Sunday.