The Pomp Podcast - #519: Synthesis: The Future of Childhood Education

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

Synthesis is an innovative new way for young students to learn critical thinking and problem solving skills. Pomp was so fascinated with the program that he invested. This episode is with Josh Dahn, Chrisman Frank, and Ana Lorena Fabrega.  In this conversation, we discuss the challenges is legacy education, why critical thinking and problem solving is so important, how Josh started a school with Elon Musk, and what Synthesis is doing.  ======================= Exodus is an absolute game changer in the crypto wallet space, and we’ve teamed up to offer an exclusive discount for you, as listeners of the podcast. Sign up for Exodus today using my promo code Exodus.com/pomp. This is a no brainer for both newcomers and crypto heavyweights - go sign up today.  ======================= LMAX Digital is the leading institutional crypto currency exchange with current average daily columes of $2bn. Built on proven, trusted LMAX Group trading technology, LMAX Digital delivers a market-leading solution for trading and custodial services for the most liquid crypto currencies. Trading with all the largest institutions globally, LMAX Digital is a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading indices and analytics platforms, enhancing the quality of market information available to investors and enabling a credible overview of the spot crypto currency market. Learn more at lmaxdigital.com/pomp ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 140,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Synthesis is an innovative new way for young students to learn critical thinking and problem solving skills. I was so fascinated with the program that I invested. This episode is with Josh Dahn, Chrisman Frank, and Ana Lorena Fabrega. In this conversation, we discuss the challenges with legacy education, why critical thinking and problem solving is so important, how Josh started a school with Elon Musk, and what Synthesis is doing. I really enjoyed this conversation with the team at Synthesis, and I think you will as well. Before we get into this

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topics into easy to understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with the team at Synthesis. I hope you enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got a special treat for you today. I have most of, if not all, of the Synthesis team here. I've invested in this business because I fundamentally believe in what they are doing. And I wanted them to come on and really talk about the problem with education in America today and then what they've built to start solving this. And so I will have them each introduce themselves as they start to talk, but maybe we'll start with Josh. If you can kind of introduce yourself a little bit and then give us some background in terms of your involvement with Astra and what that is and kind of how you got into wanting to build an education company. sure yeah um 2014 elon musk approached me to start a school for his kids and a few others at spacex

so that school became ad astra school and i ran that school for six years and that school spun off and is now astra nova so i'm the executive director and founder of that school and then synthesis was basically like the class that i taught at ad astra and continue to teach at astra nova which was like collaborative problem solving like bringing kids together to like work through difficult problems and sort of like learn those tough lessons along the way so uh so yeah so then i you know met chris and uh when i was doing a project at uh with with class dojo trying to bring like good questions to kids around the world and uh we just started talking about like what else could be scaled through ad astra and that became that became synthesis very cool and then

chrisman maybe you can uh introduce yourself and then explain when you first saw uh ad astra and the course that our class has now become a synthesis kind of, what did you see? Why did it stick out to you and why'd you want to go work on it? Yeah. Yeah. So my name's Crispin Frank. I'm the co-founder and CEO, um, before, before starting synthesis with Josh, I was, uh, I was a class dojo, as you mentioned, which is, uh, is massive, uh, messaging app for, uh, K through five teachers and families got 51 million users worldwide. I was the first engineer there. And my kind of thing I was really excited about was using that network to distribute better ideas. Right. Like right now, you have to if you want to get good ideas into classrooms, you need to go sell them school by school, principal by principal or district by district. And it's just a terrible process. And, you know, we can all kind of see the results in the schools. so uh the ceo there and i uh we went down to visit ad astra and actually by this point i was kind of

i was kind of burned out on seeing schools i felt like i'd kind of seen everything i'd seen all the fancy schools in the bay area and like a lot of other places in the country i've seen top public schools top private schools and you know honestly like just nothing was uh nothing was strictly innovative or impressive so you know going down to visit elon school you know it was just what i knew it as the time I was just like not expecting much. Um, but I think we met Josh for dinner like the night before and he had Josh just like so intense. Like we had dinner from like six to like six 28. And then he was like off, like to get back to work. And I was like, that was like my first inkling, like, all right, this, this might be a little different. Um, and so, yeah, we went

to the school and it was, uh, it was just unlike anything I'd ever seen. Like it, you know, blew me away. It's kind of like, you know, maybe what people would imagine from like a project that Elon's involved with like everything was uh everything was different and uh mine was just like spinning from everything I saw and when I was touring there and the moment that really stuck with me was we were out for like recess slash lunch and I was just hanging out with some of the teachers and uh and there were these kids that were like they were still inside and they around a table just like shouting at each other but shouting these like really complex sounding arguments and I was like what what is going on in there and one of the teachers was like oh yeah

that's uh it's it's a synthesis week like you know the kids get pretty obsessed with synthesis like what what is this because this sounds they sound like they're having the kind of conversations that we have at work like in a tech startup like what is going on here and she kind of explained you know it's like these games and they're they're on teams so they're collaborating within their team but then they're competing against the other teams and the kids just like go nuts and they get really engaged with this and you know pretty much from that moment like i was hooked like i was just like i need my son was only two at the time but i was like i need him to do this because i think if he gets out in the world and he comes up against people that are trained this way like he doesn't

stand a chance so how do i get him in here and josh's like you know you can get a job as a rocket engineer at spacex and then you've got like you know maybe a one in a hundred chance of getting your kid in here um and then that was kind of like all my options at the time so we sort of over the next couple years you know just uh josh and i got to be friends and just talked a bunch more worked on some stuff at Class Dojo and eventually, you know, decided the time was right and it was the right thing to do to try and open this up and get it to, you know, accessible to more people. For sure. And before we get to Ana and kind of the start of Synthesis, Josh, explain a little bit more about what was the impetus for Elon to want to start a school? And what was the thought

process as you started it with him? Were there certain mandates or directives? How did you come up with the curriculum? What were the types of teachers that you put into that school to kind of make it different or fit the need that Elon and yourself had identified? Sure. I mean, I think just most simply, he wanted a better school for his kids. You know, I think it was just really that. And, you know, regardless of the type of school your kids are going to, if you feel like your kids aren't being served, I mean, not many people have the ability to just like ask them whether they want to start a school. And for me, it was like a dream come true. It was like, well, yeah, of course. Right. He invited me to come to SpaceX

and was like, you know, have you ever been here before? And I was like, well, no. He's like, all right, let me just, let me walk you around. And, you know, I tried not to ask a stupid question, although like, I don't know anything about rockets. And, uh, we just sat down as basically like, what do you think about the school that they're at? And I told him what I thought. And he's like, you know, what about, what do you think about just like starting, like starting, you know, our own school? I was like, yeah, like, where do I sign up basically? So he said, you know, why don't you take some time to think about it? And then like at four in the morning, I wrote him an email. I was like, all right, I'm in like totally ready to go. This is like,

what needs to happen. And, uh, and I didn't hear from him for like three months, maybe two or three months. Like, I think it was like maybe mid November and I didn't hear back until like mid January. So in that amount of time, I'd kind of convinced myself that I had like hallucinated the whole thing and, you know, um, you know, kind of like an opportunity missed. And then, you know, I was like, Oh, you know, it brought in January. Hey, I got super busy. Just, uh, yeah. Like, let's definitely do this. I'll, you know, let's figure out like the next steps. So really in terms of like guidance, it was just like, make it great. You know, like first principles approach, like, what are the things that are going to be most,

uh, like meaningful to kids or kind of experiences do they need to have? And then how can we, you know, like, just like, we're not trying to get accredited. We're not trying to like build a program that, you know, can really be scaled at the time. It was just like, make this a really great experience for the kids that are part of it. And then for me, it was always, I mean, I did teach for America. So I taught in low income public schools for my first four years of education. And, you know, public schools, I mean, there's just the challenges the public schools face are like, are pretty unbelievable, right? And whether or not the schools are as good as they can be, I think we all would say like, no, they're not. But my harshest criticism was actually for

like the private schools, because those schools are not needing to follow the mandates of the state or having to sort of make all these compromises at scale. Like these schools are these like lush, beautiful campuses with like largely affluent kids who are not, you know, I don't know that the experiences they're having are like, not that interesting. Like they're just, their classes aren't that fascinating. Like the challenges problems are working on aren't that compelling. So for me, it was like, well, how could I design really engaging, challenging problems and give those to students at a really young age and then allow them to make the mistakes that they're inevitably going to make? Like that's sort of the purpose of school, like kids that

are roughly the same age who are like learning these tough lessons. But it felt like to me that you can't learn lessons. If you're doing worksheets, you can't learn lessons. If you're doing like static, unchanging stuff. So synthesis started really as like kind of like ethical quandary. So I, and I mean, ethical, just like quandaries really. So I don't know, like, so here's the department of veterans affairs, here's their budget. Here are the different ways that you could spend that money. Like how would you allocate the money and like make a justification for why just like simple stuff like that. And then, you know, building like simulations basically, where you could like look at the effects of gerrymandering or the effects of redlining or

you know you could have you know like figure out like how nasa should allocate its budget so it started in that sort of way and conundrums this thing with class dojo was more of like an outgrowth of those the choices between seemingly equivalent options and then synthesis evolved to be more like games basically like experiences that were like really well designed that provoked conflict between the teams um but they're all working towards collaborative goals as well so so that's kind of like where i started going as i was leading the school and then i knew that i would need to teach classes because we were always so lean and elon insisted and rightfully so on interviewing anyone that would work for the school so you could imagine you know he's

essentially one standard and that is like the ultimate standard like could this person work for me at spacex or tesla or boring company or neural link or whatever else so you know it's difficult to get more teachers uh more administrators in the school so we had to you know always run lean. And I think that's right. And in doing so, you know, brought in like just some really talented people. But for me, it always felt like if you're going to have someone like at that time, Chris, and many other educators and people who are like coming at Astra, hoping to see something different, that it was like imperative that I show them that something that I had built or someone at the school had built that could convey a different type of educational experience,

like kind of the possibility of what it could be. And the thing that's just been so exciting about building the company of synthesis is to be able to see things that I designed in illustrator, like PDFs, like essentially like really intricate, like board games or, you know, or simulations that have just relied on, you know, Google sheets to see those things brought to life through software. Like that's the thing that to me is like most powerful is we would play this elaborate simulation over eight weeks and then it would come to an end and never to be used again. And now like that same simulation could be condensed into a shorter amount of time and

you can play it and like learn the lessons from it over and over again. And that's like it just kind of blows my mind, to be honest. Absolutely. And Ana, so maybe introduce yourself and kind of talk a little bit about as you come from more of a traditional teaching background, kind of the issues that you'd seen with many young kids who didn't have the Ad Astra experience and kind of what was the frustrating part for you on that front? Yeah. So I'm Ana Fabrega. I'm a former elementary school teacher. I left the classroom about a year and a half ago for the same reasons that Josh has been talking about and the things that Elon noticed that were wrong with the system. Like, I think a lot of people are now aware that we're still following a very outdated system. And, well, my biggest concern was that I was very excited to teach kids, challenge them creatively and teach them how to be innovative and how to really learn the skills that they're going to be using in the real world.

and you quickly realize when you're teaching that you're not using or spending kids' time in the most meaningful ways. Like kids are capable of doing so many things and they're very hungry and they wanna learn, but we just cram them with all this work that's very meaningless. And we're just, for so many hours,

we're with them in school and we're really not training them for the kind of future that they wanna live and the kinds of jobs that they wanna have in the future. And they talk about this. So I just grew very discontent And I quickly realized that I was going to be able, you know, I wasn't going to be able to do a lot within the system. So I left and I turned to the Internet and I started sort of writing online and building my audience and connecting with different people in the alternative education space that were working on different learning opportunities and things that look different.

And what I quickly noticed was that most of the people that I spoke to that were innovating in education were really just making slight iterations to the old system. Right. They were either trying to make classrooms more take enabled or they would create an app or something that they would claim that it's more, you know, to help kids learn. But really, they're more teacher enabled tools and they're not really tools that are helping kids learn. So the outcomes are pretty much the same. You're just sort of adding things to, you know, the same old structure. And to me, that's not really fixing the core problem, which is that kids don't understand the purpose of why they're going to school, the things that they're learning. they're not engaged and they're really not being, you know, they're not doing meaningful things in school. And all this innovation wasn't really fixing that. Until I spoke to Chrisman when he was still working at Class Dojo and then he started telling me about synthesis and it sounded too good

to be true. But when I joined one of their beta testing sessions, that's when I really saw the magic. And, you know, the kids were just engaged in ways that I had never seen kids, you know, you know, raving about their learning in that way. And I realized that the reason why it was so effective was because of the way that they had, you know, that Josh had thought through how he wanted to create this school, right? So when he, he talks about how when he was talking to Elon, like they really, instead of doing what most of the people trying to innovate do, which is, okay, what can we add? Let's, you know, continue grabbing what's already been done and making it a little bit better. They were like, no, let's just rethink education from first principles,

which essentially means like, you know, going back to like the fundamental truth. What do we know is true about how kids learn? Like really focusing on that. What do we know about the kinds of jobs that they're going to have in the future? What kind of skills can we help them develop since they're young for the creator economy, for like all these things, right? So they really focused on that. And that's why they created, you know, the learning experiences that Josh designs.

I've never seen anything like that. And it's because they're just designed for the kids and thinking of, like Josh explains, like with all these sprinkles of complexity that he wants the kids to be solving. And it's really like you can see the relevance to the real world and the kids can understand why they're doing the things that they're doing. And that's just really magical. And that's what hooked me. So I decided to join and we're building this with the kids, right? And with the feedback of the families that we have and not really like looking at what other people are doing or basing off the things that have always been done, right? We just want to do something that, you know, that works.

So that's sort of the plan. And so when I look at kind of the team you guys have assembled, it's a very unique kind of set of experiences of skill sets. Chrisman, maybe describe a little bit just when you think of the product, how exactly does the product work and what is kind of the child's experience in the product? We heard kind of Josh's perspective as to where the original idea for a synthesis-like course came from and an experience in person. Ana is explaining kind of what the problem is, but how does this specific product work? yeah so you know the promise that we make to parents is you know we will we'll we'll make your child a world-class problem solver right so the analogy i use a lot is uh is like i have my

kids in jujitsu they just they really like wrestling each other as two boys they go to jujitsu i know they're they'll learn how to you know stand up to bullying or you know something like that i can see them like building this skill and it kind of compounds over time um and i think you know, when I go back to like what I, what I witnessed at Ad Astra, that's what, that's like what my, my feeling was like kids who go through this, they will be world-class at, at solving problems as a team, which is the world's most valuable skill. So that's kind of the promise that we make. You get your kid in synthesis. That's, that's, what's going to happen. The way we do it right now is we're starting with like an enrichment program. So it's just a, it's one

hour a week sessions they're led by a facilitator you've got like 15 16 kids per group and what they what they do is uh not to give too much away for the first class because we have been keeping this kind of a secret but uh hopefully the kids won't listen to this um but what we do is we're just like say hey this is welcome to synthesis this is unlike any experience you've had in school or anything education related what what you're going to learn to do here is become a world-class problem solver. So you can build, you know, we want you to build cool things. We want you to make the world better, build flying cars, build jet packs, you know, give us clean energy. Like you're going to work your way up to doing these kinds of things. And the way you're going to do

it is the way it's going to be done in the world is no one's going to be able to really tell you the rules or like how it works or tell you if you have the right answer or even if there is a right answer. So that's what we're going to do here through these problems we're going to give you. And then we'll just go, they'll, the hands will go up and they'll be like, well, what are we going to do exactly? And we're like, you know, we're not, they're not going to tell you that. And, uh, they'll ask a couple other questions and we'll just say like, you know, we're not going to tell you.

And then we'll put them in breakout rooms. They'll, uh, they'll get their team there and they'll have like a screen that like lays out a problem. And, you know, the first one's kind of, they look a lot like video games and they've kind of just got to discuss, like analyze, strategize, figure out, you know, what they're, what they're going to do and then uh and then the game starts and it's just you know try to try to win and then after the game we we do like a debrief so we we talk about you know what you've learned what you figured out what kind of course corrections you want to make and then and then go back and do it

again and uh you know the idea is that the games get uh sorry one second um the idea is that the games get more complex we're gonna have to do a little edit there um but the idea is like as you master one level of the games they get more complex so the games get more complex uh and your competition levels up as well so if you remember for like the science fiction novel ender's game like this is how they train kids to fend off an alien invasion because that competition and like novelty um even when you just keep doing that you you develop like problem solving skills in general and the competition sharpens you and just drives you to a higher level than you could get on your own. Um, so yeah, that's the, that's, that's kind of the core of it.

Josh, explain a little bit why it's so important to go through this experience with, uh, kind of peers, uh, or, or other, uh, uh, kids. Why not just have it as kind of a single player type experience, but, but rather have it as a multiplayer experience. Yeah, that's a great question just like just having to like to navigate the dynamics of a team and i think you know it's just i just i just came from a class um at astro nova synthesis and it's just so interesting like the way that like roles are defined in a team like so the so one of the things that we do you know there's like the synthesis experience has you know the cohort is broken into like you know maybe four teams of four or five teams of three or whatever that is and those teams like will

compete against one another but it's not like cutthroat it's just like a way to kind of like measure yourself relative to one another but then we do these cohort wide challenges where you all work together as a class and try to accomplish like a specific goal in this specific example they're playing a game called art for all where they're like needing to curate like different works of art and put them together by harmony and take them different cities for attendance and profit and all this all this all these different dynamics but what's so interesting when kids have to collaborate is that like you know by default some kids are basically not speaking They don't feel comfortable participating in like a traditional way, especially in the

Zoom room. And there are others that de facto just sort of assume responsibility. They've not been elected. They just sort of decide that they are like they are the ones to take control. And I just felt like in most collaborative, like at least my experience in school, it's like a group project was like a nightmare because you were either the kid that was like doing all the work or you're the kid that was like, well, I was the kid that was always doing all the work and I resented the kids that weren't doing any of it.

And sometimes I guess as things that were complicated, some classes, I was a kid like didn't know how to participate and felt like maybe lost. And I think we've all can like, we can all, we all remember like what that feels like. So for me, like there was just never a moment for someone to be able to like support me and becoming like a more valuable member of a team to add like real value or to like kind of question the assumptions that were made within the group of like, oh, I'm in control because like I'm loudest basically, or I'm like most aggressive or whatever that may be. So for me, like the collaborative piece was always like the greatest challenge to unravel was like how to make sure that your team operates efficaciously so like you know yeah

there's like the context of the game whether it's art or you're like you know deciding on like these like fishing routes and like uh and like an arctic where like the ice is melting or like there's all this complexity that people think is just part of the game design which it is but the real complexity is like navigating the dynamics of the team and like knowing that like regardless of whatever i designed that like that's going to actually be like the most difficult part and the part that's like most enduring so for me the games you know we're not i guess we are kind of like a game studio at this point because we're just creating so many because that generative piece is so important to our like soul like we must always be learning lessons and incorporating those into the

next experiences we design but like you don't need a remarkably elaborate game to bring out like the collaborative elements competitive elements there's like tough moments that you can just like hit pause or or look at the video and reflection and say like hey like what's going on here? Like, why, why do you not think that you accomplished your goal? Like what, what role did you play within this team? And are you playing the same role over and over again? Is it because you want to play that role or someone assigned you that role, or, you know, you, you just didn't feel like there's any other role that you could play. So it's just that, that meta piece of like, really thinking about how you feel in a team, what you are contributing or not able to contribute,

and then like, how can we remove those barriers so that you can sort of be your, you know, to flourish as, as a, as a contributor. So it felt, it's always felt like to me that you can't do that over a poster project, or you can't do that over, you know, some project where you have kids that are totally different levels of ability. You need to create something that is novel and complex that engages them in a common mission, but the games themselves should be really welcoming. So that it's funny, like really welcoming games because I hate instructions and yet ones that building complexity so that even like, you know, not even especially adults who were to play would marvel at the fact that younger students can handle this so well. I confidently believe that

our strongest synthesis cohorts would beat nearly any collection of adults in these games, at least to start. And that is not necessarily because they have less experience or less wise, but because their team just operates more effectively. They communicate better. They're more honest about what they know and what they don't know, where all the ego of adults and all the jostling for positioning um makes the team less effective so what if kids have that experience now like what if they could have that experience in school like to learn how to be like an unbelievable problem solver like that's kind of the promise of synthesis so it's absolutely fascinating to me and anna maybe you can talk a little bit about um you know when the kids go into those breakout rooms what is the

conversation like like are they um kind of as uh as josh is alluding to here are they able to uh communicate well? Are they, you know, struggling with maybe concepts they don't understand? Just what has been your experience in those breakout rooms as to the conversation? Yeah, so I actually want to mention two things. So first, to answer your question, one of the things that I find really unique about synthesis is the way that it helps kids find their unique voice. And this is something that, you know, as a teacher, and I taught in many different schools, and attended to many different schools, you don't see, like, there's little opportunity for kids to really like, you know, give their opinion or, you know, share really

what they're thinking or question things because it's really not a safe environment. Although we claim that they are like, not really, like how embarrassing is it to say the wrong thing in front of all your peers or then getting that mark down. But in synthesis, what I've noticed is that, you know, we really help kids develop and find their unique voice because the simulations are set up in a way that students get to, you know, experience sometimes being the leader, but sometimes understand that they don't always have to be the leader, right? But they do need to understand how top level decisions are made, right? So kids in synthesis, what you notice is that they get to contribute to consequential decision making, but in a way that feels authentic to them, right? So

sometimes they're leading, sometimes they're disagreeing. Sometimes, you know, they're like, Josh was talking about like the different roles, but we're really, but you know, you sometimes see at the beginning, kids that are not, you know, they're not used to speaking so much or having to sort of like take the lead. And then suddenly they see like, oh my gosh, and I, now I, you know, this is part of, this is expected from me. Like, this is how I'm going to help my team win. And you see them come out of their shell. Then you have the kids who are, you know, very talkative and you can tell that these are the kids that in, you know, in the school, they're the ones like leading and what Josh was saying, like sort of like dominating the team. And so, and here they

start to learn, you know, they started to take a step down and be like, sometimes my ideas are not the best ideas. You know, maybe I should listen to my other teammates and see, cause they come up with, you know, a better strategy. So it has been fascinating, especially as kids, you know, you perhaps don't see this in the first session, but as kids go from one session to the other, you start to see them evolve, whether it is taking a seat, you know, a step back or sort of like jumping in. And that has been incredible. And then the other thing I wanted to mention was one of the most unique things about synthesis that, again, I hadn't seen anywhere in any other learning experience is the way that we engage students.

So a lot of the problem in education is that we're going through an engagement crisis. You know, kids, you know, teachers don't even know what to do anymore to get kids to pay attention. And that's because, again, the whole system is, you know, designed in a way that prevents learning, right? And what ends up happening

is that traditionally teachers add points or, you know, they give extrinsic rewards and they think that this is going to work, but it doesn't, it may work in the short term. It doesn't really work in the long term. and the kids are really not learning. But in synthesis, and Josh, I would love for you to talk perhaps a little bit more about this,

the way that we engage kids is by actually making things complex and making things unpredictable and pushing kids to a certain extent to be vulnerable in the simulations. And what I mean by that is, like, we understand that kids, you know, in school, a lot of what happens is we water things down, we make things easier or more predictable to sort of, because it's more manageable, right? it's easier to grade and it's easier. We think that, you know, kids are just kids that there

are two problems with that. Like that's not the real world, right? Our real world is very complex and very unpredictable. So we're sort of like doing a disservice by sort of watering things down and making them less complex. But also when you make things like that, it becomes boring, right? And what we've noticed in synthesis is that kids not only can handle complexity, but they crave it. So they actually, yes, at first they may be a little bit thrown off when we put them in the games and we're like, figure things out or, you know, things get more challenging. But then that's sort of like what what makes them want to come back. Right. And that brings down like when I say we push them to be vulnerable, it's because we put kids in a way they don't have all the answers.

So when they put their guard down, they're able to connect more with the different kids that they're meeting from different countries and all. So it's just really different. Right. Like, you know, a lot of educators don't think that that's sort of like the magic pill to make kids like want to learn and want to come back by making things challenging and complex and unpredictable. So I don't know if Josh, you wanted to like talk about that, but I just think that's genius. That's fascinating. And it works really well. Yeah. I mean, you want, you want kids to like, feel like you want it, like to feel what it's like to solve a difficult problem. You want to like feel what it's like to like experience scarcity, right?

Like you scarcity and like, whether it's on the map or like understanding what that is and, and an understanding game theory, not because you read about it, but because you like are living it in the choices that you are making. And I think what Ana mentioned about, like, because of the scoring, right? And scoring is important, not because, like, we're always looking for the high score, but because, like, you can see how you've done relative to other teams. And the lesson that I love most is, like, to help students understand that because they

won in this instance does not mean that they had a winning strategy over time, right? There are, like, all of these things that I think the students are needing to, like, at least in synthesis, I see them unlearning and learning in, like, a more, like, authentic genuine way because they know that yeah maybe like things kind of fell their way but that strategy over time will probably not be successful or a strategy that is the dominant strategy for that moment might not be the overall dominant strategy and other teams will see what they've done and emulated and then they need to figure something else out uh and then i think the final piece which has been mentioned before is like students as collaborators there's just such

arrogance sometimes in education about like what you know what i don't know we're gonna like put all this stuff together and then just like basically give it to kids and synthesis came from my early days of teaching fifth grade, 33 kids in East Las Vegas, like during the recession. And I basically just felt like I can't like sell this stuff to kids. Like I can't like tell you that this worksheet matters really. I can't really tell you that this is going to make a material difference in your life. And it just, I think then because I just, I identify as like a, someone who likes to create things or like try to come up with solutions. I just started generating more and more of what I would create because at the very least, even if it was flawed, it's like,

I like put time and effort into this. And I like structured the problems in such a way that I think will be engaging and enriching and like worthwhile basically um and you know there's nothing more worthwhile than giving students a meaningful experience and then giving them the space to reflect on that experience and to talk about it make sense of it because sense making is the most important thing like making sense of the world for all of us is the most important thing we need educational experiences that allow that to happen and that's like what synthesis is meant to be I am. I'm drinking the Kool-Aid. I absolutely think that you guys are onto something here. Crispin, obviously the kids don't get to make these decisions, right? In terms of

they don't have credit cards. They're not going and signing up in most cases. They may hear about it from a friend, but ultimately the parent has to make the decision. And so talk a little bit about maybe the types of parents that seem to be drawn to this versus the types of parents who just, you know, aren't as bought into the idea of non-traditional education, if you will. But then also, what are the things that parents care about or what are the things that they're evaluating the program on in terms of once they actually do start to put their kid through it, are they expecting overnight, you know, for there to be improvement? Is it something that they kind of buy into and they believe they need to be a big part of? Do they just trust you and the software

and the program to be successful? Just what have you seen from the parent side? Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. Let's, you know, the number one thing that we see that the parents have in common is just like dissatisfaction with the way things are done. Like if, if I say, you know, school is broken or, you know, it's, it's completely schools is disconnected from the world. Like what Josh said, this worksheet is not going to make any difference in your life. The parents, you know, that that's the one thing like every parent at Synthesis has in common is they they are not willing to just kind of trust their child's future to the school, whether it's public school or like an elite private school. There's something there's something that's that they feel like is missing. Within then to get to the second part of your question, like how kind of like how involved are the parents? definitely it varies like we've started doing this thing now where we run uh we run the simulations for the parents it's probably like the best uh the best kind of like marketing sales technique we could do because some parents that like they're skeptical right they hear like okay

josh built this school at spacex like it sounds really great like games but like are the kids actually learning are you just playing video games like i don't get it and that like having them do one of the simulations has like a hundred percent conversion rate right like they get in there and they're just like baffled and it's you know it's this completely like complex thing like they they don't get it and they and they start trying to make sense of it with their group and then you know they they'll win or they'll lose but they'll they'll they will see kind of like the reality of the experience like like what josh said it's like there's we are we are teaching like some knowledge about the world like we teach these like mental models like these concepts

that come up across, uh, across domains. Right. But it's not, it's not like you're reading it out of a book, like you're living it. And then we're giving you like tools to make sense of your experience. And so like when parents experienced that, they're like, Oh, wow. So it's not everybody that, uh, that's joined one of those sessions yet. Right. Like some parents really want to get involved. They want to be talking to their kids about it. They want, like, they want us to recommend books that they can read to like, you know, apply to the scenarios the kids are facing um in their sessions and then some are just like you know they let their kids do it for like an hour a week and they just kind of completely trust it to us so there's no real

pattern there but i would say the main you know the thing everyone has in common is they're they're just dissatisfied with school primarily because of the you know the idea that two things really one it's irrelevant and two you know the the speed limit if you're like bored or unchallenged at school, like they feel like synthesis is, you know, we we've, you know, had a lot of, uh, interest from like the gifted community because they, they want things that are just going to push their kids as much as possible. Yeah. It seems like there's a, a pretty significant correlation between, uh, you know, Hey, school is, uh, boring or a monotonous in some sense, also adults, uh, and kind of a traditional corporate America job may feel

the same way. Right. And, uh, sure. It's different information. It might be different, uh, tasks, But you could easily see if you take somebody from that corporate America job that is very monotonous and boring in nature and you put them into one of these environments, it essentially just works mental muscles that they don't work on a daily basis. Right. And so you could very quickly see where they kind of wake up and say, wow, this is different. This is something that, you know, I don't I don't even get as a professional. And so, of course, I want my child to have this. And, um, I I've got to ask, and any of the three of you can answer, but, uh, have you guys put, uh, adults into the simulation with kids and had, uh, either the adults win or lose, but, but has there been a comparison yet?

Adults lose every time I've done it. Yeah. I did it art for all thing. Right. And did it with, I did it. Yeah. We did it at Astro Nova. We had Astro Nova kids play with Berkeley engineering graduate students.

and uh it was humbling to the students for sure to the berkeley students that is i mean just in that you know there's that you're like overwhelmed at the speed of it right and it's like you know it's it's kind of amazing like so design the games that have like components of the fast and the slow but when they're fast they're really fast like you're managing four different auction styles of different works of art that are happening simultaneously and have to decide which of these works of art is most harmonious with your collection which of these works of art based on like their market for the cities that you want to go to makes the most sense for your like overall trajectory as a team. And if you are expecting kind of like a, you know, all right, we're getting

in teams are going to just kind of collaborate on this problem. You know, we're going to talk through which of these 20 items will help us survive, you know, our plane crash in the desert. Is it the mirror or the parachute or, you know, that kind of stuff. It's just a totally different world. And it's, you know, it's just, it's amazing also to see. Yeah. It's really cool. It's really cool also to see students like the confidence right the confidence of like i can work on this like i can like i can make headway on this challenge in this problem and i'm not like so concerned about winning i'm just concerned about like refining the choices that i'm making and becoming like a better decision maker and then also like helping to understand that like i'm

like measuring my own value within a team is like the decisions and things i'm adding like how well of those things actually turning out um that that type of thing is i mean that's what makes us so excited to unleash these students over time of synthesis onto the world because we all wish that we had more of that time as kids i mean as adults it's like there's nothing better than working on like a highly functioning team with people that are like committed and dedicated to what they're working on spacex's success is not i mean everyone is committed to going to mars right like that's why everyone is aligned in that way so um so yeah what you just reminded me of as you were talking about kind of the speed is uh i grew up on nintendo 64 and i'd play like the 007 game and

basically it had the speed it had right now it to us was just the speed of video games and then i remember watching one of my younger brothers years later play a call of duty and literally it's like 10x the speed and i remember i picked up the uh the console sticks and i was just like there's no way I could play this game, right? Like the speed at which he was processing information, etc. And so, you know, not quite the advantageous benefit of education, but still that speed really does matter. And so I guess, you know, Ana and Christian, as you guys think about this, like, what is the hope in terms of what these children end up going and doing? Like, is it a failure if they end up just being a middle manager, you know, accountant somewhere? Is the expectation

that they're going to go on to be entrepreneurs and engineers. Um, how do you guys just think about, you know, this is a starting point, obviously for a child, um, from an education and kind of professional sense. Uh, if you look at it that way, like what's the expectation of them, uh, as they grow? Yeah, I think there's, you know, it's, it's important not to have such strict expectations for what kids are going to do. They're going to, you know, they're going to hopefully find, find something to do that matches up with their personality, but there, there is like a certain sort of skill and just getting, getting what you want out of life. Right. It's, it's about solving problems and, you know, primarily it's about, you know,

learning how to think rigorously and learning how to communicate and collaborate with other people. We think with other people and it's, that's kind of like the base, like the idea here is, you know, solving complex problems as a team, that is the world's most valuable skill. That's, that's what makes elon the wealthiest man and he's got him all these fans because people realize that skill is what moves civilization forward as well and so to the extent that there's some general ability to get better at problem solving we want to cultivate that and make your child as skilled there as possible and then who knows what what they're going to do like they could start an organic farm they could uh you know they could they could build a you know the space suit

that, uh, that people will be wearing on Mars, like whatever that that's going to get to like specific knowledge, they're going to go in their own direction and you can't really influence that. But the core idea is like, there is some skill of being able to solve complex problems with the team. And we want them to get as, as much of that skill as possible. I always use the kind of, uh, analogy, like there aren't world-class musicians who start in their twenties, but that's, you know, when it comes to like innovation that's people mostly don't start on anything like that until they're in their 20s they're done with college like what if you start kids thinking that way at like age seven and they get this kind of rigorous program from age seven to 14 now they're

at 14 they've got the base that you know very few 35 or 40 year olds have now what are they going to do they're going to build on top of that and do things that we can't imagine that's what i'm really excited about i i just i just want to see so i do think these the kids i've seen go through it for a length of time, like it, it like rewires the brain. And if we can get to that at a certain scale, like that'd be pretty amazing. Absolutely. Yeah. Just to add to that. So we say that we're like training kids to be better problem solvers and decision makers. And I think that the decision making part, it's such an important component of what synthesis does. So in, you know, life is all about making decisions, right? You either make good decisions or you make bad decisions. And

And that's why we talk a lot about like mental models, which is like a way to help have this like frames of reference for difficult moments and to make better decisions and wiser decisions. Kids don't really learn this in school, right? The decisions that kids make in school are very like school setting oriented and very simple and just, you know, not transferable to real life. So even if, you know, we have all kinds of different kids, right, at synthesis, some of them are going to go ahead and create amazing things. And those tend to be the ones that are really obsessed with synthesis and they go the extra mile and the session finishes and they want to do the intensives, which is like this new thing we're launching for kids that are really into it. And perhaps those are going to be like the innovators and the ones who create amazing things. But then we also have other kids that are there and they're benefiting from learning again, this mental models, this new ways of thinking, from having the opportunity to, again, like find their voice, play different roles in learning. And what I've noticed from talking to a few of the students a few months ago was that they're finding that learning can be enjoyable, right?

So many of them joined thinking, okay, so this is a science class or a space class. Some of them say because they hear this from parents. Others go, okay, this is a game. But then by session two or three, they realize, wait, this seems like a game, but this is not like a video game. Like there's definitely something here where I'm like, you know, there's more than that. and they realize that they're learning, but they're learning in a fun way. And I think that that's so powerful because that's what kids have mostly lost in school settings, in traditional school settings. So getting them excited to learn and to play different roles. And again, like,

you know, find what's their best role in a team and all these things. That's really exciting, even if they don't go ahead and, you know, turn into innovators in the future. Right. So that's something very special that I've noticed. For sure. Josh, you've, out of all of us, spent the most time with Elon Musk. What do you see in the kind of teaching of the actual curriculum and in the games

that most mimics kind of what goes on at SpaceX and the way that Elon thinks? I just think you just need like really flexible, flexibly minded people that are, have like a great grounding and like what what is the problem you're trying to solve and what are you know what are like the steps to get there and what are the course corrections you're going to make along the way um as things are inevitably going to go awry or going like different than you you know originally imagined so i think like for me it's just so many problems i feel like we

give students are linear like it's just you know it's just inputs and then outputs and then or it's like a teacher in history who is there at best doing the synthesizing of reading a bunch of primary source documents and like reading a bunch of like different authors and perspectives and then kind of giving you what amounts to some version of the truth through their eyes or through, you know, through their mouth, literally. For me, it's like, like I, we like purposely leave, you know, pieces of the game unfinished, right? Like we, like you could, you know, one of the challenges in the game, like art for all

is like when you're trying to put together works of art that have harmony how like what's the way that we like you know organize these works of art and like there's like code that like students can find that can like help them better understand how like you could do harmony really well it's just like one way that you could approach the problem so it's like there's always like kind of this mystery to synthesis because ultimately like the student themselves is responsible along with their team to try to figure out how it works and when you don't start with an instruction manual or like some long kind of like onboarding process and you just throw them into it and say like your goal here is just to figure out as much as possible like how this works and what's

so interesting is like regardless of how old the students are the same things will happen like they will have they will see something and they will just assume that that thing will just endlessly happen right rather than trying to prove something like that is demonstrably like not true they are just looking for evidence so that like things are going to go that way and if they don't it's like oh that must be like a glitch or something else so i mean one of the things i think is actually really unique too is like rather than spend like a year designing a simulation like for some of our leading cohorts they like our beta testing like we are like working on this game together we are making changes like hourly and we are just like trying to try new configurations and part of that

is that students design their own maps right they design their own um decks of cards for a game like art for all where they're putting together like you know collections of art so if you really believe in students as collaborators hey back to your original question like that every single person has a role to play at SpaceX. Like every single person has a role to play at Synthesis. And that role is like all in like sort of this big high-minded idea that like we need more efficacious and ethical problem solvers. And we're going to give you real experiences of doing that now. And you as a student, as a nine-year-old can design a map that will be used by thousands of students that will help them better understand network effect. Or like you could put together a

collection of like of art and put it into a deck that could be used to help students like truly figure out like what harmony is as it relates to the game which is like one of the most complicated things to figure out so i just love when we think of things that are just like preset structured linear like that there's just that openness um with like one really ambitious goal and i feel like spacex and the other companies are that way um you know you're trying to like truly change the world and you know whether or not we get there or not i think we're showing how you know time can be spent in super meaningful ways. But it only can happen if students are part of that process. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Ana, if you were to talk to a parent and ask you from a kind of a

teacher's perspective, why should they put their child into the program or into the synthesis class? Well, my first answer is they're going to be learning the things that they're not learning in school right um and and you know guaranteed that their time is being used in meaningful ways and and it's it's interesting i speak to lots of parents um and and you know you have all kinds of parents you have the parents that are more of a traditional mindset um and the first thing that they ask you is like well how do i know what my kid is learning like where do i see are their grades how can i measure the progress and like this questions you automatically like you immediately know that the parents coming from and you can't blame them right like that's how they've been

that's how they were educated right um but that doesn't really matter here like what we you know what i usually like well we we tell parents is like to think about where their kids are at the beginning of synthesis right and then to think about how are they improving over time in the way that they reason through problems and how they synthesize concepts right um and we tell them like you as a parent are such an important part of this because, you know, we're evolving with you, right? We're evolving and we're preparing this learning experiences that are so unique and so different. That's hard to explain them in words. Right.

And that's actually a good problem to have. Right. Cause that means that we're not doing anything like that's been created already. But it's, it's really like having them. And I like how Josh explains how it's sort of like synthesis is sort of like that multivitamin that's missing in a lot of kids' education. so although we are an enrichment program now like really the but by coming to this program and joining this community that's really what we call it because it is a community it has like so many different aspects to it it's not just like that one hour course i mean going through it over the

weeks and over the months and over the years like your child just starts to think differently and they start to make decisions differently um and they sort of consider things that that they wouldn't otherwise consider and and it's amazing because you again you you don't expect kids to be able to make the decisions and analyze things the way that they do. But the reason why we think that is because we don't give them the opportunity in school settings, right? But here we're like, we trust that. We trust that they can do it. We know that they're going to be able to rise to the occasion. And they do, like they do, they always end surprising you. So for parents that are like worried, like, okay, it's session three, like, where's the learning? It's like, wait,

you need to, you know, you need to be patient and see the progress. It's more like an overall way of thinking that that's different. And you, you feel that shift in the kids who take it seriously and who keep coming back and believe in what we're doing. Crispin, how do you think about, uh, the proof points that, uh, it's working and parents want this? Uh, I'm privy, uh, to obviously all of the data, but I don't know what you want to share kind of publicly, uh, in terms of how it's going and, and, uh, why you, uh, believe that parents want this. Do you mean proof points in terms of like, what are the, what are the kids learning or proof points is like like back up like hey synthesis is gonna work and there's gonna

there's there's a big part where the last the latter the latter yeah yeah josh josh already told us that the kids are gonna learn anna confirmed it now uh now explain why this is working as a business uh yeah you know it goes like the the first thing i i sort of thought before we started that uh you know this this sort of mysterious story of like elon starting the secret lab school at spacex and in doing this you know as josh mentioned people from all over the world came to that school i hadn't really realized when i went down to visit there but it was there was like a there was like a discord server with like a couple thousand people on it that were just dedicated to like trying to dissect like what josh is doing at the school and like

spread spread that to their schools uh so i knew there was a kind of a tremendous amount of energy behind doing something different and and i knew the story the backstory would capture people's attention but i i always uh josh and i always talked about this like in the really early days uh i heard seinfeld seinfeld still does stand up right and another community was asking him like uh you know isn't do people just laugh at whatever you say because you're seinfeld and he was like no you get one joke he's like they will laugh at my first joke and then if i'm not funny i'll bomb just like any other comic and so i thought like you know the backstory would be like that's like our first joke right like we get we will get people give us a chance like one time

um and then and then that'll wear off um but yeah it's been i guess we launched our first beta uh test like in august and then i i don't know the number off the top of my head i think like 80% of those kids are like still with us like six, seven months later. And since we launched the subscription, their retention is like even better. It's like 85, like 90% are still with us after three months. And the ones that have canceled,

it's primarily like they say, like a scheduling thing. Like they had some schedule change, but they want to come back. So yeah, it's been this, we're starting to see their friend referrals. Like most of our customers now are coming from referrals to people who are already, already are in it. And that's, despite it being, you know, it's a fairly like high price, like premium thing right now, um, which is by intention, we kind of, the growth has

been sort of insane. We've kind of had to, the way to limit the growth is like, start with a high price point and, uh, just try to make like a really great experience for those people. And then, you know, we'll eventually create kind of like pricing tiers so we can be accessible to more people because we don't, you know, it's not, uh, we, we, we, we want to reach every kid with this. Right. Like, I think ultimately that's, that's the goal is like every child should be able to experience some version of synthesis. I think that that's like the way to really change the world. Um, but yeah, so, so far, like, uh, yeah, people seem to love it. Kids seem to love it. And, uh, you know, the, the parents are happy with the changes. You gotta, you gotta be careful

with, uh, the pricing. I always joke that college is the only business I know where there's a line out the door and when they raise prices, somehow the line gets longer. And I always laugh at that one. Awesome guys. Listen, thank you guys so much for doing this. I am obviously a huge fan. It is a no brainer pretty much to everyone who I think listens to this podcast. They've heard me talk about it before. Education is broken. And I think that kind of the root memorization and frankly, just the lack of creativity, critical thinking and problem solving skills that are taught to children is a massive problem. So the work you guys are doing is going right after that. And I highly suggest everyone who's listening, if you have a kid, what probably, you know, ages six

through like 13, 14 years old. So we're admitting age eight now is kind of like the low end. So it's eight to 14 right now. But if you're, you know, six or seven, then go ahead and apply because we'll be opening up, you know, cohorts for the younger kids soon. Okay. So if you're in those age groups, you have kids that are in that age group, go ahead and go apply. Where can people go? Just synthesis.com? Synthesis.is. .is. All right. I was going to say, if you guys got the .com, I feel like that one would have been pricey. That one would be pricey. Yeah. Awesome. Well, listen, thank you guys so much for taking the time to do this. I hope that everyone learned a lot from it and hopefully

people will go check out Synthesis. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.