Venture capital firm a16z has founded a new type of school for high school graduates, and students who complete their studies can directly get access to positions in tech companies.

Global top-tier venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (commonly referred to as a16z) is launching a school called "The Horowitz Andreessen Academy", targeting aspiring entrepreneurs who have just graduated from high school and have not yet attended college.

The academy aims to train these high school graduates through hands-on courses covering a wide range of topics from technical fields (such as "Artificial Intelligence Research and Models") to life philosophy fields (such as "The Geometry of Luck", a course that promises to teach students "how to structure their lives to let good fortune flow through them"). Students will also work on personal projects. The core selling point of this school is that it promises to connect students with big-name mentors from the tech industry.

The first cohort of the school charges no tuition, is open to around 50 students and lasts for one year. According to the school's official website, admission is based on "proof of work: what they have built, launched, or earned". The academy is located in San Francisco, and students are responsible for their own accommodation, though the school is helping them find housing and match them with other student roommates.

One point to note: the academy is not an accredited school at present, so participants will not receive a degree, nor will they earn college credits that can be transferred to other institutions.

According to the founders, they want to take a middle path. In the past, young people either finished college first before entering the tech industry, or dropped out entirely to start a business. Now this school wants to offer a third option.

Ben Horowitz, co-founder of a16z, pointed out that the training model designed for the Industrial Revolution cannot be perfectly mapped to the AI revolution, and someone needs to blaze a new trail.

Gagan Biyani, CEO of the academy, mentioned that higher education is a $2 trillion market, and they believe there is an opportunity to educate the next generation in a more future-oriented way and grow it into a successful business.

Erik Torenberg, General Partner of a16z and a board member of the academy, said bluntly that "venture capital is about discovering and nurturing talent", and he is certain that he will invest in founders who graduate from this school. Essentially, this academy is a "talent pipeline" built by a16z at the source of talent.

01

Learn by doing, turn initiative into a capability

a16z believes that the Internet has made knowledge easily accessible, and AI has further lowered the threshold for creation and practice. An 18-year-old young person can now start a company, develop software, conduct research, and even explore a brand new field from scratch with the help of AI.

When tools change, the connotation of education also changes. Knowledge remains important, but raising questions, exercising judgment, making good use of tools, collaborating with others, and putting ideas into practice are becoming the new priorities of education.

They believe that the traditional lecture and theory-focused education model is outdated, and a new institution centered on "Building" is needed to cultivate young people's ability to act, create, and solve real-world problems.

The Horowitz Andreessen Academy tries to redesign education around these capabilities. Its core philosophy is: Rather than passively absorbing knowledge, it is better to learn in the process of solving real problems.

a16z hopes that through learning by doing, initiative can be turned into a capability.

(Screenshot of the school's courses)

As a result, unlike traditional schools, the entire design of this school revolves around "hands-on creation":

Take personal projects (Pursuits) as the core unit of education: Students spend most of their time working on personal projects, entrepreneurial ideas, or in-depth research, and the school provides budget and resource support, with the goal of stimulating students' initiative and "extreme ownership".

"Learn while doing" (Co-ops) in real companies: Students can rotate or intern at founding partner companies such as Stripe and Google during the academic year (not just during summer vacation) to gain real industry experience.

Courses taught by practitioners: Classes and lectures are delivered by top founders and operators in the tech industry including Sam Altman and Jensen Huang, with the core logic of "learning from the authors of textbooks, not the people who write textbooks".

Replace diplomas with portfolios: The school explicitly does not award degrees. Its admission criterion is "proof of work", and upon graduation, students will have a portfolio of projects and real work experience.

The school's founding team mentioned that they hope students leave the school having already done things that truly matter to them.

Maybe the student has founded a company. Maybe the student has found someone they want to start a business with. Maybe the student has become an outstanding engineer, written something worth reading, or fallen in love with a field they have never been exposed to before.

Along the way, students are also expected to make close friends, understand how they work, become more capable of dealing with uncertainty, and develop the confidence to take their own ideas seriously.

The point of this school is not to tell students what their lives should look like. It is to expand the scope of what they can achieve.

02

Access to 200 speakers and mentors, 10 well-known Silicon Valley tech enterprises

In a16z's view, for exceptionally ambitious young people, such peers are often hard to find nearby. Nowadays, many people find each other through group chats, online communities, hackathons and the Internet. This school hopes to bring them together.

The school plans to launch a two-year program by 2028. It is backed by a for-profit company that has already raised 42 million US dollars. At that time, the tuition the school plans to charge will be as expensive as that of top private universities.

It is understood that although the school recruits high school graduates, applicants under the age of 18 are also eligible to apply. In the future, the number of enrolled students may exceed 50 and continue to expand.

Of course, with such high tuition fees, what can students get?

They can get access to 200 speakers and mentors, many of whom come from 10 founding partner enterprises: Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit and Stripe. Gagan Biyani, the school's CEO, said that these companies, as well as dozens of other enterprises, are looking forward to recruiting graduates from this school.

This school sits somewhere between Y Combinator (the well-known startup school) and Peter Thiel's Fellowship Program, the program that specifically encourages young people to skip college and start businesses directly.

These students pay tuition, learn practical skills for the tech industry, and also get internal referral opportunities to land jobs at tech companies.

Apart from these, the school's own management team has a strong lineup.

a16z is one of the most influential and disruptive venture capital institutions in the world. It was co-founded in 2009 by Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen and seasoned entrepreneur Ben Horowitz.

Marc Andreessen is a board member of this innovative school. He started his career at a very high starting point, directly driving the popularization of the modern Internet. He is the co-founder of Netscape Navigator, and now one of the top investors in Silicon Valley.

a16z's investment portfolio is star-studded, including Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Instagram, Groupon, etc.

Board member Erik Torenberg is a well-known Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur, angel investor, and founder of the podcast network Turpentine. He currently serves as General Partner at a16z.

Gagan Biyani, another board member of the school, serves as CEO in charge of daily operations. Gagan Biyani is the founder of Udemy, and his entire career has been dedicated to rethinking how people learn.

Udemy pioneered a model that allows anyone anywhere to learn from experts online. Gagan Biyani also co-founded Maven, creating a new model for live, cohort-based learning on the Internet.

Zelda Poem from the founding team is the founder of Nautilus, a non-profit project in San Francisco. Nautilus is a three-month residency program where young artists, scientists and technologists live and work together, fully funded by patrons. She dropped out of French high school at the age of 15, and has spent the past ten years building the alternative education options she wished she had access to back then. She used to work at a16z and currently works at venture capital firm 1517.

As previously introduced by Duozhi, there are already many innovative schools in the United States that "replace college with entrepreneurship", such as Alpha School which focuses on AI teaching and Forge Prep which emphasizes "working on real projects". But The Horowitz Andreessen Academy is quite representative — it is directly founded by top VC firm a16z, managed by well-known edtech practitioner Gagan Biyani, and can mobilize resources from 10 founding partners including OpenAI, Google, Stripe and more than 200 mentors, directly opening up the most core Silicon Valley network to high school students.

At a time when AI has taken away many entry-level jobs, having a path that guarantees entry into the tech industry and landing a job may be attractive enough for many young people.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Duozhi Wang" (ID: duozhiwang), written by Wang Shang, and published with authorization from 36Kr.