YouSaid · the spoken record

Joe Liemandt

lines on the record: 209
first: 2026-03-31
most recent: 2026-03-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That we transform education for one billion kids. So that's nothing like what we had. And the tagline, if I had to give my tagline, is our job is to make this the best time in history to be a five-year-old.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's manageable. It's super manageable. Math Academy. Every parent go look at Math Academy. It's going to be like, oh, 28 hours away. I want to say they've just released their SAT program. They've been updating it. And I want to say it's. 180 hours?”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it literally can just tell you based on your work how long, you know, to get there, and when you put the goal setting in, it'll tell you all of that. And so not being ambiguous, right, and being definitive to the students critical. And then the second, the numbers are small. It's definitive and small.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's 200 hours. Right? I mean, we're 20 hours, not 200, right? We're 10 times faster And so there's the two parts. There are both things you said were totally correct. It was ambiguous. So I could just put a bunch of time in. And if you don't have an AI tutor, you can study for a long time and your SAT scores don't go up, right? And so the first is we're not ambiguous. We're like, here it is. You're 17 hours away. You're four hours away. Like in our dashboard, it literally says you're six hours from finishing, you know, six or six weeks from finishing it. If you go to an hour of homework, you're like a week away”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just effort based. Do you want to do it? And back to just how life is. She's like, Yeah, I want this thing. And now I have the world's best Broadway musical. I'm going to change my world, right? Changing what, you know, she's going to go back in college. And she's like, I'm going to go, you know, be arts theater forever. And that's why the mass, she was like, it was enough on her because she's an arts theater girl.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's correct. No, the musical Maddie who's doing the musical. She wasn't wanting to do the 790. She got a 790 or math SAT. She was below it. And sorry, Mattie, I just outed you. You know, she was below it, but she wanted money to go fly to New York to meet the producer so she could get money to do her own thing. And I was like, well, what does Timeback tell you how many hours? It's going to take you to get to 790. We were actually trying for 800, right? It was like X. And I'm like, okay, go do it. And you'll earn the money and we'll buy your plane ticket up there, right? And so she did. And then she got her plane ticket, right? And it was just, and it's just this concept of, oh, it was work. And, you know, she was happy at 750 or 760 or whatever. And then you just move it up”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just not how it works. I mean, and you could get kids on this, and it's not like there aren't times where the kids like, okay, Right. And so, you know”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All those things around it, we're trying to take out, you know, one of the things is there's a bunch of Montessori, right? Maria Montessori in Montessori schools, she very much believed that kids should be involved in real world things. She actually has things where she's like, Kids adolescents should earn money. Right, and you know that this having them do work and the value of work and that their work has value is a good thing for child development. And we find, you know, I think if you, the best thing you could do is ask alpha parents or like, no, this is all really good. This isn't, we're not poisoning the kids and getting them to be this coin addicted person who if they don't get paid, they won't do any learning, right? Instead”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's mine, and I'm going to invest it right now. We do let them yolo it and do something stupid and lose all their money.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because if you want to teach financial literacy, which every parent wants, you know, you earn alphas, you learn how to save, earn, save, spend, invest, and donate. And they start that cycle in kindergarten and then move it all the way up. And it gets bigger dollars as you get older, but you want your kid in seventh grade. Like if you give them some phantom stock thing to teach them to invest in seventh grade, I can tell you that's terrible. Because one, it's not real money. They didn't earn it. And they're going to yol”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing off camera. Oh, you guys want to do an off campus lunch? Whatever the currency is, social peer pressure. Oh my God, all the other girls are there. Whatever it is, our guides will use to get them there. Then once they're top 1%, right? Boom, right? They're there forever. Our kids at college aren't getting paid. They're all 40 students, right? It's just you change kids' capability to become self-driven learners to do that. But there is a fear of it. And there is, I'm sure there's a bad way to do it. But starting in kindergarten, our kids earn alphas.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And all of a sudden, they're going to do it themselves because they change their internal view. And so part of all of this stuff is when you talk about extrinsic and intrinsic is if you can change the kid's internal view of their capabilities. It's worth using whatever motivation you can, right? Back to our guides. They use whatever lever they need to pull with the kid to break through. Kids have part of education is kids have blocks about what they can do. I'm not a math science girl. And you're like, that just doesn't exist. There's no like brain chemistry that I'm a middle school girl. I can't learn about science, right? Yes, you can. So, our guides have to break through that, and they'll do whatever it takes. And if paying them a thousand dollars is it or bringing them out to an event or letting them go to an off-campus lunch.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're bigger, so then they win a little bit, and then once they win, they get jump started, and then they're good, and now they like it because they keep getting accolades that they're good at it. Academics is the same way. You just need to jumpstart them on paying. And then like those kids, so in our middle school, we'll pay any kid $1,000 to become top 1% Know, so when they transfer in, oh my god, top one percent is too hard. You pay them a thousand dollars, they get to top 1%, it changes their internal view of themselves. I'm like, oh, I am a good student, then you don't have to pay them anymore.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“External and extrinsic motivation versus intrinsic. There's a huge debate about it. And I believe we'll have the biggest real data set in the world. And so there's both. There's both sets of papers, which is a paper that literally that you could look up that says there's no such thing as intrinsic motivation. Because even if you're intrinsically motivated, it's because of something. Know, even a good student They want the accolades of being a good student. Is there a true love of learning or is there a true love of accomplishment? And what's the accomplishment getting you? So you can go read that paper and have a very strong view of there's no difference between paying kids and boost. It's why in sports parents often hold their kid back a year.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so it's going to manage all that for the parents, right? And the parents are going to be like, oh my God, my kids top 1% and they're super happy because they hit this and then, oh my God, I got some gaming time or I got some TikTok time or whatever it is. I was able to control those kind of elements. So wrapping in all the motivational stuff. There's just there's a hundred ways to motivate kids, right? There's going to be social peer gaming. Like we have a multi-user version where the kids are just competing. Think of video games, but just, you know, you're competing on academics. And, you know, the 10% of kids who really love academics. I mean, oh my God, those kids, you know, they just run out of curriculum, there's just not enough to teach them. Like, they're just, you know, they just blow through the top of the charts.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What if it was that, right? Or what if I had an associated life skill project where it funded your trip to New York so that you could go meet the producer for your musical, you know, or funded your robot war that you were going to do, all ideas? Or just more mundanely, what if it was what manager screen time? So every parent struggles with how much screen time. Well, what if there's just the time back that's like, guys, Let me be in charge of your kids' screen time because I'll make sure they get to top 1%. And if they're top 1%, you're going to give them some more screen time”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who are the influencers you like? So imagine there's influencers where you're getting social creded based on being able to do this. Now, and if you want, as parents, what if I allowed you to do 100 for 100? So just take our system and you as the parent could put in the money, right? And all of a sudden the kid gets it, right? And what if especially when I took that money and I didn't let him spend it went into the Robin Hood for kids account to teach them financial acumen and investing in financial literacy?”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you earned your little card, and then you went out in the afternoon. Or what if online after you did that, you were able to go into a 10,000 person Twitch stream with some of the best video gamers in the world, right? Who's your famous, who's the streamers you like?”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, well, let's just take middle school boys, their number one motivation is video games. So imagine if you got some of the world's best video game designers, like the best, not your prodigy guys, right? The best ever who've made the world's best video games. And you got 150 of them in a building and said, go build the world's best video game on top of this, where the kids are going to play it two hours a day and become top 1%. Bet your kids if they're video gamers are going to love to play that. Right and be super interested in that. Or let's talk about like an after school for kids who need after school tutoring. Just ran this as a test. Imagine Kuman, if you know some of these, everybody hates it, right? Yeah. Oh my gosh, it's all terrible.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And that's what I want Which is so, how do we 90% motivation? So, how do we solve it? So we've spent all our time, and when we release time back next year, the set of motivations for these kids are going to be awesome.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You'll make them, right? But no, I need to make them love it more than vacation. Not just there's a set of parents who will make them for sure”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or here's our problem and what we've been working on is you know, if 10% of it is the ed tech, you know, the time back, how are you, if I let it out of my environment, I no longer can give the kids a time back. If I own all six hours and I give you four. I got the motivators. I got the motivation. But at homeschool, I don't have that. Or after school, no one, you know, I can't tell you how many. My daughters are like, no one wants to go to school after school.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what timeback's going to be, and it's going to explode it. And then there's the pure virtual, which is, well, homeschoolers. Right. And everybody else.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Come do it. We're hiring a thousand coaches through Texas for Texas Sports Academy for these middle schools, right? We have 500 GT schools for gifted talented kids. I have somebody who loves Montessori, so we're going to have a Montessori school. We have a wilderness school, right? Where if you think the wilderness in the afternoon. So there's all these great opportunities for entrepreneurs who want to go then build schools. So there's just going to be a, think of Shopify for microschool or for schools, right?”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so then I get to the second when we talk about virtual how can I scale it without that? So, one way. Is the time back software works? So we're going to let people build on it And so anybody wants to build a school, now's the time, right? If you have an idea of what the afternoon should be.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, the second thing we're doing is we want to make sure for our existing students that we're giving them awesome classmates. And then and only then, after you do those first two circles, do you say, should we open to a new location? Building that culture is hard, especially we're the most talked about school in the world. We have demand through the roof. We're called from every country. Secretary of Education is down here. I got 10 governors who, you know, are coming down. Everybody wants this model. And I'm like high quality at all times, right? Never relent on quality because we have to deliver every kid and we'll get it to everybody. So those are our physical school rules, right? Now, I'm not going to be able to get to a billion kids next year if I have to build the schools.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, and you lose some because they don't want to do it. But you build that culture of And back to even growth. So, like, our growth team, right? Because we're expanding, you know, they wake up every day, and the first thing they work, we have three concentric circles. The first is, is there something you need to do to deliver three commitments to every existing child in the school? And if there is, go do it. Like if there's a problem at an existing campus and you can fix it. Worry about some new campus. Go fix Then the second is have we filled every school that we already have? Because the number of classmates is an important part of school, right? And when you start a school, it's smaller and then you want to grow it.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you believe in delivering the three commitments to every kid? And if you don't believe in that, don't come. And everything's based around it. And if you're a guide, you have to deliver to your students. But if you're on my academic team creating lessons, you do too. So, like, if a kid is struggling and can't get through your lesson, the guy who did the lesson is going to get on a call with them. Back when I lose 50% of them, when you have some of these learning science researchers and they realize they have to deal with kids and are accountable”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know all that kind of stuff. And so, we went through back to our standard, which is we opened all these schools, all these new locations. I'm like, how do I know if they're good? Well, we have six and a half hours of testimonial videos from families who joined the last 10 weeks about them saying, you know, it's only been 10 weeks and my kids' life's transformed. And so you just, you're out there trying to figure out what's the hard question to ask. You show it publicly. We show all our grades publicly. We give all the, you know, all these testimonies. You see everybody around it. And that's our control group, right? For that. And then the other part's just core culture, right? Just your core culture of”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're doing the stuff they love that's hard and challenging with a guy who's supporting them, right? It is hard to beat. That is why on Saturdays they're like, God, I wish I could go to school. Just building all that kind of stuff. But you're always trying to figure out what is that extra question, right? Like, how do we know if the parents really love the school? What is it? Like, will the parent create testimonial videos? Know of their school because it's totally crazy, right? Because people are always like, You go to that weird school where they don't have teachers.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And it's asking the hard question. It's easy to ask easy questions, right? It's why we move the question from, do you love school to do you love school more than vacation? Because G left school, my comparison when you say that to a kid, it's like, well, it's better than my old school. My old school sucked. But you're like better than vacation, though. That's a harder standard. You're old school, if you're compared to your old school, it's too easy. Better than vacation, that's a hard standard.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's everything also surveys. We ask the kids. Every adult had one or two teachers who transformed their life. Is your guide that for you? To the parents, do you trust your guide to hold high standards so you can provide unconditional love, right? You know, a kindergarten, do you love your guide? But we ask, you know, so you just are asking these questions, right, to get the data that you need. We have quantified all the metrics on the life skills. So I know it's not just, oh yeah, our kids have grit or, oh, they're good public speakers. I'm like, no, everybody in our class scored 95% on our eye and every fifth grader beat a Wharton MBA and teamwork and leadership. And so we quantify everything, right? So that and measure it and then can react to it if we have a problem. Because you do, right? Every guy's not perfect. But then can we swap one out?”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I have all that. But how do I know if my culture's good? How do I know if I've hired the right guide? What if I have a wrong guide? How do I measure all that? So we have the same level of metrics that we do around our school and our system that we do around our academics. So, I know within eight weeks whether my guide's good or not. And a lot of this, so a lot of it comes from results. Are they delivering three commitments to all the kids?”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, we call them painfully insightful metrics. So we wake our org every summer when we're redesigning, you know, for the next year. We sit down and we say, what are the painfully insightful metrics that we need to know such that we know that new school we opened that we've never visited is as good as our Austin flagship, right? And all our guides, you know, and everybody in the org is like every year they get better. Like, how do I know I don't have a bullying culture, you know, somewhere, right? What's the question? What's the survey question? What's the metric I can collect to know that? So obviously on the academic side, right, we have the best closed-loop system in our, you know, that collects all the data. So I know on a daily basis if you're learning.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. So that part's commoditizing the six hours a day down to Kovar. Got that. Now, let's talk about all the other hard parts. Let's talk about there's physical and then virtual. So on physical schools How do you measure guides and how do you have the metrics so as you open new buildings, right, new schools that you're sure what happens in all the other schools?”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot. So scaling's hard. This is, you know, this is sort of back to your Elon example. This is building your first prototype is really easy. And how do you build the factory that churns it out? And so a lot of what I've been doing in the last three years is how do I build the system that's going to allow this to scale? And so timebacks, you know, a key element on the academic side.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And she was like, it was because you're just constant focus that it had to be every kid That we'd come in and we'd be like, okay, we got 90% of the kids. And you're like, Focus on the ones we want, and what do we have to do, and what do we have to fix to get that for every single one? And that's back to building a system that if we're going to get this out to a billion kids, that's the mental, that's the model we have to have. And that's, you know, back to being 100.0% charge. It makes it so great is, you know, if you're going to be on time back and using this system, it's going to be every kid.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's, you know, it's just really important. And you have to have that focus. Now, one of my public school, one of my, there was a teacher, when I first came in, you can imagine there were skepticism, you know, because I would say crazy stuff. There'll be no adults academic teaching in this building. You know, just if now with hindsight, you're like, well, duh, it works. Before that, that's crazy talk, whether you're a parent or a teacher, right? It's just, it's, and the set of teachers and parents who stayed, you know, who were like, okay, I'm in. There was one who was, you know, basically from public school and I was like, you know, and I'm an evil billionaire, you know, and so every evil billionaire does education, all those, you know, appropriate memes. And I was like, eventually, what was it that won you over to stay and be part of it?”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no alignment. The three commitments to the kids, your kid will love school, they'll learn 2x in two hours, and then life skills. Those three commitments. Every kid, every kid, we have to do that for every kid. And if you're in my organization, you wake up every day and say, I'm going to deliver that. And you can never blame the student. You can never make an excuse around that. And if you don't like that, just don't come because that's what we're going to be about, right? We lose about 50% of our educators when we tell them they're accountable for the kid learning. They're not used to it, right? And they're like, No, it's a kid's fault. What if he doesn't do this, or what about that? I'm like. Our guides are measured on do they deliver the three commitments to every kid, every kid.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not democracy. We're going to do this. And if you want to come board, we're going to do this. Like, if you want to come and start a school on Time Back, you're going to do two X in two hours. And there's a whole set of people who are like, well, how about we do one X in one hour? Because 1X is as good as every other school. And I'm like, well, go do that with somebody else's offer. If you're going to use mine, all these coaches who are setting up these sports academies, they're like, well, some of the parents don't care. I'm like, sorry. We're going to do it this way. Delivering awesome academic outcomes, right? Just who I am, and that's just I don't want to vote around that.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I am in charge, or hey, I'm your biggest supporter, good luck around it. But yeah, I don't do well on the 50-50 consensus kind of stuff. I push the edge on radical stuff. I'm like, I don't want to vote. You don't get to vote on this, right? We're going to do this.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Frankly, just my daughters give me, you know, Marcus Lamonis on the prophet, if you know that TV show, he has, I'm 100.0% in charge. That's pretty much my attitude.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The PC order story helped me realize I didn't want to be public. So PC order was actually one of the trilogy co-founders, Christy. Had this idea of okay, I'm going to build PC order, which was online selling computers online back in.com days. And built it up, super successful, had all the biggest resellers aboard. And then she went public. And then basically Dell put her customer base out of business. And so then her business went terrible. And so the stock went from 50 to 5 or something. I can't exactly remember. But down 90 plus percent. So it went public, you know, ran up in all the hype and then imploded. And then we bought it back. And just, you know, said, okay. And, you know, for me, so I've kept trilogy private, you know, to this day. It's still private. And a lot of it is just. I prefer just to be 100% in control.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that can you can draw it sort of back to his resetting me of are they getting value out of what you're doing? And I'm like, oh, it's my responsibility to make sure all the kids learn these days. So anyway, so yeah, I had all those kind of things. It was awesome.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kids have to love school and they have to learn, right? And when we designed our educational system, I think we're the only school in the world who, if a kid's not learning, it's our fault. It's the system's fault. It's not the kids, right? If our kids aren't learning 2x in two hours that they're failing, it's my fault. What did I do wrong? How is my motivational model not right? Do I need a different guide? Was the lesson I gave them not the right level? Was it not a good lesson? Was I not coaching them the right way? But what did I do wrong versus a lot of school systems are like, oh, kids' fault.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And GE had used a G medical, had used it in Melt's group. And literally, I met with Jack and he's like, yeah, I hear med doesn't like your product. I'm like, freaking won e-commerce product of the year. He literally was like, Joe, I don't care if it comes from heaven above. If GE doesn't get an ROI, your product, you and your company suck. Where's our ROI? It was like an eye opener to me where I was literally just a product guy, where I was like, I delivered a good product. And he's like, if your customers don't get value. Nothing matters. And I was just like, huh? Right. And it totally reset my whole view of what a company would have to do. And, you know, if I had to apply it to education now, education thinks their job is sort of just to put kids through school. Ours is to actually have learning.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then he is the most inspirational person because he sort of had to, he shocks you a little bit with who are, you know, and then inspires you to greatness, right? Where I remember I was flying back from that trip. And that whole plane ride back, I had a, I was riding a hundred things down that I had to go do, right? That I was on the, I was sure I made sure I was going to be on the first step, not on my last step, right? And so just that kind of great inspirational, he was amazing at and other level setting, like this was a big one for me was in 97, we won e-commerce product of the year. And 97 went back to bot com. It was a big e-commerce year. I'm like, I won the e-commerce part. That's why we were very successful in other things.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's like, that's sort of like your skill set, right? Realistically it was, right? I had this set of skills, but fundamentally that's what I was. And he's just like, you know, Joe, you have to decide whether you're going to sit here and, you know, be full of yourself and decide that you're awesome. Or if you're going to decide, you are now at the case where you can go spend the rest of your life and freaking crush it, right? Is this your first step or your last step? Are you done? Have you just declared victory? And hey, everybody, look at me. I won the race, or are you like, oh my God, I'm only on the first step of the race.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly, Jack. I'm sure you want a copy of this, right? And I mean, I fool myself, obviously. And I get there and, you know, we're talking about stuff and he's trying to understand because he's astounded by, you know, how much my company was worth and all that stuff. And so at the end, he's like, okay, so I guess if I had to classify you, you're like, I'm trying to remember the G levels. You're like a level eight project manager.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is because they're building a real business and you got to know gross margins, right? And these are fifth and sixth graders, right? And so kids loved it just like I learned and loved it young. Everybody can learn this stuff if they're interested. We have other kids who don't like launching food trucks. But for those who do, it was awesome. And then once, you know, back to my 20s when I was building my business, Jack was both When you talk about high standards, high support, it's both where he would just be like, I remember this particular story was I was a youngest self-made member of the Ford 400, right? And so I'm flying up to where my annual mentoring thing that I was going to do with them. And I'm Right? Check this out, right? I'm all that.”
2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source