Joe Liemandt is the principal of Alpha School and the founder of Trilogy Software and ESW Capital. 

Liemandt dropped out of Stanford to build Trilogy, became the youngest member of the Forbes 400, then vanished from public life for 25 years. But he didn’t stop building. Through ESW Capital, he quietly became one of the most prolific acquirers of software businesses in the world.

Now he’s back with a $1 billion bet that AI can help kids learn ten times faster, and that school as we know it is broken.

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At Alpha School, students spend two hours a day on AI-driven instruction and score in the top 1% on standardized tests. The rest of the day is devoted to what Liemandt calls life skills: leadership, entrepreneurship, teamwork, and real projects that kids actually care about. There are no lectures, and kids don’t move forward until they master the material.

He argues the traditional classroom was designed for a narrow slice of students and wastes everyone else’s time. The fix isn’t more money or better teachers; it’s rebuilding from scratch around mastery, motivation, and AI. The role of a ‘teacher’ dramatically changes.

This conversation covers everything from sleeping on the floor at Trilogy to being mentored by Jack Welch to the thinking behind Alpha School.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

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