00:00The new Horowitz Andreessen Academy is launching an AI-focused alternative backed by $42 million
00:05and some of tech's biggest names, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and NVIDIA. Founder and CEO
00:11Gargan Biani joins us now. What is this? This is an academy. This is alternative education for the
00:17AI age. What are we talking about? Yeah, it's a new school built for the most ambitious young
00:23high school graduates. And our goal is to train them for the new era. What age are we talking
00:28about here? Typically 16 to 20. They're going to, they have to have a high school diploma in order
00:34to apply and they can be one or two years into college. And so let's get into the skills that
00:39we're talking about here, right? You know, actually there is no standard path anymore, but let's say
00:44once upon a time you might've gone to Stanford, done computer science, and then dropped out.
00:50Are we talking about competence in coding, computer science still as the pathway, or this is literally
00:56just being fluent in AI, the tools themselves? Yeah, I think at this point, the specific majors
01:04are less relevant than the overall skill of building. So the mentality that, you know, we talk to hiring
01:11partners every day and ask them, who are the employees that you want to bring on? Who are the
01:16young people that are most successful? And they have a few key skills. One, they're AI native builders.
01:21So they understand how to use the technology, whether that's building software products or
01:25hardware, they know how to use the technology to build things. The second thing is they have
01:30people skills. And then third is they have to have ambition. And so our goal is to train people on
01:36those three main skills. We said that the frontier labs and Nvidia are some of the big backers from a
01:41financial perspective, but it's called the Horowitz Andreessen Academy. Talk a little bit about Ben and
01:46Mark's involvement and how this came about. Yeah, they've had an internal effort to rethink,
01:52you know, higher education for a long time. At their venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz.
01:57At Andreessen Horowitz. But it's only recently that we felt that they felt that it was time to actually
02:04get in the ring and provide an alternative. And so what we're doing now with the Horowitz Andreessen
02:09Academy is we raised $45 million, $42 million, excuse me, $42 million, a significant portion of
02:18which is from the firm. Mark Andreessen is joining the board along with Eric Torenberg, who's a general
02:23partner. That's right. Yeah. How is that going to work? So she raised the money to get yourself set up,
02:27right? That's right. You know, if you are a candidate to join this college, A, when are you guys going
02:32to
02:32get set up and start your first semester? Well, applications are open today for our founding class
02:37fellowship, which is a one-year tuition-free program. It's a school. And the first program
02:45starts in September of next year. Quick question. Why Horowitz Andreessen and not Andreessen Horowitz?
02:51Well, it's not an extension of the venture firm. It's a separate company. And so we had to make it
02:56clear by flipping the name. We also, though, wanted to make it clear that it has close ties to the
03:01venture
03:01firm. Because one of the main things we're trying to do is build a network. You know, most students go
03:06to
03:06school in order to get a network of peers, hiring managers, and advisors who can help with whatever
03:13they want to do in their career. And Horowitz Andreessen Academy indicates that this is going
03:18to be one of the most premier networks that any student can possibly get access to.
03:22They're kind of solving for the talent pipeline, you know, ensuring a talent pipeline in some ways.
03:27Yeah. I think that A16Z's portfolio has like 850 companies with 18,000 roles available right now.
03:35We need to train people to be more effective and to be able to join these companies and succeed in
03:41the new era. You did mention the closeness to the firm. And, you know, Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
03:46know what they're doing, right? They're identifying talent as part of their thing. How much of this is an
03:51element of it being an incubator, right? If you think about the academic institutions in the Bay
03:56Area, loads of startups have been born directly out of them. So is that the idea? Is there anything
04:01codified? If somebody brilliant starts a company while at the academy, then what happens? Who gets
04:08a piece of it? Yeah, we're absolutely going to help, you know, students at the academy get funding if
04:15they want to. But we also believe that some of the most ambitious young people are going to go and
04:19join companies. Not everybody is going to start a company at 18 or 20. And so the idea is to
04:25provide
04:26something that gives both options to students. And certainly, I hope we fund some of the companies
04:32that come out of it. What I find really interesting about this is who's going to be teaching? You know,
04:37lots of regulars on this program, they might be founders themselves or bench capitalists. And it's
04:43not that surprising if you see on their calendar a Thursday night class at Stanford. That happens quite
04:48often. So who is it that you want to bring in to give exposure to these brilliant young people you
04:54hope will go through the system? Yeah, I mean, first, let's be clear. The most important thing
04:59about the education at the academy is pursuits. So we expect 80 plus percent of the time of students
05:06to be spent on their own pursuits, doing things like deep research, learning a new skill, starting a
05:13company or building a project. That's the core educational philosophy. Around that, we've
05:19recruited some of the most seasoned and experienced operators on the planet to come in and offer
05:24classes on subjects like AI inference engineering, or building and scaling AI applications, or even
05:31things like product sense or finding love. The idea is... Finding love? Yeah. I mean, we believe
05:37interpersonal skills and life skills are a critical part of the academy. That would be my question,
05:40right? Like I went to college, I went to law school, I played sports. Some of my most formative
05:45years weren't necessarily spent studying. I did study. But how do you get that element of it? If
05:50it's an alternative to college, the non-academic part's as important to many people. Yeah, absolutely.
05:57Social life really matters. And that's why our goal is to open up San Francisco to these students,
06:01right? This academy is based in the heart of San Francisco. It's going to be... And as you and I
06:07both
06:08know, this city has so much to offer from arts to culture to music. Was it ever a debate whether
06:13it would be in San Francisco or not? No. That was something firm from day one that it would
06:18have to be. That's the moment we're in right now. That's right. San Francisco is the center
06:22of innovation. It's the center of business. And it's now becoming the center of culture for
06:27a lot of things. And so, I mean, it's San Francisco or nowhere.
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