Why a16z is Building a New School for the AI Era | Ben Horowitz
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Why is this considered the greatest time in history to be young?
This should be the greatest time in the history of humanity to be young. This is like Thomas Edison's time or Henry Ford's time or so forth, but the challenge that we have is everything that we've built to train you was built for a world that is so
Soon to no longer exist. Mark and I just commissioned this research report on Gen Z, and one of the findings was that it's the generation that has the highest variance and fragmentation across the board.
It's critical for young people who don't have that billion dollar idea to not settle for the million dollar idea and instead go and explore more. We're building a new school for the AI era and that means redesigning everything. Let's go pursue it all and
let's get an output on that.
Picture HAA five years from now. Водою хоп да ви ачивід? Хауді детермін іфробінь суксо? Май го
із.
The education system we have today was largely built for the industrial age. What should it look like for the AI era? In this episode, I sit down with Ben Horowitz and Gagan Biani to introduce the Horowitz and Indrissan Academy. A new school designed around learning by building. We discuss why AI is changing the skills young people need. While the Academy focuses on projects and real-world experience, and what students can learn by being immersed in San Francisco, alongside people building technology today. We also explore why Ben thinks this could be one of the best times in the history to be eighteen. And why judgment, people, and learning by doing? May matter more than ever. Well Ben, Gogin, we have a big announcement today.
Yes.
We are announcing Harwitz and Jason Academy.
Yes, we are. And we're very excited about that. Super popped.
So let's get into the story of how this came to be and let's talk about what it is. Ben, ever since I joined a year and a half ago, we've been working on bringing this to life. We found the perfect CEO and co founder in Goggin, but you've been thinking about this at A C and Z for years before. So talk about what was the impetus for why we wanted to make this happen.
Yeah, we kinda came at it from a couple of different directions. So the kind of first thing was one of the things we notice is for young people, kind of college works really, really well if you wanna be a scholar or kind of a professor or that kind of thing. But it's a little bit of a weird proposition if You just want to get a job or you have an idea to start a company. It's a very large financial investment and a very big time investment. And most of the stuff. That happens in college isn't around that. It's around other kinds of things. And there's being a well-rounded person, this and that, and the other. But if you ask, an eighteen year old why do they go to college? It's to get a job usually. And that kind of uh doesn't always translate.
So that was kind of one thing we're like, you know, I wonder if, you know, we got a lot of jobs. Maybe we can help with that. And then on our side, from a hiring standpoint, I think that college really evolved a lot in the last, I would say, four or five years in terms of kind of the kind of students they're looking for and then what skills they have. And in our world, the skill sets needed are evolving so fast. that it was just very hard for a kind of big system like that to keep up. So we still think college is great for probably most kids, but there is a certain kind of kid that wants to build something that already knows they want to go in specifically currently into technology and We have access to all the jobs.
We know exactly what you need to learn. We know exactly the skills that you have to have. And so we thought, gee, like that would be a great thing for us to add to the mix and provide.
Yeah. And we've individually been thinking about this for over a decade. You and your many businesses haven't co-founded Udemy, Maven most recently. We did a search for who's the right CEO and it just through the process became obvious that Goggin has one been thinking about this forever, but then two is one of the most just impressive entrepreneurs in the entire space over the past decade plus.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why is this considered the greatest time in history to be young?
0:00–5:11
2
What problem does the Horowitz & Andreessen Academy aim to solve in education?
5:11–11:01
3
How does the Academy’s project‑based learning differ from traditional college?
11:01–17:08
4
Why is San Francisco chosen as the campus and how does its culture support students?
17:08–21:56
5
What role do failure and real‑world projects play in developing judgment and people skills?
21:56–27:19
6
How does AI change the skills young people need and the way they learn?
27:19–31:38
7
What are the long‑term goals and success metrics for the Academy?
31:38–36:46
8
How can the Academy’s model expand beyond tech to creative and other fields?
36:46–42:49
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The a16z Show
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