Hello and welcome to the Road Dad Podcast today. My guest on the show is Jeff Ralston. Jeff is the guy who invented Yahoo Mail. He's also a founder of many startups and now a part in that Y Combinator and in famous Silicon Valley tech incubator that invested in companies such as Drop Bucks, Weebly, Stripe Airbnb and many others. Personally, Jeff is one of my favorite partners of Y Combinator because he's firm but kind, heal quickly and honestly tell you exactly what he thinks about what you're doing, and then he'll help you fix it. I am really excited to have Jeff here today. Enjoy the show.

Start off as a computer. Scientists are programmer. I'm convincing some of the computer. The programmers I know to start call themselves computer scientists cause it sounds cooler. But I think I got a degree in computer science and became a program around Silicon Valley and worked as a programmer for quite a long time, always dreaming of being on an entrepreneur. But, um, but, you know, one thing led to another, and I had a great Christian, often Hewlett Packard, and I got a bunch of great opportunities and I went back to school with HP sort of a couple of times and got to different degrees one of master's in computer science from one MBA, and so a whole bunch of time passed before I really got to, um, you know,

to feed my my entrepreneurial need. But I finally did that in the in the early nineties when the Internet craze hit. My timing was pretty good, and I ended up with a company that, um that that did a bunch of things but eventually created this Web based email product called Rocket Mail, which turned into Yahoo Mail when we required in the late nineties by Yahoo. And then I spent a bunch of time at Yahoo almost nine years running a group in in. I skipped over the fact that I transition from being a program or to tow a manager. Although I never stopped programming programming was always my first love it and every job I've ever had. I kept on programming, but it was certainly not the major part of my job after that and that Yahoo indeed I had management roles, and I manage the team and the engineer organization. I became a general manager of division and then the chief product officer over those nine years, but eventually left in 2006 to start off doing a whole bunch of different things. But I I, uh I really wanted to start my own company in the education technology space,

but decided that the time was right for a variety of reasons and started doing a lot of angel investing and hanging out with my old friend Paul Graham at Y Combinator and Paul because his company had been purchased. Um, in just a year after my company at Yahoo And so we've known each other Yahoo and Captain Touch, and he was a natural person toe hang out with a little bit when you start doing angel investing because he was starting to become sort of ah, guru in the in the startup investing space, and I ended up I was the Seed Investor, the original investor in a company that I ended up becoming the CEO of for a couple of years, and that company got sold to Apple and I spent a little bit of time with Apple but left Apple and came back to education when I left Apple and with a couple of co founders, started uneducated technology accelerator. And we did that with Paul's help because he thought it was a great idea and at the same time he recruited me to be a partner Lycee. So in 2011 I became a partner. I see and founded an educational technology accelerator which was really modeled purposely with Paul's help after Y C, which was a smart thing to model it after, of course, because it was the first. And really,

I think, the best accelerator, the best early funder of startups in both their their waas and imagine 12 which was the name of our educational technology seller, didn't really well. But for a variety of reasons. After five years, all during that whole time, I was also a partner. I see my partner at the time. Tim Brady and I decided to merge. Imagine K 12 in with Y C. That was in 2016. And so now, as of now, I'm I am Ah, solely Ah,

partner. I see. But imagine K 12 and a tech focus is still there. It's a vertical focus within my see. That was a pseudo capsule somewhere, I guess maybe longer than a minute to be.

It's so good. I mean, it's it's a long history, and I'm actually really curious because in a way, you're not a typical founder, that the image of a typical founder that's been sold around the Valley of 18 year old who just dropped out of everything and started a $1,000,000,000 company, you actually had a really good career before your ventured out into the start

of world. You know, it's actually a little bit of a misconception. The average age of a founder. Why, See, is over 27. And I was a little older than that when I finally got going with my first company in my early thirties, which is a little old to do it. In fact, I always tell people that you're probably for most folks, the best time to do a start up to start a company is 22 to 30 to 20 to 35 depending on what happens in your life. So I was maybe a little on the high side, but not as much as you might think.

Yeah, okay. I mean, yeah, who is it? What's operate the founder was in his mid thirties when he started the company,

and they they sold young young Kume who the father is from. What's up for a good example. The two guys I know very well from there, Yeah, you guys and yeah, they were there, I think, Yeah, I might have even been 40 close when I started. You know, there's a lot of fathers who are older. There's no question Stewart Butterfield was in his forties when he started slack, right, especially of founders of enterprise companies. So there's a bit of a range, and it kind of depends. It doesn't mean that we should write off the 22 year olds or 18 year olds.

I've known incredible founders at that age. I have known incredible finders who are older, but it doesn't skew a little younger, just based because of the exigencies of the job of started, Pounder intends to skew younger

Well, it helps Thio be younger to sleep or not sleep. You work for 100 hours

a week. I think that's part of it, although I would argue it's less about the ability to work hard on and spend the time and um, and have the energy to that. Maura, about the fact that you just don't have that much else in your life to do so. You don't have distractions, you don't have Children and a wife. Usually you, um, and all sorts of other dependencies that distract you from this incredible focus you need to do it. That doesn't mean again that some people with all those things can't focus. But the hard part of it is that usually something has to give and often for the very best founders, it's their personal life in their family life. And that's a tough one.

Absolutely agree. And what want one thing that I've heard from a lot of founder shore dads now that they said they became a lot better at managing my time once they became parents. Because you

have to. You have todo always become better at things when you have

no choice. Maybe that's ah management trick. Just put yourself in a position where you have no choice, and then you automatically

because it is absolutely a parenting trick, right? You know, if you want your kids to make the right decision, don't give them too many choices not that you shouldn't give you his choices, but, um, you know, at some point help helping that. If you want to help them make the right choice, limit the possibilities.

Oh, for sure, because if you give him two choices, then it's easy for them to choose one or the other, and it's still a choice. But if you give them 20 then it's overwhelming. And then the kids don't really know what to pick. Actually speaking about teaching kids something, Let's talk about your childhood and how it shaped you as a person because I bet there were things from your parents and the way you were brought up that really influenced who you are today.

You know, I had a really good childhood. I had our family. Life was, for the most part, pretty happy. I haven't. We had four kids. I was the second of 43 boys in a girl, and my dad was a professor, computer science at the State Univision State University of New York at Buffalo. And, um, my parents were, um you know, I think they had their pros and cons. His parents,

they want I don't think ideal parents, but they were. They were, at the same time, great parents. And, you know, we had We had family dinners every night, and we had, ah, great conversations. And we played games families, and we had amazing trips. Um, as a family, we lived overseas as a family.

We actually, I I only did. I did it once, but they actually lived overseas, Um, several times. And And my younger siblings lived overseas for a year at a time, more than once, my dad would take sabbaticals every seven years, and we had a we had. Ah, we had a great time.

So was your dad a

professor? Yeah, he was a professor of computer science.

Oh, is that what led you to do computer science? So I was just getting the right career choice, but not really influenced by dad.

You know, certain e I think it would be. It would be, uh, silly to say he wasn't none. Influence. When I when I was in college, I did not go there at all with the intention of studying computer science. However, I had, you know, I had no idea really what I was going to study, but in the end. Computer science would came fairly easily to me. And it was certainly the path I struggled with that because it was the path of least resistance. It was too easy. It felt like I had to be struggling more,

but But I didn't. So I majored in computer science. Um uh, back in the day. In fact, it's interesting. I am. I haven't a nay be in computer science are B A. It's got a B because I went to Dartmouth and they're pretentious. And it's, you know, the Latin is artist back Loris, as opposed to being. But But back then it was in the math department, which was considered an art as opposed to a science. Although that's changed there. And in almost every computer science department in the country now,

she didn't get a B s degree.

Yeah, exactly. I did not get a B s degree. I did get an M s degree in computer science later. What? I was out in California, but that was a few years ago.

So just a little bit about the past and not to reveal your age. But how do you think you know family life changed in the last couple of decades. I get a feeling that back when you were growing up, I think family was important. But it was a different kind of importance. Like maybe it was a little bit colder on the inside. It is just my view of kind of the past, but, you know, you said it was happy, but

I would never I would never characterize it that way. I don't think there was a colder thing. I do think I do think sort of. The traditional relationship between parents and Children has shifted over time that for sure, in general, the dad is more engaged that I certainly changed a gazillion more diapers than my dad ever did and was more involved in all aspects of my kids growing and nurturing. Then he waas That was just, you know, Thea, um, the standard typical American home life was the dad came, and yet the damn it out and worked. Mom stayed at home with the kids. You know when When, um, when dad came home, he would,

you know, get ready. We'd have dinner. We talked then and then you go back. My dad always went and worked for a while before we before we did anything, but But I don't It wasn't we had a very warm family. I think that's true. Hours warms. My parents could be given their own, you know, issues and neuroses. But they were that we had a warm family, and I think that that that's not what's different. It's just that the split between Mom and Dad and maybe Dad's are are more, she said a little bit. But I don't think the overall laces I wouldn't progress,

you know, just more demonstrative, perhaps, than it was in the past. And more of the warmth came from Mom. Just perform for forcing. It's maybe a little more humanly balanced, but I wouldn't say it was It was warmer. I think the main difference that I would point out the main challenge for today's parents has shifted back in our day. That main challenge, I think for our parents was, um, TV. Like it was kind of a relatively not a new thing. But programming shifted rapidly in the seventies and eighties when I was growing up and, you know,

um and it was a challenge. You know, kids wanted to watch you know TV is this incredibly absorbing thing. And kids wanted to watch a lot of it in my My dad actually rebelled against this and and did everything he could to ration us from TV, even though, you know, he really wanted to because you wanted to watch sports and news things like that. But in little else, really. But But today, you know Justus an example. When my wife and I, um, we're building the house that we're in now and, um and they all my kids who grew up in we said for shore, you know,

in responding to the if you meet the challenges that we knew our parents had no TVs in bedrooms, TV's okay, but we want to watch as a family. We're gonna We're gonna make sure that if we do a TV thing, it's a family thing. And, um, it didn't matter because by the time my kids were, you know, 10 years old, they each had, like, three TV's any true because they had a phone, they had a laptop, and they had, you know,

tabler access to all those things and and we didn't know what to do about that and I don't think parents have figured it out. And I think the the isolation that that new media and new devices brings two families is, um, crazy. Hard for parents to deal with.

I wholeheartedly agree. It's virtually impossible because everywhere you go there's a TV. If there's a screen, there's some kind of a device.

You see that all the time? I mean, it's a societal thing. You you walk around and you look at people and everyone's, you know, go go on a go on any mass transit and where people are absorbed in their device all the time. When I go back to my college and I see people walking around there walking around, looking at their device all the time, it didn't used to be like that. You'd walk around in your head, would be up, and you'd be saying a load of people and it's you know, it's I among the great challenges of our time, I think howto howto how to be present in the world and cyberspace maybe not simultaneously, but in balance.

Well, just the personal observation. It's not only is it extremely absorbent, but I think a lot of people, maybe don't want to make a correlation between devices and behavior, but we've certainly noticed that the days when our daughter, the older one, is exposed to a device, even for a short period of time. Her just emotional state goes completely out of whack. In all it is is a correlation. But at least we've seen it because we don't usually give her a phone or a TV or anything. But even if you give your phone to look at pictures for 10 20 minutes, next thing you know to ours latest she's throwing a tantrum, which never usually happens. It's because the competition, basically anything in real life can compete with screen screen is just

so easy. Yeah, I mean, there's an adult equivalent to that watch someone who you know, forgot his phone somewhere. It's It's an immediate, you know, pseudo tension. Oh my God, where's my phone? But where where is my phone? How you know we've all been that way, like I left without my fault. The G's

What are you gonna do for the

day? It's liberating. Thio be without your phone in a weird way. You know, I was actually impressed with my son who's who's 20 now. He was out, you know, doing what 20 year olds do, which is sort of, you know, going out with his friends. Undoubtedly, even though he's a year under age, There was alcohol involved, but he lost his phone and he thought it might show up. So he forced himself to be without a phone for three days and accepted that before, you know,

giving up and getting a new one. And it was kind of neat because, you know, you would you would see him. And instead of having to take his attention away from his phone, you could just talkto which was nice. And he kind of agreed. That didn't mean that as soon as he had a new phone, it wasn't right back into the way We all are. But, uh, yeah, I think it's This is perhaps the ultimate challenge for new parents.

So you said your son. Is he the oldest or Yes, it's 20. Right? Does he? I guess that's college. Yeah, How challenging is that? And this is for all our parents, listeners with older kids. All right, we're gonna have their college age kids soon. You know what do you see? Changing over the last maybe a decade that he was growing up from, like, a little baby to now fully grown adult, doing his thing

while decade isn't from little baby a decade from a decade ago, you know, he was almost six feet and, you know, my size. He was a little baby. So, uh, Okay, So I'm sure you wanted that to be a narrow question. It was way too broad because, like you just asked me from a little baby to now what changed everything? Nothing. Because when what I have found proud, perhaps one of the biggest added to changes I've had towards towards parenting before I was apparent when I thought my attitude would be. And now is that I'm a big believer in nature over nurture that I used to be. And so many of the traits that we,

you know, noticed in my son from when he was a little baby or a toddler to now have remained consistent That, you know, in many ways, your Children are the people who they are from a very, very young age. But of course, everything has changed everything you know, in every way and that your worries change. Your your focus changes. Their focus changes. So that's about the best way I can. I can answer that question over that scope.

What? I guess what? I'm curious. As you know, Jan, my wife and I were just talking the other day how our oldest is just three years old, but we already got a pick, a noose from the future school for her. And that choice sounds easy, but not not so much, because what you pick now could lead or not lead to Stanford 15 years from now.

You know, let me tell you, I think I remember distinctly my dad basically saying, You know, 00 to 5 doesn't matter, like it doesn't matter what you do, it's all it's all kind of zero grade zero. Sorry, I should say Great kindergarten Grade five like is irrelevant. Not major enough. I can go out and it's like it's like elementary school. Just doesn't matter. It's after that that education really starts happening, but there's a lot of evidence that he's rah. He was wrong. Andi, I think it kind of depends on the kid.

Of course, it's all depends, but There's also some pretty good evidence that and this is a little shocking. That who you're kindergarten teacher is is predictive of your future salary. Some evidence for that, In fact, I wouldn't make any claims to the actual veracity of that kind of wild sort of thing. But there's some dad out of it that backs it up, which is pretty stunning. If you're a parent, be it just makes you worry more because that just meant for them they didn't worry that much about it. But, uh but yeah, I do think that I do think it's gone way overboard, though, like people are.

So so uh, you know, insanely focused on, you know, getting your kid into the right preschool. And, um, I just think that puts one of the real flaws I think, is that we all put way too much pressure on ourselves and our kids wait twirly now and and I do think that the simplicity of of some of those decisions back in the day took pressure off in a way that was that was helpful to both parents and kids. Stress is, in most cases, stress makes you stress. Load your I Q. Adulterer is a child, and literally, literally.

If you give a stress person on I Q test and you give a calm person, I could test the same person that I Q tests the same test of similar to the test. When they're calm, Vell do better. You'll have a higher i Q. And that's that's something to think about.

Also a great way to hack tests.

That's why there's these. These These drugs, like Ritalin, are so popular amongst kids because you can medicate yourself to do better on testing. You don't take uppers to do that. You take something that calms your mind down so that you can focus because focuses improves your I Q. At least the way we measure, right? You know, we all feel that right. That's what caffeine does. We know when when, uh, we're about doing something and we're caffeinated all of a sudden, like we just focus in and we have, you know, we have energy, but it's not like crazy. Certainly we also know if we have too much caffeine and we're jittery. We have a harder time, but just the right amount really helps

us, right? I guess that explains the bomber peak right where you just caffeinated enough, but also under the influence of alcohol enough that you balance that state

for longer. I don't want to come in that chemicals there for me to make any comment on, but I do think we all know like in the first cup of coffee while jazz. We're doing great. If you have, that's fourth cup of coffee. Not a good idea for any reason. All of a sudden, you're like jumping. You know, your you build a T d into yourself by doing that. And then it's hard to accomplish

the hard part with parenting. Really, what you do today doesn't show up for a couple of years for maybe a couple of decades.

Yeah, it's like investing in startups, right? You're your own. Start up and you won't know the results. Not for a couple of years, but for a decade or more. It's true, and I do think that that that's one of the complicated things there is. The little, uh, these little beast sees these little human machines do not come out with a manual. I always thought that was kind of shocking, where you know We've all had that experience with the first baby where you know, you still can't believe they just kind of check you out of the hospital and you're sitting there with this thing, and then you get home and you're like, What do we do with it?

You know? Oh, my God. You know, and anything that happened, you ask yourself, we don't know what to do in this situation. What do I do? And so whatever you call your parents, your friends or whatever and eventually you figure it out. And then for the second baby and I still remember so vividly taking my first baby out to the car and incredibly awkwardly and gently, like putting them in, putting him in his child seats, you know, took like, five minutes to get all the buckles just right and figure it my first time I'd ever done it right. And I was so worried about hurting his arm and his leg. And I put him in the second child. Just kind of slapping in there when you're done, right?

Yes, but it's amazing. That has been 20 years. But you remember

that moment? Oh, I remember it so distinctly

But what you What you describing is exactly what I just heard a couple of months ago from a friend who just had a new board. Exactly the same story of like, you know, I never really sure this thing. It's some fragile, like his comment was, Can't even take Highway.

Exactly. You know it. You know, every stage is a little bit that way. It's like your kids to two and 1/2 years old on the floor, screaming and crying as if the world is about to end in your thinking. What do I do? I cannot. This is not like his cerebral cortex is not fully developed enough for me to actually have a conversation about this. And you know it's hard enough to have a conversation with an adult that sank. It's impossible to have a conversation with. The child is saying that Todd Lewis actually forget it, you know. So what do you do? And it's, you know, it's a conundrum that every parent will run into, because that's just a developmental thing. That happens, and you have to muddle your way through it really public right

at the end of the day, public or not to me personally. It's just it's just an environment than you know. How you feel is apparent that it's all your feelings. Your toddler has no concept off a being in public, right is just she's she's having an issue. But I went to a couple of classes on positive parenting, and I think it was shocking there, too. A lot appearance was that most of the time it's really not about your child, that's about you. And in the case of a toddler's throwing attention like really you is appearing you to come down and figure things out first before before they can, because they don't have the emotional capability to deal with what's going on with them right now.

You know, it's interesting you say that because I think if there's one lesson, one most important lesson I've learned about parenting at every age is it's not about you. Uh, you know, a 20 year old, he's he's this whole products. The whole process of a child growing up is them separating from their parents and creating their own place in the world in their own life. And and, you know, for the 20 year old, I'm pretty involved. Still, we're talking about what he's doing this summer, and I'm still paying the bills and we take vacations together still, and we still have a life together. But he is,

you know, when he comes home, you know, he's really said to come moment, see his parents and he's out the door, right? He's got a separate life and it's about him and it's not about me. It's just not about like my life anymore. It's about his life, and that's equally true. When you're thinking about how you're a CZ, you said how you're dealing with a toddler like it's very complicated because we have just as many emotions and reactions as they do and your Children can be, you know, unintentionally cruel to you and mean to you and and ignore you. And it's not about you and you know you have to. It's hard way.

I think it's this we're all human beings that started that we all felt. I know I have felt many, many times on that score, but, um, you know, we put our own hopes that our own fears and and our own emotions as a lay on top of everything about them and that colors how we treat our Children in ways that lots of times is more about us and them. And that's almost always a bad strategy.

That's really excellent advice for everyone to write down or remember. And it's hard to remember, especially when they get emotional and you get emotional right. You have to remember that you have to come down first and you have to

know. Yeah, and you know what? There's this impossible line that you think that you're always thinking about, maybe for for me anyway. Maybe some parents. It's, I think, different parents of different clarity on the Slim's. Where do you say? Well, this is about me. I need to let them deal or B you know, let them get themselves, pick themselves up off the ground. Or I need to respond in a certain way or you say, no,

no, no. This is my parental duty. They may not do that. You know your daughter is is 15 and going out wearing something you consider inappropriate. When do you say something and when do you know? And jeez, today that's hard. The You know, I finally you know, I have no no real guidance as to where I should step in and where I shouldn't. And a lot of times I when I think I should step in, my wife looks at me and says, You're nuts. What do you do that I have to? And and you know that causes me,

Um, you know, gives me real pause. So it's it's a continuous. It's a continuous hard battle and I'll just go back to what I said before there's no manual. And even if there were Emanuel, it would be out of date instantly. You know, my parents were struggling with the manual. How do you deal with this crazy media that suddenly is engulfing your Children? We have this incredibly like it to the ends degree. What do we do? Oh, well, you know, there's the good news.

Is this guidance? The bad news is no one knows if the guidance is really right or fact, they're just because this, you know, in every generation and more so now because things change faster than they used to. But every generation you conduct experiments with no controls on your Children. We're just doing it now. And you know It's a live experiment, and we're just kind of improvising as we go along and trying to do the right thing by our kids. Yeah. You know, I used to say a lot of the innovation that we funded was incrementally for the simple reason that you know, if you do radical stuff, you're basically doing radical, stuck to Children. And,

you know, you can sort of imagine your kids of this age of imagine walking up to a school and you know, you you take your pick your age your your your six year old, first grade and, you know, hand them off with school. And they say, Hey, good news, which changed everything. We have no idea if it's gonna work, but this is the first pass. We're gonna experiment on your Children. Cool, right? And you know,

you know, you be horrified and grab your child back in, take them back home and find a school. It wasn't going to experiment on your child, right? But of course, the truth is we're experimenting all the time, and nobody knows precisely what. The outcome is just like kill. And here's here's a heart, just like we don't even know really what world? Our kids are gonna be coming of aging. It's changing so rapidly. What's it gonna be like? What jobs are going to be available? How are they going toe?

Live a happy and successful and productive. A good life. What is that? What will that mean? 10 15 2030 years? I don't

know. So how do you How do you prepare your kids If if even you don't actually know what this world is going to look like.

You want the answer, right? It's a hard one. I guess the only thing you can do is what I tell my kids is You better be flexible. You better be good at learning you better. You better expect change because you're going to get it. And some of that change is gonna be harmed. So you better be resilient. And, you know, I don't know that I've been remarkably successful in building grit and resilience and flexibility into my kids, for the simple reason that you know, a lot of that stuff is like I said, I'm a big a big proponent of nature over nurture. But you can do what you can do, you know, I have Ah,

friend who tells me, you know there are You can teach compassion. There's ways to do that. You need to think about that. And so even things like compassion, which I don't know how that some of that is certainly hereditary and some of it is learned. But, you know, you try to teach your kids everything you can and and project everything you can and model everything you can and hope in the end that that the right stuff sticks Not the wrong stuff because, well, model. Wrong stuff, too. Unfortunately, all of us managed to do that

as well. No, it's a great point because kids mirror us so much. And every time you do something poorly or an exhibit negative behavior, they pick it up. Just this fast is all the good things. So again comes back to us right on being good parents and showing leading by example. Uh, yeah, so we're does imagine k 12 come in in all of this. What's the role of that? I guess it should record the White Sea education stream now. Or is it?

That's what it is. Yeah, magically. 12 is is a track within Why CNN Take track where where we take the way work with the the tech companies that Aaron each batch on the two companies in Y. C is a hole. Do what we can to help them be successful.

Did you started originally because you were frustrated with something about your own kid's education or it just seemed like a really good thing to bring into the world?

Well, they're they're broadly speaking. There are two reasons we started. Imagine K 12 one was because it was pretty obvious that technology should have a role in education. Our kids were being educated in a sense, with technology and inundated with information, knowledge of a sort right and wrong knowledge all the time unless they were in school, in which case at the time was like, You check your technology at the door and there's nothing there. And that didn't make sense. My partners and I have been part of the, you know, the genesis of the Internet age, and we were thinking, This is ridiculous. It can't like that the schools need Thio. Thio need to open up to this technology and make use of it.

It's going it's going to radically change the way kids kids learn, and by the way, it's changing the world. So schools have to be, you know, cognizant of that. And they should change their products to help kids be prepared for this brand new world. And there's huge opportunity there because everything isn't working the way we think it should work in education, especially in America. And this may be has, you know, technology can can ameliorate things where they're bad and improve things in every case. Secondly, I think if you wanna have a positive impact on on the world, outside is a whole. There's no better place to focus than than than education.

And if you won't improve people's eyes and and prospects educations when you're start right, or at least one of the places one of the key places you start. So for those reasons, imagine, you know, a tech was an actual place for me to go after, you know, being pretty fortunate and getting to be part of some really cool things and having the ability to make some choices.

Speaking of making impact, here's something that happened to me the other day. I went on Reddit and then one of the forums and teaching. I asked what would it take to get rid of books? Because to me, when I was growing up, I remember carrying a lot of books to school, and they were heavy and kind of highly unnecessary. And very often you don't even need those books in school. But you still have to bring him over its head and going forward in the future. You know, I see a scaring on iPad. I'm having all the books in the iPad or something along those lines. So but a lot of responses I got on the forum were along the lines of like, Oh, no, we can't get rid of books.

Paper is great. You want to touch your pages, that kind of stuff, maybe books or maybe something else. But what do you think we can do over the next 5 to 10 years to make the biggest impact on education?

You know, my daughter has back problems, thanks to lugging around whatever 20 or £30 of books all the time. It's ridiculous. Like it's it's the stupidest thing ever. But also, you know, you put your science book out there and it's immediately obsolete. And you know, instead of having a video of how the volcano works, it's a picture which isn't as good. And you know, someday, instead of having a video, you'll be able to step into the volcano in virtual reality, which will be better. So so they're just not as good as we can do.

So of course, we're going to get rid of them. They you know, because that that that, uh, that video of ah volcano weighs nothing. You don't take care around and you can see it anywhere, and you can bring it with you and put it in your pocket. It's way better than a book when I can have thousands of those videos and put them in my pocket. Of course, paper will go away, and I sympathize with the people who love paper and think it's a beautiful thing and you know it will still exist in limited amounts. But but the sad truth is, is that's the past. However, those things are good,

but I don't, you know, transforming educations. Ah ah, lot bigger and more complex than that. It's still probably starts with making better teachers and figure out ways we can make better teachers, and by the way, there's a technological aspect to that to which you might not expect. But that's surely because technology allows you to measure things and make things transparent that it was hard to do in the past. So we can figure out ways, toe, help teachers, become better aircraft and, frankly, figure out which teachers really aren't gonna be able to make it as, um in the new world and figure that out for them and for us.

And, you know, there's other societal things we need to do. There's nothing to do with technology and teachers, but you know, we need to have. We need to make teaching be as prestigious a job as we possibly can may be the most prestigious job in our society. And once we get there than the prospects for the future standard of living and the future prospects for United States of America just doing that if we could do that somehow would radically shift. But there's other aspects to preparing kids for the 21st century. There's different things we should teach them. We should teach everyone how computer science works and how technology works, and we should. We should be much more flexible on Let much more personalized and adaptive and all those things will help kids have better outcomes and therefore are better prospects in their lives. So there's there are transforming of things we can do with education. But we can't forget that that, you know his parents send is And as people who want to impact the education world is that these things have a lot of inertia for good reason.

Think back to that that, uh, scenario I gave you where you drop your kid off at, You know, a lab that's going to experiment on them and what sort of reticence you might have to that sort of thing. There's, um, there's a great story that Van Taverner is the founder of some of public schools, tells some. It's incredibly innovative school system, and she's doing amazing things, and I love what they're doing, and one of the things they're doing is that each child has a personalized learning planet, P L P. And it's it's different. It's complicated.

And when they implemented this, there was a lot of pushback from the entire community, from parents from teachers from from kids because it was different and it was very deep and very hard to deal with. And they found themselves unprepared and in unexpected ways. For example, she tells the story about how she came home and I had this really moment of conflict with her husband because he was trying to help their child, who was in the school with their math and was lost as to how to do it. Because, you know, it used to be your son's doing algebra or something. And you maybe you're a little rusty. You grab the textbook, you see where they are, you help them out. This was different, and their massive challenges like that.

Then she it was Her thing was, her school is her and her, you know her path to change, which was incredibly great, positive, but hard to implement. So these things a complex and difficult and I hope it, Adam,

and you just pointed out something, um, selling away. But I feel like parents with higher income and maybe more time on their hands or more a better ability to buy time. All right. They can actually invest more in their Children in these ways, but may be a way to look at technology. Is that her parents? We don't have as much money. Technology can bring all these experiences. Two more kids where you can have fancy school, can't have tutors. But if you can substitute that with Tech, you can really like give amazing science and math in everything experiences to kids who otherwise wouldn't get it because they're stuck in some poor school, you know, with no funding.

By the way, I think I think that's an awesome awesome point. I do think, Look, there's a lot of fear that that, um the technology can exact actually exacerbate the achievement gap that exists United States today, especially if you look a TTE communities of color versus versus Caucasian, um, communities, Asian cleaners, et cetera. But I believe firmly that if we do this intentionally as a society, we can. If we take steps intentionally decided we can use technology is a great leveller. Maybe maybe it's impossible to level completely, but it can be a great leveller, too.

Thio make our society much more of a meritocracy to re implement social mobility, which is actually incredibly tragically almost died out in America today. Um, your your, uh your situation at birth has something has an extraordinary high probability of determining your upcoming life. And that's wrong. No one in America believes in that. The American American dream is that anyone from any strata of society or economic um ah, level can do anything. And it's not so true anymore. And I think I really believe that technology has the potential to help us re implement that. I think it's critical for the for the future of our country and our standard of living and are and for future generations. So I really hope it's true anyway.

Well, you're making it true. I see and imagine.

I hope I hope we're playing. I hope we're playing a role in that, even if it's a small when I hope that's true.

I mean, remember clever there were in my badge in summer 12 and they seem to be in 1990% of schools in America now, So I think it says it's small steps

that made a huge impact. Yeah, I love, of course I know. Tired of power and Dan and clever, and that there are the guys are awesome and they're doing an incredible job. I'm actually very proud to say that if you look at imagine K 12 companies and the products they have created their in essentially every school in the United States and many, many, many schools around the world, and that's great. But change has been incremental so far, and we'd really you know, we need me is a sad I need to make more transformational change, to really squeeze out that achievement gap to really bring United States up Thio. Where it can and should be and bring are teaming up here and the rest of the world. There's there's more than a 1,000,000,000 Children in the world and and you know we should all have has a goal that each and every one of them have the resources. They need Thio to,

you know, to improve their outcomes and improve their their expectations for a good life. And that starts with education. By the way, health care. You know, if we can get healthy, educated kids everywhere in the world, the entire world will be a much better place.

I don't want to get too political. Um, but going back

parenting here,

right way are. But once you touch education and health care, you're basically both feet or in politics. Um, but I'm just curious back to you growing up. Do you think there was actually more focused on being educated back then? Then there is now.

No, I don't. In 1981 m, President Reagan created a task force to analyze the state of American education. Get that thing about how long ago that was this task force came out with a pretty damning report, pretty famous phrase that came out of that that said that if the state of American education today had been imposed on the United States by a foreign power, we would have considered it an act of war that maybe has some residents with what foreign powers are doing in our election system in the United States today. But just think about that. This was this was, you know, that's the air that I was growing up in being educated, and there was well understood in the United States, implemented public education way early. We understood the impact of education and how important it was. We understand how the importance we understand what our priority should be in this country. We just do a remarkably poor job off, putting our money where our priorities are or ought to be.

Putting. Our resource is behind behind what I'm what our priorities are ought to be, and the result of that is tragic, in my opinion. This is all my of course, of

course, but it's ah, it's not too far from the truth. You know, I was just talking to some parents from a school where we want our oldest to go to next year, and it's an alternative school so they don't have standard curriculum and they do a lot of cool things. But one thing they said, 90% of kids will end up getting tutored after school because at the end of the school they'll still need to pass standardized test in order to get to the next level, whichever is middle school. Something like that. And until kids graduate and do really well after the school, but that's because parents are able to send them to the school and pay for tutoring, and we still have a lot of work to do where society as a whole can actually progress together at this really high level, and hopefully this is where technology can really come in and level the playing field,

you know? Look, uh okay, um, it's a bit of ah, far afield from parenting, but my hope is that, uh, you know, there will only it will always be true that that wealthy people will have more resource is to put against the education of their Children than poor people and because I have three sources and they will put them there. But But just take that one example that that you can hire a private tutor free for or you can take classes for us, a tea that are the S a T that might be very expensive, thousands of dollars. But if you can create an online tool that that will prepare your kid equally or even better than a human tutor, that's way cheaper, way cheaper, like,

why isn't it? Isn't that great? Isn't that an example of technology being a great level? I don't know that we'll ever achieve, um, complete equality, but if we can, if we can, uh, look, our goal should be as much equality of future outcomes for Children as possible without without you know without doing police state kind of things, which I think is wrong. People are too busy to spend their money. How they want then, um you know, I just want to make it hard for people to figure out ways to spend money so that the rich kids get a leg up over that poor kids.

Wouldn't it be great if it really waas? Um, about, you know, toe paraphrase? Um, Martin Luther King. The content of their abilities has Pulis to the the the content of their wallets.

It would be for a lot of people, but, you know, before we have to go, it's just finishing them. Maybe brighter and less political. Note. Yeah. This is something I really wanted to know more about You. At some point, you said your parents took you and your siblings overseas to travel, and at some point, you took your kids. I believe it was to Spain for a year. Yeah. Um, can you tell us about that experience?

You know what? You learn how you kids enjoy this. And, um, like what? What was the purpose? And when they get out of it?

Um, well, yeah, I lived in Ah, in the United Kingdom for a year when I was 11 years old. And, uh, it was a transformative year for me. I, um So I like to tell it when you know, as you get older, Uh, it's harder and harder to really, if you think back Thio, even when you're in your twenties and thirties and certainly in your forties and fifties and you try to think back of what it was like being an 11 year old kid or 12 your kid Or actually even what happened to you during those times it's really difficult. Like try to think back and think of a sequence of things that happened when you were 12 years old and think of you no more than a few days. Unless something really stood up,

something spectacular happened. Um, it's hard to remember it, and, you know, when I was 10 to 11 I can tell you hardly anything that happened there, and when I was 13 and 14 I can tell you hardly anything. I really like, you know, if I could dredge up some memories but be hard, but that year I could talk to you for hours about stuff we did that year. Even today, it stands out in my mind in bold in ways that it's hard to describe. And I wanted that my kids to have that kind of experience as well. And And that's why when I finally got a chance to do it a little later than I that I would have hoped monkeys were a little older than I would have hoped. But within the right range,

I think I took it. And even though it's actually a pretty complex, big thing to extract yourself for even a year and live overseas and make it all happen and get your kids in school and figure out how you're gonna live and all that stuff, you know, just getting all the the bureaucratic paperwork done that you need to get done to make it happen. Uh, we both, I think, massively succeeded and ran in tow, complications that we didn't expect and like like in every case, you know, one of my Children had a really hard times being. He never had, didn't want to go. He's not the most flexible child in the world, and he,

he sort of He still says he hated it. It was terrible. It was a terrible year. Although increasingly is older now, increasingly, he's appreciates the experience you got there and is leveraging them and and yet likes it. It still was kind of a painful year for him. And when when your kid isn't happy, it's hard to be happy. His parents, although we were I mean, everyone sort of had incredible experiences, but But that was a complication. I just didn't expect. Didn't think that was gonna happen. But did

How did you help him to stick with it for a year? A year is a long time, especially for a kid.

Oh, my gosh. It was hard. It was hard. I tried to tell you I tried everything. And I don't know that anything ever worked. Um, we, um we you know, sometimes we were very hard on him and just said, This is this is your life. This is your family. Come along with it. Sometimes we, um we allowed him. We put him in control way. I took him over there.

I thought this was actually gonna make a bigger difference. And it did. I took him over there. Well, he was saying I don't want to go. I'm not going on that. I am not going to Spain with you. I'm staying here, you know, Right? He was young, right? Use 10 year old kid. Um, and, um maybe nine have to think if he was nine at the time.

Anyway, I took him over there and allowed him to actually choose the house that, you know, we looked at a Munchausen, allowed him to choose the house so he could we put him in as much control. You know, your kids, I have no control over almost anything in their lives. And so the more control you can give them, the stronger and more empowered they feel. So we tried to give him more control over his life. We let him plan a vacation. Mylar over there. We tried toe, give him control, and that helped. But, you know, it wasn't It wasn't perfect.

Did they go to an international school? Well, there, or was it really just a normal Spanish school?

No way. Put them in an international school. And there is a lot, lot to be said about that. Pros and cons. But doing doing if you do immersion, a language that your kids don't speak at the time, and you're only there for one school year, depending unless your kid is truly exceptional. It's basically a loss to your academically, and you have to be prepared to deal with that and make up for it. You might have to repeat the whole year when you go home, and that's again. That's another reason for a kid to a rebel, massively and and I have a hard time and maybe not such a good time. So, um,

parents do that, and it sometimes works out, and sometimes it doesn't. It's amazing how much we decided not to take on that sort of risk. And it's especially complicated where we stayed in Barcelona because because the kids there speak Catalan now, not Castillo Castillo know. And so if you want your kids to learn Spanish instead of Catalan or or you know you want, you don't want to put that even if you put them in a situation where they have to do both and your other staying one year, that's that's a that's Ah, that's a challenge that goes, Yeah, yeah, it's, too. It's too much for a kid that won't work. So we don't. Kids have done that, but they've stayed for 234 years.

So if you want to do it again, would you go for two or three years?

Um, it just wasn't feasible at the time I was doing this, I was right in the middle of founding. Imagine K 12 and was already a big challenge. So at, you know, the best way. But however, the best way to do this is to plan on staying two years. There is no saying I like to know something. It's my old saying. My thing is that, you know, maybe I heard it from someone I can't remember, which is that, Um, if you go for one year after one year,

the parents want to stay in the kids, I want to go home. If you stay for two years, the parents want to go home and the kids want to stay beautiful. It's it's a great I mean, I I it's a great experience,

and not a lot of people do it especially well. I mean, it's expensive, challenging and schools all that tight end. But I think yeah, if you can do it. That's definitely something worth what do you think was the right age to take your

kids? And that's what you want them to be old enough. Thio. Remember and appreciate it and and young enough not to. I feel like you're completely destroying their lives. So that sort of late elementary school early middle school is the optimal. If that's where your kids are. Hardly a multiple kids, so you know, sort of fifth grade through 733 Is Becca okay? High school's really hard parents. Plenty. Parents do it and you can do it. But it's hard

like if appearance parenting is already hard, so you kind of get used to doing hard things after a while. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for being the podcast I've learned it on, and I hope our listeners did, too. Before we go, is there anything that you'd like to reiterate? In case you know, people forget that one thing that they should really remember.

I'll just reiterate the lesson that I think is most fundamental, that I think all parents no, but sometimes is impossible. Too easy to forget, which is It's about your kids. It's about them and not you and try to understand when you're putting your own cares and needs in front of your kids in ways this probably in that their best interest. It's all worth it.

That's great to hear. All right, well, thank you for being on the podcast. And if listeners want to help with the White Sea at tech track or something like that, is there a place they should goto

that they should feel free to reach out to me? Jeff G E O F F A Y Combinator dot com

Sounds good. Thank you very much.

Good talking to you. Good catching up.

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