welcome back to another episode of the Startups therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rutan, joined, as always by Wil Schroder, my partner and CEO of startups dot com will. Today we're gonna talk about something near and dear to both of our hearts on, and that's what should we be teaching kids about startup companies?

I think a lot of people have an opinion on this because, you know, world Ah, of course, parents and some right or will be, Ah, but the other side is we're all came up through a system that was mainly broken and were founders grasping to try to find that hint of something we learned that could be useful for what we're doing right now. And we're usually having a tough time with it. There's a lot of other things in life where you can pull from what you learned in school. Being an entrepreneur usually isn't one of them. In fact, it's the common broken narrative that everything I needed to know about entrepreneurship I learned

somewhere else. Yeah, you know that box of cables. It's in everybody's parents basement where you like, said every cable ever and you want to go through then you want to find something useful. It's never in there. You just never find

it. Yeah, man. And, uh, I think the conversation has gotten to the point. You know, among the world's stage really about kind of the state of education, et cetera, uh, that it's almost laughable. And every country kind of has its own version. But, you know, in the United States, which is the education system we're gonna talk about mostly today, although you'll probably have some comments about what things look like out of the country,

I think part of, ah, that the dialogue has been around. What is the future that we're preparing kids for? And what the hell are we teaching them right now? Because it's based on the future? You were largely teaching within a program that was designed 50 plus years ago and without a lot of changes, and it's ah, I'm not saying change all of education, But I'm saying, as it relates to teaching kids to become founders, there's a whole other world that we need to consider, and I think it would be fun to kind of unpack

that today. Yeah, I agree. And look, we're yeah, like you said, We're not. We're not down on education. And we understand the plight of education right, which is that you're trying to take kids and prepare them for something in the future that you can't see right a lot like building a sort of company. We're doing things under terms of high uncertainty, and it's it's really unclear what the skill sets that will be required to be successful in the future will be. But I think you and I will both agree that giving kids this entrepreneurial mindset and problem solving and wanting ownership on dhe wanted to build things and being curious, um, has to work. At least a CZ well is preparing them for an industrial economy that no longer exists.

Well, let's let's start with the fundamentals because I think, you know, again people have pretty strong opinions about ah, how could she be taught or kind of what's broken in the system, et cetera. What I think we should discuss first, you know, it kind of just setting the stage is why kids, you know, when we're talking about kids, we're talking about kindergarten through state 12th grade, you know? Why is it important that we're teaching kids entrepreneurship. And what is it about entrepreneurship that isn't just about getting a job? You know, what are some of those kind of core developmental skills that we want to hone that again aren't necessarily about whether you become a founder of a company. I I would argue if I had an entire school of kids that I was teaching about entrepreneurship and not a single one started another company. They would be, ah, 100 X more effective in just about any other job they would go into because they would have so many core

skills. I'd agree with that. Hands down.

And I think the other thing, Ryan and you not talk about this in the past. The reason I think we need to start as early as possible is because we need to start with a foundation which says, Ah, early in life, when there is an idea in your head, we've taught you a mechanism to get it out of your head. Full grown adults don't have those mechanisms. Kids definitely don't have them. You know, if I'm thinking, Hey, this would be a really cool video game concept, but I have no idea how to get that concept out of my head and into an actual video game, or I see that this is a really cool toy would have loved to develop. You know, when I was a kid,

if I could have created my own G I Joes, I would've been all about it, all right. But we don't teach kids that that's possible. We don't teach them that if there's an idea in your head, you could make that happen in the world.

And is it funny because we see this manifest itself all the time in in conversations with grown up founders, a CZ We're talking to these adults. They're still hung up on the fact that they don't know they're allowed to do these things, even though the grown ups, because, as you're saying, we didn't build that foundation, we didn't give them permission at that point in their youth to be able to do these things and leave that creative gate

open, let's stick with permission because I think that's such a powerful unlocking mechanism for really anybody at any age, but certainly to be taught with kids. Permission in this context has as many variants. One of them is I have permission to pursue an idea. In other words, I have this idea in my head and it's okay for me to go pursue it and see it through. I will have the tools to go get it done. It might break and that's okay. Versus I have toe only work with absolutely fixed items. You know, I mean things that already exist in the world of Nick

Latest such color within

the lines. Yeah. And I think when I work with kids now, like when you talk to kids about entrepreneurship, et cetera, what I love about working with them Ah, and it be worth noting. I really active in my kid's school. I've got uh, uh, essentially a preschooler and a second grader, and we're working on a program throughout the school. We'll talk about this more in the program, uh, to teach every kid from K through 12 entrepreneurship. So this is something you haven't spent a lot of cycles on. And as parent entrepreneurs, that's something we think about non stop. But what I love with working with the kids is their brains are so fresh they haven't been taught know yet, which is so powerful. Yeah,

there no rails on the thinking, right? There's no reason to think you there's no no questions about whether this is possible or not, because the reality is they don't know, right. They haven't been given enough information at this point to stop

the thought, right? It reminds me of the elephant with that chain on its leg. Yeah, you know, it goes so long with the chain, and it's like that as it grows. It doesn't realize that it can't just walk away and break it. And I think for kids, uh, we need to make sure that chain never gets put on. Yeah,

it's It's absolutely

true. Yeah, but I don't think it an amorphous context. I think the earlier we couldn't teach kids that yes, you can solve problems. You can create problems there, see problems in the world, identify problems in your life and solve them. Um, whether or not you commercialize that and turn it into a business doesn't

matter. Doesn't it all?

I'll give an example. If I were a kid in today's arrow, I grew up in the eighties like nothing compared to what's there today right from the Internet to three d printing. I would've been a busy boy. Ah, yeah. And you could have said, Hey, here's the G I Joe guys you're playing with, Um but guess what If there's three different ones that you know you would love to see that didn't exist, you could just go make those happen. If there's bad guys that don't exist or good guys that don't exist, right, like you could just go make them That unlocking mechanism would have been so powerful for May I would have I would have

eaten that up. I'm just trying to picture what the G I Joe with the hockey stick what it looked like.

But, I mean, look the point here, and I don't think we need to belabor this. Those kids have this amazing early sense of wonder, and I think over time that wonder that natural curiosity gets blunted, and I think that's a huge challenge. We need to be able to capture that natural curiosity and at that time, arm it with a formative ability to turn that curiosity in tow. Real world objects, so to speak, right and to be able to see these things through so powerful in a time and a place in the world with where that can actually be done.

Yes, I think it's a It's a well established fact that kids are sponges, right? And not only sponges, but they can take all of that information that they absorb, and they can synthesize it without barriers. And that's that's a really important point taken, take this information, they can turn it into things of their own. And I think that's a really important concept we should spend some time talking about. And that's that's ownership, right? So when you create something right, it is it is of your making. And I've seen my kids get like, insanely excited about a Plato blob. That was some creature that was indiscernible from just a Plato blah.

But to them there was something really amazing and special about that because they created it. They had ownership of it right when you have, you know, an idea in your head and it's something that you want to pursue. There's a concept that you've made the level of interest in the level of of passion, of willingness and desire to put energy into that is completely different, right? It's the reason kids will sit and play with Legos or Plato for hours. You give him, you know, a toy that just does One thing is one trick pony. They're done with it relatively quickly, and it's not just because the toy itself is boring because they could do the same thing with that toy. But they don't feel that same sense of ownership. And I think that's it's a really powerful point that gets overlooked very often with kids.

Kids don't get to experience it. If we're lucky enough that adults, sometimes we get a taste of it. I I see this happen a lot at startup weekends rights. I've been to a ton of them in all different cities, and it's such a great program. And if you're not familiar, it's It's a program where essentially, Uh uh, people will get together a bunch of strangers at a local facility, and they spend 54 hours working on an idea together at the end of the 54 hours and Sunday night. They pitched that idea to a mock panel of judges, and, they say, which one's best? But by Sunday night, the people talking about their ideas aren't talking about a job.

They're talking about something that they own. They feel like it's part of them. In fact, if you if you rip into the idea, if you're one of those mock investors shark tank style, that kind of rips into the ideal, they take it very personally. And I love that because they have ownership and I always think to myself, right, I think, What if Maur and more people in the world had true ownership of what they're working on? And I'm not talking about equity ownership? I mean, like, personal vested stake, the way we have personal vested sakes and things like our kids.

Um, I hate to say our pets when I say I hate to say it I don't want to compare kids and pets, but people very strongly about their pets, right? Um, that deep personal connection that goes beyond that. This is just some product or business. I think giving a kid's a taste of that early on is something that you can't reverse. You can't put that toothpaste back in the bottle, and I think it's one of the most powerful things that kids can learn and take with them, no matter what they do with that as they move forward, Where do you

think this starts to break down? Like if we want to go back and kind of compare that to the educational systems were talking about that at the top? Where do you feel like there would be some easy points for them to do this? And then why aren't we? I guess that's that's one of my big questions is always Why isn't this already happening like this doesn't seem. I mean, it seems obvious to you and I because we spend day and night thinking about these things. But why isn't this obvious to the educational system? Why aren't they thinking like, Hey, we need to give kids more of a chance to take ownership in there And there's There are some things now where you got these Children directed learning pads and things like that. But it's still very much a choose your own adventure type thing rather than a write your own damn book, which is not the same thing,

Ryan will. You and I were growing up many moons ago. The whole concept was there's like 12 jobs out there and you have to pick which

one he wants, right? I shall remember the results of my last aptitude test that was supposed to point me towards my career's. I was either going to be a Forest Ranger or a

lawyer that zip, right? Well, but But but think about that. So, uh, we weren't designed as an educational system to set people up for just infinite creative freedom. It was kind of like, you know, more of a put people into particular types of jobs. It all made sense at that time. And And to be fair, it worked pretty well, you know, society as a whole did just fine. Uh, our issue is just that that things have changed so much that that same system doesn't work the same When we want to talk about why are we still teaching?

And if we wanted to kind of zoom out and say, You know what's broken? I think there's some some straw men that we have to kind of take off the table. When people say that, you know, teachers don't see it. I've never spoken to a teacher that doesn't see it. It's never seemed to be a problem. May administrators don't see it. I haven't talked all the administrators in the world, but generally speaking of whom I've talked to, they seem pretty. It seems pretty. It's one of those things, like everyone sees it, but actually making the change is dramatic,

and this is the twist here. I don't think in the near term let's call the near term the next 5 to 15 years that the change will happen at a purely call it bureaucratic level whereby all the you know, the levers get moved at once. But that doesn't mean the change can happen. I believe the change has toe happen among the parents. Founders like the folks listening to this podcast, I think we all have to suit up in the same way. If there is nobody teaching our kids soccer team, we would jump in and coach the soccer team. We've gotta bring entrepreneurship. We've got to bring some of that extra level of education and our expertise and experience is to the table like we've got to show up in an integrated. There's no other way to do

it. I like that so much so there's something that I want to stick on there for a second, and that's this. This is the concept that you brought about. If nobody's coaching the soccer team, then you jump in and coach, right, Because I feel like saying to get the parents involved. And I think that as entrepreneurs, we tend to do this anyways, right with our own kids at least and maybe some close friends. But I think that when you said that what sparked in me was this thought that there needs to be something more formal going on here right now. I don't want to start a league started little league, but something along those lines right where there's it's not just happening through osmosis, because my kids are gonna get that your kids are going to get that right. They're going to see what we do. They're gonna hear about the challenges.

They're going to see the upside. They're gonna see the downside. You know, they're gonna ask us questions. They've got access to it all the time s o they through osmosis or going to pick up a lot of these lessons. But that doesn't spread the concept of entrepreneurship at that scale, and I also agree with you that this isn't all of a sudden, like, You know, what common core is dumb and let's teach entrepreneurship right. It could be true, but like you said, it's not likely to happen. So I think that it will begin with with more grassroots efforts. But I do also think it's important that we push it towards the educational system. I don't think it's enough to say okay for a lot of reasons and I'll get into a couple of in a second.

I don't think it's enough to simply say Let's just do this outside the educational system and I think there's a couple of dangers there. One lots of kids are gonna get left behind right. They're not gonna get exposed to it the way they should to My kids are already really busy, right at third grade and kindergarten. My kids are already very busy, so the idea of like layering on more things beyond what they're already doing inside that day, especially when I look at the day and I say like most of this is good, but there's certainly a lot that we could do differently and spend that time more effectively in terms of preparing them for what actually comes next. So I like the concept of of treating this more like a team sport, not necessarily from the aspect of teams, but at least from the aspect of if you have the skills you do owe it to yourself, your community and the kids to get in there and do something

about it. Let me just explain that if we're talking about a little bit of insane, she ation let me talk about how I'm doing it. So last year, when my kids transferred to new school, um, I talked to that the administrators about where is entrepreneurship in this program, you know, in the in the curriculum. Ah, and to be fair, it's a private school. It's a super advanced school night and day versus the public school that they were going to be four. So again, I don't want to overlook this. I was a public school kid myself when we tried to the public schools to get some things moving. It's funny.

We were in L. A county schools, which all had all shut down at the time. Um, it was a total disaster like trying to get things, move the public, schools, the bureaucracy and, by the way, like the teachers all men will hold. Administrators meant well, they wanted to see stuff happen. It's just their hands were pretty tied. But here's what's interesting and I just want to frame this. We have been a private school for linear reasons, and the private school says,

What do you want to do? Whatever you want to do, just suit up and go. And I said, I want to teach entrepreneurship. I want to build up a preeminent entrepreneurship program at the school They said, Wonderful. You start tomorrow in just like that. A week later, I'm sitting in classrooms talking to kids about entrepreneurship to set the stage. There were already was an entrepreneurship class, you know, like a math class that students were already in. Um, so it wasn't like I just created the class. It was already in session,

but but here's the thing in the Progress bar of this effort. All of that's like 5 to 10% and important 5 to 10% because it's happening. But what I propose back to the school and what we're working through right now is, um let's figure out how to get entrepreneurship. Introduced K through 12. This is a This is a K through 12 school. Incidentally, um, let's create a an incubator inside the school. Not because we're gonna create tons of companies, but because we wanna have We have clubs for everything, right? You know, there was a chess club. There was a navy club. Why isn't there an entrepreneurship club into some high schools?

There are. But the next question is, who is involved in an entrepreneurship club? You say? Well, there's there's one teacher and maybe a parent volunteer. Bullshit. I need to get at least 5 to 10 other parents who either have some interest in entrepreneurship or, um, or entrepreneurs themselves involved in helping me coach that team. What does that look like? I start pulling the students aside, and I said, Hey, are any of you particularly interested in learning to build a startup student start raising their hand? Cool.

I need an hour to a week of from you to start working through your ideas, Not a ton of time to your point, Ryan. Kids got a lot of other stuff going on let me get the ball rolling. I think if people try to boil the ocean with this effort going into it and say, Oh, I guess you're going to say like every kid needs to be a full time entrepreneur. No, no. Any more than you need to be a full time paper boy back in the day to learn the lesson. Right? Um, start with the fundamentals when

you kicked this off. Now what age groups you're working with? I know you told May, but for listeners benefits where where are you spending the time?

K through eight. Ah, is where we want to focus where we haven't done it yet. This will be next year. Ah, on ideation. All I want kindergarteners through eighth grader to understand is that problems all around them exist and hear the basics for how to turn those problems into a potential business or product idea. I don't care if you sell anything. I don't care if you make it a business. I just need you to understand how ideation works. That that ideas are things that we see every day. But we often overlook ideas, air, our natural creativity being brought to life and brought to action. Uh, so that's the only focal point when we get to toe high school. We're teaching what I'm gonna call commercialization,

and that goes in three steps. First step is we're teaching people how ideation works in kind of picking that up to be something more like instead of just taking it from an idea to, like, maybe a prototype. Ah, an idea. It's a validation. Should we even build us? The second step is launch. Um, getting just the basic collateral around the business idea, like a website or ah, logo or, uh, just are like your first M v p of the product that we can actually show somebody. And then the last stage is growth and growth is simple,

man. It's just, um Celta one customer. Get one user to download your new app. Er, er taste your new cookie whatever your business is. Um, just start understanding what progress looks like. These are all super basic things. Um, and the students want to do it. It's exciting, and these don't have to become venture funded companies. I think when people hear incubator, they get the wrong idea. They just need to take students through the full spectrum of what it means to start something.

Just so you understand, just started weekend does. To be honest, they do it in 54 hours. Sure, I

didn't. This get solved back in, like 1986 with lemonade stand.

Let me tell you this. You know a funny, funny side note, right? Every single founder that I ever talked to has a story where they created some business as a kid. Funny is funny enough. We all think that we're the only people that did it. Like I sold candied it so I could eat. Um, but everyone has that story. It is that, you know, the natural entrepreneur and you coming out. And I think that needs to be something that every single person experiences Every every person should have that experience, whether they choose to use it or not

correct again. It teaches problem solving it. It it opens up the world of possibility in the sense that you realize that how you spend your time has far more optionality than you would have been led to believe otherwise. And I got this is one of those areas where we would both agree that the current educational system is still failing people by pigeon, holing them into a handful of careers, um, and then prioritizing those careers based on, you know, perceived status or income rather than basing it on your aptitude, desire, passion, toe. Want to do those things? I'm sure you know some as well. I know I know a handful of doctors that hate medicine, but that's what they did because their parents push them towards it because it would make them more money. Or that's what they thought.

That's been a joke and two hands at this point. But, um, I think that's one of the things that exposes you to is that I can create my own life circumstances. I can, you know, take a problem that I see and turn them into something that benefits the people around me. Benefits benefits. Mia's Thea's the owner of the concept on, and I think that you know the earlier you can instill that the better because I don't know how it went for you Way have very similar experiences in terms of selling things, you know, very young and starting entrepreneur, very young, but it was sort of accidental, right? It wasn't as if it was exposed to it.

It was sort of like I came across the idea, right? Get across the street, Count the idea that he was gonna practice baseball a lot, right? And, you know, he played for the Mets so that I know they're working out better for him. But a lot of other kids that were kicking, kicking dirt clouds around throwing balls, you know, I decided entrepreneurship was gonna be my little sport. Um, and that's worked out well for me. But again, it was just sort of accidental collision with a concept that led to it rather than any prescribed path or any anything that somebody handed me and said,

Hey, Ryan, think about this. What if you tried this? What if you did that?

Well, okay, so one thing you mentioned that I really like and and I harp on a lot. You know, when we're talking my kid's school or when we're talking about this as a whole, we need to teach kids agency this concept that you couldn't You couldn't fulfill your own destiny. This isn't just about you couldn't do anything. That's not really the point that feels just more aspirational. Agency means you don't have to choose these 12 paths. You can go pick 1/13 agency says maybe you don't want to do that job, or maybe you don't want to do it the way everyone else does. Maybe you love law, but you don't want to be a lawyer. Agency is your understanding that that's possible, right? Um, I think we get hung up on this very linear path,

which is Education leads to college. College, college leads to job. You get to pick one career, and that's what you d'oh clearly that those days were numbered, right? Agency says, I'm gonna find what I want to dio, and I'm gonna look for whatever path gets me there, and what I want to do may not be a prescribed job. It may be an interest that leads to a job. And let's face it, with every modern profession basically getting either eaten up or transformed in some bizarre way, it's really hard to pick one career

and say That's what I'm gonna do forever. The statistics show that we don't do that right, even even if we make that choice, we end up changing career, something like four or five times. Right. Um and then you end up with us. One of the reasons you see, sadly, a lot of miserable people with high functioning professional careers because they've made such an investment in that career that they don't feel like they can change it. Right? I'm stuck with this Now. I've spent, you know, a 12 years of K through 12. Then I spent four years of undergrad another four years of residency to get my medical degree. You know,

two years are sorry for years. Medical school, two years of residency, maybe a surgical residency. And so now you're 20 plus years in. You're not going to turn around and say,

You know what?

I think I really would just like to be a woodcarver, right? And maybe that is what you wanted to d'oh. You can't at this point, right, that sunk cost fallacy starts to kick in and you're trapped by your own decisions which were large largely made for you, right? It's point your life, which is just an absolute

pity. Kids will go into the world with whatever we teach them. So it's incumbent on us to determine what that's going to be if you're listening to podcasts and you're one of a 1,000,000,000 frustrated founder parents saying, Yeah, I grew with all of this, but, like, you know, how do I make this happen? I'm gonna go back to what we said a minute ago, Ryan, which is? I don't think all of it has to be a sea change in the say, the public school were in private school curriculum. Yes, that would be great. And maybe someday that will happen.

In the interim, though, I think a lot of this stuff that weaken do with our kids and for other kids if you know if we have the cycles to do it, um, whereby we sit down with them and say, Hey, there's a few things I need to teach you and I'll teach you the requisite skills again. I need to teach you agency so that you know, that you could actually go try and do other things and pursue things that you care about, not just things that you're good at, which hopefully or one in the same, but aren't always, um the second is I need to teach you. You know natural ideation. I need to teach you that things can come out of your head. Um,

that could become what you go and do for a living. You don't have to just look at the world as it stands now and pick something. You could invent that world. That's that's a learned skill. A lot of people don't realize that they think inventors or these people was with ease. This special Albert Einstein, you know, Ah, special gift. Not true. Inventors air. Just curious People like the rest of us that figured out how to take that idea and get it out of their head. Everyone's an inventor. They just don't know how to use it. It's a skill. It's not a natural talent. Yes,

let's circle back to something that you said a few minutes ago. Well, which is that the aim of these efforts? Right? And in terms of presenting Maur Children with the knowledge of what entrepreneurship is in this skills and the mindset, Um, and in good examples of how entrepreneurship works in the world, the endgame here is not to turn every kid into a founder, right? We're not trying to make you know in an Army. If I may be an army of founders but not a full global founders, I wouldn't mind an Army founded. I'm just thinking about like, what a wonderful hiring pool That would be a TTE this point if this existed. I wish we'd started this 20 years ago. We'd be hiring these kids that they came out of school now. But that said,

you know, what we're really talking about here is is teaching them that there is a possible path for self advocacy, for self agency, for self direction and arming them with the knowledge that that is possible and also a set of hard skills. Uh, that make it possible, right? Not not just that. Yeah, this is This is something you can achieve but also hear some things that will actually let you accomplish

that. Do we expect that every kid's being coming? Founder? No, of course not. Right. It's It's not for everybody, and it doesn't need to be, but I think part of the value and I think there's a lot of points here, but I think part of the value that we can really drive home with every kid that we teach is the fact that you can make your own decisions. You have the freedom to kind of switch gears. You couldn't listen to an objective. We don't necessarily have to say this is exactly the prescribed path for getting it done right. We love hiring entrepreneurs because we know that when they run into a problem, there first thought isn't well, let me talk to my boss and be told what to do. Their first thought is,

Oh, yeah, I'll just figure out how to get it done right? But here's the better part. They don't just stop there. Entrepreneurs, people who who are used to kind of charting their own destiny, look for problems that nobody have brought up yet has brought up yet. And they actually go forward and try to figure out the problems before they're asked what to do. Right, that is, that is not something. The average person you know, every employee, that's how they think. And so getting more people to think with that mentality is incredibly powerful.

Regardless of that, they choose to use that information to go start a company. I mean, like, that's all well and good, but we need people with more freedom and flexibility.

I'm going back to that common around having an army of founders. And I'm thinking that lake, if we've got roughly 30 million people out there building companies and trying to change the world Now,

what

happens if you shift that number to 60 million? Right to me, it feels like a better, better world, but I don't know. What do you think?

I mean, holy cow, right? I mean, you won, Steve. Jobs was incredible. What happens? We have to. I mean, Justin, what if

right then you have apples.

Uh, but I'm right. Think about the multiplicity effect. Um, if we actually do have more founders again. To me, this isn't about driving more founders, but you're going to get more founders. And there's also a really important piece of having more founders in the world. It's not just about having more variants of the iPhone, so to speak. Having more founders in the world are about having more passionate people in the world, right? Not people that are just dreading their jobs and hating what they do but have ownership in what they dio. All right, you see this in every restaurant that ever gets opened. The owner of that restaurant,

she's so passionate about her restaurant. She's not just like, Oh, yeah, I guess I'm serving food and this is my job. Now she cares about every customer she cares about. Every plate that goes out the door. She cares about every review that she ever gets. We need a world of people who give a shit about what they dio, the way Founders d'oh! And we have lots of them. I mean, Ryan, as far as I'm concerned, the world already has a ton of board employees. We don't need to make any of those yes anymore. The world needs more passionate founders.