Austen Allred

Smash Notes for the first week of April 2019

- Justin Kan tells the story of how he nearly drowned in the Pacific Ocean while spearfishing with his wife. - Chamath Paliphapitiya tells Kara Swisher that he is not anyone's slave - Austen Allred of Y Combinator shares a story of how he turned a failed startup blog into a huge success - Naval Ravikant explains the difference between money, wealth and social status - DHH, the founder of Ruby on Rails, Basecamp, and the author of "Rework" and "It does not have to be crazy at work" explains why years after becoming a millionaire he still shows up for work every day - Tim Romero from Disrupting Japan explains to fellow podcasters what makes a grea

Universities like to start with fundamentals and build a holistic picture over time. That works for some students, but not all. Lambda gives you a project to play with on day one, enabling you to experiment, to change things, to get excited about what you are learning first. Once you are motivated to learn, learning becomes a natural process.

It seems that traditional educational models assume that some students are going to succeed and some will fail, and instead of helping those who might fail, they are making sure the other ones are guaranteed to succeed. It does not mean you cannot learn the curriculum, but if a student and the school don't share the same goals to begin with, it becomes even harder for someone to succeed when faced with a challenge.

He did not see another option. On the Y Combinator podcast, Craig Cannon asks Austen Allred, cofounder and CEO of Lambda School, whether he wanted to quit early on. Allred says there was never a point he wanted to stop, and that he would do the work forever even for minimum wage. His explanation for that kind of stubbornness is blunt. Founders in that spot do not have a backup plan. They figure it out or they die, and that pressure is a powerful motivator. Lambda School, from Y Combinator's summer 2017 batch, taught computer science and charged nothing until the student got a job.

Existing bootcamps tried to solve online with the same tools they were teaching offline. When they put their curriculum on the internet and it did not work as expected, they assumed the internet was broken. Lambda realized that in order to teach their students online, and to get them jobs, not just the whole curriculum but the whole ecosystem for the students had to be changed from the ground up.

Yes, there are many areas where employers are willing to pay a lot of money because of the shortage of labor. For example, there is a huge shortage of nurses, but due to funding restrictions every nursing school is at capacity and cannot produce more graduates.

No, it's whatever you can negotiate. Just because someone is getting paid X does not mean you cannot negotiate 2x or 3x that. Companies are incentivized to not advertise that, but if you can prove what you are worth, you can make whatever your dream number is.

If you can measure how much you are worth, it would be easier to leverage the pay you deserve. There a lot of people who get underpaid every day simply because they don't know their true worth. Don't let people peg you into a specific number, instead figure out your own number.

While working for his previous company, Austen wrote a few blog posts on growth marketing. Inspired and out of money, he emailed his followers, suggesting that he would turn the blog posts into a book, and put this book on Kickstarter. Soon after, the book raised over $100,000, pulling Austen out of debt.

Sometimes a VC, after doing months of due-diligence, would pull the rug and not fund you. It's a bad move, but it happens and it's something every founder should be aware of. That would be one reason to dislike VC, and to strive towards profitability.

Absolutely. There is value in liberal arts. You might not have to do it within the walls of a University though. For example, if you are 35 and you have never had a high-paying career, taking thousands of dollars in loans to take a few years off and go to a University is not a bad thing, but it might not be the right thing at the right time. Lambda School is looking to create vocational curriculum to help you accomplish these goals on your own terms.

Code camps are shorter so you won't be stuck studying for years on end. By the time you graduate from Lambda vs a regular university, you have another 3 years to get jobs and experience to get more network than a college student would. Meanwhile, the camp has a full-time team to work on hiring and connecting and educating students. Networking is built into the curriculum.

Colleges do a great job marketing their programs, and our society in the last couple of decades come to believe that if you go to college and get a degree you will be successful, but often that is not true. In fact, many successful people do not have fancy degrees.

Aftering living in rural Utah and then moving to San Francisco, Austen saw that places with less access to work have just as many qualified talent, but this talent does not have as much opportunity to connect with jobs.

Not at all. In fact, one of the hardest thing for Lambda is to convince people who qualify to apply. Often case people don't recognize they have what it takes.

Highest level activity one can have is inspiring other humans to do their best. Massive imposter syndrome often prevents people from taking a leap. In case of Lambda School, many early graduates were great at their work, but they did not feel confident in their new shoes to start applying for jobs right away, so Lambda came up with a few mechanisms to build self-confidence and encourage these folks to leap forward. People don't realize that tech work is in such high demand, they'd get jobs the minute they actually apply.

Austen Allred is the CEO and Co-founder of Lambda School, a Y Combinator company that gives you a Computer Science education for free, until you get a job, at which point you repay them with a chunk of your salary for the next few years.