Lots of new friends; here’s what we do and how you can get involved. We invest in small dollar loans (<$250k) and contractual cash flows. Examples: small business, consumer loans, bridge real estate, music royalties advances, litigation finance, etc.

Listened to @astroteller interviewed at @moonshots_pod Live. Education is one of the biggest moonshots he hasn’t seen solved yet, but wants to. Also says Moonshots have to be efficient to work at scale. @Alphaschool is the closest thing I’ve seen yet to a revolutionary change of education. It has started as a high cost private school, but @jliemandt wants to bring it to a billion kids. I think this model has the best shot at efficiency for growth.

Flew back into LAX last night and was frustrated by the traffic flow. Got me wondering how bad it is vs. the other top 4 US airports. So I had Opus 5.5 whip this up for me on the Uber ride home. LAX traffic flow design is truly a disaster.

Deal Catalyst ABF was awesome! Great conversations, and even the quick hellos, were incredibly valuable to do in person. I did lose my voice, but I'll take that as a measure of success. Back to LA tonight to go to the Moonshots conference tomorrow. Will I see anyone there?

Saying AI in schools is bad is like saying phone apps are bad. A calendar, calculator, health monitor...they're not all Tik Tok.

First week of @Alphaschool South Bay LA is in the books for my three kids. I'm super impressed already, but I drank the Koolaid long ao. Here's a spattering of updates if you're interested. * Transparency - night and day between this summer. We were honestly scared the location search would die, but now that school is open, the comms from the school is almost overwhelming. And, through Timeback, I'm already tracking daily learning. * Earn everything - I've heard this multiple times from my kids this week. They are blown away by what they can earn, but realize they have to earn it. My middle daughter came home one day and immediately told me she wanted to make goals with her guide so she could earn a set of headphones that's available. * Field trips - The kids were informed they will go on 50-60 field trips this year, which 3-4 on domestic flights, and 1 Int'l. All, only if earned. The 1st field trip happened on day 4! * MAP testing only in mornings so far, so no screen learning yet. Setting a baseline. My son tested at 99% on Math 8th grade MAP test, while my 7th grade daughter tested at 3rd grade science and reading. Both don't really care...they know that all that matters is how well they improve from here. * The Playa Vista building is huge and decked out. Kids and guides are planning use of all sorts of empty rooms (they have to earn each) - 3d printer room, woodworking room, gaming room, movie room, garden, drone room, futsol field/team/room, maker space room, art room, science lab, etc. * "How was school?" All 3 kids are already responding "good, great, fun". Huge step up from last years' answers "boring, sucks, ugh". * Enrollment: 25 kids a week before school, now already at 28. (I believe we'll be at 60-100 by year end.) No complaints about the number of kids of friends or anything like that yet. * Carpools are amazing already. Interesting conversations among kids K-8. Partially just great kids, partially due to their excitement around school. 10x better than previous year carpools. * First workshop is learning to surf, 2x/wk. Learning independence, goals, tools, safety, grit, etc.

A week from today, all three of my kids (4th/7th/8th grade) will be starting at the brand new @Alphaschool South Bay LA. I could not be more excited that this has come to fruition after a 10 month journey of getting this off the ground. We have 2 amazing campuses launching and a ton of awesome founding families. I truly believe the trajectory of our family is about to change significantly this year. If you're in the South Bay, come join in this amazing journey!

Data centers barely use any water, barely use any land, and they lower electric bills.

You have a bunch of former math teachers trying to dunk on alpha school. Basically alpha school opened a free charter school in Arizona called Unbounded. Now they are saying it failed based on a google slides from the board of directors. I just read it and the Unbounded board of director slides show the opposite what @ddmeyer is trying to show. The key number is that Dan is showing the Unbounded students underperforms on AASA based on comparsion against Arizona public students. But the slides show that actually it's the opposite, the students are learning extremely rapidly based on MAP 1.8, which is extraordinary. Just for context charter schools typically are at 1 to 1.1 and just public school is at 1 or below 1. What likely happened is the school got a bunch of underperforming students. But now they are learning rapidly. The slides show that at the end of the year the students have a 1.8 MAP, which is a measure how fast a student is learning as compared to the base line. The reason why charter schools are famous is that they are at 1.1 MAP which is equivalent to 16 days ahead in rading and 6 days ahead in math. Alpha school shows 1.8 MAP overall end of the year, which is equivalent to being ahead 144 days. The mid year report reports that the students have a 3.75 language (275% faster than normal), reading 3.18 (218% faster than normal), science 2.43 (143% faster than normal) , math 1.15 (15% faster than normal). Overall 80% faster than normal with a map of 1.8. This is the substack danmeyer.substack.com/p/does… This is the board's slides: docs.google.com/presentation…

Today’s WSJ front page shows a kid crying as he heads back to school. Meanwhile, my kids are counting the days until Alpha School starts here in the South Bay of LA in September. And, tonight, they start a three day Founders Weekend where they launch their own business. #DivergenceInEducation

153 students have applied for the upcoming Founders Weekend event in LA. 🤯 That’s a lot of new entrepreneurs launching their first business this weekend. Can’t wait to watch the kids cook.

The IRS’ continued reliance on faxes is truly mind boggling. Is there any other business or agency in the world that is still using, let alone reliant upon, fax machines?

This has to be one of my favorite charts of all time. Unfortunately, it's hard for humans to comprehend exponential growth beyond here. The better way to think of it going forward is in the inverse. Assume AI has static human intelligence. In a month, we will be the equivalent of a monkey compared to AI as a human. In 2 months, we'll be an ant. In 6 months, we will be a single cell organism. We will have no comprehension of the work it is doing and its intelligence.

Thank you to the founding fathers of this great country. Happy 250th! “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” - Sir Isaac Newton

Why is it on humans to determine the best AI model for the question? I’m happy to provide insight as to how quickly I want the answer. I do this every day with employees. But, I should be able to give a manager the question, and let it figure out the best employee/agent to answer it. Who/what is doing this best?

As longevity and disease is solved over the next decade, most common cause of death will shift to accidents. Sad, but this means it’s even money that we’ll actually outlive our children.

Just back from 3 days in NYC for a music conference. Quite glad to make it out before the city chaos after that Knicks game. Though, there was pandemonium on our plane through the entire 4th quarter. On the music front, it was great see many friendly faces. Several new leads on catalogs to purchase, so that part was productive.

How much money do you leave as a buffer in your checking account? Or, put another way, how much money do you loan to banks at 0% interest?

If you don't want to look silly with your relationships, don't send blind intros. Always stick with double-opt in.

We are hiring for a business development team member. Part of that job is networking and building relationships. Please don't apply if you don't have a LinkedIn page. 🤦‍♂️