Joe Liemandt, the AI pioneer who founded Trilogy, is reinventing K-12 education with Alpha School, a model built from first principles. Using an AI-powered platform rooted in learning science, students learn twice as much academic material in just two hours a day, freeing them to spend the rest of their time on a robust life skills curriculum. His vision is to scale this revolution globally with the Timeback platform, a “Shopify for schools” that empowers entrepreneurs to build the next generation of highly effective, for-profit educational institutions.
After building Trilogy into the first AI company to sell a billion dollars’ worth of product, Stanford dropout Joe Liemandt is dedicating his next 20 years to what he calls the biggest challenge of our time: education. He argues that the 200-year-old “industrial model” of a teacher in front of a classroom is the “worst way” to learn, creating a system where a student’s age dictates their lessons, regardless of their actual knowledge. This leads to massive gaps, with students at top private schools sometimes being three to seven years behind despite having an “A” on their transcript.
His solution is Alpha School, a complete reinvention of education co-founded by Mackenzie Price. At Alpha, an AI-driven platform delivers personalized academic lessons, allowing students to learn approximately 10 times faster than in a traditional setting. Students master a full year of material in just 20-22 hours. By completing their academics in two hours a day, they gain their “time back” to focus on a life skills curriculum covering leadership, teamwork, grit, and entrepreneurship. The model is built on three core tenets parents must believe: (1) your kid has to love school more than vacation, (2) your kid can crush their academics in only two hours a day, and (3) the key to your child’s happiness is high standards.
The model’s effectiveness is not measured by internal grades but by objective, third-party standardized tests, where Alpha students who have been in the system for a couple of years consistently rank in the top 1% nationally. Now, Liemandt is ready to scale this model through the Timeback platform, creating a new ecosystem for “thunder lizard” entrepreneurs. The platform will not only allow them to build their own innovative, for-profit schools but also to build EdTech software that benefits from economies of scale, finally bringing true, market-driven disruption to education.
It’s built on three commitments to parents: 1) Your child will love school more than vacation. 2) Your child will master academics and score in the top 1% nationally, but in only two hours per day. 3) The key to your child’s happiness and success is being held to high standards in a highly supportive environment.
Guides are responsible for motivational and emotional support, not academic instruction. Alpha hires two main groups: the world’s best traditional teachers who are thrilled to stop lecturing and grading quizzes, and high-achieving individuals like ex-coaches, athletes, and Olympians who serve as impressive role models and can motivate kids to achieve greatness.
The AI platform first assesses them to find their true knowledge level, ignoring their age or previous grades. Because a full grade level of material only takes about 20 hours to master, a student who is three years behind can catch up in just 60 hours. Liemandt says, “We can catch them up in no time.”
Liemandt states that chatbots are terrible for learning because 90% of kids use them to cheat, turning them into “cheatbots.” Instead of chat, Alpha’s AI uses a vision model that watches the student’s screen and coaches them on their learning process, with a “waste meter” that shows them how much time they are wasting.
