Transcript Summary: Alpha Schools Discussion with Amos Dinan (2025-05-12)

Participants

• Gary Sheng
• Amos Dinan (Quality Program Manager at Apple, homeschool parent)
• Ron Roberts (briefly)
• Chris (briefly mentioned)
• Unnamed speaker(s)

Setting

Alpha School campus (former Google campus), during a tour/discussion about education models and potential collaboration.

Key Topics & Revelations

Homeschooling Experience & Philosophy

Amos shared his extensive homeschooling background:

• Time Efficiency: "In the normal education system, starting in kindergarten, you get about 15 minutes to 30 minutes of actual schooling. And that increases between 15 and 30 minutes per school year of education in the normal system until about six hours or plus when you're a senior."
• Focus vs. Socialization: "The bulk of it is the socialization, the how do you sit in the room and follow directions, interact with other kids... I'm going to teach them how to behave in a society."
• Early Advantages: "If you can have your kids even up through kindergarten, you take an hour a day with them, they're leagues ahead of their peers."
• Evolution of Teaching: "The best part is when they get about 10, you can just give them their assignments on the board and they self-educate. And they only come to you when they need guidance on something."
• Personal Journey: "We started my daughter... well, then we have another one. So by the time he was in kindergarten, my oldest was in sixth grade... now he's graduating. Second oldest is about to graduate. My daughter's moving right along and it's not hard."

Alpha School Model Connections

Amos noted parallels between his homeschooling approach and Alpha Schools:

• Similar Time Model: "It's moderately similar in that if you dedicate and focus the time, you can knock your sport out in two hours and spend the rest of the time on the things you actually care about."
• Personalization: "A more formalized and structured process with technology and with people who are there to like hone in on... the thing you are really interested in doing better."
• Student Requirements: "This particular type of school... requires a certain type of personality as well. Like someone who is fairly self-directed and ready to take control of it."

Corporate Campus Strategy

Gary proposed a potential collaboration focus on corporate campuses:

• Target Companies: "This would be a pilot, right, for Google, Oracle, Trilogy itself... Tesla, SpaceX."
• Apple Campus Insights: Amos advised: "Your best bet would be to start it in California. If they would let you do it, you're going to get much better... penetration into the company ecosystem of people."
• High-Value Demographics: "You look at California and Cupertino, the surrounding area, not just the VPs, you've also got all your software engineers... those are the people that aren't even like super high up, not principled."
• Existing Examples: Another participant mentioned: "Our kids went to BP's little private school in Houston."
• Cultural Adaptation: "There's a certain culture that exists at every company. There's a culture that exists around that company in a certain state, in a certain region."

Alpha Schools Expansion Challenges

Gary and Ron discussed current challenges in scaling:

• Current Growth: "There's eight schools opening in the fall... Miami, Santa Barbara, Dallas."
• Key Challenges: "Gaps include guide stuff, like all sorts of things related to guide stuff. What is a guide? How do you hire them? Where do you find them? How do you train them? School leaders... Similar problem."
• Codification Need: "We just need to codify the alpha models... which ones are the biggest successes? What are our best practices? And then what, which of these need to be in the foundation?"
• Regional Adaptation: "You're gonna have to adapt it based on your culture, your region."
• International Plans: "Domestic first, but there is there is an intention to go international... Which would add in a whole other layer of complexity."

Movement Infrastructure

Gary articulated his vision for systematizing school creation:

• Movement Framework: "The more blueprints that people have, the more that we can automate the process, almost like school GPT. It's like, here's a default deal, right? You're going to need these kinds of people involved, right? An evangelist, a money person, a guide, school leader."
• Templatization: "The more that it can be templatized, obviously, the more that it can scale. The more that you can just type in, oh, what do I need to do?... The more it can just be like an automated system where the movement can grow."
• Strategic Field: "I call this movement infrastructure. And this is like a field that won't just be limited to alpha, but I think this is a great training ground for it because there's demand for schools."
• Funding Model: "Joe has his own, you know, war chest, but also Mackenzie, who was down there, basically in her office, is the founder and visionary slash spokesperson, who apparently has met with 150 billionaires in the last two years."
• Decentralized Growth: "I also kind of see the vast, vast, vast majority of the schools that get started that have anything to do with alpha at all will be their own businesses."

Potential Collaboration

Gary invited Amos to consider involvement:

• Value Recognition: "Look you are like an x-factor in so many ways right because you have this undeniable experience."
• Joint Development Role: "What would need to happen is basically through the process of trying to start this, you would inevitably be helping us figure out a lot of this."
• Flexible Engagement: "I think there's also a way for you to keep your current job and also just do something else and have another stream of income."
• Economic Incentive: "I absolutely want you to get rich from being an educational pioneer. Because then what you could do is then get equity in starting all these schools, too, because you'd be the expert in that."
• Next Steps: "I think my homework for you would be to think about this... I will create a group call with me and the head of the school expansion stuff that will be able to answer whatever question you have about compensation."

Upcoming Events & Initiatives

Several near-term activities were mentioned:

• White House Visit: "I'm going to the White House. We're going to the White House on Friday. We're going to D.C. tomorrow just for different meetings with the White House on Friday."
• Parent Event: "It just got approved for the parent event on June 7th. Could be June 14th as well. And I want you to speak."
• School Openings: "There's eight schools opening in the fall... Miami, Santa Barbara, Dallas."
• Incentive Structures: "You know how they pay $5,000 for nights and weekends students?... They don't have that for normal students... Which feels like a missed opportunity."

Personal Connections

The conversation revealed several personal connections:

• Church Community: Both attend church, with Amos at "Whitestone... up in Cedar Park"
• Martial Arts: Amos practices and teaches martial arts (jujitsu mentioned)
• Long History: Gary mentioned meeting Amos in high school through church
• Family Meeting: Gary mentioned speaking with Amos's mother recently: "I chatted with your mom for like 15 minutes... she's great."

Concluding Arrangements

The meeting ended with plans for follow-up:

• Ongoing Connection: "Well, at minimum, I'm seeing you every Sunday... It's a nice default."
• Near-Term Plans: "I'll be back not this Sunday. I'll be probably back Sunday evening or Monday morning. So I won't be in church next week."
• Open Consideration: Amos stated "I'll get some thoughts, and you want to set something up, we can have a conversation."

Key Insights

1. Amos's homeschooling experience closely parallels Alpha School's focused learning approach, suggesting natural alignment for collaboration.

2. Corporate campuses represent a significant market opportunity, with California/Cupertino specifically recommended due to concentration of high-earning tech workers.

3. The major challenges for Alpha's expansion center around systematizing the recruitment, training and deployment of guides and school leaders.

4. The concept of "movement infrastructure" - creating templated systems for starting new schools - appears central to Gary's vision for scaling.

5. There are significant current activities including eight new schools opening in fall 2025, an upcoming White House visit, and a parent event in June.

6. Gary sees Amos as potentially valuable for both corporate campus strategy development and overall scaling expertise, offering a flexible collaboration model that could allow him to maintain his Apple role.