Transcript Summary: Conversation with Rachel Saunders (2025-05-12)

Participants

• Gary Sheng
• Rachel Saunders (Cruce Saunders' mother)

Setting

Outside Alpha High campus in Austin, a brief but substantive conversation while both were likely arriving or departing from the school.

Key Topics & Revelations

Cruce's Alpha School Application Process

Rachel provided insights into how Cruce discovered and applied to Alpha:

• Initial Research: "He did research on his own, and I guess, simultaneously, they had posted that scholarship application. So just kind of serendipitous, and it worked out."
• Application Components: "He filled out the application. He had to do several essays. They did, I think, some testing, and they took them in for a shadow day."
• Timeline: "I think the whole process took two weeks or so."
• Scholarship Consideration: "I think it was a little bit more extensive just because he was getting a scholarship."

Cruce's Transformation

Rachel shared a striking before-and-after contrast of Cruce's demeanor:

• Pre-Alpha Cruce: "Cruce two years ago, apathetic... Just kind of down trodden, going through the motions, doing what he had to do, but very frustrated... Very apathetic."
• Current Cruce: "Now he has life, you know, he has excitement. Every day. I mean, he lives for the opportunities that he gets."
• Middle School Experience: "We've had some hardship in the past. So he had a pretty dicey, dicey middle school."
• Traditional High School: "By the time he hit high school, he was just doing the regular public high school grind... he was completely, I guess, disillusioned with what he was doing... he felt that he was taking all of this time and wasting it."

Alpha Advocacy & Friend Recruitment

Rachel has been actively promoting Alpha to her circle:

• Sharing with Friends: "Oh yeah, one of my friends, we've really talked it up a lot with him. He's been here, actually."
• Specific Interest: "My friend, Ferdie, he really wants Orion to come and he's come to some events."
• Peer Discussions: "Cruz has talked to his son, Orion, about it."
• Potential Obstacle: "I think it's more a matter of his ex-wife that may or may not [be supportive]."
• Upcoming Engagement: "I invited him to come with me. There's an event this week, right, on Thursday night. It's McKinsey talking with somebody from Stanford about AI interface education."

Educational Vision

Rachel expressed strong convictions about educational transformation:

• Future Perspective: "I feel like I have this window into what's about to happen with education that maybe the masses aren't quite aware of yet."
• Transformative Belief: "I absolutely think that it's going to change fundamentally."
• Scope of Change: "I don't think college is going to be the same way that it has been historically. I don't think the school system is going to be the same way that it's been historically."
• Movement Recognition: "I think it's going to transform education... It's like the whole thing."

Cruce's Name Origin

An unexpected tangent revealed family history:

• Family Lineage: "It's a family name. He's the fourth. His name is Walter Cruz."
• Meaning: "It's more from like, I think, Spanish origin, like crossroads."
• Historical Connection: "It was the last name of a lawyer who got his great-great-great-maybe-grandfather off in a murder trial for killing his neighbor over water rights."

Parent Event & Collaboration

Gary discussed an upcoming parent event and potential involvement:

• Event Planning: "I'm in the process, I'm like in the 90-something percent mark of getting approved for a parent event... Maybe June 7th."
• Schedule Conflict: "We are planning to travel, because so far I was going to leave on the 6th or the 7th... I can push it to the 8th, though."
• Flexibility: "Could be the 14th, but I'm assuming then you'd be gone anyway... We're planning to travel."
• Participation Interest: "If this is the beginning of June, I think that that could work out, and I'd be more than happy to participate."
• Personal Impact: "This is again, like I said, changed my son's world and I think he's going to have a completely different life trajectory because he was [at Alpha]."
• Commitment: "I'm going to do whatever I can to help."

Alpha's Operational Challenges

Gary shared some frustrations about Alpha's current structure:

• Project Support: "For example, [Cruce] has this running app idea. They have not set them up for success, honestly, to be able to build out the app actually."
• Development Reality: "It's totally not something that you just randomly learn on the weekend how to do."
• Inconsistent Support: "If you get a little help for like two weeks and then they're gone... Most developers don't want to just pick up someone else's work anyways."
• Leadership Issues: "You know, there's a lack of, candidly, clarity from Joe on what he wants to do, what he, what success looks like, and then what he would be willing to fund."
• Organizational Gap: "Someone needs to be day-to-day. That's like taking ownership and responsibility of the whole funnel. Including the whole student experience, right? And I don't see anyone doing that."

Leveraging Church Spaces

Gary briefly mentioned a creative idea for school expansion:

• Underutilized Resource: "People are like, oh, how are you going to find school buildings? I'm like, have you seen churches? Churches are not occupied for one day through Saturday."
• Rachel's Response: "That's brilliant. I mean, I've always thought about bridges for recreational activities and things like that, but the fact that they're underutilized..."
• Value Alignment: "Plus, very compatible ideas, too. So, I think that would be brilliant."

Cruce's Future Role

Gary suggested alternative paths for Cruce's contribution:

• Marketing Potential: "I think that... he could make a lot of money through sales, whether it's through Alpha."
• Evangelist Role: "I can see it making more sense for Chris to really lean in as one of the evangelists for online social media in-person events."
• Rachel's Agreement: "I think he'd do really well on that. And I think he also has like the foundational love and the basis for his own experience with that to share with other people."
• Prior Success: "That's why I had him speak at this event I did... Two and a half weeks ago... he did a great job."

White House Connection

Gary briefly mentioned an upcoming high-level meeting:

• Political Engagement: "I'm doing a trip to DC to meet with one of Trump's cabinet members on the spiritual council."

Key Insights

1. Rachel's account of Cruce's transformation from apathetic to enthusiastic provides powerful testimony to Alpha's impact on student engagement and well-being.

2. The scholarship application process for Alpha appears to be comprehensive but relatively quick (two weeks), involving essays, testing, and a shadow day.

3. Rachel has become an active ambassador for Alpha, recruiting friends and their children and bringing them to events, demonstrating the organic growth potential through parent advocacy.

4. Both Gary and Rachel share a vision of Alpha revolutionizing education broadly, beyond just the current implementation.

5. Gary identified several operational gaps in Alpha's current structure, particularly around project support and leadership, suggesting areas for improvement.

6. The conversation reveals potential for Cruce to shift from focusing solely on his app development to leveraging his communication skills as an Alpha evangelist.

7. Gary's idea about utilizing church spaces for school expansion shows creative thinking about scaling the Alpha model cost-effectively.