a16z Launches a School: Breaking the Traditional Higher Education Mold to Cultivate Top "Young Builders" for the AI Era

Venture capital firm a16z has incubated a school: Horowitz Andreessen Academy, or HAA for short. With Udemy and Maven co-founder Gagan Biyani serving as founder and CEO, the school offers a full-time, in-person program in San Francisco, primarily targeted at high school graduates who have already demonstrated initiative by building their own projects.

When AI makes it easier for an individual to write software, conduct research, or produce a film, how should a school help students find worthwhile pursuits, see them through to completion, and learn to collaborate with others?

As AI Lowers the Barrier to Building, What Must Schools Change?

Ben Horowitz of a16z begins with hiring: the skills demanded by the tech industry evolve rapidly, and large-scale educational systems struggle to adapt at the same pace. While he still believes traditional college suits most students, he hopes to offer an alternative for young people who already want to enter the tech sector and thrive on hands-on building.

He draws an analogy to the Industrial Revolution: shifts in modes of production inevitably transform the capabilities people need and how they are trained. In his view, the impact of AI on both the content and methods of work runs just as deep, warranting a fundamental rethink of how schools allocate students' time.

His proposal is to shorten concentrated lectures, encouraging students to leverage tools and AI to learn at their own pace, while dedicating the reclaimed time to projects and structured socializing. Gagan believes young people can now attempt tasks that once required specialized training and heavy resources, such as training robotics models or developing software. The educational premise here is straightforward: since modern tools expand what students can do, the scope of learning tasks should expand accordingly.

For individuals with clear practical ambitions, Ben focuses on how time and money are spent: if the primary goal is to enter the industry or build products, can education expose people to real workplace challenges earlier? This is also why a16z feels positioned to get involved—it connects with a vast network of companies, understanding what they are building and what capabilities they require.

However, universities bundle multiple forms of value together: academic knowledge, an institutional brand that employers recognize, peer relationships, and the social life of young adulthood. Simply offering a set of great courses struggles to replace that bundle. HAA therefore aims to combine projects, courses, corporate opportunities, and shared living experiences, ensuring students not only learn to build things, but also meet people they want to build with.

Young Builders: What Kind of Young People to Cultivate

Gagan defines "builders" broadly: leaders in product, finance, marketing, and engineering within a company can all be people who create substantial results. Students can set their sights on joining a team and excelling at critical roles within it; not everyone needs to start a company.

Among the early applicants showcased by the Academy, some have built six-axis robotic arms, designed and fabricated low-cost prosthetics, or founded non-profit organizations. These pre-admission projects illustrate the type of individuals the Academy seeks to bring together.

Ben and Gagan have cited examples from music and calligraphy: if you want to learn music, try writing a few songs; if you are interested in calligraphy, practice until you can turn a poem into a display-worthy piece. A project can be driven by career aspirations or sparked by pure curiosity—the essential point is transforming what you learn into what you can do.

Three Pedagogical Pillars: Centering on Projects to Turn Knowledge into Execution

This represents a "pull" model of learning: start with something you genuinely want to build, then seek out knowledge, tools, and assistance based on the obstacles you encounter. It consists of three complementary components.

Pursuits: Deciding What to Build and Taking Ownership of Progress

This is the central learning unit of the entire Academy. The school assigns no traditional homework nor mandates uniform projects; students independently choose to pursue one or more projects. These projects are not limited to startups or coding; they can also encompass research, community initiatives, events, or artistic creations.

To support independent exploration, students admitted to the inaugural cohort will receive over $50,000 in compute credits and a dedicated $5,000 budget for self-directed research and travel. If a topic requires traveling overseas to investigate local industries or crafts, the school will fund a three- to four-week field expedition and help facilitate introductions to frontline local experts through its network.

The Academy requires students to share weekly updates with peers and mentors: what has progressed, where they are stuck, and what they plan to do next. The absence of traditional exams, grades, and homework does not mean an absence of expectations; progress is gauged by tangible output and the fulfillment of commitments.

The Academy views agency as a skill that requires deliberate practice: deciding what deserves focus, finding people who can help, making commitments and keeping them, and judging when to persist, pivot, or seek assistance. While students gain freedom of choice, they must also practice how to exercise it. Weekly reviews ensure these choices leave a clear trail for discussion: what was done, what feedback was received, and why the next steps were adjusted.

Courses: Filling Knowledge Gaps Just in Time

Courses run from two days to four weeks and are taught by entrepreneurs and industry practitioners. Students can select courses that directly benefit their active projects or use them to explore emerging interests.

The roster of guest speakers and lecturers includes Sam Altman of OpenAI, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, Patrick Collison of Stripe, Dylan Field of Figma, along with computer scientists and prominent investors. The courses aim to bring in the real-world experience and judgment practitioners apply when building products and leading teams. Guest talks, formal courses, and mentorship represent different forms of engagement; not every high-profile figure listed should be viewed as a long-term course instructor.

Co-ops: Entering Real Teams to Understand How Work Actually Happens

The Academy plans to arrange at least three months of full-time corporate co-ops.

This arrangement aims to place students inside real teams to take on substantive work, observing firsthand how high-performing teams make decisions, collaborate, and ship products under pressure. A co-op can either focus on a single established tech giant or function like a mini-rotation to experience how teams operate across different stages of growth.

Ben explains that if young people already have a compelling, distinctive idea and feel an urgent drive to build it—much like Mark Zuckerberg in his early days—they can attempt to start a company. At age eighteen, however, Ben had no such idea. Joining Silicon Graphics later showed him how innovation unfolds inside an organization, laying the foundation for the rest of his career.

This underscores the value of joining an exceptional team first: tools help you build, but exposure to real business operations reveals deeper problems. In the absence of a clear direction, learning how an industry operates and finding a team worth joining represents an equally valid path to growth.

The Academy encourages students to remain open-minded: exploring multiple ideas simultaneously, changing course, or working on their own startup on a part-time basis. If a project matures into a viable company, the co-op period can be used for independent study. For those still finding their way, this preserves room to explore interests without treating every early attempt as a business that must succeed.

How a16z's Resources Become Usable Learning Conditions for Students

HAA is an independently operated, for-profit education company. The Academy disclosed that it has raised $42 million, with a16z contributing $35 million. Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg have joined the board of directors, alongside individual angel investments from founders of companies such as Shopify, DoorDash, and Quora.

The school has partnered with ten founding partners, including Google, Meta, Anthropic, Palantir, Anduril, Coinbase, and Replit, along with dozens of hiring partner companies.

Support from founding partners varies by company, including compute and hardware, co-developed curriculum, and hands-on practice or internship opportunities; hiring partners, meanwhile, will consider student applications. These ties connect the tools, experience, and workplace settings required for learning.

Why San Francisco Is Non-Negotiable

The Academy plans to base itself in downtown San Francisco, adopting the slogan "San Francisco is your campus." The founding team wants students to interact continuously with peers, practitioners, and companies within the same city, forging relationships through the process of building together.

Ben holds another expectation for AI: by letting tools shoulder more computational work, people can spend less time glued to screens and channel more energy into understanding others, rallying teams, and accomplishing things together. In this vision, the more tasks tools can handle, the more deliberate schools must be in structuring time for interpersonal connection and collaboration.

Proximity to companies and practitioners makes access far easier. The founders place high value on the dense cluster of tech companies, labs, and entrepreneurs across San Francisco and the broader Bay Area. Living here, students do not just study in classrooms; their everyday socializing, lunches, dinners, and casual café encounters offer continuous exposure to live industry problems as they unfold.

Mutual support and tolerance for failure shape whether someone dares to explore. According to the founders, they value the local appetite for exploration and experimentation—if you tackle an immensely ambitious and difficult problem and ultimately fail, you can still secure backing for your next endeavor, provided you developed concrete insights and authentic understanding along the way. This culture of high trust, willingness to help, and patience without demanding immediate payoffs is an atmosphere they hope the Academy can sustain.

These arrangements also point toward a vital capability: collaborating with people to push things forward. Ben Horowitz offers an analogy: an athlete can read every playbook in the world on American football, but when standing on a professional field as quarterback with a 300-pound defensive monster charging straight at him, words in a book will not save him. His point is that understanding a concept is fundamentally different from making decisions under pressure. Building a team, navigating conflict, and bearing the consequences of hesitation require hands-on practice.

Ben also emphasizes an even more fundamental discipline: understanding the person in front of you. Where they grew up, what their family was like, and why they care about this issue—this context helps you forge genuine relationships rather than merely reciting a canned pitch.

Gagan uses a hypothetical scenario to illustrate how projects drive communication: a student wants to build a robotic dog but lacks a specific chip. While he might never have cold-emailed a stranger for help before, keeping the project alive leaves him no choice. Knowledgeable mentors around him can advise on whom to contact and how to frame the message, while his genuine desire to bring the robotic dog to life motivates him to give it a shot. Technical learning and interpersonal growth occur within the exact same endeavor.

Mentors step in with advice and initial introductions. The level of mentor involvement varies individually, with some visiting only a few times a year for Q&A sessions; sustaining long-term trust and collaboration is up to the students themselves.

Communal living also carries value beyond work. The Academy plans family-style dinners, book clubs, museum visits, and weekend excursions, hoping students will build lasting friendships and mature during this post-high school transition. The Academy also wants students to understand how they work, discover previously unrecognized interests, and develop confidence in the face of uncertainty. Such peer relationships support not only collaborative building, but also an individual's personal life.

How the Academy Operates, and Who Owns Student Work

Ben and Gagan explain this structure as a desire to build the institution around student growth, reducing the pressure to simultaneously satisfy competing demands from alumni, donors, and parents. Their envisioned operating model is that as students produce results, the school builds a reputation, which in turn sustains ongoing operations. This represents the founders' take on incentive alignment; whether it succeeds will depend on actual student outcomes. Independent operation also gives the Academy room to explore fields beyond technology in the future, such as music and creative arts.

While the Academy and a16z are distinct entities, they share ties through investment, board representation, and resources. The Academy explicitly states that students retain full ownership of any intellectual property they create; the Academy takes no equity in student companies, takes no cut of future income, and claims no right of first refusal or preferential investment rights in student ventures. a16z likewise holds no preferential investment rights in student companies. If a student founds a startup, the Academy can help introduce investors, but enrollment itself requires no surrender of company equity.

The Inaugural One-Year Program: What Students Actually Receive and What They Bear

The inaugural Founding Class Fellowship is a one-year, tuition-free program planning to enroll approximately 50 students. For anyone considering this educational path, costs, credentials, and actual opportunities must be weighed together.

• Living expenses are self-funded: While the Academy encourages peers to live together, specific housing arrangements are chosen and organized by the students. Housing, food, and daily living costs are borne by the students. The Academy lists reference dormitory rents of $1,600–$1,800 per month for shared rooms and $2,300–$2,600 per month for single occupancy; eligible students may receive partial living stipends.
• Target applicants and selection materials: Under the Academy's current admissions criteria, applicants must earn a high school diploma or equivalent before the fall of their matriculation year. If already enrolled in college, their full-time undergraduate study after high school graduation cannot exceed one year prior to enrollment, with preference given to graduating high school seniors. International students are eligible to apply, though the school does not guarantee visa approval. Admissions selection prioritizes proof of work over academic metrics alone; the initial application requires contact information, a link to a personal website showcasing past work, a short video, and high school transcripts and test scores for record-keeping, with no recommendation letters or essays required at the initial stage.
• No college degrees or credits granted: The Academy explicitly states that it is not an accredited degree-granting institution; the one-year Founding Class Fellowship confers no college degree or college credits. Students showcase their capabilities to employers, partners, and investors through portfolios of work.
• Corporate opportunities still require interviews: While the program includes at least three months of corporate work experience, the Academy does not guarantee co-op placements or full-time employment. Students must still undergo standard interviews with partner companies, and compensation is not guaranteed for every co-op position. Students may also use this period to explore starting a company or conduct in-depth research.
• Proposed two-year program pending regulatory approval: The Academy separately plans to seek regulatory approval for a proposed two-year program, which is not yet open for enrollment or officially offered; if approved in the future, it is expected to charge annual tuition comparable to top private universities.

What This Educational Experiment Ultimately Needs to Prove

Ben recounted a conversation with Dan Boneh, a cryptography professor at Stanford University: faced with powerful artificial intelligence tools, educators effectively have only two choices—either try to ban them (which Ben considers futile), or push the difficulty of problems to an extreme, making them so challenging that students must rely deeply on AI to solve them.

The pedagogical takeaway is clear: as tools grow more capable, the expectations placed on tasks can rise, challenging students to wield these tools to tackle harder problems. At the same time, problem selection becomes far more critical—once execution is within reach, one must still evaluate what is genuinely worth spending time on.

Ben is consequently very optimistic about opportunities for young people. He contrasts traditional ladder-climbing with the possibilities unlocked by modern tools. He believes young people versed in these tools can identify new approaches much faster, rather than simply waiting for opportunities through slow, seniority-based progression.

Gagan made a statement that is easily misunderstood: "If you don't have a billion-dollar idea, don't settle for a million-dollar idea—explore more." In context, he was reminding young people that having experienced only campus and adolescent life so far, stepping out into the wider world first may reveal directions far more deserving of their efforts than immediate notions. The dollar figure serves as a rhetorical device to encourage exploration, not a valuation threshold for selecting projects.

Ben likens this process to scientific discovery: you set out to solve a major problem, only to discover a smaller one blocking your path. As you work to understand that hurdle, you may realize it is worthwhile in its own right, ultimately redirecting your initial pursuit.

He does not praise failure unconditionally. An attempt is valuable only when it shows you concretely why a problem is hard, where things stalled, and which sub-problem to tackle next. These newfound insights form the true foundation for continued exploration.

When asked what success looks like five years out, Ben's criteria extend far beyond company valuations: whether students have found careers they love or founded compelling companies; whether the Academy has identified which pedagogical methods work; and whether it can help more students outside tech bring their ideas to life in fields like music and film.

Ben has also explicitly expressed hope that other institutions, like Harvard, will replicate this model. In his vision, part of the Academy's purpose is discovering educational methods that broader institutions can borrow. Looking ahead, what warrants attention is not merely what this cohort of students builds, but which teaching approaches prove genuinely beneficial and whether they can transfer to other settings.

By weaving together self-directed pursuits, industry courses, corporate co-ops, and peer relationships, HAA attempts to build student capability within real-world tasks. It raises a pivotal educational question: as tools accomplish more and more of our work, how can schools better prepare students to choose wisely, act decisively, collaborate effectively, and take ownership of the choices they make?