The Network School

We’re starting a new school near Singapore for the dark talent of the world. Apply online at ns.com/apply.

We got an island.

That’s right. Through the power of Bitcoin, we now have a beautiful island near Singapore where we’re building the Network School. We’re starting with a 90-day popup that runs from Sep 23 to Dec 23, right after the Network State Conference. Rent is only $1000/month with roommates or $2000/month solo. And we have plenty of day passes for visitors.

So, go apply online at ns.com! Then read more below.

The Dark Talent

As motivation, I’ve always wanted to expand equality of opportunity around the world. Because my father was born in a desperately poor country, but with the right opportunity he was able to make something of himself. Like dark matter, he was dark talent.¹ And for more than a decade I’ve been thinking about how to give others who are similarly situated the chance to make something of themselves.² That is: I’ve been thinking about how to empower the dark talent of the world.

US universities used to fill this role, even imperfectly, and I loved Stanford when I taught there years ago.³ But the data shows they’ve declined in recent days. And they’re just not affordable or accessible to most of the world. So, it’s time for a new approach. And thanks to Saraswati and Satoshi, I have the resources to endow a new Internet-first institution: the Network School.⁴

The purpose of the Network School is to articulate a vision of peace, trade, internationalism, and technology…even as the rest of the world talks about war, trade war, nationalism, and statism. To revitalize democracy for the internet era, with digital polities and verifiable votes. To train the next generation to be not just leaders of companies, but inspirations for their communities. And to pursue truth, health, and wealth by leveling up our attendees personally, physically, and professionally.

Let me now describe in more detail how the Network School works, who it’s for, and how to apply.

How the Network School Works

The Network School is for people of all ages, not just the youth. And it’s meant to be lifelong rather than one-off, with both a structured and and an unstructured component. The structured part is about continuous daily self-improvement: learning skills, burning calories, and earning currency. Meanwhile, the unstructured part is about having fun and hanging out with people of similar values.

For short: learn, burn, earn, and fun.

Learn

The first part of the Network School is about learning technologies and humanities.

As motivation, the existing model of US undergraduate education is broken. You pay $100k+ for a four year degree, and then budget nothing for maintenance over the course of your life. It’s like paying $100k+ for a new car and budgeting nothing for maintenance.

By contrast, the Network School is about continuous education. It’s for remote workers, engineers, creators and digital nomads who want to integrate learning into their lives, rather than stopping everything to be a full-time student.

Here’s how that works. We set up mini-classrooms where you can drop in to see the problem of the day.⁵ You solve that problem and a proctor awards you a cryptocredential, a free non-transferable NFT sent to your crypto wallet that establishes “proof-of-learn.” Often your solution will involve putting code on GitHub/Replit (to show you understand a concept), or posting content to your social media profile (to show you understand a new AI tool). And over time, these cryptocredentials actually build up a cryptoresume proving what you know.

Our initial material focuses on founding tech communities, as distinct from tech companies. As such it touches on everything from crypto, AI, and social media to history, politics, and filmmaking. It should be useful even if you’re just growing a traditional company or building a following. Over time, of course, every branch of the sciences and humanities becomes relevant when building a community. So if this initial experiment works, we can expand branch-by-branch to build a new kind of university.

But we’re intentionally starting with something simple. Our learning is about continuous education, about solving the problem-of-the-day.

Burn

The second part of the Network School is about burning calories.

Longevity is important, but 20th century communities just aren’t physically set up to maximize physical fitness. Quite the contrary: the default mode of Western society is sedentary and sugary. Those who want to escape this need to roll their own nutrition and workout program, which takes time, money, and energy.

We’re changing that. I’ve teamed up with my friend Bryan Johnson to set up Blueprint-inspired food and fitness for the entire Network School community. Bryan will be on campus to set up the program, and then his designates will maintain it on a daily basis. Like many of you, I’ve been both fit and fat at various times, so this is a product I want to use myself.

We are doing our best to productize Bryan’s protocol. If you come to the Network School you will experience his Blueprint food and fitness program.

Every member of the Network School gets a daily workout slot with a semi-personal trainer, much like a group fitness class. You run and lift in the morning at your chosen time, getting a proof-of-workout from your trainer. Your group holds you accountable for showing up. Then you get a box with your Blueprint-optimized healthy meals and head to work. The whole point is to provide willpower-as-a-service, where the community⁶ provides the discipline.

We’re starting with the basics of running, lifting, eating, and sleeping properly. The initial goal is to hit the limits of your genetics. But if all goes well, the biotech founders that come to the Network School will eventually help us all surpass our genetic limits, to live much longer than we otherwise would.

But again, we’re starting small! And so the “burning calories” part is about lifelong health and the workout-of-the-day.

Earn

The third part of the Network School is about earning currency.

We’ll have crypto prizes of the day for open source projects, AI content creation, and microtasks. There will be $1000 bounties every day for the duration of the program, similar to the various prizes I’ve posted on Twitter and Farcaster. And community members will post their own prizes.

Next, in keeping with the overall theme of self-improvement, we’ll have office hours to help with your job, your career, your visa status, and your funding. We’re much more invested in you than a typical college career center because our interests are aligned: the more you earn, and the stronger you are financially, the more you’ll eventually have to reinvest in the community.

Finally, we’ll have visitor hours with famous visiting technologists. As my friend Sriram noticed, when investors come through Singapore I typically do a podcast with them. Many will also visit the Network School to meet attendees, invest in them, or hire them. Others will give remote talks. And you can see the quality of visitors from the speakers in our conference and podcast.

So, earning is about constant career development and the prize-of-the-day.

Fun

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, of course. So the fourth part of the Network School is about fun.

This is the unstructured component. It’s most of what you’re here for. It’s just about assembling great people in one place: positive-sum people who believe in technological progress, internationalism, and capitalism. It’s your internet friends, coming from URL to IRL. Stanford introduced the concept of residential education, but this takes it to the next level.

In fact, our initial location is very similar to Stanford. It’s beautiful and sunny, and less than an hour from a major city (Singapore) with an international airport (Changi). That means you can be heads down during the week, head into the city on the weekends for fun, and get to just about anywhere in Asia within the same day. This is convenient for the >50% of the world that lives within the Valeriepieris circle.

We’ll do some group outings too, but most of the fun will be up to you.

Who The Network School Is For

Who is the Network School for? There are four lenses on this: demographical, ideological, professional, and personal.

Demographically

As mentioned, our focus is the dark talent. The more respect you have for legacy institutions, and the more respect they have for you, the less suitable you’ll be as an applicant.

So: the Network School is for Indian engineers and African founders, for makers from the Midwest and the Middle East, for Chinese liberals and Latin American libertarians, for Southeast Asia’s rising technologists and Europe’s remaining capitalists.

It’s for everyone who doesn’t feel part of the establishment. But it’s definitely not only for tech, because a community does not run on tech alone.

Ideologically

Ideologically, the Network School is for people who admire Western values, but who also recognize that Asia is in ascendance, and that the next world order is more properly centered around the Internet — around neutral code — than around either declining Western institutions or a rising Chinese state.

For example, the Network School is for those who understand that Bitcoin succeeds the Federal Reserve, that encryption is the only true protection against unreasonable search and seizure, that AI can deliver better opinions than any Delaware magistrate, and that democracy can be rejuvenated with cryptography. It is for those who believe in technology, harmony, internationalism, and capitalism. It’s for those who want Silicon Valley without San Francisco. And for those who want to found, fund, and find not just new companies and currencies — but new cities and new communities.

Professionally

Our ideal applicant is capable of remote work, or has enough savings to support themselves while at the Network School. For our initial cohort, we’re seeking three major groups of people in particular:

1. Writers, artists, influencers, and filmmakers

2. Trainers, athletes, coaches, and clinicians

3. Founders, engineers, designers, and investors

These are, roughly, the demographics focused on learning, burning, and earning respectively. Of course, if you fall outside those categories but still think you have something to contribute, you should still apply to the Network School.

Personally

I should mention that the Network School is a “product” that I built for the young version of myself — the aspiring young engineer. This is the community I want to live in: a technocapitalist college town, a Stanford 2.0 that’s globally affordable and genuinely meritocratic.

So, I’ll be on campus full time. Bryan Johnson and I are supervising the setup of everything from bench press to French press. And we’ll eventually be recruiting faculty in the form of content creators, fitness influencers, and angel investors for the learn, burn, and earn portions of our program respectively. But all that in due time.

Applying to the Network School

Ok, so how do you apply to the Network School?

Just register at ns.com/apply, where we’ve set up a simple Luma page. That initial application takes a few minutes. Then, if you pass review, we’ll send a second application where you pay rent. As mentioned, our monthly rent is $1000 (with roommates) and $2000 (solo). We also have daily and weekly rates too, but short-term visitors still need to apply.

The rent gets you an air-conditioned room on a beautiful island, with internet, gym, and access to all courses and community services. You’ll still need to handle your flights and pay for your food, but we think the overall package is extremely affordable. And so the Network School could be an amazing option for individuals or small teams looking to save money, get fit, and level up while living in paradise.

I’m looking forward to seeing you there! Just fill out the application at ns.com/apply.

FAQ

Join the discussion on your forum of choice:

• Substack Comments

• Substack Notes

• Twitter/X

• Farcaster

We’ll answer questions and update the FAQ.

1. Dark matter is the undiscovered matter that tools like the Hubble Telescope let us see. By analogy, dark talent is the undiscovered talent that we need the “mobile telescope” to let us see. That “mobile telescope” is all the new mobile phones around the world, newly connecting people to the global internet and making talent visible.

2. See this 2014 interview where my collaborator Vijay Pande mentions our work on the dark talent. I’d been thinking about this since our online course with 250k students. It proved to us just how much untapped talent was out there.

3. As background, I once taught bioinformatics and statistics at Stanford, as well as an online MOOC in 2013 with 250k students. Before getting into startups, I thought I’d be a professor. I still admire what Stanford once was, but it’s in decline just like other US institutions. I do feel fortunate that I didn’t waste my life in academia like some of my peers. But I also want to build an Internet-first version.

4. Saraswati is the Hindu goddess of knowledge and Satoshi is of course the founder of Bitcoin. This is just meant to be fun, don’t read too much into it.

5. We recognize that you might need to focus on your remote work job for a few days in a row, so you can also catch up by doing several problems at a time.

6. In general, you shouldn’t need extraordinary willpower and discipline to be fit. But you currently do because (a) corporations have optimized the placement of hyper-palatable foods in every checkout line, grocery store, and strip mall and (b) modern dwellings aren’t built around the premise that everyone will be exercising every day. There’s more reasons too, but suffice to say that a subscription residential community with fitness as part of its premise should enable a different outcome.