The Network School Fellowship

Anyone from anywhere can apply for $100k in funding at ns.com.

Global meritocracy is finally here.

We’re launching a new fellowship for founders and creators, open to anyone from any country. You can apply online in ten minutes. If accepted, you will receive $100k in funding for a new or existing venture. Our main requirement is that you relocate to the Network School campus near Singapore with other fellows for one year to lock in.

If that already sounds amazing, go to ns.com/apply. Then read on for details on who should (and should not!) apply, what the process is like, and why we’re launching this.

(1) Who should apply

You should apply if you’re a global tech founder, AI-first creator, or community builder.

Our ideal founder recognizes that the Internet is rising, that Asia is rising, and that technology has now fully decentralized¹ out of Silicon Valley. We welcome applicants from any country, so long as you have English language fluency. As for the specific area², what you’re working on matters less than how intensely you’re working on it. Some of our founders will be early in their careers (like recent high school grads or newly minted PhDs), while others will have more experience (like open source developers, research scientists, early stage startup alumni, or engineering professors). But we’re flexible, so long as you’re technical.

Our AI-first creator category is newer and deserves a bit more explanation. In short, we believe 20th century media is over. And we think every niche filled by the formerly mainstream media — Hollywood, newspapers, magazines, broadcast television, and the like — is up for grabs as never before, with production shifting from traditional venues to the global Internet. So, we’re looking for filmmakers, artists, and storytellers who want to make tasteful³ use of AI to hyperdeflate production costs and write new stories for the 21st century. We’re open to “traditional” creators too⁴, but we think the economic leverage from AI will be substantial⁵, so we want creators who think about AI as an integral part⁶ of their workflow.

Our community builder category is likewise new and also merits explanation. Briefly, we think the third kind of “thing” after tech companies and cryptocurrencies will be startup societies. That means intentional communities, pop-up cities, and network states, where digital tribes assemble offline in person. I’ve written about this at length in The Network State, but see this video and dashboard to see why we we think startup societies will be a megatrend.

About you

OK, so that’s the type of person we’re looking for professionally — a founder or creator. But what are you like personally?

• You’re Internet First, in that you broadly believe in the open web, decentralization, cryptocurrency, and encryption.

• You’re classically liberal, centrist, or otherwise politically pragmatic⁷ — rather than ultranationalist or socialist.

• You’d be in tech even if markets crashed for a decade, so long as you had time to study, learn, and explore.

• You’re excited to relocate to our solarpunk campus near Singapore for a year to level up among others of like mind.

• And you’re likely what we call dark talent — undiscovered greatness from the middle of nowhere⁸, whether that’s India or Indiana, Eastern Europe or the Middle East — who just needs a shot to prove yourself. And this is your shot.

So: you should apply⁹ for the Network School Fellowship if you’re looking for a sunny, green, and calm environment to build your dream amidst a community of builders. We’ve created a peaceful place with minimal distraction where funding, coffee, food, gym, office space, laundry, cleaning, and all the rest is provided so you can focus on work.

Now, let’s focus on the application.

(2) How to apply

Because we’re open to the whole world, we expect many to apply. So, we have a simple multi-stage process for obtaining a Network School Fellowship.

• Form. First, fill out the form at ns.com/apply. We’ll review to see if you have either potential (as demonstrated by test scores and academic accomplishment) or results (as demonstrated by tech portfolio or startup traction). We’ll also administer a short screening test and ask for references.

• Zoom. For those we deem competitive in the first round, we’ll do a structured video interview where we get to know you and ask a number of interactive questions. We seek people with high integrity and high agency, a combination that’s hard to assess through forms alone.

• Room. Finally, we ask candidates who make it to the third round to fly out¹⁰ to our Network School campus near Singapore¹¹ for an in-person, proctored, pencil and paper objective examination similar to the IIT JEE, the GaoKao, or the SAT. This offline component allows us to AI-proof the online talent search, thereby confirming your skills. During your trip you’ll also meet other Network Schoolers, see the facilities, and determine if you’re ready to build.

• Boom. Then, if you’re accepted, you’ll relocate to Network School for one year to build. We’ll either fund¹² your existing company or set up a new one. Existing companies will be backed in their current jurisdictions, while new companies will be incorporated by default in Singapore.¹³

So that’s the idea: a global startup draft, like the NBA draft, where we source talent from around the world and colocate it in person. We’re starting with 100 global founders in our first batch, and plan to scale up over time if things go well.

But why are we doing this?

(3) Why we’re doing this

We believe the old path for finding global tech talent — which went through Stanford¹⁴, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, California, and ultimately America — is ending. So we’re going to need a new path, based on pure global meritocracy. And we think the Network School Fellowship could be a starting point for this new path.

To motivate this, let’s talk about (a) what the path for tech talent used to look like, (b) why it’s now broken, and (c) how we plan to replace it.

The old path for tech talent

Let’s break this up into the American and global paths.

The American path once started with a smart young kid in the middle of (say) Indiana like Scott McNealy. He’d take the SAT, get a great score, attend a top engineering school at a reasonable price, come to Stanford for his graduate degree, found a Silicon Valley tech company, scale it up, and eventually go public.

The global path once started with a smart young kid in the middle of (say) India like Vinod Khosla. He’d take the IIT-JEE, get a great score, attend a top engineering school at a reasonable price, come to Stanford for his graduate degree, found a Silicon Valley tech company, scale it up, go public, and eventually become a US citizen.¹⁵

Now, if you know anything about those two men, you’d know that they cofounded a little multibillion dollar company called Sun Microsystems. That is: they came from very different places, but thanks to the magic of global meritocracy, thanks to international capitalism, they could build something great together that pushed tech forward and benefited the world.

The old path for tech talent is broken

Yet their story is much less possible in today’s US. I won’t rehash every headline, but today’s Scott McNealy might well be blocked from matriculating by DEI, and today’s Vinod Khosla might well be blocked from immigrating on an H-1B. And that’s really just the start of it. Every single piece of the old path for tech talent is now either fully broken or under assault. To review:

• Stanford. With anti-merit admissions, unaffordable tuition, student visa denials, grade inflation, ideological zealotry, AI fakery, lack of reproducibility, and budget cuts, US academia (including Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, etc) is in steep decline.

• Silicon Valley. Still great people here, but the proverbial garage startup may need $250k just for compliance. High cost, high regulation, and high ideological conformity now means fewer crazy ideas — and much more consensus (and hence fundable, but perhaps not exceptional) work.

• San Francisco. Even more extraordinary cost, rampant crime, out-of-control filth, anti-tech laws, and ideological anti-tech sentiment that’s escalated all the way to ritual destruction of self-driving cars and violent attacks on founders.¹⁶

• California. A bankrupt state that can’t control fires, stop theft, or build public infrastructure — but that will still raise taxes and impose anti-tech regulations.¹⁷

• America. Now institutionally hostile to skilled immigration, foreign investors, student visas, exports, imports, free trade, and foreigners in general, with unpredictable corporate law.

In short: the combination of surging anti-capitalism and anti-internationalism means it’s going to be much harder for global tech talent to come to Silicon Valley to build international tech companies. That path is now closing.

Fortunately, we still have the Internet.

The new path for tech talent

Remember, there’s no silicon being mined out of the hills of Silicon Valley. There’s no natural resource keeping tech there. So in theory, given that you just need a laptop to build things on the Internet, we should be able to materialize the global tech community anywhere. But in practice, someone needs to actually do that.

And constructive proofs are always more satisfying than existence proofs. So, rather than simply assert that a better path exists, we must build it. And from a practical standpoint, we must also recognize that we can’t replace the old path for global tech talent in one fell swoop. After all, literally millions traveled that path, and will continue to do so for some time, even if it’s breaking. So we’ll have to start small, with perhaps just one hundred builders, to prove a new path for tech talent.

And thus the Network School Fellowship.

In a sense, our fellowship just does the “obvious” thing. It starts with the observation that tech has already decentralized out of Silicon Valley, and it gives a new coordinating point for global tech talent to assemble.

We put the first node of the Network School in the new Singapore-Johor Special Economic Zone because (a) thousands of millionaires have moved to Singapore, (b) >50% of the Earth’s population is within a short plane flight, (c) ~50% of GDP is now within Asia, (d) crypto has already decentralized to Asia, (e) AI is in the middle of similarly decentralizing, and (f) the zone has plenty of visas for global talent and a stated goal of recruiting 20,000 skilled workers.

In other words: we have capital here to fund tech companies, visas for tech talent, and the will to build. And with that will, we’ve already built our initial facilities and seeded the community. Which means we have everything set up for you.

And all we need is you. So, apply for the Network School Fellowship at ns.com.

1. For example, you should be aware of not just Tesla but BYD, not just SpaceX but ISRO, not just ChatGPT but Mistral, not just Anduril drones but also Bayraktars. That is: you should know about the best of Silicon Valley, but also the best of the world.

2. We have a list of areas we’re interested in at ns.com/fellowship. But in brief, applicants will usually be in software, hardware, crypto, AI, robotics, genomics, or really any other tech-enabled vertical.

3. What is tasteful use of AI? It’s not slop. It’s not text in ChatGPT voice, or humans with twelve fingers. It’s using AI to create something cool. This is a good example. Arguably this is as well. And much of the work from accounts like this, this, and this. For example, one of the best near-term targets for AI will be disrupting Hollywood by telling new stories they can’t or won’t.

4. In general, we think the workflow of an AI-first creator is highly technical and similar to a programmer, so in a sense you can think of this as a subclass of tech founder.

5. As one example: a traditional creator often builds an audience on the basis of their looks or charisma, which is fine. But an AI creator is more like a screenwriter, who can cast any actor or actress in any role at any time. This makes them far more flexible, and capable of generating many different kinds of content.

As another example, a creator like Mr. Beast spends millions on video production. Could some of that eventually get turned into AI, with tools like Runway ML? I’d be surprised if the Beast team isn’t looking at it. Of course, any given AI tool today won’t necessarily hit the bar to replace any given live shoot, but they keep improving. And we want pragmatic creators who’ll make smart decisions on when to shoot live and when to do it on the computer. Pragmatism means you don’t generate AI slop (at one extreme), but you also aren’t irrationally anti-AI (at another extreme).

6. For example, AI is already extremely useful for cleaning up raw audio transcripts, generating timestamps, and tasks of this nature. It usually requires polish, but it saves time.

7. As a first cut: if you like Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore, and believe in results over ideology, then we will probably get along.

8. Of course, if you come from “somewhere”, like New York or Tokyo or London or the like, feel free to apply. Dark talent is about your current position, not so much your current location.

9. Just as important is who should not apply. You should not apply for the fellowship if you’re seeking something purely recreational. Of course, we do have fun, but our events calendar is more like a research university, fitness bootcamp, or tech conference than a tropical resort. That is: the typical event is organized around learning technology, burning calories, and/or earning revenue — around self-improvement of some kind. So, if your idea of fun is working with robot dogs, running a 5K, hearing guest lectures from founders like Vitalik and Bryan Johnson, and meeting people of like mind — you’ll definitely have fun. And Singapore is right next door, so you can hit a global city whenever you want. But the focus is not Bali, but technology. Meaning: not eat/pray/love, but truth/health/wealth.

10. We may reimburse travel for applicants with true financial need. Just indicate this when you apply.

11. You can fly in via Singapore’s Changi Airport (SIN) or one of Malaysia’s airports like KUL or JHB.

12. A certain kind of extremely finance-focused guy will immediately ask “OMG on what terms!?!”

(a) The short answer is that this depends on the stage of your startup. If we're the first investor, we'll propose a competitive seed valuation. If you have existing investors, we can discuss.

(b) But the longer answer is that I have hundreds of startup investments and don't necessarily think a formula is useful. Network Schoolers already come from 90+ countries, and Network School Fellows will be at widely varying stages in life. Some will be 18 year olds from the formerly “third world” and some will be 48 year olds who’re founding their third startup. Startups are by their nature heterogenous, and the template of “Delaware C Corp operating in Silicon Valley, California with X check at Y valuation in Z round” is already broken in several ways, not least because Delaware, California, and Silicon Valley are broken. Moreover, international founders and web3 add all kinds of new complexity as Sam Lessin has also observed. Apply with your startup and we can figure it out.

(c) The still longer answer is: prices are just fundamentally lower in Asia than America, which makes comparison across time and space difficult. I have plenty of friends in Silicon Valley, but that place is expensive. By contrast, you can live for a year at Network School with room and board and gym and everything for just $1500 per month. A $100k check then gives 5+ years of personal runway, more than enough time to build. That makes the Silicon Valley garage startup viable once again…by going 10000 miles away from Silicon Valley.

(d) In particular, a $100k startup check on pure potential is absolutely life changing for the dark talent. For all those billions who could never go to Silicon Valley, not least because it’s increasingly impossible to get a visa to get there. This idea of helping under-appreciated talent rise is something I've written and spoken about for 10+ years. Anyway…I am now in a position to devote capital towards global equality of opportunity — and that is a big part of what Network School is about. We are 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, for talent overlooked everywhere from Indiana to India. If that resonates with you, and you want to be part of the pro-tech startup society we’re building, apply.

13. Unless there’s regulatory justification for another locale.

14. I don’t mean literally Stanford alone. I mean Stanford in the sense of American STEM-focused universities like Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and the like that graduate tech talent. Though of course Stanford by itself was a large part of that.

15. For decades, many talented immigrants essentially applied to college, company, and country as one package at age 21. For the US, they applied to do their graduate degree on an F-1 or J-1 visa, they then worked at a company on an H-1B or O-1 visa, and then they got membership in the country via permanent residency and ultimately citizenship.

16. Some people I like say SF crime is on the mend, but I’m skeptical. In any case, it’s in a jurisdiction where extreme anti-tech, anti-immigrant, and anti-free-trade sentiment is indisputably rising.

17. Some of these measures, like the anti-sharing economy and anti-AI bills were narrowly defeated in California, but only after hundreds of millions had to be wasted on politics. The point is that many California legislators dislike tech and want it to leave. Which means we need to find a new location. Think of it as Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit.