Gagan Biyani with Ben Horowitz and Erik Torenberg on HAA: The Horowitz Andreessen Academy a16z is backing a new school for the AI era with Gagan at the helm. An in-person program in San Francisco for 16-22 year olds who make things, directly plugged into the firm's 1,600 company network. College works for scholars, but it's a weird deal if you want a job or want to build. Skills are changing too fast for universities to keep up. Universities were originally scaled up to train people for the Industrial Revolution. AI is a shift of the same size, and that training won't map over. Someone has to pioneer the new model. HAA is project-based - less lecture time, more time with tools and AI, structured social life, co-ops/internships, with students embedded alongside working adults. Founding Partners include Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit, and Stripe. It's the best time in history to be 18. The vision is grads with careers they love or their own companies founded, and hopefully other schools copying the model down the road. "Please, Harvard, copy us." 0:00 Why a16z is backing a school 4:40 Why other college alternatives failed 6:55 AI is this era's Industrial Revolution 9:35 The model: live in SF, intern at top startups 12:10 Ben: the best time in history to be 18 15:25 No big idea at 18? Join someone who has one 17:40 People skills come from reps, not lectures 23:15 Why it has to be San Francisco 26:45 Why it's a separate, for-profit company 29:50 "Please, Harvard, copy us" 31:00 Every curiosity becomes a project 33:30 Main character or NPC? 35:15 You can't learn to be a CEO from a book 37:30 Picking a problem, and failing the right way 40:30 What success looks like in five years YouTube: https://youtu.be/Z4x71naDx1Q @gaganbiyani @bhorowitz @eriktorenberg