Hola super fam, I haven’t been writing a lot of deep dives lately & I found twitter to be a great platform to share threads. Here’s a Twitter version of this article in case you prefer that.
If you’re someone who’s not on Twitter, I highly recommend joining the platform. It’s unbelievable how much value is getting delivered on this platform.
Earlier this year, I moved to Silicon Valley. I mostly grew up on the internet & was raised by the books, in Varanasi. I had been waiting to come here for years.
Reading about all the action happening here was fascinating, I always wondered how it is like to be in the middle of where the action is.
The sun & community is amazing but - I must say that I’ve come to realize that “the action” is not in silicon valley, it’s on the internet.
In fact, I’ve been spending time with friends here & I realized how expensive education is in the US & it’s only getting more expensive every year.
I’ve been living with my friends here & I realize they start their careers on the backfoot - $300k in education debt! They’re on defense on day 1 instead of taking risks!
However, as we enter the next decade, access to education is not a problem - thanks to the internet. Rather, there’s too much information & curation is the key.
Then why is education expensive? In the tech world - degrees are expensive, not education. With skills becoming more measurable, the degree has lost meaning.
The traditional education model was never designed for tech, we adopted it as tech came in. So what’s the traditional model?
The idea of a university: go to a building to study for 4 years to accumulate knowledge that will help you make money throughout your life.
This model doesn’t work for 1 simple reason for tech education: tech moves too fast. The knowledge you accumulated won’t be as relevant for long because tech moves, things change, fast.
For context: Harvard is 384 years old & Oxford much older. We need a way to make tech education more efficient. We need to reinvent it.
In the last few years - we’ve had some great signals of what it should look like. Let’s look at these trends.
We’ve so many great people in tech who’re now self-taught. EVERYTHING you need to succeed in tech is available online - for free! In fact, there’s too much information available & curation is the key in today’s world.
For developers, working on open source projects is a great indicator of being good. This means you’ll be learning from people from the community & later give back.
This helps decrease the gap between companies & colleges. Companies often sponsor the early stages of these projects. They have a vested interest in helping you learn the technology because they need more people in the community to help it grow further. It’s a win-win.
So we’ve access to content, a community designed to help you learn the technology & a way for you to get involved in building it.
It’s a continuous cycle - you junk the old to make space for new - more efficient ways of doing things.
Learning constantly keeps you in the game. Curating the right resources helps you learn fast & finding a community of people at a similar stage keeps you accountable.
So what if we had a subscription-based education model. One which is free & linked to your career growth?
A place where you only pay when the community makes a substantial impact on your career growth? There’s nothing that you can’t do without this community but this way, you’ll just learn faster.
What if someone else takes responsibility for curation & keeps you accountable?
What if someone makes sure that you’ve access to the right opportunities? I’m not sure the model that’ll work out long term but would you be happily subscribing to something that helps your career grow substantially?
Why can’t education institutions function like investment banks? Why can’t they take accountability?
We don’t know the right answer but with an amazing team we’re definitely moving in a direction where our goal is to truly democratize access to higher education & take accountability.
We’re quite small but we’ve seen some great impact in the lives of developers who’ve gone through our program. We’re far from perfect but we want to take our shot at making things right unlocking seamless access. A quick graph that reflects the same.
We started with a dream to help developers get access to jobs that pay them more than 15 lakhs, but today multiple Pesto developers make close to ~$100k.
We always wanted people to realize their full potential. We were surprised!
We’re now expanding & we’d love to make you a part of our mission! If you resonate with this idea - here are ways you can get involved!
You can be a mentor with us & help other developers! Apply here
You can join the program as a developer & let us help you! Apply here
If you’re hiring developers, hit me up! Apply here
If you’re just a well wishes & don’t have a way to get involved directly - let’s keep in touch. Life is too short & I’m sure our paths will cross.
Will look forward to hear from you. We’re also hiring in case you’re based in US - would love to hear from you - we’re hiring for these roles.
Have a great week ahead!
Ayush