Born on Third Base: Preface, Introduction, and Part I

Chuck Collins writes from the point of view of a "one percenter" and starts his book by explaining his relationship to the wealth that was accumulated by his parents. He describes his first job working with mobile homeowners renting their sites in private parks in New England, and that wanted to buy these sites, rent becoming too expensive. After realizing the funds were insufficient to buy the land, he tells the bad news, but few of them decided to make new sacrifices, and give it all to buy this land. He said he could have helped them, but didn't, and said maybe he should've. That's when he decided to start giving a lot of "his" wealth, thinking that he too, should be able to make it on his own.

In the introduction, he describes the extreme wealth inequality that is striking the USA and introduces a few ideas to solve that, such as increasing the minimum wage or implementing higher taxes. However, he says, the best way to solve this issue is to call on the wealthiest to "come back home", it is to say, to be willing on their own to give and to help solve this situation.

The discussion in part I of the book revolves around a few ideas. First, people have a complex relationship with wealth. In one of his talks, he asks the audience three questions: who feels some kind of rage against the 1%? who has ever felt admiration towards actions that have been done by wealthy individuals to make things better? who wants to be in the wealthiest's place? He realized people feel hatred, admiration, and want to be the object of their own anger.

It was also interesting to read about the discussion that he had with a former executive that was working for Boeing. After confronting him with the fact that Boeing is not paying any taxes, he was surprised by the former executive's answer, which said he was himself quite disappointed by the situation. Hank then tells Chuck about his trip to Kenya where he had an engineering project. He told him how he met kids that were in such a bad situation, and how this affected him in his decision to start working with these people and build houses for those who had not any. He said his heart was "cracked-open", and Chuck believes this is the solution to bring wealthy people to start fighting for this cause.

Ghali

ART OPENING AT COAGULA CURATORIAL

To be honest, I thought going to this art opening was going to be very boring, but it was fine. After getting into the art gallery, I started walking around and took a few pictures to prove my presence (see below). The pieces of art displayed within the first room did not trigger my curiosity at all, though I tried to look at them from different angles to understand what was special about them, perhaps maybe I didn't catch the artist's message if there was one at all. 

Getting to a second room, smaller and darker, I started observing more interesting artifacts and was more curious about the art. This might be because they were almost all representing human beings in different situations, enabling me to understand more easily to each one of them, by looking at the facial expressions and the body shapes. I was surprised to hear the stories behind all the paintings and particularly the one below (750$). 

***this is not our reaction to the previous painting.***

I like art because it allows me for a moment to be passive and just to observe the beauty of our creations without the need to have an opinion or judgment about anything.

Investment Proposal: Lambda School

TO: Professor Clark Hansen, CEO, AMDP

FROM: Ghali Berrada, Research & Development at AMDP

DATE: March 1st, 2019

SUBJECT: Potential Investment in TechEd

Being responsible for finding valuable and profitable investments, particularly in companies that have successfully shown that they are socially responsible and environmentally friendly, I reach out to you after extensive research and discussion with investors to recommend an investment in Lambda School. Lambda is a newly founded startup that is revolutionizing the way we see education, by implementing an income-sharing agreement that allows anyone without financial resources to learn to code and get a high paying job.

AMDP standards

Triple Bottom Line: A measurement to monitor the impact of a business when it comes to people, profits, and the planet: it tells us how good a company is at generating profit, being socially responsible, and being environmentally friendly. It determines the full costs that have to be taken into account when running a business rather than the financial expenditures only.

Corporate Social Responsibility: A process involving business self-regulation to assess a company’s benefits to stakeholders, including investors, clients, employees, and the environment.

Social Enterprise: A social enterprise is an enterprise that has the objectives of an NGO and the business model of a typical business. Its purpose is to find solutions to social and environmental issues while being financially sustainable.

Carbon Footprint: The Carbon footprint is a way to measure carbon dioxide emissions (or equivalent) by an individual, an event, or a practice. For an organization, measuring carbon footprint boils down to three steps. First, measuring the impact of the organization and all its capital (machines, software…), then measuring carbon emissions from energy use, then finally measuring the impact of the employees and contractors. This groups together all the activities that are made to promote the working of an organization. But measuring it is useful only when it is also being reduced. In general, this is done by refusing to use plastic products and opt for reusable, eating less meat, recycling, reusing items, or using renewable energy.

What is Lambda School?

Lambda school is a startup that invests in people’s future. What is the role of a university? Is it to form students to become critical thinkers and learn about the world for four years? Is it to train them to become the best in a particular job? It seems like most of them respond to the former. Lambda solves the latter. Lambda school teaches you what you need to get the job that you want, and for free, until you are paid more than $50k a year. Anyone without any programming skills but with a strong desire to learn can launch their professional career, and that without any financial prerequisite. Lambda school was founded in April 2017 and graduated from the famous accelerator YCombinator which spawned companies such as Airbnb, DropBox and DoorDash. More recently, it has raised $30 million from a group of Venture Capitalists led by Billionaire Pieter Thiel, and in October 2018, Lambda announced another $14 million in Series A funding, led by Google Ventures. Investors are clearly attracted, and Lambda’s future looks as promising as its students’ careers.

But how does it really work?

Basically, it consists of online live courses that last from 9 to 13 months. The ratio is of eight students for one professor, which allows anyone the ask the questions they want and keep progressing at the same pace. After graduating from the school, career advisors work with students to build their CV (including a portfolio of projects), and Lambda uses its large network of more than 100 employer partners to find the best jobs for them. This results in an average entry salary of 70k$, higher than what students usually get from four years of college.

Does Lambda School meet AMDP standards?

Lambda focuses on people. Whether it is by finding potential students, teaching them, or finding the best possible job for them, Lambda School is more engaged in people’s career success than any other university. But that’s not all, the more students Lambda helps, the more profitable it becomes. Indeed, since employed students are their main source of income, the startup’s profitability is proportional to their successful alumni. When it comes to expenditures, the company’s costs of capital are low since there is no need for physical classes so Lambda can spend more on hiring the best professors. Their business model is also simple and innovative, in fact, their students sign an “income-sharing agreement” that will get them 17% of their future income for two years, caped at a total of $30k if the actual salary is higher than expected.

Saying no to post-graduation debts

A major problem that students face in current typical educational institutions is the debt that they have to pay back after their studies. According to the New York Times, “it is [Lambda] a model that so far has been aimed at vocational education but has the potential to end the crushing cycle of student debt and change the way schools think about students.” Indeed, typical universities get paid upfront, so, after the students are in, there is not as much incentive to guarantee their success. In contrast, this new system involves the school more than ever in the student’s ability to succeed. There is no worry to have about paying back their debt as the students already know how everything will work out by the end of their studies at Lambda.

Focusing on employability

One reason why people get a degree is to get a job too, yet we still see thousands of students struggling to land a job after four or five years of college. According to tech focused website TechCrunch, “while there are some entirely free higher education courses available online, such as via MOOCS programs, the general difference of Lambda’s proposition is to offer a more guided and intense teaching experience, with an explicit focus on employability”. This highlights the fact that students’ progress is being constantly monitored and that Lambda School not only teaches the students, but mainly and most importantly gets them high paying jobs. To sum it all, Lambda wins only if their students win. This is why the startup is constantly in communication with their partner companies to adjust the skills that the students need to be taught in order to be successful.

Lambda’s potential

Lambda School is already present in the USA and in Europe and is currently offering courses that are mainly computer science related. This means two things: one, Lambda has not reached its full potential, and two, Lambda has a strong potential. Being an “online” school, they are considering expanding in other countries and might one day offer their service all over the world.  Also, as part of their expansion strategy, Lambda is planning to offer a cybersecurity course in the US, and the startup is working on a new bold project to offer new interdisciplinary courses, which might turn lambda into something bigger than a school.

Is it worth investing?

Clearly, Lambda’s purpose is not to form individuals that will be capable to evolve in any given environment and adapt to any job. Although this school does not pretend to replace university, it is pretty efficient in the short run, for it has the power to bring people from a state of unemployment to a situation where they make more than almost anyone with a bachelor’s degree, in a year rather than four. Lambda is vocational, and this is in part what makes it successful. Another source of success resides in incentives. Lambda students are ones that are willing to work hard and to learn, in a school that has the incentive to teach them and find for them the best jobs possible, because these jobs will be the school’s source of income. Finally, what makes this project so powerful is its scalability. Typical universities need space to grow, and nowadays, this space is becoming scarcer than ever, but the virtual space can be as wide as we want it to be, allowing as many people to learn as Lambda’s budget can pay for. This is why I believe that an investment in this business would be not only profitable financially, but profitable for the next generations of coders and learners, and all those who want to work, and improve their condition. The income-sharing industry is booming, and I find this to be the perfect time to invest in Lambda, because it is has shown serious growth, and because their young founders have a lot yet to reveal.

Citations:

“Triple Bottom Line.” The Economist, The Economist Newspaper, 17 Nov. 2009, www.economist.com/news/2009/11/17/triple-bottom-line.

Chen, James. “Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).” Investopedia, Investopedia, 11 Feb. 2019, www.investopedia.com/terms/c/corp-social-responsibility.asp.

“A Revolutionary New School.” Lambda School | A Full Computer Science Education That's Free until You Get a Job., lambdaschool.com/.

Hicks, Caleb, and Caleb Hicks. “Upcoming Changes at Lambda School – Lambda School Blog – Medium.” Medium.com, Medium, 19 Apr. 2018, medium.com/lambda-school-blog/upcoming-changes-at-lambda-school-344395da8726.

Adams, Susan. “How Lambda School Raised $30M To Expand Its Income-Sharing Tuition Plan For Online Coding Students.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 9 Jan. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2019/01/08/how-lambda-school-raised-30m-to-expand-its-income-sharing-tuition-plan-for-online-coding-students/#f9d6b102c689.