This episode is a bit completely different. It’s a reside, unscripted working session with a founder, and I’ve solely carried out one different earlier this yr.
Niels Hoven (@NielsHoven) is the founder and CEO of Mentava, an organization constructing software program to assist quick learners. Keen youngsters are dramatically underserved by right this moment’s schooling system, and Niels created Mentava to permit college students to realize their potential. Previous to Mentava, Niels labored at Cloudflare, ClassDojo, and Pocket Gems, the place he ran the highest-grossing cellular recreation on this planet in 2011. He has a graduate diploma in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley.
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This episode is dropped at you by:
Why Children Can Study 10x Quicker Than We Assume — Niels Hoven of Mentava (Tim Teaching Session)
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Transcripts
Present Notes
Join with Niels & Discover Mentava
Books
Associated Studying, Listening, & Viewing
Instruments & Merchandise
Folks
Timestamps
[00:00:00] Begin.
[00:01:32] What Mentava is—and the toddlers studying earlier than age three.
[00:08:31] Recreation design, slot-machine motivation, and decreasing the ring.
[00:11:54] Tim’s pink pen: rewriting the bio and positioning.
[00:16:59] The true drawback: wasted early years, high-school strain.
[00:23:55] Studying at your personal tempo—and “what should you did nothing?”
[00:29:32] Canine-fish, fish-dog: readiness, failed trials, and follow-ups.
[00:35:06] The $500 value, faculty pilots, and videos-for-tuition scholarships.
[00:41:39] Train a child to fish: promoting aid, not nagging.
[00:47:49] Viral posts, the culture-war lure, and why exaggeration is loss of life.
[00:55:05] Put the ask on high: investor updates and what really converts.
[00:59:35] The thirty-year phonics battle—and it’s not with academics.
[01:01:10] A $1,000 coupon, zero takers: why the referral bribe flopped.
[01:08:04] Lead with the love letters: testimonials, homepage, and who’s shopping for.
[01:20:03] “No rip-off fees $500 a month”: pricing and who you’re not for.
[01:34:16] Uncrowded channels and workshopping like a standup.
[01:42:08] Don’t let Amazon be your debutante ball: testing what sells.
[01:46:42] Alpha Faculty, the aggressive map, and the keen investor.
[01:48:39] Reaching the already-converted: be the painkiller, TiE, encompass sound.
[02:08:18] Niels’s cost: advocate to your little one, unapologetically.
“Children are these little sponges. They need to study every little thing.”
— Niels Hoven
“The metaphor for motivation that I like to make use of is it’s like attempting to get somebody to leap by way of a hoop. You possibly can both enhance the scale of the reward on the opposite facet or you may decrease the ring.”
— Niels Hoven
“In case you permit youngsters to study at their very own tempo, you may pack all the faculty day into a really small period of time.”
— Niels Hoven
“Everyone in cognitive science—everyone in the remainder of academia—fully understands that phonics is the one method to train studying.”
— Niels Hoven
“Having the ability to say, ‘My child can already learn. You should give them extra alternative,’ is considered one of your strongest negotiating levers.”
— Niels Hoven
“By no means ever let anyone make you are feeling responsible for advocating to your child.”
— Niels Hoven
Wish to hear one other episode with somebody fixated on the outer limits of how briskly people can study? Hearken to my dialog with chess prodigy and The Artwork of Studying writer Josh Waitzkin, during which we mentioned initiating stream states, cognitive biases, mounted versus progress mindsets, the hazards of a inflexible id, presence in parenting, cultivating high quality as a lifestyle, the precept of shortage within the studying course of, thematic interconnectedness in schooling, and far more.
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