FS | BRAIN FOOD
April 5th, 2026 - #675 - read online - Free Version
Welcome to Brain Food, your weekly signal in a world full of noise.
Tiny Thoughts
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One-sided deals are one-time deals.
**
A lot of problems persist because the solution is too simple to take seriously.
***
Credibility is expensive because the bills never stop.
You pay it in conversations no one overhears, in deals where you leave money on the table, in credit you give away. You pay for it every time you say the hard thing instead of the easy one.
The strange part is that you're paying for years before anyone notices, and you can lose it all in an afternoon.
Insights
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Jim Rohn on why we set goals:
"The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them."
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Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher on consensus:
"Consensus ... is the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved."
***
Author Ryan Holiday on accomplishment:
"You'll never feel okay by way of external accomplishments. Enough comes from the inside. It comes from stepping off the train. From seeing what you already have, what you've always had."
The Knowledge Project
My guest this week is Joe Liemandt, the principal of Alpha School and the founder of Trilogy Software and ESW Capital.
Liemandt dropped out of Stanford to build Trilogy, became the youngest member of the Forbes 400, then vanished from public life for 25 years. But he didn't stop building. Through ESW Capital, he quietly became one of the most prolific acquirers of software businesses in the world.
Now he's back with a $1 billion bet that AI can help kids learn ten times faster, and that school as we know it is broken.
At Alpha School, students spend two hours a day on AI-driven instruction and score in the top 1% on standardized tests. The rest of the day is devoted to what Liemandt calls life skills: leadership, entrepreneurship, teamwork, and real projects that kids actually care about. There are no lectures, and kids don't move forward until they master the material.
He argues the traditional classroom was designed for a narrow slice of students and wastes everyone else's time. The fix isn't more money or better teachers; it's rebuilding from scratch around mastery, motivation, and AI. The role of a 'teacher' dramatically changes.
This conversation covers everything from sleeping on the floor at Trilogy to being mentored by Jack Welch to the thinking behind Alpha School.
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
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Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week.
— Shane Parrish
P.S. I can't believe this was a real stunt.
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