Khan Academy: Sal Khan. From Tutoring His Cousins to Teaching the World For Free (September 2020)

0:07 Hey everyone, it's Guy here. So it is the holidays, and this week we're gonna bring you a conversation from our archive. It's with Sal Khan, and he tells a story of how he started Khan Academy, which is a free online tutoring service. That now has over 170 million registered users and lessons in over fifty languages. This episode first ran back in 2020. It is such a good one, one of our absolute favorites, and I hope you love it. It was incredibly stressful. And we were digging into our savings about five or six thousand dollars a month. Uh and you know, but my male ego was trying to shelter my family fr from it. So I was putting on a strong face to my friends and family, and you know, you can imagine my mother Mm. You know, when I told her I'd quit my job, I you know, I I still rem her first word was

0:58 What? Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. Built. I'm Guy Roz, and on the show today, how a random decision to help a cousin with her math homework led Sal Khan to build Khan Academy, a free online teaching platform.

1:29 with nearly thirty million users a month. So most of the products and services we've talked about on the show have been innovative or disruptive in some way. But some of them, and you've heard me say this before. Have fundamentally changed the way we live. А мін Ліф, Арбен Б, старбукс, Shopify, Wayfair.

2:01 These brands have transformed the way that many of us shop and travel and work. But what about someone who makes a product or offers a service that is equally transformational? Maybe even more so. But makes it one hundred percent free. To do that.

2:18 You have to make personal sacrifices. Starting by earning a lot less money. which is just part of what makes Salcon so incredibly remarkable. Over the past twelve years. He's built Khan Academy into a powerhouse.

2:35 A massive online learning platform that offers free tutorials to anyone anywhere. And from the very beginning. Sal decided his academy? Would be a non profit, that it should never be tempted to compromise. On its values.

2:51 But before he launched Khan Academy? Sal didn't anticipate any of this. He was just trying to help a younger cousin with her sixth grade math lessons. At the time. He was working for a hedge fund. But from those early days of doing one on one tutorials,

3:07 Sal gradually built a platform That offers hundreds of classes in dozens of languages. Nearly thirty million people use Khan Academy every month to learn math, science, the arts, even SAT prep. All for free. And Con Academy has inspired the launch of many other online learning platforms, but many of them are for-profit operations that

3:33 charge money. But we'll get to all that in a moment. First, let's back up just a little bit. Salcon grew up in Mettery, Louisiana. His mom was from India and his dad was from Bangladesh. And the marriage.

3:46 Ended when Sal Was pretty young. My Parents. You know, had

3:52 Issues and so Uh, they separated when I was probably about eighteen months old, two years old, and then I had really never, you know, seen my father again. I saw him once. uh for an evening when I was thirteen, and then he passed away the next year. So it's it was really my um mother who who raised us as a as a single mother. Wow.

4:14 Was there a community of of South Asian Families and Imetery. When you're growing up? Yeah, my

4:21 You know, when my parents separated, we actually lived with my young uncles at the time. They were in their twenties. And so they all were kind of like father figures and uh almost like older siblings uh to to me as well. And in a lot of ways they were not your stereotypical Um You know. Just come to the US study.

4:41 You know, get a job, save money. uh kind of prudent immigrant story. They were they were much more embracing of New Orleans uh culture and and I would say they're the most New Orleans uh South Asians you will ever find in in your life. Um I had a very colorful childhood, you know, late night parties, people singing and dancing You know, for for me it felt like a uh uh I remember my third birthday that my uncles got a belly dancer. I still remember Habiba, you know, uh so it was definitely a different type of childhood, but it was uh in some ways a really rich one. So, what did your mom do for a living?

5:16 The first job that I remember her having Uh she She was the the the person who takes the change out of the vending machine at the uh at the local hospital. Actually the hospital where I was born. And she took me to work a couple of times'cause she didn't have child care. Uh and I thought at the time I remember, you know, watching her do that and think it was like the coolest job on earth because you you know you have this key that you can open up the vending machine and like quarters just pour out of it. Um so uh she did that for a little bit. And then

5:43 Essentially was a cashier at a series of convenience stores just kind of doing, you know, one minimum wage job after another And then I was in high school. Uh she had remarried, uh her and my stepdad at the time were able to Uh kinda cobble together to get a a s a small Uh convenience store in Mettery.

6:02 In your book you write, uh, Louisiana was as close to South Asia as the United States could get. It's spicy food, humidity, giant cockroaches, and a corrupt government. Um Which is um both funny but somewhat true true, I guess, right? I mean You grew up at a time when um

6:21 Like David Duke was the Like the representative in the state legislature. Yeah, the the part of Medury where m we had our store, it was called Seminole Convenience Store on Seminole Avenue, and it's called a part of Medery called Bucktown. That was kind of the heart of uh David Duke's base, so to speak. I remember, you know, right outside of our Our store across the street was the largest David Duke for President Signor I've ever seen. And so it was a

6:46 It you know, the the folks who lived in the neighborhood who We're frankly, you know. super David Duke supporters. Uh you know, I in some ways it was lucky this was pre-9-11. Uh they didn't really know what to make of of my family at at the time. Uh you know, we've had a few conversations, I remember, with people at the store where they they openly told us that they were trying to decide whether we were white or the N-word. Um to you know, we were confusing them. Um But you know, growing up

7:13 I was, you know, the only brown kid in in in in in the classroom. Uh but I never felt in school uh at all like folks were in any way uh biased or racist against me. If anything, I have to give the the school system, the Jefferson Pyre school system, a lot of credit. Uh, you know, I think a lot of what I am today is because they gave me opportunities, there were teachers that believed in me, I had a really good friend circle. Uh so so I have no You know, I I don't feel like it was a A tough childhood.

7:43 So was your mom? Um Did she have very strict expectations for you? I mean she had come from India

7:52 to the United States made a lot of sacrifices. Did she sort of You know, would she say you have to be an engineer, doctor, a lawyer, like w w w was there any kind of talk like that at home when you were a kid? You know, my mother uh definitely did instill some really strong values, or, you know, just seeing her operate. My mom is a very courageous person. And you know, we were the only family that that in our friend circle where

8:17 You know, we we were kind of not well off, uh or at least not middle class. Uh but I think that was helpful too because the family friends we had, many of them were the stereotypical uh doctors and engineers. And

8:31 You know, you obviously can see where you live and you see where those kids live, and you can see kind of our financial insecurity. I still remember s I must have been eight or nine years old at at Kmart and I was being a brat. I really wanted to be, you know, buy this Hot Wheel set. And I was throwing a tantrum in the Kmart. And I remember that was the first time that my mom kind of just kinda broke down a little bit and says, Don't you realize we have no money? And Um

8:54 Yeah, uh one of my uncles. They had a uh they had a a food store in a really rough neighborhood in New Orleans. He got shot. Um, you know, people uh you know, we thought he was gonna die. I think I was about eight years old at the time. I was just like, I don't I don't want that life. I'd rather have the life of of my other South Asian friends who are whose parents are um you know who Who are professionals. I read that when you were in high school uh you

9:20 Or in A heavy metal band or a death metal band or I don't know which one which one was it. Is that true? Yes. I was the lead singer, but you know, singing is a is being very generous to what I was doing. It was more of yelling or growling. Um You were the lead growler of a death metal band? I was the lead growler of a death metal band. What was the band called? Original name And and I cringe when I say these things now. It was malignancy. Uh but then we had to change our name'cause there was a band in Florida called malignancy. Anyway, it w you know, it it was uh me and and uh

9:54 Three other guys. Um all right, so you were in this band and um But it sounds like school was um Pretty easy for you. Yeah, I was a kid that kinda did just whatever it I needed to do to to get a decent grade and it was about ninth or tenth grade that I started getting

10:13 really serious about studies, and I remember in tenth grade I kinda lived lived this double life where I was on kind of the academic teams and quizzable and science Olympiad and Uh I was chosen to be on like uh representing Louisiana at National Academic Games. And it was the same weekend as our first big gig as a death metal band. And so I had this kind of path I had this choice that I had to pick. This was m this was malignancy's first main. Yeah, we we had an opportunity to open up for paralysis. Uh which is a big deal.

10:44 And malignancy opens for paralysis. Yeah. It's it's definitely and you know, some of my the people who are in my band, they were starting to get into trouble. Some of'em started Doing some drugs. You know, getting getting a little bit into I would call a scary crowd. Um And and that frankly scar you know, I had my I had my quiz bowl and academic games friends.

11:06 And then and then uh I had had some of my my other friends who were You know, their their life was getting really tough. And they were starting to to I would say get into trouble and that that scared me. Huh. So w when it came time to apply to college were you

11:22 encouraged to aim pretty high, like like to a prestigious school? Yeah, I give a lot of credit to my sister. You know, she was always a little ahead of me and Yeah, I looked at the schools that she was applying for when she was graduating from high school. I was in middle school or or a freshman at the time, and she was applying to places like Brown University. And I was like, Farah, have you looked at the tuition at Brown University? There's no way we're gonna be able to afford that. And she's like, No, there's something called financial aid, and you can get clones and and all of this. And she ended up going to Brown and That completely opened up my mind of what's possible. And and to give my mom fair credit, she definitely, you know, I think South Asian culture, Indian culture, whatever you want to call it, you know, there is this very You could call it

12:00 Positive or negative. peer pressure of like, Oh so what are your kids doing? So and so's kids going to med school. What you know so and has a has a has a perfect GPA, is a valuatorian. Is your kid only the salutatorian? So she kind of would often tell us stuff like You know You should be validatorian just like Thouheen. Thouheen was this kid we knew who was ten years older who had I think by the time he was eighteen he had a PhD from Tulane. So you know, it's I think he now has two PhDs and an MD. So so I remember there's a lot I heard a lot about Thouheen. So so I guess your mom was pretty happy'cause you wound up going to MIT and and and when you got there was it just so exciting?

12:37 It was for me. Uh you know, when when I got there, I was it it did feel like heaven on so many levels for me. You know, it was the first environment that I w had been in That really are like, you know, you shouldn't be ashamed if you're getting excited in an organic chemistry class. You know, I still remember one of my friends, Durander, who I actually met in the organic chemistry class, like I literally saw him getting excited about what was being talked about. He was having epiphanies as as we were talking about like the Aldol reaction. And um It's the closest thing to Hogwarts in in the real world where

13:10 You know, science is magic and you can walk down, you know, the the main hallway in MIT is called the Infinite Corridor. And you're just seeing You know People with like that some of them are a little bit unusual in their affect and all this, but they all have these magical superpowers. And there's professors who are inventing things and building things. And this is right in the late nineties where

13:30 The internet and computer science was was starting to become very uh relevant to to broader to to society as a whole. So it's it's it's it MIT was and I think continues to be an incredibly exciting place. Um, you graduated MIT with a master's degree. You you like double tripled up on classes and I guess w we're insanely productive.

13:52 um and and got a degree in computer science. Um, what did you do after you graduated? Well um I I I remember my senior year, this was about November of my senior year, I talked to a a friend who was a year older and he had just gotten a job at Oracle. And I I was kind of nosy. I was like, Well, how much are they paying you? And at

14:12 And he said a hundred thousand dollars. And for me at the time, I was like what My mind was blown. My mom was making sixteen thousand dollars a year. I had about twenty five thousand dollars in debt, which at the time felt like all the money in the world. So I was getting stressed about it. And I was and I literally I remember thinking like it would be irresponsible for me Not to try to make that type of money, pay off my debt, help out my family. Uh and and just get a little bit more financial security. So I remember that's when I went to my advisor and saying I think I need to finish the masters this year. And they all thought I was a little bit crazy, but um it it happened and and and I actually ended up working at Oracle. That's my first job.

14:50 Wow. So you you moved to Silicon Valley, uh to work. Uh to California to to to work For Oracle, I guess. Yeah, moved out to the Bay Area, uh, and you get to, you know, about a year into my tenure there, it's nineteen ninety nine now, we're at the peak of the dot com bubble. Um You know, I remember having a conversation with a a friend of mine who was on an H one B visa from India and and he said, Sal, why are you here? I was like, Well, you know, it's the pay's very good He's like I'm here'cause I have to get my I have to get my immigration, but like you're a citizen. Like I if I were you I'd be do I'd be starting a company right now. This is the late nineties. And so uh yeah, I I ended up joining a startup

15:31 Uh it was a startup to it was gonna dem democratize venture capitals called Me V C, where the the idea was uh you know, you had all these IPOs that were popping, so a lot of people were trying to get into the venture capital market, but it obviously it was hard for people to get into it. And so these two bankers from Roberts and Stevens at the time they had come up with a structure uh that could be a publicly traded venture capital fund. And and so that was the startup and it was gonna have a tech aspect of it where people could see the investments, et cetera, et cetera. So that was what I was uh supposed to build and and did build. Huh. It's a great idea, but but still hasn't been democratized to this day. What happened to the startup?

16:08 You know while the NASDAQ was roaring was doing quite well it It grew to forty employees, it raised its first fund, which I think was a Several hundred million dollars. Uh but then You know, I still remember that day in I believe it was you know spring of two thousand when the Nasdaq collapsed.

16:26 And uh you know, and with that I saw the the other side of the startup world where, you know, every week we'd have to lay off a few folks and it was incredibly, incredibly painful and political and stressful. And that was around the time that I was like, Yeah, maybe I should Take shelter someplace. Yeah. So I started looking up uh applications for business school. So you decide to leave um Silicon Valley and the start up world for at least the time being, um and go to business school. You went to back to Massachusetts to Harvard Business School. Yeah. And what was the what was the idea? Was your idea like, all right, I'll do this And then I'll go back into the startup world or or I'll go into finance and get a stable job and, you know, make a a s a stable good income. Like did you have a sense of what you want to do?

17:11 I I mean, if I'm really honest, I was I was lonely. I was out in Silicon Valley I mean the male female ratio in Silicon Valley back then was Horrendous. I I also uh felt traumatized to a large degree by my startup experience because it was it was so painful and political and And and I actually told myself that I didn't I didn't have the fortitude to be an entrepreneur. Uh I that that it is it's just

17:35 It's just so emotionally taxing. Let me go to business school and, you know, maybe broaden my resume a little bit so people just don't perceive me as the tech guy or the the quant guy. And it was while I was in business school, uh I started taking finance classes and started seeing that wow, there's a real beauty to finance. that it has its quantitative aspect, but it also has a huge psychological and historical aspect to it. uh that I loved. Uh and

18:02 I remember taking a capital markets class and that was probably the the Math heaviest class offered in business school, and uh and the professor's name is George Chaco. I remember going to him after class one day, I was like, you know, I really like this class. And he's like, Yeah, you really have a a knack for capital markets and things like this. I was like, Well, what should I do with this? Like, what what kind of career is this for? He's like, I think you should go work at a hedge fund. And I said, Wow, that sounds great. What's a hedge fund? And he and he explained, you know, it's it's like a mutual fund, but there's a lot more flexibility in how you invest the money. You can get into exotic things, you can short, you can buy and sell options. And I talked to some friends.

18:37 Or were going to work in hedge funds and said Yeah, so what what's the pay like? You know, is it good? And they kinda looked at me like Are you crazy? It's like it's about as good as it gets So uh so I guess you you decided to do exactly that to get a uh a job at a hedge fund and uh w was it easy to land one? No, I got pr you know you know pr I uh you know, my application got rejected hundreds of times. My resume Did not look like a a hedge fund resume. I w I was getting people in tech who wanted me to be a product manager or something like that. But uh at that at that time I had

19:12 There was a girl I had a crush on from MIT. She was now in med school in New York. And so I was also like, I need to work in New York. And so um I was I literally went through the directory of any hedge fund in New York, and I was I was getting one rejection after another. And then eventually there was uh The sky Dan Wool Based in In Boston. Who was

19:35 Apparently kinda getting his hedge fund off the ground and Dan at the time was thirty-two years old, I think, or thirty-three years old, and Um I interviewed with him and he hired me. And he later told me he hired me because I didn't have a background in finance. He liked that I seemed to be kind of a out of the box type type of personality and uh You know, it was it's one of these ironies that I had then fallen back into essentially a startup'cause it was me and Dan and we were looking for office space and you know, making sure that the office was dog friendly'cause he had this large dog that we had to that we had to accommodate. Um so yeah, that that was my first job in finance.

20:14 How'd it go? How d how did you do? You know, I gotta say, it you know, y it it's it it was it was a fascinating job because What we would do is we would screen the market for Intriguing. And we would try to understand that business. And the best way to understand that business was try to get the the management team

20:33 on the phone to explain their business to us. Yeah. And and so it was intellectually I I was like a kid in a candy shop because I was able to Every day. I mean, it's kind of like being a journalist. You're able to really dive deeply into these. And and my job was actually to be kind of a hyper learner. Cause you know, the first half of the calls, I would always say, like it was it was a little bit of like, gee, whiz, so how does this work? How do logistics work and all that? And then the second half of the call, I would I would turn up the knob a little bit and I was like what you know what you're saying doesn't make sense and and push and push the management teams a little bit harder. Huh. And w I mean, while you're doing all this, you're you're also sort of Starting what would become

21:09 Con Academy. I mean y you're working there in Boston and I guess this is around two thousand four. Like the story, I guess, uh that I've heard is that your sister's daughter has is like having trouble with math. Is that sort of the story? It was a cousin. It was a year I was a year out of business school, had just gotten married to the to the Umama, uh my my the the person that I was trying to move to New York for. And and uh the wedding was in New Jersey, which is where my wife grew up. Uh but then Uh

21:36 family was visiting from New Orleans and they had come they wanted to visit uh Boston during fourth of July. And so I was showing them around town and I just came out a conversation that my twelve year old cousin Nadia, her mother, Najratanti, was telling me that uh she was having trouble in math and she's like, Sal, if there's anything you can do, I know, you know, y you're more knowledgeable about these types of things. And so I I talked to Nadia and Nadia said that She was having trouble. She took a placement test at the end of sixth grade. had a lot of unit conversion in it. She felt that she g just couldn't understand unit conversion. And so I told Nadia I was like, I'm a hundred percent sure you're capable of l learning unit conversion. How about when you go back to New Orleans

22:13 Uh, I'm happy to tutor you remotely. And she was up for it. And so uh that's that was August of two thousand and four when I started tutoring Nadia. Alright, so Remotely sounds fine today, like in the era of Zoom and Slack and stuff, but how did you do that in two thousand four? Was it was it over the phone?

22:32 Yeah, it was over the phone. Um and We'd use Yahoo Instant Messenger to to type messages or to type questions. And Yahoo Instant Messenger at the time had this feature called Yahoo Doodle, where you can actually with your mouse scribble something and

22:49 Someone on the other side could see what you scribbled. And you can imagine writing math equations with a mouse was pretty painful. And so I got myself and I got Nadia a Yeah, like a I think was sixty dollar uh pen tablet so that you could write. But it was on a little little part of your instant messenger window, but that's still enough that you could write things like three X is equal to six. You know, what does X equal? Uh so that's that's how we did it. And this is just something you're doing at night and you know, kind of after work. Yeah, we I was doing it every day, uh about thirty minutes, getting on the phone. And after uh uh frankly a few weeks, Nadia The first few weeks was just deprogramming her own lack of self-esteem. But then

23:31 After she got through that, she started to believe that she was capable of learning. Unit conversion actually came quite easily to her. Then she got caught up with her class. She came a little ahead of her class. At that point I became what I call a tiger cousin. I called up her school. I I said, you know, I really think neither am I on should be able to retake that placement test from last year. They said, Who are you? I'm her cousin. And you know, surprisingly, they let her retake that placement test and Uh the same Nadia who was only a few months ago uh put into a remedial class was now put into an advanced math class. And

24:03 I was hooked. When we come back, Sal discovers that YouTube is not just for cat videos. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's two thousand four, and after a couple of months of Sal helping his cousin with her math,

24:36 She gets bumped up from a remedial class to an advanced one. So What's his secret? I I would love to believe that I'm some type of super tutor or something, but I think the reality is that there's actually a lot of research to back this up. If you do have one on one tutoring Um, and that tutor is able to identify what your gaps are.

24:55 and fill in those gaps, especially in subjects like mathematics, that uh most kids can actually probably all kids could be accelerated dramatically. And Uh that's all that was happening with Nadia. I mean there was some of it was just motivational. She had almost given up on herself, so I had to just re-motivate her a little bit. And I think a little bit of the secret, you know, this might sound a little bit of like a once again a tiger cousin or tiger parent thing to do, but when you get when you allow a student to get a little ahead of their class, Uh two things happen.

25:23 One, when they see it in class, they're like, Oh, I've seen this before. So they it builds a little bit of cushion and also builds confidence. There's just you know, once you start to realize that you can actually get a little ahead of your class, you're like, Oh Maybe this is my thing. Maybe I'm a math person. And I guess Like

25:39 The word gets out in the f around the family in Louisiana and other relatives are like, Hey, can you help my kid or can you help me? Is that Sort of what happened? Yeah, I mean put exactly as you described, word spread that free tutoring was going on. And before Uh you know, and I was getting requests. From from from family m members all over the country.

26:02 And by By two thousand six I was tutoring On a given day, anywhere between five and fifteen cousins, family, friends are around. On a given it. Yeah, I'd go they would all get on the speakerphone together. I would answer questions they had and You know, I I one one thing I saw with my cousins

26:21 The way that math is often taught and especially learned is it's like these fragmented concepts that you have to memorize formulas and patterns and things like that. And what the thing that really served me well growing up is that if you just ponder the math a little bit, it all connects. It all makes intuitive sense. It's all just a way of thinking. And so I was really trying to do what I what I could to s to support them all. And meantime you were still working at at a hedge fund. Right. I was.

26:46 And and and I I have to give extra credit to Dan'cause in the early days when I was working for Wool Capital Dance. startup hedge fund. It was just me and him. I had bought into the stereotype that you have to work eighty hours a week to make it in finance, so I was ready to do that. And I remember

27:03 It's probably a month or two into starting my job. Dan's like, why are you still here? Why aren't you going home? I was like, no, no, Dan, I'm I'm ready to, you know, I'm I'm gonna look for more investment ideas. He's like, no, no, go home. I was like, okay, I was like, okay, I'll go home and I'll look for investment ideas. He's like, no, Sal, you're you're not gonna help anybody by just You know. Having the appearance of motion. It's not about just churning yourself and tying yourself out, because then you're just more likely to make bad decisions.

27:28 Our whole goal is to avoid bad decisions. And the best way to do that is when you're at work, you know, have your game face on, have your game energy, but to do that, you're gonna have to have Other things in your life. You should Read interesting books. you know, recharge. And actually that recharging is going to keep your mind open and and keep you creative and not fall into the group think that a lot of people do. And so Dan kind of forced me to have a life.

27:52 And That's what gave me the space in in my life to to offer to Nadia. Say, yeah, you know, after markets close, I'm I'm actually pretty free uh to to work with you. Um, so you're doing this. tutoring these kids and it's over the phone. And this is like around two thousand six.

28:10 And somebody suggests that you make videos and you put it on YouTube. Is that did that happen around that time? Yeah, it actually even before the videos happened, uh in around late two thousand five You know this background in software. And

28:25 In the back of my mind, I have always been fascinated by Can software play a role in improving human potential? And when I was in college Almost every job I did was in some way related to education or how tech and education could be useful. I remember I worked for the uh some Spanish professors to help teach people Spanish. Then the the next summer I worked uh on some software to to help kids with attention deficit disorder learn math. uh and I created this little thing called Math Planet. So my brain was there throughout For a long time and so

28:58 When I started working with my cousins, I was like, wow, you know, it's hard for me to find good practice problems for them on the internet. Let me write some software for them that could generate practice problems and that uh then can give them hints and solutions and immediate feedback and that could give me as their tutor data on how they're performing and how long things are taking them. And I wrote it as a hobby. Uh and that was that was the first con academy. I you know it was I set it up as a website.

29:25 And and you just it was not very expensive, presumably you just kinda did it yourself and Offered it to the These kids. Yeah. And I remember, you know, a lot of my friends was like, Well, is this a business? I was like, No, no, no, not a business. I'm not a startup guy. I'll never do that again. Uh this is this this is my family project. That was my way of frankly protecting it emotionally. And

29:46 I was at a dinner party and my friend, his name's Zuli, Zuli Ramsan, give him full credit. He's like, Well, this is cool, Sal, but how are you scaling your actual lessons? And I said, You're right, Zuli, it's hard to do with ten cousins what I was originally doing with just Nadia and her brothers. And he says, Well, why don't you record some of your lessons' videos and upload them onto YouTube for your family? And I immediately

30:07 You know, my technologist side said, Well, that's such a low tech solution. And then I I I vocalized him. I was like, No, that's like YouTube's for cats playing piano, it's for dogs on skateboard. It it it's not for learning. And I went home that weekend and I I think I probably had explained least common multiple to a cousin for like the eighth time and I was like Maybe Zul's got a point. Maybe I should make a video on Lee Scott multiples for my cousins. And and then it was just a How do I make the video? I mean, back in two thousand six

30:36 Uh, cell phones weren't particularly good. I didn't have a video camera and and I you know, you do Google search you realize, oh, there's something called screen capture software. And so I downloaded some, you know, free screen capture software and I started just essentially recording some of my digital scribbles using my pen tablet. Uh yeah, and you you but you can hear my voice over while I'm talking. Yeah. And it was they were done very extemporaneously. You know, I've they're from my cousins uh and Um, I started uploading them onto YouTube and telling them, watch this at your own time and pace and then we can we can dig deeper when we get on the phone and Wow. After about a month, I asked them for feedback and they they they famously told me they like me better on YouTube than in person. Yes. They just really liked having an on-demand version of their cousin that they could watch as much as they want. There was no shame in reviewing a concept that they should have learned in fourth grade. Uh and

31:26 I started to realize, you know, this kind this type of thing, especially math, and I was doing math and I started doing some physics and chemistry and biology as well. It's pretty evergreen content, if once you have a good explanation of adding fractions with unlike denominators, Pretty much everyone in the world could use it, and you don't really have to refresh it unless you figure out a better way of explaining adding fractions with unlike unlike denominators. I mean, I'm trying to figure out how you were thinking about this,'cause c I mean, clearly you were motivated to help your relatives and and these kids in your extended family and and and friends of friends, but um

32:02 I have to think that a part of you was like Maybe there's something bigger here. Or or were you just not even thinking that at all? Oh, there was a for sure something. My my brain, it it oscillates between these like mega delusional

32:18 You know, um space opera science fiction ideas. Uh and like Sal, you're being crazy. Focus on on what you can do in the here and now. And so Yeah, the reason why I was always fascinated w by software, technology, and education is that it's not hard to imagine that if you you make something that can increase human potential by ten percent, twenty percent, or a hundred percent And if it scales like technology can, there's no reason why it can't

32:42 affect all of All of humanity one day. Yeah. You know, I was super inspired when I was young. In seventh grade I read um I I read the foundation series.

32:52 uh Isaac Asimov. And the protagonist is someone named Harry Seldon, who's kind of a a new form of academic that's a combination of mathematics, economics, history, psych psychology, and he's able to predict large scale historical movements. And he sees through his science that the Galactic Empire is about to enter into a 10,000 year dark ages. And he decides to do something about it. He can't stop it from happening, but he can shorten it to a thousand years. And the way he does that is by taking the galaxy's knowledge and putting it into a foundation at the periphery of the galaxy. And I remember when I was seventh grade and I read that. I thought two things.

33:30 One. Why don't more people think on those scales? Like that it feels so inspiring and epic to think on that scale well beyond ourselves. You know, I and when I went to the hedge fund world I realized most people don't even think Beyond the the next earnings period, much less, much less generational or over centuries or over thousands of years. And then the other aha from that book in seventh grade was like. Yeah, Harry Seldon's right.

33:53 Like the way to preserve civilization is really through knowledge. It it like that is what defines a civilization, and that is what defines human potential. And so You know, while I was working on this in two thousand six and now two thousand seven and I started getting Thank you letters from folks around the world, you know, people who are soldiers in Iraq saying I'm I'm using your content while I'm while I'm in Iraq to to prepare for college so I can go back to college. People who dropped out of high school I was like maybe

34:21 Maybe this project could be like the foundation. It could be the thing that keeps us from going into dark ages, or maybe Entering into a new age, who knows? Yeah, I mean that's what I'm wondering, when you started putting these videos out on on YouTube on the internet. Would you like wake up and see like Two hundred views and then Six hundred views the next day, like Yeah, that's that's pretty accurate. That's about what I've Were you surprised? Were you like what is going on? Who's who's watching this?

34:45 I I I was hoping that something like that would happen. I mean, you know, when when I put it on YouTube and it asked whether I want to make it public, I was like, Yeah, I guess it would be pretty cool if other people could could could benefit from this. Uh, but then when you start getting, you know, not just the views, but for I would say the comments especially, you know, people like opening up on the YouTube message boards are opening up on you know, they'll th they can do the private uh messaging on on YouTube and they'll tell you their life story and how that one video unlocked their perspective. I'm like, oh my God, this is This is a For that person, that video was a big deal, and I didn't really have to do anything extra for that person. Uh, it's really inspiring and and I just got more and more hooked on it. Huh. Meanwhile, uh as she mentioned, I mean you you're still with

35:27 Dan at this point at the hedge fund and then I guess as at some point he decides to move the fund to California, right? Yeah. Um, we had moved out to Silicon Valley. Dan's pr wife had become a professor at Stanford, which is why we had moved out here. And uh so my wife was able to

35:44 finish her fourth year at med school doing a bunch of rotations out here in in the Bay Area. So we You know, and now that we were on the West Coast, I was working from five AM till about two in the afternoon. So before our first child was born, I had a lot of time on my hands. Uh, you know, so I was spending about, you know, that four hours that I was four to five hours that I'm spending after work, I was spending about half of it making videos and about half of it continuing to write code, write that software, that practice software for my family that that other people were now using. And By

36:13 Two thousand seven, two thousand eight, it was in the tens of thousands of people. And by two thousand nine it was in the hundreds of thousands of people were using it on our on a regular basis. At what point did you say to yourself I think I wanna do this. I think I wanna do this full time. I think I actually wanna Turn this into something.

36:34 There were many moments, you know, you can imagine in the investing world you have your share of not so great days. You're like, maybe this is not what I should do. Maybe I should be a, you know, this virtual tutor. And then you're like, okay, stop dreaming, Sal. You know, look, you gotta pay off your debt, pay off your mortgage, et cetera, et cetera. Uh so you know, I had multiple cycles of that over the years. People in Silicon Valley, they do understand quitting your job, you know, some angel investor writes a hundred thousand dollar check and you're off to the races, but Yeah. I I I did incorporate it as a not for profit in two thousand eight. To protect it. From the get go you you said this is going to be a non profit even before you decided to

37:09 Make this your full time job. In my mind it was almost an uh it was initially an emotional thing to do, which You know, I was getting these letters from folks saying how it helped them and That was such a precious thing, people's trust in me, that I never wanted them to

37:27 That I'm doing it for any other reason. Um now, look, there's a lot of for profits. in many industries that do incredible things, and even in education, there's for profits that do good things. You know, I obviously I was working at a hedge fund. I'm I I believe in capitalism. I believe in in in in markets

37:44 But While I was at a hedge fund, I saw how much Capital structure and incentives can really drive what an organization does. And the only organizations that really do stay true to some Social bottom line over long periods of time are nonprofits. Um I did have some folks who were reaching out to me by two thousand and eight saying

38:05 Hey. Our kids have been using your stuff. We think it's great. We think this is gonna be a the next big play in ed tech. Yeah, yeah. Can can I write a check and we'll start this thing. I'm sure. And it was tempting. Yeah. Uh but then by the second conversation, it was always like, Okay, we'll give this stuff for free, hook people, and then you have the freemium content. We'll sell it. Yeah. Right. And and and that just felt a little, you know, queasy to to me. Um so so But even when I set it up as a nonprofit, I said, you know I'm not gonna quit my day job. I have a great day job. You know, this hedge fund thing, I can I can make a lot of money. What I can do as a nonprofit is maybe get other volunteers.

38:41 Who wanna help? Uh maybe uh if we get some philanthropy, maybe I can help hire other people. And maybe if you know if I could be on a trajectory like Dan was, you know, Dan Dan if if he kept at it, uh could have easily become, you know, the next Warren Warren Buffett, but uh you know, he he decided to kind of pseudo retire it at forty to uh focus focus on his family when if he kept going he could have easily become a multi billionaire. Wow. And I'm like maybe I can retire early and be, you know, reasonably well off. So that that I could I could do this. At that point.

39:14 So What How did you decide to leave Fit relatively secure and stable, not stable, but

39:22 You know, this this immense riches and jump into this full time, what what happened? What was the catalyst? Um

39:32 You know, there's this guy, Jeremiah Hennessy, who's the founder of BJ's restaurants. He got my email address. Uh and and emailed me and I was like, oh, this guy runs a large restaurant chain, publicly traded. Um yeah, it seems legitimate. I should talk to him. And he's

39:48 I started having like these therapy conversations with him almost like on a weekly basis. And he would just keep calling me and say, Sal. Your purpose in life is not to to be a a hedge fund investor. I'm sure you're good at it, but that's not your purpose in life. You don't realize the content you've made, what it's done for my own family, what it could do for the world. You need to be doing this. And he's like, there's gotta be some way that that someone will fund this as a nonprofit. This, you know, the impact on the world could be so huge. And so When a legitimate person tells you that this is a legitimate thing to do, you start saying, Maybe, but then you go home, you look at your, you know, my my son was born in February of two thousand nine and I'm like, Okay, no, I have I have another mouth to feed. We look you know, we

40:28 Um We were renting a house uh you know, that the rent had gone up because we had to move to a larger house. My mother in law had moved with in with us as well. I'm like, There's no way I could do this right now. You were not a millionaire. I was not a millionaire. Yeah. And then by um

40:44 Fall of two thousand and nine. There were several hundred thousand folks who were using m the stuff I was making on a regular basis. I got a call from the the local tech museum. They have this annual award ceremony, which is a pretty high profile thing called the Tech Awards. And they called and said, You've been nominated one of three entities nominated to to win this year's tech award.

41:06 And I was like, wow, you know, and and so I was getting that validation that like wow, people are starting to take notice of this thing. And then Um CNN had called. At around the exact same time, I mean, if y everyone remembers the context, the market was falling apart. And it turns out, you know, I had made videos on

41:23 not just on math and science, I actually had made videos explaining the stock market and videos explaining what mortgage backed securities were and credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. And I started getting media houses contacting me saying, We are watching your explanations before reporting on the financial crisis. Wow. And we think they're the best explanations out there. And then I remember um Rick Sanchez on CNN reached out to me, says, I want you to come onto my show for twenty minutes. And explain the financial crisis to America. So I'm like, wow, like people are paying attention. So that was like my first. signs from the universe that maybe

42:01 This is what I should be doing. Your wife, I think, was not Yet of a doctor, she was still Um when you said hey, I'm gonna

42:14 Leave finance. And Do this. Was she nervous? I mean was she like sound like it's great, but I mean We don't have enough cash.

42:26 do it, but just for a short period of time. Yeah, it was a process. You know and you know, look, every marriage there's I would call it moods or weather to the marriage and and uh you know, if I caught her at a bad moment It'd be like I just get a weird look.

42:41 Uh, but if I caught her at a good moment, she'd be like, No, you don't look like I you've been showing me these letters you've been getting. They are incredible and It does seem like you're onto something. But but then let's look at our finances and we would look at it. You know, our rent, you know, to rent a a four bedroom house it out here at the time it seemed like a lot. It was four thousand dollars a month. Uh we were you know she was making Probably forty thousand dollars a year as a as a fellow. Yeah. Um

43:07 My mother in law was w living with us. We had a a child. We we were hoping to have more children. Um our expenses were were only going higher. Uh so she saw that I I was having trouble focusing on anything else. Yeah. We said like, okay, maybe maybe we can dig into that.

43:27 For a little bit, for for a year. I I also say that a couple of philanthropists had reached out and said, We're interested in what you're doing. And so You know, I was like, Oh, surely one of these people will fund it. So let me and we're off to the races, right? So he'll say million bucks and we're good to go.

43:43 Exactly. So I quit the job and then it doesn't work that way. It did work out that way. All right, so you jump into this. With both feet. And um Did the money start to come in immediately? Did you start to get Doners.

43:55 Sending you checks. Kind of. You know, those early those early funders who Seemed promising. You know, by conversation four or five, I start getting, well, this is really exciting, but it doesn't really fit in our portfolio or our budget's already allocated. And so you go several months into it.

44:15 I did have this little donate button on on my website and There were people starting to donate, it was amounting to a few hundred dollars every month. Uh if it was anyone listening, you'll thank you for that. But it but it we were digging into our savings about five or six thousand dollars a month.

44:29 Ah, so it was it was incredibly stressful. Uh, and you know, but my male ego was trying to shelter my family from it. So I was putting on a strong face to my friends and family. And you know, you can imagine my mother. Who You know, when I told her I'd quit my job, I you know, I I still remember her first Word was what? Literally in that in that in that tone because you know, f uh as as as we talked about

44:52 I I had now fallen into a really lucrative career and then to give that up and to do that for something that was like not something that she could tell her friends at the next Indian party. Um You know, th not only was there a monetary aspect to it, there was probably a shame aspect to this as well. Um that that uh you know, was was was hard. Love love your mom. Ha

45:16 Um Yeah, no, right. I mean she came to the United States with nothing and really You know, kinda was scraping by most of her career and Her son goes to MIT and then Harvard Business School and

45:31 And now he's calling mom and saying Um yeah. gonna do this nonprofit thing. Yeah, that no one that no one has funded. This nonprofit thing that no one has funded and I'm living off of savings. Would you like to see your grandson child that I really can't support? It's not it's it's a you know, we go to gatherings and Um

45:51 You know, I I remember one at one party and they kinda asked what what what I do for a living and I said, Well, you know, I used to do this Uh, but you know, now I do this thing where I make math videos and I write the software as a nonprofit and you know, and they're asking all these questions, how is it funded? What's the model? I was like, Yeah, I'm still working on that, still figuring it out. And I remember when they were walking away, I mean they literally said this, like Well yeah. he's lucky that his wife is a physician. You know, and it's like this it's like

46:16 a punch to the gut of your like fragile male ego. It's like no, I can support my family too. You you wait. You wait. When we come back in just a moment, how Sal gets his first big donation for Khan Academy. And how he eventually winds up having a slightly surreal meeting. With Bill Gates?

46:38 Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. Welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Roz. So it's 2009, and Sal has just left his high paying job at a hedge fund. To focus on Khan Academy full time.

47:11 And since it's just him, no other coders, no other teachers. This new venture is not costing him a lot of money, but what is costing him is the fact that he's no longer making any money. You know, the first three months you're euphoric, you're you know, you're super excited about your new lifestyle is this nonprofit do gooder and all of that. Um I would say by month seven or eight.

47:37 I couldn't sleep. I I I'm I'm I literally couldn't sleep. I I anxiety. I was yeah, I was getting anxious. I was um Waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweats I was you know, I would I would look at my bank account over and over again and look at the you know, look at our expenses. I would run financial models for my family.

47:57 You know and my wife would say, Oh, what do you got I was like oh nothing, you know, like it i yeah I mean in s in hindsight I was like I shouldn't have been so kept it just to myself, but I wasn't I wasn't a really Was there also that kind of maybe residual fear of like

48:15 Failing. Yeah, I think there's You know, we talked a lot about childhood and you know not having a lot of resources growing up. I think I And I frankly still have

48:26 A fear of being one catastrophe away from financial hardship. Yeah. And you know in two thousand nine I was like I made the catastrophe happen. Like I I it it wasn't like a hurricane or something that that's ruined our finances. It's not a fire. It's it's like I quit a good job. And Like the type of job that I had.

48:48 is not easy to get. And Yeah, I would Try to channel whatever nervous energy or anxiety I had into the work. I was like, let me make more videos. Let me let me make more content. Let me write more code. And

49:00 And hope. Uh that eventually someone will notice. I guess like sort of maybe it was a kind of a low point. That you hit and

49:10 a wealthy, very wealthy person reached out to you. This is Anne Door, the wife of John Dore. Um the billionaire venture capitalist, um kind of reached out Two Make a donation? What what was the story?

49:24 Yeah, you know, this is you know, I I have this theory that benevolent aliens are are helping me so that um Khan Academy can help prepare humanity for first contact. And Um, it was May of 2010, and you know, I was getting these donations off of PayPal, you know, people donating ten dollars, twenty dollars every now and then a fifty dollar donation would come in. That was pretty exciting, and then Um, I saw a a ten thousand dollar donation come in. But he came in through the site just ten thousand dollars just like that. Yeah. It was uh I

49:59 I mean, just like I got a email notification from like PayPal that like a donation has come in. I was like, Oh, this is gonna be a fifty. I was like, Oh, it's a 10,000. And and Uh then, you know, I immediately did a Google search and I was like, oh wow, like And Dor. She's like a real philanthropist. Yeah. And I immediately emailed her and I said, You know, thank you so much for this incredibly generous donation. This is the largest donation that

50:23 Khan Academy has ever received. I I tried to project like I'm a real institution. And if we were a physical school, you would not have a building named after and and uh And immediately r emails back and says, Well Yeah. Y you know, I I didn't realize that you you weren't getting this kind of donations. Um

50:42 I I I see that you're based in Mountain View. Uh you know, I've been using your stuff with my daughters, I've been using it even myself to understand the financial crisis and and accounting and finance. If you have time, I would love to grab lunch with you. And I was like, Yeah, absolutely. And so A week later? Maybe a few days later we were in downtown Palo Alto at a Indian buffet restaurant. She asks me over lunch so

51:08 What what's your goal here? And I told her, when I filled out the paperwork with the IRS to become a nonprofit That little part of the forum with like mission, colon, and they give you a line and a half, I filled out a free world class education for anyone anywhere. And when she looked at me, she's like, Well That's ambitious. How how do you see yourself doing that?

51:28 And and I told her I you know. To be very clear, that's a mission. I don't think I'm just gonna be able to check it off this weekend and then move on to healthcare or something. But I I I showed her Yeah, she was already familiar with the content I was making. I showed her the exercise, the software platform I was making, I said look Videos are nice and I wanna keep making videos. I really enjoy that. I want to translate it into the languages of the world. But the real learning happens when students are able to work on exercises, get immediate feedback. Ideally, teachers and parents can get dashboards to understand where their kids are and how to do

52:00 uh more interventions. Uh you know, I had by this point been rejected by so many major foundations, probably about twenty of them. Uh so but I but in preparation for all of them, I had a binder of of testimonials from around the world. I mean it was literally several hundreds of pages thick. And it you know these letters, so I showed it to her. I showed her how the the usage was growing exponentially. Uh and I was like, you know, I think this could eventually reach like All of humanity And then she's like, Well, you you've made a lot of Progress. Uh how

52:28 I only have one question. How are you supporting yourself? Yeah. And as Proud of a way as possible, I said. I'm not.

52:38 Yeah. She kind of processes that and'cause she's thinking you're a big shot. You she you're like doing T V interviews and Uh m hundreds of thousands of people using this, like, right? Yeah, no, I mean I had been on CNN and I didn't realize there was actually there was a buzz about Khan Academy in Silicon Valley at the time. I that I didn't know about. No one they they weren't but I wasn't in the know. I wasn't even in the right circles to be experiencing the buzz. And so anyway, sh you know, she she she offered to pay the bill and I I said oh if you insist

53:10 And um and you know, ten minutes later I'm I'm driving into my my driveway And I get a text message from Anne. And it says You really need to be supporting yourself. I've just wired you a hundred thousand dollars.

53:24 That was just you know, it's like one of those moments where you just like stare at the phone and you sit in your driveway for like the next half an hour. Wow. Uh like You know?

53:35 Holy crap. I mean I I I think I was I I might have cried, you know, like if it was that type of um You'cause you you know, all that stress that builds up over the months, all of a sudden it just gets released. You know, and it's not that hundred thousand was all of a sudden gonna like change everything forever, but it's like okay I can now pay my bills.

53:54 We're not gonna have to dip into savings it gave a like I can do this for a few more months at le for a year at least. Uh or or maybe even a little longer. So so she Fires you a hundred thousand dollar check. And I guess that same year.

54:10 Two thousand ten, um The Aspen Ideas Festival happens and Bill Gates And he's He's telling the audience that he uses this thing called Con Academy. Um w how did you find out about Bill Gates

54:24 Mentioning you at Aspen. So um I start getting text messages from Anne. Which you can imagine I now take very seriously. And she

54:34 There were four or five of them and it were kinda cryptic, as text messages often are, and and and they said This is Anne writing. I'm at the Aspen Ideas Festival, main pavilion. Walter Isaacson interviewing Bill Gates. Gates last five minutes talking about Khan Academy.

54:50 Well. And Once again, she's kinda stared. I was like, what is she talking about? And I I start doing a web search for, you know, Aspen Gates Cod Academy.

55:01 After about 10 minutes, I actually found like the delayed recording of the interview and Walter Isaacson Ask Bill Gates. What are you excited about right now? Yeah.

55:13 And he says, Well, there's this one guy Uh I think his name is SalCon and he's created this thing called Khan Academy. I've been using it with my kids, I've been using it myself, and it's really great. And and it was clear not only that was he using it, but he was He was eerily familiar with my story. He's like, Yeah, this one guy, his his wife let him quit his job, he was making stuff for his cousins. Y you know, it's it's just one of those moments where you're just like, Is this really happening? Yeah, where you're just like wha did you have any idea that Bill Gates was using this with his children? I had no idea what at at all. I mean

55:48 It it's It it it it was f it it definitely gelled with some of the delusions that I've had over over time, but it did it didn't it it it it you know, I had I I I had no clue. And Yeah, I remember that night I went home I immediately showed my wife the video. uh when she got home from her fellowship and

56:07 You know, we both kind of stared at each other a little bit and I was just like what do I do now? You know, like do I c do I do do I do I do I call him? How do I contact I'm sure he's not listed. And uh so Simultaneously, uh a reporter from Fortune uh had reached out actually before this happened saying, Oh, you know There's a thing you're doing, it's really interesting. We'd like to do a story about it.

56:34 And so I was already talking to the reporter and that reporter calls And he's like, Did you know that Bill Gates uses Khan Academy? I was like, I had no idea. And then the reporter, uh Robert Kaplan uh with Fortune, he says. I'm gonna call Bill up. I'm like

56:48 If you think you can call Bill up and do that, and so he calls me like two days later, he's like Bill took my call. He I just interviewed Bill Gates about you. And and and it's like this really surreal thing because this person that's obviously like a lifetime hero. Like, you know, you grow up in computer science reading about Bill Gates and And then the fortune article came out.

57:08 And I still had not met Bill yet. Or or even had any contact with them. And the article said something like uh no the title was Bill Gates' Favorite Teacher. Wow. You know, and and I yeah, the press sometimes writes these hyperbolic headlines to and I almost felt insecure. I was like, Am I his favorite teacher? Like did he say that? Are they misrepresenting? Like I felt serious imposter syndrome.

57:29 And then I got a call, uh uh uh my cell phone rings right when I'm a r record a video. And I answer, I say, Hello and I hear, you know, this is Larry Cohen. I'm Bill Gates chief of staff. You might have heard that Bill's a fan. And I was like.

57:42 Yeah, I heard that. And if you're if you're free over the next couple of weeks, we'd love to fly up to Seattle and learn more about what you're doing, maybe ways we could work together. And I was looking at my calendar for the month. Uh. It's completely blank. And I said, Yeah, maybe next Wednesday, you know, I've gotta cut my nails, do some laundry. I'm happy to meet happy to happy to meet with Bill. Can make that work.

58:07 Uh so yeah, I I flew up and and and and we had that meeting. What was that like? And it was a little bit awkward. Oh, you know, I love what you're doing, tell me it was like oh so Yeah, uh yeah, there's a little bit of a prompt. I think Larry might have said, Oh so tell Bill what you're up to and and then I just started into into I had my s I had my uh laminated s slides that showed hand with me. I love it. You didn't bring a laptop, you brought laminated slides. I love that.

58:35 I I I mean there's an irony to it that you know I'm obviously someone involved in technology, uh kind of kind of based on technology. I'm presenting to the creator of PowerPoint. So so yeah, I went through it and and at the end you know he he didn't Give. during the presentation a lot of feedback. So I just kinda kept going and it's one of those moments where, you know Twenty percent of your brain is trying to do what it needs to do and then the other eighty percent of your brain's saying

59:00 You're talking to Bill Gates. That's Bill Gates. He's three feet away. Don't mess this up, Sal. Don't mess this up. You're about to mess this up. Don't mess this up. Um And then when I was kinda done, he he kinda nods. He's like, Yeah, nope, this makes a ton of sense. This is great. This is great. And I'm like, Oh my God, this you know, and and then and then I got overconfident. I I remember I threw out another idea. He's like, No, that doesn't make sense. I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, you're right. Wow. Um, but was there any like and here's a plan on how we could collaborate. Was there any of that at all?

59:32 No, they they asked. They they Bill said well what would you do with more resources? And You know, I I I think this is the question I have to answer really well. Uh and I said, look, you know, it's just me in a closet right now with more resources. We could translate this to the languages of the world. We could build out the software platform so more people can access it. We could build tools for teachers and

59:54 You know, I said I think we could we're reaching hundreds of thousands now. I think we could reach a million folks by the end of this year and it could be ten or a hundred million, you know, by the end of the decade. They said, Well, what do you need for that? And Yeah, I said, Look if I if if I could hire up about Five six engineers and educators and content folks

1:00:13 I think we'll be up and running. Um, so you know, fully loaded costs in Silicon Valley, that'd be a million, million and a half dollars a year. Um, and so they said, Yeah, we'll we'll we'll think about that. That seems reasonable. So um Uh and then a few days later they said, Yeah, uh that's they they feel like they could do that. So I started talking to the Gates Foundation about about that. uh that grant and uh you know simultaneously Folks from Google had reached out.

1:00:36 Wow. You know, Google had made this promise in two thousand and eight, which was the 10 year anniversary of Google, that it would donate ten million dollars to five projects that had the potential to change the world. And They determined that one of those projects has to be a project that has a chance to educate the world. And They on their own said, We've done a lot of research and we think

1:00:57 What you are doing has the best chance of helping to educate the world. I was like, okay. Well, I'm glad you've been listening in on my delusions. And by fall of two thousand ten, uh both the Google and the Gates Foundation each gave about two million dollars. Wow. Uh Uh uh so we had a four million dollar initial funding for that first two years to hire up a team, internationalize and and start scaling Con Academy. Wow.

1:01:22 More more than four million dollars. Yeah. Grow, you've gotta build, you've gotta get office space, you've gotta hire people, you've gotta really turn this

1:01:34 into A thing. So what did you do? I mean that's kind of overwhelming, uh right? I mean Isn't it? Yeah, it it was. I mean you know I immediately call

1:01:47 Um One of my closest friends Shantanu Sinha. He was someone I first met actually in Louisiana. He beat me at a math competition in 10th grade. And then we were on the same team. Representing Louisiana at National Academic Games. So that's how I got to know him.

1:02:04 He ended up becoming my roommate freshman year at MIT. Uh so you know we're we're pretty much like brothers. And I I said, Hey Shantanu, I need help. Uh like

1:02:14 I know this wasn't on your career path to to start a to to help me. kind of get this thing off the ground, but like I need your help and I think it'll be fun. And uh you know, I he he took a couple of days to think about it and um he decided to to take the plunge with me, and so he quit his McKinsey job and uh joined Khan Academy as as a president and COO uh to essentially help me

1:02:39 Turn into a real organization. At the same time, there were these two engineers. I mean, it's once again, it's really eerie how these people came out of the woodwork. These two engineers that summer, uh, Uh Ben Cayman's and Jason Roseoff. They had volunteered for Khan Academy, and I just assumed they were some young kids were looking for some experience, but when they were volunteering, I'm like, these guys are incredible. Like these are some of the best engineers and designers I've ever worked with in my life. Who are they? And then I realized they're they're actually like known figures. They they were like you know, uh really uh well known engineers and designers. Um and so they were shant through my next call uh where we said, hey, would you guys want to work full time for Khan Academy? I think we're gonna get funding. And uh they uh after a few months we were able to convince them they worked initially remotely from New York, but then they were able to to move out to the Bay Area. So as you began to grow and scale and hire more people, um

1:03:30 D I'm assuming you kind of wanted to professionalize it a little bit more and maybe kind of Start to replace some of those early screen capture videos that you that that you that you'd made in two thousand si s six and seven. Yeah, you know, the interesting there's a a constant tension as an organization grows.

1:03:47 Um of How do you make sure you do what's right from a professionalization point of view, from a scaling, from a managerial point of view? But How do you make sure that you're not just doing the things that everyone else does that ends up creating these large bureaucratic organizations that, you know, aren't aren't always the most innovative? And how do you make sure you don't lose whatever secret sauce you had that made you a success initially? And a lot of Khan Academies I can say not so secret sauce.

1:04:13 I believe was it's eccentricity, it's quirkiness, it's informality. coupled with its depth and intuition and desire to you know, show the wonder in the universe and the curiosity. And

1:04:26 Uh so you know, the last ten years for me have just been how do I How do I balance that? You know, can I bring in other people who also compliment us, but we do not lose uh that entrepreneurial, that creativity, that curiosity Uh uh that eccentricity, that that quirkiness that made Khan Academy what it is. Yeah. I interviewed um

1:04:47 the founders of Headspace, which is a different obvious it's a for profit company. It's a Meditation app. Meditations were Andy, Andy Puttycomb, if if you're familiar with it. And initially all the videos were were Salcon. But SalCon is not scalable. You cannot Make. tens of thousands of videos. Was that clear to you pretty pretty soon after you started the the funding started to come in that you needed

1:05:13 To get other people to make videos To your standards. Um Now, you know, we we don't have a lot of folks making videos. I still make a lot of them. I I pretty much make all of the math and science video and then we have a few other folks who are doing some history videos and and some language arts videos.

1:05:31 Um and one of the reasons why we we were we became a little sensitive of Like not just outsourcing it to five hundred folks is we got a lot of feedback that You know, education even when it's done in this kind of distance way or asynchronous You have to really trust your teacher. You have to trust that they're they're gonna get me to some place that I

1:05:49 I know it's going to be insightful and there's gonna be an aha moment that you're willing to invest in it. And we've had moments where, you know. There's a video from me, a video from me, and then there's video from someone else. And it just even though they might be explaining that better than I could have. It could be dissonant for the student where they're feeling Wait, I I really got connected that my teacher now a substitute showed up. So well we've been trying to um balance that.

1:06:12 It's amazing. I I met David Coleman a couple of years ago, the the head of the college board, and he talked about the partnership that they did with Khan Academy where you offer free SAT prep, which It essentially really Big impact on the for profit SAT prep um industry. Because you're essentially offering this

1:06:34 Product and service for free. Yeah, you know, it's um I I think all of these players, they're trying to do what they can in the context that they're they're doing it, but David Coleman reached out Uh and it was really, I think, David's brainchild when he took over the college board.

1:06:48 That You know, the Cobs were the folks who administer the SAT and the AP exams. You know, it was the Cosmo was a nonfor profit that came into existence to try to level the playing field. That Yeah, a a hundred years ago, the only kids who were getting into Ivy League schools were kids of legacy, kids who prep school went to the right schools. Exactly. And the notion of the SAT is let's give a chance for the kid in Mederry, Louisiana to to to to compete with the kids from Andover or Choate or Deerfield.

1:07:15 But over time, as we know, this whole industry, this billion dollar industry came up a around what look like creating a perceived and maybe actual advantage for the for the, you know, upper middle class or or affluent. And you know, David said, Look, we've been Secretly observing Khan Academy and what we really like about Cod Academy is

1:07:34 Y'all are about really learning the material. I had actually made some SAT videos for Nadia and my cousins. I actually went through the SAT practice book and I did every problem in the book on video for my cousins. So that it was like 400 something problems. And I was afraid that the CowdWord was going to sue me because I didn't take their permission to like screen capture their problems. Um But Dave is like I watched that and what I really liked about it is At no point did you say Oh, this is how you guess. You always said oh this is a concept. You need to learn to be ready for college.

1:08:05 This is where you learn it. This is how you learn it. Uh, there's a little bit of test taking strategy. See, like that's what Test prep should be. It should be something that genuinely makes you better, generally makes you more prepared for college, and and how you perform the SAT is just going to be a byproduct of that. Yeah. So he said, How about We partnered to create the world's best test prep. That happens to be free.

1:08:25 And uh It made sense to me. And Over time the relationships evolved where they actually pay us resources. Uh to create free test prep.

1:08:34 Uh, which is you know, that's that's the type of revenue I love'cause it's it helps sustain us, but it it's it's free to the student. Yeah. I I think um the last time I checked, it's it's more than this now, um Con Academy videos have been viewed like Almost two billion times.

1:08:51 Which is Insane. Um I have to imagine Sal over the last few years as the kind of ed tech sector has exploded, right? And lots of schools

1:09:02 by these programs, Dream Box and other um for profit. programs that are available to help children with math and other Langues, etc. Um

1:09:13 I mean I'm sure people came to you and said, Sal, let's spin off a for profit channel here. You've got something big here. You know, there's There's there you know, and and then you won't have to worry about raising money for for Khan Academy. You know, you can still do that, but let's let's do that. W did I mean that must have happened. That must still happen. You know, yeah, we we do Oftentimes yeah, you know, sometimes I'll go to a potential philanthropist and they're like, Well I'd rather invest than donate. Something like that. Um, uh people I think

1:09:41 There's some creative ideas that I would entertain. They're like, well, you know, Khan Academy's brand is so valuable. You know, what if we could take that brand and do it in this tangential space as you know, and and and Khan Academy can have equity and maybe it can help build an endowment for you know, and I'm I'm always open to um Ideas But what I always remind myself and look, I I'm I'm not someone who has transcended you know, material desires. I try to m transcend material desires, but I'm you know, I I ever now and then go to a friend who's you know done well with the their IPO or something and they've they got the new Tesla or they're they're living in a you know they're living slightly upstream the the income gradient in our neighbor you know in in in in in uh a little higher up the hill. Um

1:10:22 But but I I I remind myself, one, I I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be able to do what I I am doing. And You know, the way I think about it is I've done my philanthropy in reverse order. And it you know, I I could have stayed in the hedge fund world and, you know, maybe one day become a multi millionaire or or larger, and then but then what would I have done with that Mundi? Uh you know, I'm not someone who who wants that much. You know, I I wanna be able to, you know, have have a backyard, uh be able to s you know, uh support the family, you know, go on a vacation once or twice a year. Right. And it and anything above that, if I did become a billionaire, I frankly would have donated it to an effort like Khan Academy. So you might as well just cut out the middle man Or you know, just time shift it and and work on it. And and I do generally think that it has benefited the mission and the vision, uh because once you know people

1:11:08 hopefully are viewing it as an institution. They do they're they're try they're rooting for it because they they realize that it's not it doesn't have an ulterior motive. You know the the out of everybody I've had on the show over the past four years that you are most likely Jimmy Wales. Jimmy Wales.

1:11:24 An incredibly Enormous influence on the world. with Wikipedia. Right. Had they done this as a for profit, he could have been a multi millionaire. His argument was it wouldn't have worked. You had to make it a nonprofit, and by the way, he said, look, I don't really care about

1:11:41 having lots of money, I I have a really interesting life. I get to meet really interesting people. Interesting people want to meet me. I get to have Get exposed to all these ideas. That to me is worth More than any amount of money I could ever have. And I that's really stuck with me because I

1:11:58 I think he's right. I think he's right. I I agree with him. I mean, you know, I I um Like Jimmy Wales, by virtue of this adventure I've been on, I get

1:12:08 lenses into really interesting parts of the world, which for the most part have made me more optimistic about the world. You know, I I every now and then I'm you know, get invited to various conferences that you know where, you know, very powerful people are talking about the problems of society and how to fix them. And when I when you when you when you get into these circles, you realize most of these people are Honestly, just trying to help. You might not agree with everyone, et cetera, et cetera, but Um It's it's actually been very uh it's made me more optimistic about the world, not less.

1:12:37 Hm. When you think about um this just this incredible journey and and the amazing success of of Khan Academy, how much do you think it has to do with um You know, your skill and how hard you worked and and your intelligence and how much do you attribute it to luck? It's all of the all of the above. I mean it's you know, one person can call it luck, one person might call benevolent aliens working in your favor to prepare humanity for first contact. But yeah, there's something

1:13:05 You know, that I I I I I can't I mean there's a lot that I can't take credit for. I mean and and uh above and beyond luck, there's circ I guess it's luck where I was born where I was born I had the teachers I had had the the friendships, supports that I had, and then um You know fell into things at the right time and

1:13:25 But every now and then you see a door crack open, you say, I think there's something interesting on that other side of the door and you've got to sprint through it. And so I try not to overthink when when there are signs in in my life that like that door's open. Don't don't don't make someone have to force you through the door. Like run through that door. That's SalCon. Founder and CEO of Hard Academy.

1:13:51 And by the way, Sal has just taken on an additional leadership role at another nonprofit. Ted. They're calling him a vision steward, and it's a pretty safe bet that he'll be focusing a lot. Education. Hey thanks for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for my newsletter at guyros.com or on Substack.

1:14:20 This episode was produced by Jed Anderson with music composed by Ramptina Rabli. It was edited by Nick Graham. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, JC Howard, Chris Massini, Sam Paulson, Katie Seifer, Carrie Thomson. Andrea Bruce, Ramel Wood, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Roz, and you've been listening to how I built this and don't stop the podcast just yet.

1:14:43 Пиказ район You're about to hear an amazing small business story that you don't want to miss. This segment is presented by American Express with a business platinum membership, the best just got. Even better.

1:14:59 Our story today begins in the fall of 2018. when a mom joined a Facebook group that changed her life. When our oldest son went off to college, he actually stayed in St. Louis and attended Washu. And I joined the Facebook parent page that a lot of parents join. This is Mindy Horwitz. Mindy noticed that on that page, a lot of the posts were from out of state parents asking for help with local logistics.

1:15:24 Things like, how do I mail a laptop to campus before my kid arrives? Can anyone recommend a car mechanic? One day I saw a parent from Boston advising a parent from Florida about the best dermatologist in St. Louis, and that was kind of a light bulb moment for me that well-connected locals had an opportunity to create something. She wondered if local expertise was something parents would pay for. She tested her idea on parents in her friend group and got a lot of encouragement.

1:15:54 By the next summer, she was ready to launch under the name Mindy Nose. I purchased an ad in the newspaper that went home to every new family at Wash U. And it was like, imagine if you have a student and they have a birthday coming up. What do you do? You call Mindy. Or if your car is being shipped to St. Louis and you aren't there to receive it, what do you do, you call Mindy. And I thought that immediately my phone was gonna start ringing. And it was radio silence. Like I really wasn't sure that the newspaper had been sent. Everyone had told me for a year what a great idea I had, but it was quiet. But Mindy believed in her idea and stayed patient.

1:16:33 Eventually, the call started coming. and she was able to solve real problems for families. Sometimes in a big way. Like one year when St. Louis got hit with a blizzard. The mom reached out and she was really in a panic. Her daughter was sick and the daughter needed medicine. Nobody was making deliveries and nobody could get anywhere. Mindy made a few calls and got the medicine delivered.

1:16:56 By 2023, business was going pretty well, with revenue coming in via monthly retainers and hourly fees. And that's when Mindy got an email from a reporter asking for an interview. And we ended up on the cover of the Wall Street Journal, which was just Unbelievable. And once that happened, I had people from all over the country who were calling me and they wanted to be a Mindy.

1:17:19 Mindy ran with the idea. There are now licensed Mindis on nine other college campuses, and Yes, some of them are men. But we still call them Mindies. Mindy loves that through her work, she can help families through hard times and celebrate the good ones too. She recently hand delivered champagne and cupcakes to a fourth year med student.

1:17:40 A treat from his mom for finishing his residency applications. I met him on his campus, he was in his scrubs. Oh, it was so cute. And really at the end of the day, it's about what his mom's arranged for him. His mom is the one that he's grateful to. But I get the fun of acting on her behalf. That's Mindy Horowitz, the founder of Mindy Knows. Her story was presented by American Express. To build a business like no other?

1:18:04 You need a card like no other. There's nothing. like business platinum.

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