Entrepreneur School by Andreessen Horowitz

by Dee Miller

Andreessen Horowitz is making a new kind of investment. This time, it is not another startup. It is a school.

The venture capital firm has backed the launch of the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a new full-time, in-person programme in San Francisco designed for ambitious young builders coming out of high school. The idea is simple: less focus on grades, tests and homework, and far more emphasis on actually building things.

The Academy is being led by Gagan Biyani, co-founder of Udemy and Maven, and has raised $42 million, led by a16z. Its founding partners include OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, Palantir, Replit, Stripe, Coinbase and Anduril, giving students access to mentors, compute, co-op opportunities and some of the most influential companies in technology.

Instead of a traditional curriculum, students will spend most of their time on personal projects, startup ideas and real-world work. Courses will be shorter and taught by founders and operators, with names including Sam Altman, Dylan Field, Amjad Masad, Naval Ravikant and Marc Andreessen expected to take part. The philosophy is built around what Biyani calls “proof of work”, placing more weight on what students can build, ship or create than a conventional academic record.

The first intake will be a tuition-free, one-year Founding Class Fellowship for around 50 students beginning in autumn 2027. Each student will receive more than $50,000 in compute credits alongside a $5,000 travel and research budget. The Academy then plans to seek approval for a full two-year programme launching in 2028, with tuition expected to be comparable to an elite private university.

There is an obvious wider story here.

For years, Silicon Valley has celebrated the college dropout. Now one of its most influential venture firms is asking whether it can build a better version of college for the AI generation instead.

As AI makes it easier for young people to code, design, research and launch companies earlier, the value of education may increasingly shift from simply learning information to gaining access, judgement, networks and real experience.

The next big Silicon Valley experiment might not be a startup. It might be the classroom itself.

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