a16z is challenging Silicon Valley’s love for drop-outs by launching a school

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is launching a school called The Horowitz Andreessen Academy aimed at aspiring founders who have just graduated high school and have not yet attended college.

The academy is aiming to train these high school grads with hands-on coursework on a variety of topics ranging from the technical (such as “AI Research and Models”) to life philosophy (such as “The Geometry of Luck,” which promises to teach students “about arranging a life so good fortune flows through it.”) Students will also work on personal projects. The school’s main pitch is that it promises to provide students with mentors who are big names in tech.

The school is currently accepting applications for its first year, which will be a one-year program that charges no tuition, and is open to about 50 students, “chosen on proof of work: what they have built, shipped, or earned,” according to the school’s FAQ. The academy is located in San Francisco and students will be responsible for their own housing (although the school is working to help them find it and match them with other student roommates).

One item to note: the academy is currently not an accredited school, so participates will not earn a degree, or college credits that transfer elsewhere.

In 2028, The Horowitz Andreessen Academy — which is a for-profit venture that has raised $42 million — hopes to offer a two-year program. At that point, it plans to charge tuition “similar in cost to an elite private university,” the school’s CEO Gagan Biyani said in a post on X.

In exchange for that elite-tuition price tag, students will gain access to 200 speakers and mentors, including people from ten founding corporate partners: Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit, and Stripe. Those companies and dozens of others hope to hire from the grads of this school, Biyani said.

So, this is like if Y Combinator (the most famed startup school) and Peter Thiel’s Fellowship Program (a famed program for young people who opt to build companies instead of attend college) had a baby. The difference is, instead of a short-term experience ending with funding for a company, these students will pay tuition, earn tech-trade skills and have an inside track at tech industry jobs. Or they may also have a startup in the works, built with access to a lot of mentorship.

As the founders of the academy describe, it’s meant to be a new, middle ground between obtaining a full degree before entering the tech industry and dropping out to start a company. In this era where AI has been hampering the entry-level job market, gaining access to jobs may enough reason for some young people to try this new trade-school like approach.