Building Wealth Creation Engines & Education Treadmills
First, the COO of Public.com joins The Deep End to go beyond the meme stocks. Then, the cofounders of Primer detail how to cultivate ambition & curiosity in our children.
The Deep End is a podcast where visionary builders, creators, and experts discuss world-changing ideas. We skip the surface level and go in-depth into ideas that matter.
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Announcements
Live episodes:
We’re having Abe Choi come on the show to talk about launching an Africa-focused venture fund. It will be on 11/16 at noon EST. Reserve your spot at lu.ma/abe - should be a great episode!
From the larger On Deck Community:
ODX is live and has already extended offers. We’ll get back to you fast if you decide to apply - folks hear within 48 hours if the fit is right.
🎧 Episode #32 | Beyond the Meme Stocks with Public.com COO Stephen Sikes
Listen on Apple, YouTube or Spotify
Stephen Sikes is the COO of Public.com. He’s also a US Army vet, a McKinsey alum, and a Sofi alum.
We go beyond the meme stocks to discuss the greatest (or is it?) wealth creation engine that humanity has ever made.
Today conversation is about how millions of Americans are entering the stock market for the first time with mindsets and behaviors unlike any generation that has come before. New investors, particularly those who have started recently via a mobile app, believe they're part of a movement that's making investing more inclusive and accessible.
Public exists to help these people get started investing and become better, more thoughtful investors too. In that vein, we talked about how to build community through investing, how to build financial literacy especially in regard to meme stocks, and the benefits of fractionalization.
Stephen labels the stock market as the greatest wealth creation engine ever known to humanity, but we also examine that statement through the lens of crypto markets over the last decade. Stephen's built much of his own success through good timing - he started investing when the market was at a low point during the financial crisis in '07-08. We draw parallels between that opportune moment and the one that many others found themselves in last year during the height of lockdown.
One huge difference between those two moments? The number of folks who are empowered to invest has skyrocketed. The implications of that and more ahead in today's episode.
🎧 Episode #33 | Building Education Treadmills with Ryan Delk & Maksim Stepanenko
Listen on Apple. YouTube or Spotify.
Ryan Delk & Maksim Stepanenko are the cofounders of Primer. Primer is building an online home for ambitious kids. Prior to starting Primer, Ryan was an early employee at Gumroad and later a COO/investor/advisor at other tech companies. Maksim brings engineering experience from Coinbase & Google.
Primer cofounders Ryan Delk & Maksim Stepanenko join the Deep End after meeting through On Deck. They are currently building a community for curious and ambitious kids to find and explore their interests together.
Education is deeply personal, and so our conversation begins on a personal note, with a discussion of Ryan's background growing up homeschooled & Maksim's experience with highly structured curriculum back home in Kyrgyzstan.
Both of them look back on their own learning experience and lament an education system designed with the assumption that all children should move at the same pace. Kids' talents & interests vary wildly. Ryan and Maksim came to the realization with Primer that they could build educational treadmills for kids to run as fast or as slow as they would like towards their particular interests.
Our conversation centers on how to augment the education system to create more Michaelangelos and Albert Einsteins. How might we enable self-guided homeschooling without total involvement from parents? How can we leverage the dynamics of popularity to make learning cool?
The kids that Ryan & Maksim are working with so far are incredible. They have a huge sense of ownership of their online community and are naturally creating governance protocols that limit toxicity and bullying. They're making friends and collaborating on projects, all while learning at a clip that outpaces traditional K-12 school.
Mentioned in this Episode
Primer has launched a new website at primer.com
That’s all for now! If you haven’t yet, subscribe to get future issues in your inbox every Thursday.
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See you next week!
- Jackson (Producer of The Deep End)