Building Education Treadmills with Ryan Delk & Maksim Stepanenko

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.

For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com