Austin X. Volz

📚 Building the first expertise-verification platform built on the books that define the field.

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

@julianlehr The framing "what problem are you solving" in startups often creates bias against this fact

[Julian Lehr @julianlehr]

People buy status, not utility.

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

@PepsMccrea @jen_barker_ Where do you put reading on the doing vs watching spectrum?

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

"That might be a huge loss. Understanding isn’t just a source of pleasure, the dopaminergic rush of the aha! moment. Understanding is power."

https://t.co/APNLAMuC3h cc: @DKThomp

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

Verifying learning from experience is hard. People with the same years of experience can have radically different abilities. This why there is a vetting process and we don't just hire the person with most years of experience.

This is also why credentials are helpful.

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

@karenvaites Lots of talk of skills vs. knowledge. Do you think the majority of important skills are more like reading comprehension or riding a bike?

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

@DStrachman The elitism on the front end is the biggest issue: artificially scarce admissions. Inventing something, writing a book, running a marathon are also elite, but elite upon completion, not admissions

[Danielle Strachman 💗 🐈 💃 🪴 🎸 🎨 🐕 @DStrachman]

I've worked in alt ed for 25 years. Everyone says "we're going to charge a lot, like in technology, and then be able to scale and bring the cost down." And it never happens, because elitism is never scalable.

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

@flowidealism I suspect peer community has always been part of the value proposition for private schools, especially for those that charge $50K+

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

@ProfNeilT @abhishekn That does look inadequate... Will you expand beyond scientific occupations, or make the tool available to breakdown other occupations?

This would be valuable for education, career ladders, etc. I'd want to compare cost of different approaches to enable task completion

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

@packyM @rsg No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne

[Packy McCormick @packyM]

I asked Astra to read all of my writing, find the books and essays I linked most, recommend a few more, and then turn it into an interactive library.

You can click in, get notes, where I wrote about it, and links to the original.

Will keep adding to it. Magic.

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

@jliemandt Beyond the fund, this is what grad school should be: communities reading timeless books, discussing them, building stuff.

If you had an independent expertise verification platform (like we're building), you wouldn't need accreditation for any of it. Cc @Brendan_McCord

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

Read good books. They're free, and the bedrock of most degrees.

Then use us, https://t.co/VDs0ctWFwk, to prove your mastery to others.

[Shane Parrish @shaneparrish]

In my conversation with @bgurley he talked about this too. He called it bedrock.

When he first learned investing, he read 'Peter Lynch, One Up on Wall Street. A Random Walk Down Wall Street. All the Buffett letters, Ben Graham, and Howard Marks.'

"In order to be great, you want to learn all the bedrock principles you possibly can but then, once you know those have the independence of thought and the confidence to innovate on top of those principles."

Studying the history and knowing the pioneers is the closest thing to a cheat code you're gonna get.

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

@shaneparrish @bgurley This is arguably more valuable than a formal degree. The challenge is the signal: the self-taught get screened out at first pass.

Call it the Good Will Hunting problem. Solving it will unlock so much opportunity.

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

@abhishekn Brilliant. We took a similar approach, but for human knowledge and judgment. In our case, a person passing the benchmark earns a credential, unbundling "degree" from schools.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

If you want a life changing foldable device, buy a book.

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

And it may be the best way to prove to others that you can focus and complete extended tasks.

[Dilip Kumar @kmr_dilip]

Reading a book may be the only way left to retrain your brain to focus. No scrolling. No notifications. No ads.

[Austin X. Volz @axvolz]

@ddmeyer It's the artifacts that are misleading. So it's like saying you did a marathon, but then it turns out that you drove the whole way.