Pavan Ponnaganti

Founder and CEO, @playto_labs

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

Elite admissions select for one trait: getting the known answer faster than anyone else. 18 years of optimizing against an answer key someone already wrote.

AI just made the answer key free. Everyone has it instantly now.

So the kids trained hardest to win spent their whole lives mastering the one thing that's now a commodity. The premium moved to the questions with no answer key yet.

We need a new training.

The new training is about one thing:

How to be the first person standing in a new land, exploring it, preparing it for the coming billion people who will need it. The future will be built by these people.

And there is a lot to build.

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

@vaibhavbetter Building is the new content marketing.
Apps are the new content.

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

@yacineMTB kids in @Playto_Labs too :)

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

@pratyush_r8 @MohapatraHemant Well written. Emergent could be more like WordPress and less like Cursor.

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

@priteshlakhani 200kgs (rider + bike) vs 2 kg moving to do the same work = energy efficiency. Faster is a bonus.

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

@ku1deep Write a google apps script that looks for emails labeled unsubscribe, finds the link in header/ body and does the job. Labeling emails via keyboard shortcuts is 10X easier/ faster than manually unsubscribing each.

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

Thanks @StallionAirVTOL for the kind words! We are proud of your son’s progress. Mr. Amit is a brilliant educator, and he'll be thrilled to hear this.

Our goal has always been to help kids master STEM while keeping the kids' natural curiosity alive, and seeing your son stay enthusiastic for two years is the best validation we could ask for. I'm sure he will do exceptionally well in the coming years. His skills will only continue to compound as his understanding of the world increases! 🚀

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

Nothing beats seeing a 9 year old thrive in STEM for 2 years and wanting to learn more. Proud of what our Engineers and Teachers do! The tech leaders of the future are getting created at Playto Labs! 🚀

[The #FashionInvestor @StallionAirVTOL]

@TheEmissaryCo @pavan_ponna I want to let you know as how great it is to work with Mr. Amit from @Playto_Labs with my son for the last two years. My son is 9 and has learning robotics and math from Amit three nights a week for one hour. This is a high value service for our kids

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

We're much more likely to look on the next 10 years as massive shortages of skilled workers, not mass unemployment

We need more rigor and better schools, not AI fearmongering

https://t.co/hl0xWIJxwC

[Anand Sanwal @asanwal]

Talked to elite school admissions officer

Said every boy from east coast:

1. Does robotics
2. Has some NGO (in Asia typically) they did work with
3. Built a startup

Said they're all indistinguishable from each other

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

@stevo2113 @davemcclure @Playto_Labs is solving exactly for this

[Paul Graham @paulg]

It's easier to innovate when you're the original of something. People copying you can only copy a snapshot of your current state. They don't know which aspects of the snapshot are essential and which are random things you'd been about to change anyway.

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

@chandrarsrikant Sorry but this is exactly what's wrong and why America doesn't respect Indian H1Bs anymore. Our grads are no longer top percentile in STEM and hence not respected as much anymore. We need to fix CBSE and product great talent that everyone wants. Not the other way around!

[Prakash Dadlani @prakdadlani]

You pay ₹1-2 Lakh/year in School Fee.

Yet, your child gets:
• Rote learning (zero critical thinking)
• Meaningless Holiday Homework
• No Real World Experience

So here’s what we’ve decided:

We’re opening our factory (Silvassa) for school visits.

Let kids see, touch, ask: real learning, not just theory.

Interested schools: DM us to schedule a visit.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

Same

Almost everything I code now is AI with a few edits by me

I think there's a massive split now with two separate societies of devs who still don't use it and do use it

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

@chrisman Done. It's called @Playto_Labs and it does a lot more than this!

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

@kmr_dilip Absolutely! And we are preparing the next generation of talent in Deeptech through @Playto_Labs

[Ben Somers @ben_m_somers]

1) robotics
2) Math competitions/camp
3) Debate

[Krishiv @KrishivThakuria]

TIL Dylan Field (founder of figma) is a FIRST Robotics alumn

Almost all the most ambitious young people I know did robotics in high school, the circles run deep

[Pavan Ponnaganti @pavan_ponna]

@vasantshetty81 Exactly what we make kids do at @Playto_Labs