Lambda School looks like a charity from the outside, but we’re really more like a hedge fund. We bet that smart, hardworking people are fundamentally undervalued, and we can apply some cash and leverage to fix that, taking a cut.
-
-
fwiw, I worked at Bain & Co, and that is 100% a human capital arbitrage play
-
How so? Had never thought of it that way
-
market opp is undervaluing / lack of commiserate opportunity for top level 22-28(ish) talent. mgmt consulting firms let those people do 98% of compelling work, package it with a savvy, resumed 40/50-something, and charge a monster markup. that said, done well, a win-win-win.
-
The best phrase I ever heard about management consulting: without loss of generality Kellogg’s can’t employ 130 IQ 22 year olds on boring logistics so McKinsey outsources validation to Harvard then charges Kellogg’s $300 an hour and pays employee a third.
-
Kellogg’s gets out of this “We don’t have to entirely break our career ladder or pay scale in middle America but we do get a SQL/Excel workhorse that we would have great difficulty hiring otherwise.”
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Phil Gordon and somebody else (Rafe Furst maybe) had drawn up plans for investing in people as if they were startups 10+ years ago maybe. Your model is different, but I think their thing deserves mention.
-
http://emergentfool.com/2009/10/30/investing-in-superstars/ …. I’m a little off on the timeline. And again the model is different, but similar in concept.
-
Did they do it though?
-
For at least one person, evidently. I didn’t follow up back in the day. Only read part one, even then. Yours is a different model that affects a lot more people, anyway. I just think that what they talked about is worth mentioning.
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
It is really amazing. How do we spread it 1) outside engineering and 2) to the inner city?
-
It’s in the inner city now, other verticals coming
-
I feel like medical and accounting would be huge
- 1 more reply
New conversation -
-
-
Selective universities (to the extent they are willing to let in students that the market misprinted in absence of IQ tests), management consulting, maaaaybe graduate school (if you allow “pay in non-monetary ways”), and certain flavors of finance all feel like arbitrage to me.
-
Also YC, all but explicitly.
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
I just hope
@LambdaSchool offers an internal crowdfunding opportunity for alumni as part of it’s future funding raises. I’m excited to succeed and help open doors, but I’d love to invest as well. The non-accredited portion seems like the only challenge. But if its possible.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
"outside of venture capital no one has really ever tried to arbitrage human capital" Could you elaborate on what you mean by arbitrage human capital?
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
So cool; human capital has the opportunity for exponential growth like no other kind (when not burdened by the normal loan structure of higher education), love what Lambda stands for.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
Big believer. Outsourcing seems like another good example.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
Valid point, but many examples of arbitraging human capital. Related: ~all good employees are undervalued and all bad employees overvalued, because switching cost is massive and “stuff still works”. If your employees are truly good, then you are arbitraging >100k/person/yr
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.