Founder Letters

LettersLetter Zero

Our Story

By Navid Nathoo

Navid and his co-founder

TKSOver the last 10 years, we built one of the world’s leading education systems for young people.

A TKS sessionA TKS session
Christiana, at AmazonSimon, at Apple

We’ve had thousands of students go through TKS from over 500 cities. Some of the youngest employees at places like OpenAI, SpaceX, Google, NVIDIA, and Microsoft are TKS alumni. We basically built our own education system.

Jonah, at SpaceXShagun, at Tesla
4 years wasted

Our next arc is tackling higher ed. We saw our alumni go from TKS to university and slow down. They went into debt and left with a degree that looked the same as everyone else. They weren’t job ready and felt like they wasted 4 years.

A graduation cap full of money

Universities are businesses that charge for degrees. Employers hire for capability. Those are fundamentally different incentives. Meanwhile industries evolve constantly, tools change, workflows change, expectations change, and education remains largely stagnant.

A quill, a typewriter, a keyboard, a laptop
OpenAIMicrosoft

So we built an alternative. You shouldn’t have to spend 4 years and go into debt just to get a job.

We designed our curriculums by reverse engineering real jobs. People learn through immersive, AI-native experiences built around modern tools and real workflows.

NVIDIAGoogle

Our ambition is to build a better path into work first, then use that foundation to build a better education system over time. We all know the system is broken and it won’t change from the inside.

A cracked classical column

That’s why we built

Zero

Today we’re launching Zero: an alternative to university.

Until now, going to university was how to enter a career. But the world has changed and universities can’t keep up. Graduates spend 4+ years in school, yet aren’t job-ready and leave with debt.