Entrepreneuring Is the Best Natural Lab for Learning

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Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way. 

We’re building a national network of Schools of Entrepreneuring for 5th to 12th graders where they learn by building. At graduation, they’ll get a $200k investment if they choose to build a company.

So yes, I’m conflicted here.

But for the record, the idea for a new type of school came to me first. 

The realization that entrepreneuring is the best way to help young people learn came second.

And so today, I want to walk you through what made me realize this.

This is not written to get you to send your child to the School of Entrepreneuring, although of course, that would be a happy accident.

It is instead to help you see that an entrepreneuring education:

• Enables young people to maximize their potential and have fun doing it
• Helps parents see their kids develop into capable, curious, grounded humans who can thrive in any environment
• Is exactly what our country needs more of

For clarity, an entrepreneuring education does not mean, imply, or require that your child wants to be the next Jeff Bezos or Sara Blakely.

What is entrepreneuring?

First, “entrepreneuring” isn’t technically a word. 

It should be. 

But it isn’t.

The term “entrepreneurship” implies a field of study or a fixed identity—as if you study entrepreneurship to graduate “an entrepreneur.” (Yes – ridiculous)

Entrepreneuring is neither a field nor an identity. It is not something reserved for natural-born visionaries and risk-takers. (BTW, that idea is nonsense)

Entrepreneuring is instead a system of thinking and doing that anyone can develop. 

It’s a disciplined way of solving problems on behalf of others—by observing needs, generating ideas, testing solutions, and adapting quickly based on feedback.

It’s closer to engineering than to “entrepreneurship.” 

Where engineering applies structured thinking to physical systems, entrepreneuring applies structured thinking to human problems—sometimes mundane, often messy, always uncertain.

Entrepreneuring is a practice. 

It is something you do. And through failure, and iteration, you get better at it.

Done well, entrepreneuring trains young people to:

• Spot and prioritize problems worth solving
• Work through ambiguity without freezing
• Create value for others, not just for themselves
• Think in systems, test ideas, and recover from failure

These are skills that will serve you well in every single thing you do – whether in college, at work, in research, in your community or to build a business. 

These abilities are the true goals of education.

What Should the Goals of Education Be?

Let me ask you to imagine something.

At age five, you are prescribed a drug. 

You are told to take it religiously for ~180 days a year for 13 years. 

You’re told it will make you smarter and more capable.

After 13 years, you’re told, “We’re not sure the drug worked.”

You know, based on the side effects—boredom, anxiety, frustration, disengagement—that it didn’t.

The drug I just described is our current education system.

It is a system that has organized itself around goals that are easy to measure but ultimately meaningless in becoming smart and capable: test scores, inflated GPAs, manipulated graduation rates.

We set bad goals, got bad results, and now we’re surprised.

In a cruel twist, we’re even doing poorly against the bad goals we set.

So what if we designed education differently?

What if we designed it around solving real problems instead of taking fake tests?

The Challenge Method

Solving problems on behalf of others is what entrepreneuring is about. As a result, problem solving forms the basis for an entrepreneuring education.

In entrepreneuring, we do this by replacing traditional subjects with what we call Challenges — real-world projects that integrate academics into meaningful work.

Instead of studying biology in isolation, students might investigate a disease that affects their family. Instead of solving abstract math problems, they analyze real business data.

The Challenges cover all the same academic ground as traditional school but also go deeper & faster. And it comes with the benefit that students retain it because they’re using it for real purposes.

Below are 3 examples of Challenges used in an entrepreneuring school.

Example 1: Biological Systems – Understanding Health Through Storytelling

Students choose a disease with personal meaning, research its biological mechanisms, interview experts and patients, and analyze data. They create a video or podcast campaign to educate their community.

Skills: Biology, anatomy, exponential growth, trend analysis, interviewing, digital media, research, public speaking

Example 2: Business Detective – Cracking the Success Code

Students partner with local businesses to analyze operations, build a financial model, and present insights to owners.

Skills: Algebra, statistics, business ops, spreadsheet modeling, communication, presentation

Example 3: The Hidden Cost – Investigating Planned Obsolescence

Students investigate the Phoebus cartel and modern examples, calculate environmental impact, and make videos explaining what they learned.

Skills: Environmental science, economics, consumer education, ethics, video production, stats

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These Challenges aren’t just engaging, they are proven to work.

A 2021 Lucas Education Research study found that students in high-quality project-based learning (PBL) programs outperformed peers on AP exams by 8 percentage points and retained knowledge longer. 

Why? 

Because when kids use algebra to analyze a real business’s cash flow, or biology to deeply understand a family member’s illness, they’re not just learning. They’re owning it.

Challenges enable three important things:

1. Give kids work that matters: 5th to 12th graders crave relevance, autonomy, and impact. Challenges give them all three. No one asks, “When will I use this?”
2. Stop pretending knowledge comes in boxes: Real problems don’t divide into math vs. writing vs. science. Neither should school.
3. Work with the brain, not against it: Research shows that humans learn best by doing real things, not by taking tests about real things. 

And if you noticed: none of the above Challenges are about starting a company. They’re about applying the entrepreneuring mindset to real-world problems.

Beyond Academics: The Skills Parents Actually Worry About

Ask any parent what keeps them up at night about their kid’s future, and they won’t say “I hope they remember the quadratic formula.”

They say: 

• “Will they know how to handle money?” 
• “Can they tell what’s real online?”
• “Are they good persuasive communicators?”
• “Will they be able to work with AI instead of being replaced by it?”

Traditional schools ignore these completely or teach them in impractical academic ways.

Entrepreneuring makes them central:

Financial literacy: Not worksheets about compound interest, but real budgets with real consequences. Kids who price their own products understand profit margins in their bones.

Media literacy: Not lectures about “fake news,” but creating content themselves. When you’ve run a social media campaign, you know exactly how influence works.

Communication skills: Not presentations to classmates about book reports, but pitching real ideas to real people with real stakes. When you have to convince someone to buy what you built or to join your team, you learn to listen, adapt, and persuade in ways no speech class can teach.

AI fluency: Not fear-mongering about AI, but collaboration with the best tools to make themselves bionic. 

This is education that actually prepares kids for the world they’ll inherit, not the one we grew up in.

Entrepreneuring Attracts the Teachers You Actually Want

Most parents don’t realize:

The best teachers are just as disillusioned with traditional school as your kids are. That is why they’re leaving the profession in record numbers right now.

They didn’t go into education to prep kids for bubble tests or manage classroom behavior charts or to attend pointless PD workshops.

They became teachers to ignite curiosity, to coach, to help kids grow into something real.

And effective teachers are known to be the #1 determinant of student success.

That’s why entrepreneuring is so appealing to the best educators:

• No more test prep treadmill – Teachers get to focus on learning, not teaching to the test and gaming the metrics.
  
• Students who care – Imagine teaching math to kids who need it for their business plan. No more “When will I ever use this?”
  
• Professional growth that matters – Teachers become mentors. They build relationships. They watch students light up and develop.
  
• Room to create – Every Challenge is different. No stale worksheets. No scripted curriculum.
  

The result?
You get teachers who love what they do—and who show up with energy your kids can feel.

Your child deserves to learn from someone who’s alive in the classroom.

Entrepreneuring education makes that possible.

How Early Can You Start?

It’s never too late to learn this way. But the best time is before traditional school teaches kids the wrong lessons and “institutionalizes” them:

• Sit still
• Wait for instructions
• Be afraid of being wrong

That’s why we start in 5th grade.

Maria Montessori understood something most educators miss: adolescents aren’t just bigger children. They’re biologically driven to seek economic and social independence. 

They want to contribute something meaningful to the world, not just consume information about it.

Entrepreneuring education works with this natural drive instead of against it. While traditional schools tell teenagers to sit quietly and wait for adulthood, we give them real work that matters right now.

At that age, kids are still wild in the best way. They try things. They sell Pokémon cards. They argue over snack trades. They haven’t yet been institutionalized.

Waiting until high school also works. It just requires unlearning more of the bad habits that schools teach.

The Only Hedge Against AI Is the Ability to Create

Right now, we have an added and impending force called AI that will replace anyone whose job function is to follow rules or do predictable work.

Journalist. Radiologist. Paralegal. Even developer.

McKinsey projects that up to 800 million jobs could be displaced by AI and automation by 2030 (McKinsey Global Institute).

The World Economic Forum ranks complex problem-solving, resilience, and creativity as the top skills needed by 2025 (WEF Future of Jobs Report).

The safe people in an AI world are not the ones with the best credentials. 

They’re the ones who know how to solve problems, adapt, and create value. 

In other words, people who think like entrepreneurs—whether they start companies or not.

The Real Reason to Do This

If you’ve read this far, I assume you’re open to this way of thinking.

But in case it’s not clear, here’s the argument for an entrepreneuring education:

It’s the best system we know for producing people who:

• Have agency: They don’t wait to be told what to do
• Are resilient: They treat failure as feedback
• Think originally: They don’t just memorize what others have discovered. They figure things out for themselves.
• Can handle ambiguity: They navigate and relish uncertainty.

This isn’t about raising entrepreneurs. 

It’s about raising people who are useful, capable, and ready to lead.

The question isn’t whether it works.
It’s whether you’re brave enough to try it.