What's up everybody? This is Cortland from EndiHackers.com, and you're listening to the

IndieHackers podcast. On this show, I talked to the founders of profitable internet businesses,

and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be them and to walk in their shoes.

How did they get to where they are today? How do they start their companies? And how do they make the day-to-day decisions that keep their companies running? Today's guest is Austin Allred, one of the creators of Lambda School. Austin is the founder's founder. He's been doing those stuff since he was very young, and he's not afraid to open up and share some stories about times that he failed, rough patches that he hit, and how he pulled himself out of it, as well as open up about the strategies that he used to succeed. Lambda School is one of the fastest growing companies I've had on the podcast hands down. A year ago, they did not exist, and today they are killing it. They're also one of the most inspiring and revolutionary and helpful companies that I found in the podcast, so I cannot wait to get into this episode. First, a little message. If you are listening and you have not yet been to NDHackers.com, what are you doing? You should check it out. There are full transcripts of every podcast episode, including this one, at NDhackers.com slash podcast.

And if you are an aspiring founder or somebody who's otherwise interested in running or

starting a business, you should check out the community forum. Just go to anddehackers.com.

You can talk to other founders, ask the many questions that you want, get help building your

business, help them build their businesses, and generally just avoid the trap of trying to build a business completely on your own. Once again, that's andyhackers.com. And without further ado, let's get into the episode. Austin, thanks for coming on the show. It's great to have you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Good to be here. You are one of the co-founders behind Lambda School, which on your website you describe as the computer science education of the future.

Tell us a little bit about what that means and how it all works.

Yeah, so Lambda School is a very different take on higher education, I suppose.

So we're kind of a combination of a school and an investment fund. And what that means is

students study at Lambda School completely for free. They never pay us a penny unless they get a job

that pays $50,000 per year or more in the field that they studied. If they reach that level,

they'll pay us a percentage of their income for two years, up to a maximum

of $30,000. So basically what it is, is we're trying to create the best school in the world

that anybody can attend at zero risk. So if it doesn't work out for you, you never pay us anything.

That's super cool. Easily, one of my favorite business models of any companies that I've had on

the podcast so far.

So we're definitely going to come back to that, discuss it in more detail.

But in the meantime, I first discovered you about a year ago, over a year ago actually, on Twitter.

I was just digging through our history this morning, and we first started tweeting each other back in November of 2016.

Although I couldn't figure out why,

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