Policy Punchline

Austen Allred is the Co-Founder and CEO of Lambda School. It is an online platform that trains you remotely to become a web developer or a data scientist. The user pays no tuition until hired. Austen’s start-up journey began in 2017 with him living in his two-door Civic while participating in Y Combinator (YC), the famous San Francisco-based seed accelerator. This experience became the foundation of Lambda School’s rapid growth. Before founding Lambda School, Austen was the co-founder of media platform GrassWire. He co-authored the growth hacking textbook Secret Sauce, which became a best-seller and provided him the personal seed money to build Lambda. In this interview, co-hosts Tiger and Arsh interview Austen about Lambda School’s business model, his entrepreneurship journey, the future of higher education and credentialism, the powerful influence of Y Combinator in Silicon Valley and whether it’s become less prestigious than before, how Austen got involved in angel investing, the stellar rise of Clubhouse