All right, welcome. My name is Pranav

and I'm the program director here at TKS

Vancouver. Now, if you're watching this

video, it means you're probably looking

for a really solid understanding what

happens over the next 10 months at TKS,

and that's my hope to accomplish by the

end of this video. Now, a bit of an

introduction. Yes, my title says

director, but that is honestly just a

fancy way to say coach. So, what that

means is I coach all of my students

one-on-one, and I'm personally

responsible for making sure they get the

outcomes that they're looking for from

the program. So, they get to learn about

my background and where I come from.

Now, I moved to this country about uh I

would say 13 years ago now,

and I went to UBC engineering. And since

then, I've spent a lot of my time in

startups. So, just before TKS, I was a

startup advisor at UBC, and I worked

with scientists and engineers uh to

figure out, "Hey, you know, how do we

take these inventions that they've spent

a lot of time building and actually make

companies out of it?" I worked with

maybe 300 so far in lots of different

capacities, so I've learned everything

there is to know about taking a company

all the way from scratch and scaling it

to millions. Um so, the reason or the

way I found out about TKS was actually

quite random. And it all starts off with

this message.

Now, this is a cool message. This is all

that I saw, and it was quite intriguing

cuz I don't get a lot of 16-year-olds uh

you know, uh message me out of the blue.

And then I remember getting on the phone

with him, and I was just blown away. How

is someone at the age of 16 or 17

thinking about startups or thinking

about climate change and thinking about

these problems? And I I was a little bit

puzzled. You know, when I was 16, I was

just really busy uh playing video games

and studying and not doing really much.

So, I was I was This is a This is a

really weird experience of talking to

somebody that

almost feels like I was talking to a

founder that I I normally work with.

And then, when asking her like, "How do

you know about all this?" she said she

went to TKS.

And I was like, "I have to know more.

Like, you know, please, you know, invite

me to come to your session. I want to

see what it's like." And then I came to

session and I saw, my gosh, she's just

one out of 30. There were so many

students there working on things like

AI, you know, gene editing, personalized

medicine. I even had a kid there work on

micro needles, which is a technology

that I was working on early in my

career. So, it was just really bizarre

to see that this is community of young

kids that just want to do more in the

world, right? And so, it's really at the

heart of what TKS is about.

And, you know, before I get into more

details of the program, there's one more

thing I want to talk about, which has

completely changed the world over the

last couple years, and that's AI. So,

listen to this video from Dario, who is

the CEO of Anthropic, and it's important

to understand his perspective cuz it

gives us a window into what the world

might look like over the next couple

years. Listen close.

>> [music]

>> I become probably in the last 3 to 6

months more confident that we really are

heading towards AI systems that are

better than almost all humans at almost

all tasks.

My guess, and I'm still not certain of

it, but I think with some of the things

we've seen with with models starting to

be as good as PhD students in in areas

like math and programming and biology,

it is my guess [music] that by 2026 or

2027 we will have AI systems that are

broadly better than almost all humans at

at at at almost all things.

>> Now, I don't know about you.

When I saw this video, I was a little

bit terrified to be like, "Oh my

goodness, how are we now going to train

our students for the future, right?" All

the playbooks that we've learned about

what it means to prepare students for

the future kind of becomes almost a

little bit obsolete because now AI is is

in a position to do so many of the tasks

that we once thought were that could not

be automated, things like software

engineering, data science, art and

music. And so, all the fields right now

we have are are heavily being impacted

by AI.

And so, what I want us to walk through

over the next 20 minutes is I want you

to

really reconcile, okay, this is where

the world is going, and how is what

we're learning at TKS going to really

support your students or your kid um,

really find their place in future.

And so the really the core mindset that

I want to, uh, really train our students

is thriving over adapting. So I don't

want your kids to adapt. I don't want

kids to just survive, right? I want them

to be able to leverage all of these

technologies and no matter how the world

changes, I want them to figure out how

to leverage it and actually make things

happen in the world and create

opportunity.

So today I'm actually going to go

through the very specific details of how

we're going to be doing that over the

next 10 months.

Okay, so some, uh, a few bits of

important information just in a

nutshell. TKS is like a 10-month, I call

it like a human accelerator, right? Um,

I want to accelerate who they are as a

human being by the end of 10 months. And

really develop them to become these

all-rounded individuals that can thrive

no matter how the world changes.

Uh, it starts in September 2026, ends

June 2027.

The session, the format is weekly

sessions along with one-on-ones and the

weekly sessions are on the weekends, 3

hours, uh, in person.

Uh, we were actually founded in 2016, so

we're celebrating 10 years of TKS, which

is so sick. We've had, it's uh, maybe

close to 7,000 alumni right now, Ashley,

uh, doing all sorts of cool things in

the world. And so we've seen this

process work.

Even my, so I've been doing this for

about 4 years and this is going to be my

fifth year coaching students. So I've,

you know, I've coached maybe 400

students in my time. And I've seen

firsthand this process work. Now we're

actually all across the globe, New York,

Toronto, Dubai, Vancouver, Calgary, San

Francisco, um, and then we have a

virtual program, so we've, we've been

doing this for a while and we're all

across the globe.

So fundamentally, here are the four

things that we train, right? We train

knowledge, skills, network building, and

mindsets. So our belief is if they have

these four things, no matter how the

world changes, they will be successful.

So let me break down what each one of

these mean.

So the way we do those four is through

all of these different vehicles. So

sessions, one-on-one coaching with me,

our global community, challenges,

mentors, guest speakers, so on and so

forth. So I'm going to break it down one

by one.

So, when your kid joins TKS, or if you,

if you're a student watching this, join

TKS, really the first step is exposure,

right? I know most students coming to

TKS, they're really ambitious, they're

excited to do things in the world, but

sometimes they're like, "Where do I

Where do I Where do I start, right? What

am I passionate about?" is the big

question a lot of students ask. When in

reality, that is the wrong question to

ask. It's not about what's my passion,

it's about following your curiosity

instead. So, that's what we do. I expose

students to a bunch of different topics.

And that's actually what happens in

sessions. So, every week we do sessions

on on different kinds of topics, AI,

gene editing,

uh um the business, problem-solving,

hackathons. There's like 35 different

kinds of sessions. So, really we're

developing a holistic mindset, both from

technology

and also like as a human being, just

developing them to be really effective

uh human beings, right?

The other way that we allow students to

really explore in their first weeks six

weeks at TKS is called the explore

process.

So, to give you a sense of what that

looks like is every student at TKS gets

access to this platform called TKS Life.

It's our internal software platform.

And this is where kids can explore all

sorts of different topics. So, just to

give you an example, uh if I pick

brain-computer interfaces, they can get

a sense of what this world is like. This

is a a really fast and quick way to get

exposed to as many different

technologies as possible in a short span

of time.

>> [snorts]

>> So, that's the explore phase. Figure out

what you're curious about, watch a bunch

of videos, and see just what sparks your

curiosity. You don't have to commit to

something, but just figure out, "Hmm,

what What are you more interested in

than others?" Right?

So, that's what I just showed you. And

then once they've picked a particular

area that they want to spend a bit more

time in, then we enter something called

the focus process.

A simple way to think about the focus

process is this T. We want students to

have a breadth of knowledge, and this is

why we do sessions all across the board

across different topics, but then, I

want them to build expertise in one

topic, right? I don't want to be, you

know, the the jack-of-all-trades. I I

want them to build mastery in one topic.

So, it's a bit of both. I want them to

be a jack-of-all-trades and be a master

of one versus none, right?

And so, that's what that looks like.

They're exploring and they're then

narrowing down what they're interested

in. And then, the hope is by the end of

10 months, they've built enough skills

that they're actually able to build

something that new that doesn't exist

yet. So, that's what happens at the very

end. So, let me give you an example. So,

let's say a student comes in, they're

interested in VR. They explore VR, do

the explore modules, and they realize,

you know what? That's not really my my

thing. Then, they move on to AI and they

realize, you know what? Oh my god, this

is what I'm really interested in. Then,

that's what they spend their time doing

for the next 8 months.

And we follow a four-step process called

the learn, replicate, replicate, create.

I won't go too much into depth, but it's

simply a process for them to start small

and then incrementally build their

knowledge in that field. So, that by the

end of it, they've actually built enough

skills and they can create something on

their own, right?

Now, we've done this, as I mentioned,

for 10 years. So, we've seen this

process work, right?

Like we have like tens of thousands of

projects that students have built and

they've leveraged that to get into top

companies, uh to work at companies like

LinkedIn, or SpaceX, um NASA, and like

literally any company you can think of,

or even or even getting into top

universities. It all comes down to the

projects that they build built in the

process.

So, there's Adam who founded Thirdweb,

uh there's Alishba who um did a lot of

work in robotics. We have Briana who was

in General Fusion, uh Ben Nashman who

actually created the world's first

non-invasive glucose device and has

raised like 20, you know, maybe 30 or 40

million dollars um for his company. And

Ananya also was an early intern at

Neuralink. But all of them, when they

first started, was at TKS. And when they

were at TKS, they built projects to

showcase competency. Now, when you're

thinking about being employed, right?

What do employers really care about?

They care about, can you get the job

done? And what is the evidence of it?

And then, that's how we think about the

project building process at TKS.

So, the question I get a lot now is,

"Okay, Pranav, they've selected their

focus. Now, how do you support the kid?

You know, they don't know anything about

about this field. So, how do they get

the support

uh to build a lot of these things?" So,

number one is alumni community.

Now, the beauty of the alumni community

is we have students across the globe

that have actually built a lot of the

projects. So, once you become an alumni,

you're actually a permanent part of the

community. And so, a lot of our students

leverage alumni who have already worked

on these projects to get support along

the way as well. And within the

platform, there's lots of ways to find

out who's working on what and get the

support that they need.

The second is me, right? Um I'm an

engineer by trade, and I have seen every

single project there is across all

different technologies. So, I have a

really clear understanding of what it

takes to get a student from zero all the

way to 100 in the project that they're

working on.

And it's not just me. We're actually a

team of directors. Uh for example,

Brandon was a SpaceX engineer who went

to MIT. Um Andres uh also is an

engineer. We have Jenav, who actually

built a $50 million company. So, all the

directors are actually not teachers. We

are people in industry that made the

conscious decision to come join an

education company cuz we really care

about the mission, right? We also have

access to a bunch of mentors on our

online platform that anyone can access.

Um and so, they are really supported all

along the way as they develop their

focus.

So, this is just just to give you an

idea, I just took one screenshot of uh

of one row in our mentor tab.

And so, just give you an example, Anna

Baird, who's right here. Uh she actually

runs Google's go-to-market strategy

across the globe for AI.

And her email is right here.

Right? And so, you have people with even

their calendar links directly here

because they want students to like book

time, and they want to be supported.

They want to support students as they

build all these interesting projects.

So, this is just one of about 200

mentors we have on the platform.

Now, the only caveat is the way they get

access to platform is they have to build

two projects first.

Only then can they access the mentors

and the intention here is we don't want

students just to message mentors being

like, "Hey, I don't know what to do. Can

you help me?" It's much more effective

if they say, "Hey, I built this project.

This is kind of what I've learned and

these are the questions I have. Are you

open to getting on a call?" That would

be a much higher leverage meeting and a

higher impact meeting than just saying,

"I'm interested in a topic." Right? So,

really coaching students how to think

for themselves and build competency

along the way through this process.

Now, here's what we've actually learned

in the process though. A lot of students

don't actually end up using this

platform. Now, it's not because this is,

you know, not enough mentors, but it's

because we got really good at teaching

kids how to do the cold outreach

themselves. To me, I'd rather teach the

kids how to fish, right? So, that even

after TKS, they are or they have the

opportunity or they know exactly how to

attract any opportunity themselves and

they know how to reach out to anybody

they want to talk to. So, if there is a

researcher at Stanford that they're

really interested in talking to, they'll

now have the courage and the tools to

just directly email them, right?

Uh so, that's what we do a lot of.

Now,

this is actually an important part of

the process to talk about, which is

Velocity.

Now, Velocity is a separate program,

still included within the tuition at

TKS. It's not an extra cost program, but

Velocity is a program for some of my for

students that want to take TKS very,

very seriously and they want to commit

to it as their primary thing.

So, when students are in Velocity, I

make them do lots of extra things. And

the way I think about it, it's like

you're going to the gym, you know, TKS

is like going to the gym and Velocity is

like you are ready to get a personal

trainer and you're ready to set very

clear goals and you're ready to work

extremely, extremely hard. So, anyone

can join Velocity anytime, but if they

join Velocity, they have strict

requirements that they have to keep.

They have to think do things like weekly

goal setting. They have to do LinkedIn

outreaches. They have to do workouts.

They have to do listen to podcasts. They

have to do daily updates. I'm just going

to show you what a few of these look

like.

So, this is what a tracker looks like.

Every week, students are telling me what

their end of TKS goal is. They're

telling me what they did last week. They

tell me what they did this week, they

tell me about the meetings they had with

um with external people with external

parties, and then I'm hearing a bit of a

self-reflection from the articles they

listen to and whatnot. So, I hear this

from every student.

They also have to do daily updates. So,

this is where they set weekly goals for

themselves and they send it to me every

single day, right? I want to see if I

can find some good examples. I don't

want to go double click into this cuz

some of this is private information, but

you can get a sense that when students

do this multiple times um for example,

they learn so much in the process. I'm

just going to like put it right here uh

and I get to learn a lot about them. So,

they set their goals for today and then

they set the goals for the next day and

I get to read every single one, right?

So,

that is the velocity tracker. There's a

lot more things I'm not going to go

into, but you can get the feel that when

students are in velocity, it really

feels like velocity. They are growing

ex- exponentially in the process.

Okay, so that's a little bit of a

detour. It's not part of the main

program, but again, any student can opt

into this, but if they're in, they have

to commit. And if they don't do one of

these things, I kick them out of

velocity, right? And then the bar to get

back in gets higher and higher. So, this

is meant to be like a very strict

container. Now, I wish I could do this

for everybody, but most kids don't want

this, right? So, this is more of an

opt-in process for if they want to be

pushed, I will push them if they join

velocity.

And I just want to give an example like

this is also external outreach. You

know, Olean, here he is messaging um the

chair of the person running the chair of

the epigenetics department at UBC. And

you can tell like this is also Edward

messaging Blake who is um the CEO of a

uh hypersonic jet company, right? So,

these are kids at the age of 13, 14, 15

just being very unapologetic and sending

cold emails and getting opportunities

along the way.

Okay, so that was kind of phase 2.5

which is we talked about velocity. Now,

we have a phase three which is the

challenge season at TKS.

Now, challenges are where we partner

with top companies and they give us an

interesting challenge statement. For

example, in Microsoft, it was, "Hey, we

are using a lot of energy with our data

centers. What can we do to make sure

that we are more energy efficient moving

forward, right?" Very difficult problem.

You have to think about cooling, the

performance of the chips, where the

water's coming from, where they're

situated. So, through the challenges,

the kids learn real-world problem

solving. That doesn't have clear answers

in a textbook. They actually have to go

out there, talk to people, talk to

customers, talk to experts, and build a

worldview, and then eventually provide a

recommendation, right? So, this year we

got to work with Lovable and the United

Nations, and it's just a really cool

experience where they get real-world

exposure to how to solve problems,

right?

And then we end with something called

the moonshots. And I'll give you an

example, actually, to talk about what

the moonshots is. So, the moonshots is

four weeks. It's their end-of-year

capstone at TKS. And this is where they

are taking, they're thinking really big.

Like, what's a big problem in the world

that we can solve through emerging

technology? So, just an example, this is

Harish Ven who was in my cohort just

last year.

And, you know, he had met his two best

friends at TKS, Tristan and JP. So,

Harish was interested in quantum

computing, um Tristan was interested in

robotics, and JP was interested in

neuroscience and brain-computer

interfaces.

Now, they all came together and

developed a brain-computer interface

that helps people with paralysis move

again.

And cutscene, they started this process

at the moonshots. And now they actually

got $10,000 to continue to develop this

technology. And now they're actually

working with a professor at SFU to run

early clinical trials or early studies

to see the efficacy and how effective

this treatment or this technology can be

for people with paralysis, right? They

also go to showcase their demo live on

TV.

So, I'll actually link this later if

you're interested, but they're actually

showing this live in front of a whole

audience. This is around 7:00 a.m. in

the morning. It was quite a cool

experience.

Uh and he got lots of opportunities as a

result of this. He got the Loran

Scholarship, which is a or or in the

finals for the Loran Scholarship, which

is a 100 grand scholarship uh to go to

any university um of his choosing. So,

really at the heart of this, you can

tell that opportunities don't just come

if they're here at TKS. No, they

opportunities come cuz they use the

coaching here to build really important

projects and then leveraging those

opportuni- uh those projects to build

their networks. And then that's how they

get the internships, the top uh

admissions to top universities and

whatnot.

Right?

So, just recap, this is what it is. They

started with exploring, and they uh they

they focus on a focus process for 8

months where they're building projects.

Then we do business training through the

challenges where they're exposed to

real-world problems like the UN,

Lovable, um Meta, Google, and they learn

how do you solve real-world problems.

And then we end with the Moonshots. Um

and along the way, we have a bunch of

different workshops and whatnot. And so,

in the guide that you'll you're sent by

the admissions team, you'll get a sense

of what are all the sessions that happen

um in the time. Now, I do get this

question a lot. For now, what do

tangible outcomes look like? And also,

how many students per year get

legitimate outcomes?

Now, my response to this

is actually as follows. So,

um the outcomes look like this. Students

get into top universities, and it's not

because it happens by magic. As I

mentioned earlier, the reason they get

into top universities is because they

have the projects that most students

don't have, right? University admissions

officers are looking for spiky outcomes.

What makes this person stand out

compared to somebody else?

So, you'll see a lot of my Alaanu, my

student from 4 years ago, who's now at

Stanford.

And the reason she got there was cuz of

the projects that she built.

So, I can go on and on. Lots of students

working at all those different

companies. Uh this is also Chloe, one of

my students who got again the Loran

Scholarship while she was in session. Um

and it's because of the projects they

built along the way.

Now, for the question of how many

students actually get these

opportunities, so I would say it's about

um

roughly 25% of students.

Now, if your question is like, "Why not

Why not 100%? Why isn't everybody

getting this?"

And what I've learned over doing this

over 4 years at TKS is

it really needs to come from the

student. Not every kid cares about an

internship um or not every kid cares

enough to want to put in the work,

right? So, TKS is very much operated

like um on a merit-based system. You

don't just get the opportunities cuz

you're part of TKS, right? You get the

opportunities cuz you put in the work,

you do the training, you get the

coaching, you develop really cool

projects, you do the process as

designed. And so, when students do the

process as designed, that's how they get

the outcomes that are really important

to them,

right? So, I would say the three tiers

of outcomes are number one,

it's the internships, the research

opportunities, uh building a company.

That's like tier one.

The second tier is uh getting into top

universities of their choice.

But, at a very minimum, every single kid

will leave with a minimum of four to six

projects in their portfolio.

So, at a minimum, this is really what

I'm hoping most students leave with.

But, if they continue to do the work and

do the program as designed, they're able

to climb the tiers and eventually get

those real-world outcomes. Now, some

students get it right by the end of TKS

or for some students, it starts like

maybe they might get it 1 to 3 years

after the TKS process. Cuz they take the

skills that they build, they compound on

top of it, and then get these

opportunities at the end of the day.

But, really, you know, the the big

opportunity that I personally care about

is actually just who they are as a human

being.

They become the kind of person that like

cares about things in the world. Do they

become the kind of person that has high

agency, high discipline, high time

management? Are they willing to help

people? Are they becoming effective

people? So, those are the outcomes I

personally care about, and that usually

manifests itself into one of these three

outcomes.

And so,

another cool story is our students also

tend to present at some of the world's

biggest stages. This is one of my

students, Brooke, who um was presenting

at a cybersecurity conference with a

bunch of Fortune 500 cybersecurity CEOs

and she was like 19 years old. I was

actually there live as she was

presenting this. And all of this

happened because of the projects that

she built during her time at TKS, right?

And so students learn not just the

technical skills of how to build things.

They learn presentations. And so every

week students are presenting time and

time again and they're getting their

reps um as much as possible so that they

become really effective public speakers.

They also become really effective

writers. They write about the projects

that they build a lot.

So to give you an example, Elisheva when

she joined TKS, she knew nothing about

AI and then went through the focus

process and then cutscene about 4 years

later, she actually published her first

textbook in machine learning, right?

She's actually since then published

another textbook as well.

So this is what we mean by they start

here and then it just expands from

there, right? And I can go on and on and

on. This is again another student Shagun

who did odds detection at TKS and then

ended up working at Tesla, right? So

lots of examples. This just goes on and

on and on. We've done this for 10 years.

So where I want to end with is this,

right? 100% of students that comp- 100%

of students will get outcomes if they do

the program exactly as designed, right?

So this is a really really important

thing to keep in mind. So what does that

really mean? If they do the explore

modules, if they do the focus process,

the challenges, doing regular

one-on-ones with me, it's actually very

difficult to not get those outcomes,

right? So the more they put into the

process, the more they get out of being

here at TKS.

And so um the last thing I'll end on is

you actually don't need any prior

knowledge before joining TKS. All I need

is the desire, curiosity, and care to do

more in the world. And that's really

what I'm assessing for in the

interviews.

So it's not about what you've done,

right? It's about what students will do.

I really care about that. What do they

care about? What are they ambitious

about? What do they want to see in the

world? Because at the end of the day,

that's why I you know I quit my job

working in industry cuz I fundamentally

believe that we have to take young

people seriously, right? And I want to

train young people now so that when they

become, you know, 18, 19, 20, they're

already doing meaningful things in the

world and I don't want them to wait

until they're 30 to make things happen.

Okay, that's about it. I hope that was

really helpful. If you have any

questions about any part of the process,

please, please let me know. I am more

than happy to like answer anything you

have. Awesome. Thanks again. I'll see

you soon.