About
Mission
By 2100, we imagine an Earth we’re proud of in an age of abundant energy and intelligence.
To make that happen, our mission is to help the next billion young people live up to their potential. We want to increase the human capital of civilization. To raise the ceiling and the floor.
We accelerate these ambitious frontier people by transforming possible talent into realized compounders—people who are increasingly impactful over time.
We believe the world is full of problems that can be fixed, but incentives and status quo bias keep us stuck. We look for and expect entrepreneurship in all its forms.
We ourselves are educational entrepreneurs. We think school can be much, much better. We demand excellent teaching. We take students seriously. We connect them to interesting and useful work, now.
Indeed, in addition to increasing the supply of human capital, we want to increase the demand for impactful uses of human capital. We think it’s a tragedy that so many smart minds end up working on small problems, in extractive industries, or worse—trapped in layers of middle management. We want to develop infrastructure to help surface and incentivize young people to work on the world’s most important problems. There’s a lot to do.
Other schools and fellowships are on parallel journies to us. We celebrate them. We hope to catalyze and participate in a movement of effective and abundant education. The future of education.
Finally, it is clear that technology’s full pedagogical potential remains untapped. The internet is a one-room schoolhouse. AI is a personalized tutor. We hope to empower 21st-century teachers with new tools to drive student learning. Cognitive labor is becoming too cheap to meter. We should use it.
Our current initiatives are just the first steps in increasing human capital. We’re excited to build and learn together in the decades ahead. We’re students too.
Values
Roote’s values are operating principles for our day-to-day work.
How we work
Fellows first. Fellows place their trust in us to navigate life’s uncertainty. We are grateful for their vulnerability and respond with weighty responsibility. They are the change we wish to see in the world. Our success is determined by their success.
Everything is a C+. We hold ourselves and our fellows to a world-class standard. There’s no curve here. We strive for mastery, stress the details, and hone our craft.
Real impact. Education is rife with fake work and signaling. We strive to drive quantifiable impact in our student’s abilities and direct them to solve the world’s most important problems.
Simplify simplify simplify. We’re excited by everything but focus on a few things. We do less, better. We praise concision.
Build an ecosystem. The future of education will not be built alone. We are positive-sum and celebrate each other’s wins. We learn from others and share freely. We look for opportunities to convene the movement.
Who we are
Information sponges. We are infovores who can’t help but soak it all in. We’re pluralists first, and keep our identity small. But our curiosity is directed towards impact. We’re serious, curious builders.
Believers. Rooties think pessimism is one of the biggest problems facing humanity. We think the first step to a better future is painting a better one. We are not naive, but truly think we can build a world of abundant energy, intelligence, and wisdom.
Agentic. But Rooties know that world doesn’t build itself. We need to act. Over and over again. Every day. We have a bias to action and find ways to get things done.
Humble. Rooties know they have so much left to learn. We’re often wrong. The world is a big place. Lots of what we currently do is still a C+.
Playful. Life is too short not to enjoy the process. We aim high but delight in the small things. We laugh.
How we address fellows
Emotions first. When fellows come to us with problems, we look to move the conversation to a deeper emotional level where most issues lie. Release the fear, unleash your potential.
We believe in you. We only work with students who we have the capacity to believe in. We actively vocalize and share your strengths. From this foundational believe, we then challenge you to become your best self.
Ambitious peers are like water for dying plants. Being ambitious often starts with loneliness. It’s countercultural. But finding your people is amazing and we facilitate that. We believe in the high return of raising your aspirations and giving you permission to follow your dreams.
Be useful. We think it’s a tragedy that people are often bored, tired, and stressed. There’s lots of impactful work to be done, and we want to enable you to do it. We give you tools to navigate the idea maze.
Build habits. You’re only part of Roote for a short amount of time. We want to give you habits and helpful mind viruses that will nudge your trajectory for decades to come.
Wrap up
Although these aren’t core principles, these are slogans we say earnestly and often:
Talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is not
Say the hard thing
Play long-term games with long-term people
Work upstream
Follow the incentives
Default to transparency and honesty
Beware memetics
Get texture
Donate
We are a registered 501(c)(3) charity. Please reach out to rhys@roote.co if you would like to support our mission.
We’re funded by the generous support of Shingai Thornton, Yaniv Tal, Philip Stehlik, Protocol Labs, and The Graph.
In accordance with Section 6104 of the IRS, the public can view our forms here: Articles of Incorporation, Bylaws, Form 1023, Determination Letter, and annual Form 990 (2021, 2022, 2023).