Alpha Labs Strategy Session - Gary Sheng, Ron Roberts, and Jozef Gherman

Overview

Strategic discussion about completely overhauling Alpha Schools' marketing infrastructure, with Jozef Gherman being recruited as the technical marketing lead. The conversation revealed deep inefficiencies in Alpha's current operations and outlined a lean, results-driven approach to capture the massive homeschool market opportunity.

Key Participants

• Gary Sheng: Co-Director of Alpha Scale, orchestrating the marketing overhaul
• Ron Roberts: Co-Director of Alpha Scale, strategy and operations
• Jozef Gherman: StealthGPT founder (~$330k MRR), recruited as technical marketing lead

Major Revelations

Current Alpha Inefficiencies

Marketing Team Size vs. Students:

• Jozef: "You shouldn't have more marketing people than students. That's a... pretty basic one."
• The current marketing structure is bloated with minimal results

Engineering Waste:

• 50+ engineers producing minimal value
• Jozef: "It's like I would not pay – I would not pay these guys. Like I straight up wouldn't... they're very weak, and they're very lucky to have a guy like Joe basically putting them on, like, fucking welfare."

Broken Funnel Example:

• MacKenzie's Instagram link tree leads to dead ends
• No clear path from content to enrollment
• Jozef: "Her profile picture sucks ass. Everything sucks ass. It's ridiculous."
• The Alpha Anywhere homeschool page is completely disconnected from main marketing

Strategic Vision

The Funnel Philosophy

Ron Roberts: "The way I think about it is, like, we need a website that has different prescriptions, right? Pissed-off parents... And then, as for BSC, which is like $5,000 or $4,300. And the other one is, like, we need to have a, like, low, middle, and high-ticket offer. The high-ticket offer is the school, right?"

Market Segmentation:

• "Pissed-off broke parents, go here"
• "Pissed-off middle class, go here"
• "Pissed-off rich parents, go here"

Revenue Projections

Ron Roberts: "I genuinely think that in one quarter, we could get $5 million in revenue from funnels of selling"

Scale Opportunity:

• Ron: "I think we could sell software to a million"
• Targeting the massive homeschool market with automated funnels

Jozef's Approach and Expertise

Proven Track Record

Funnel Optimization Success:

• "Once I changed this marketing funnel tweak, our trials went from getting five to eight trials a day to 150. Like over 10x."
• Built StealthGPT to ~$330k MRR with minimal resources
• "We were getting like over 100 tickets a day on stealth, and we got that down to 15 to 20" using AI chatbots

Philosophy

Data-Driven Approach:

• "I am a very data science kind of guy where it's like, let's see – let's do this thing, and then let's see how the market reacts to it"
• "There's no secret to a startup when people ask me. And I'm like, it's a thousand decisions, micro decisions that you make every single day"

Anti-Bloat Stance:

• "Even if we raised the money, I wouldn't raise half the head count by one. I wouldn't. There's no need for it."
• Runs company with under 20 total meetings with employees, fully async

Compensation Discussion

Gary's Offer: "I would say 400K a year plus incentive bonus"

• Jozef to create his own incentive structure
• Positioned as potential CTO of Alpha Schools eventually

The Alpha Labs Plan

Complete Control

Gary: "The reality is the funnel is the funnel, right? The funnel is, like, the whole everything about it"

Starting Fresh:

• Jozef: "So we get to start from a new canvas"
• Complete website rebuild
• New marketing infrastructure from scratch

Immediate Opportunities

2-Hour Learning Product:

• Currently can't be easily demoed
• Needs to be positioned as entry point
• Ron: "The two-hour learning is a catalyst for kids to get more time in the day to actually prepare for life"

AI School Positioning:

• Should position as "the evolution of school"
• "This is the Alpha school, you know, which is, like, a popular term among the Zeitgeist right now"

Key Strategic Insights

On Current Marketing Failure

26 Million Dollar Waste:

• Ron: "They said there's only take $26 million. But actually... To get her to 10 million followers. By the end of the year. I'm like. What type of fucking dumbass."
• Vanity metrics over actual enrollment

On Rapid Execution

Summer Strategy:

• Jozef: "Summer is the perfect time to iron shit out for education. And then when fall comes around, boom."
• Use summer to rebuild everything for back-to-school season

On Sales Team Structure

Lean Approach:

• Start with routing team, not massive sales force
• Test conversion rates before scaling
• Jozef: "If you could start to go, how many labor hours can we get? And then we get consistent X amount conversion rate"

Cultural Observations

On Leadership

Dictator Model:

• Gary: "And it needs dictators. Yeah, I agree with that. And like really dictators that find another dictator to do it."
• Clear ownership and accountability

On Competition and Excellence

Ron on School Culture: "You need a fucking immigrant. That's going to fucking bust their ass. And you need like a fucking Nebo kid to like be like, oh shit, he's doing way better than me."

On Being Around Excellence

Ron: "You know how like, good it feels to be just like around smart guys? So fucking great. So mentally liberated."

Action Items and Next Steps

1. Immediate: Jozef to draft incentive structure proposal by tomorrow
2. Website: Complete rebuild with proper funnel architecture
3. Team: Begin firing underperforming marketing and engineering staff
4. Sales: Implement commission structure (suggested 10% on first-year tuition)
5. Testing: Start with small experiments before scaling

Notable Quotes

On Market Timing: Jozef: "Now is the time for a product like this. And the guy who figures it out and creates a very central, well run, good funnel is going to win."

On Execution: Jozef: "You cannot run the business. You can't beat the school system by being as tangled and messy and sloppy as the school system. It's just not going to fucking happen. You have to be lean and tight."

On Potential: Gary: "I want to set you up to be a billionaire very soon, and that's basically what I think crushing it at Alpha would do."

Meeting Context

This late-night strategy session represents a pivotal moment in Alpha's evolution, with the recruitment of Jozef Gherman bringing the technical marketing expertise needed to execute on the massive opportunity in education transformation. The candid discussion revealed both the depth of current problems and the clarity of the solution path forward.