Why Network School Chose Kazakhstan Over 10+ Countries | Balaji Srinivasan on Astana and AI

I think Astana has all the requirements to become another Dubai or Singapore, to become a global city. You want to go global, and there's so much global talent and capital that wants places that want to go global.

Really, they've got everything. You've got everything ready to just go global.

And you don't have long drive commutes back and forth. You don't have to drive to the gym and then daycare and then workplace and so and so forth, right? If you do well on an exam, then we will try and find you a tech job either in Kazakhstan or online, like a remote workshop.

So, these are two events you should come to that are actually related: September 2nd here in Almaty and October 1st at Digital Bridge.

Sure. Network School is a tech community, a digital nomad hub for people who want to learn technology, earn money, work remotely in a friendly community while burning calories and also working together, right? Collaborating. And so, with digital nomads, people have come sort of unbundled from their home countries, but they want to rebundle into a new place. And Network School Kazakhstan is going to be one of the first major hubs of this concept, then we're going to expand around the world.

Great. And that's very important: wherever, right? Basically, we're open globally. Anybody from anywhere can apply at ns.com/apply. And you will go through an application process. And then if you're accepted, we have what we call society as a service. So, when you relocate, you have to normally take care of all these things, from food, room, gym, cell plan, all this kind of stuff. You have to find friends, find a community. I'm sure when you first moved 6 months ago, you had to kind of—all the things you're taking for granted in Germany, you had to kind of reboot them on their side. We take care of all that for you, so you're productive on the very first day. And then moreover, we also wire you into a pro-tech community within Kazakhstan. And Kazakhstan itself, in Astana Hub where we're located, has many pro-tech people. So, you immediately start working with the locals, and we have a fusion of both global talent and local talent.

So, it's many things, but part of it is a reimagining of what a university is, where we will actually be offering classes and courses. But I think, you know, a university takes 4 years to issue a degree. What if you could have people learn something and then pass by examination, right? Examination as a form of graduation, right, as opposed to duration. Okay? So, examination over duration. Duration says 4 years, and then you get your degree. Examination says you can get it as soon as in 4 weeks or 4 months if you pass an exam, right? And I think what we want to do is shape universities into: pass an exam, get a job. And then rather than 48 months or four years of all of your learning upfront at the beginning of your life, then you graduate and you forget all of it. It's kind of like buying a car and not budgeting for gas, right? Instead, what we want to do is, instead of buying a car and not budgeting for gas, which is people getting a four-year university education and then not having an education for the rest of their life, imagine those 48 months of university education were spread out over the course of your entire life: continuous learning. And so that's kind of the vision of Network School. You know, when I taught at Stanford and I got a PhD at Stanford, I loved that community because it was continuous learning. Living on campus, it wasn't so much—yes, there were formal classes, formal exams, that was important, but it was also the informal proximity to other people who are interested in lifelong learning. And that's a large part of what we want to do with Network School.

So, you can be basically—you can be from 18 years old to 80 plus. And we have got people—you just have to be an adult, okay, to be able to come over. You can be a child if you're accompanied by your parent, right? So, we have Network School for Kids, Network School for Families. So, we're very pro-children. You know, someone said, "Oh, are you only for the tech bros?" And the thing is, I like tech bros, but I also like, you know, the tech dads, tech moms, tech families, tech children. And so we provide a lot of stuff for them, right? The busy mom can just drop off her kids at our drop-off, then she can go and work, drink coffee, come back two, three hours later, give them a hug, they eat healthy meals, and then she's coming back to her thing. And so the tech dad and the tech mom are no longer—what happens is when you have kids, you're often cut off from your friends, you don't have time to see your friends, and so on. And what we do is we set it up so you don't have to make a choice between work and friends and family. Your family is right there, your friends are right there, and your work—you're working remotely right there. So, you just have more time for everything cuz we bundle everything together into a healthy, positive community.

So, the way I put it is it's for techno-optimists.

Okay. That can be an engineer themselves, but it's really for people who are optimistic about the future and about technology's role in the future. And, you know, one way I put it is we're techno-traditional. Why? Because we don't just have, you know, the cool metal robots and so on. We also have trees, and we have wood seats, and we try to actually have as much natural and human and family and children and so on as 50% alongside the tech part, right? And so, we kind of humanize technology in this way because tech has become so successful in some ways that people are saying, "Okay, everything shouldn't be metal and plastic and glass." And some people want to have a more humanized version, for example, of AI and other kinds of things. And that means humans—actually humans, right? So, it's for techno-optimists, and that can be an engineer, it can be a content creator, it can be a graphic designer, but really more generally just for people who are pro-tech in their life. It can be a power user, right? It can be just people who want to build a positive future.

So, we actually did get offers from 10-plus countries. Do you know that?

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, we got offers from 10 countries, and we actually were in discussions with many of them. And we may expand to some of those countries over time, right? In the same way—not may, we will expand to some of those countries over time. However, Kazakhstan is a very special country, even maybe more special than many people in Kazakhstan understand, right? Because the quickest way to explain it to Americans and Westerners is it's like Singapore, but with space to build. So it has, in my view, the synthesis of, for example, Singapore's governance, like a sort of technocratic governance of East Asia where you've got clean lines and beautiful aesthetics outside and spotless streets, and the government is into math and science and people are into learning tech and so on. But it also has the European or American great outdoors, right? So for example, where we are in Astana, it's this futuristic city, this hyper-growth startup city, and within 30 minutes, 60 minutes, you can be on a horseback ride in totally wide-open fields. Okay? So that combines, in my view, the best of Asia and the best of Europe and America in a very unusual package, because most of the Asian megacities don't have that much nature near them, right? It's like Hong Kong or Dubai or Singapore, which are all amazing places, don't get me wrong, but just by virtue of their space, they don't have a lot of space around them. And that actually also means that, for example, often cost of living is high there or there isn't land or there isn't space to have children, right? Kazakhstan is 3,000 times the size of Singapore, and I think we can do a lot of startup Singapores here. And by the way, those cities that I mentioned can invest in those startup Singapores, right? We don't want to have just one Singapore; we want to have 10, 100, a thousand. And in fact, Kazakhstan is doing something like that with this new Alatau megacity, which I can talk about maybe.

Yes, that's right. And I think just Astana alone was like 300-something thousand people in the year 2000-ish, right? And now it's almost 2 million people. And just last year it added 100,000 people, and so it's growing like seven—

Right? That's crazy. If you think about what that means, adding 100,000 people a year is adding 2,000 units, or let's say bedrooms, at least per week, right? And that's like 300 bedrooms a day. Okay. That's a fairly large building if you think about that, right? And so that's why you see the cranes everywhere. This is a city that builds in a country that builds, in a country that has space to build, and that has a government that wants to build, right? Then you add to that the visa policy, right? So maybe you can actually talk about that.

Yes, I think it's actually going to be very successful potentially, if we're successful. And what you just said is very important because I think Astana has all the requirements to become another Dubai or Singapore, to become a global city. It has all the infrastructure, it has spotless clean streets. The main thing it needs is nonstop flights, okay? So, that's one thing. It adds more nonstop flights, but it's already got some to Dubai and other kinds of places. Going to add more. But given nonstop flights, it has what's called bone structure, right? Which means that everybody has a piece of themselves here, all the major parts of Asia. It's really the center of Asia in a different sense, right? And so, that means no matter where you're coming from, there's someone close to you and something in common with you. And so, it's a welcoming place and it's a place that wants to build global cities, right? So, it's zagging while let's say much of the rest of the world is zigging. And that is often the right way to be because you want to go global, and there's so much global talent and capital that wants places that want to go global. This is going to be something that's coming together, right?

Oh, really?