“Never ever let anybody make you feel guilty for advocating for your kid.” — Niels Hoven (@NielsHoven)

Listen to my conversation with Niels Hoven: https://tim.blog/2026/09/10/niels-hoven-mentava/…

How to Teach a 3-Year-Old to Read and Rethinking Education — Tim Coaches Niels Hoven of Mentava (#882) - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss

Source: https://tim.blog/2026/09/10/niels-hoven-mentava/ This episode is a bit different. It’s a live, unscripted working session with a founder, and I’ve only done one other earlier this year.

Niels Hoven(@NielsHoven) is the founder and CEO ofMentava, a company building software to support fast learners. Eager kids are dramatically underserved by today’s education system, and Niels created Mentava to allow students to achieve their potential. Prior to Mentava, Niels worked at Cloudflare, ClassDojo, and Pocket Gems, where he ran the highest-grossing mobile game in the world in 2011. He has a graduate degree in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley.

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How to Teach a 3-Year-Old to Read and Rethinking Education — Tim Coaches Niels Hoven of Mentava

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Transcripts

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Show Notes

Connect with Niels & Explore Mentava

• Mentava|Mentava’s Reading-Readiness Guide|Niels’s Story|Niels on X

Books

• *Green Eggs and Ham*by Dr. Seuss
• *Hop on Pop: The Simplest Seuss for Youngest Use*by Dr. Seuss
• *Elephant & Piggie: The Complete Collection*by Mo Willems
• *The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses*by Eric Ries
• *The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich*by Timothy Ferriss
• *The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life*by Timothy Ferriss
• *Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers*by Timothy Ferriss

Related Reading, Listening, & Viewing

• Tim’s Founder Kitchen — From Brainstorm to the President’s Office in Two Months (Featuring Jake Becraft, Strand Therapeutics)| The Tim Ferriss Show #868
• My Two-Year Secret Project, COYOTE — The Strategies and Tactics for Building a Bestseller from Nothing with Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens| The Tim Ferriss Show #821
• Lenny’s Podcast| Lenny’s Newsletter
• How to Turn Your AI Into a World-Class Designerby Anshu Chimala | Lenny’s Newsletter
• Waiting for “Superman”(2010)
• Glengarry Glen Ross(1992)
• Rashomon(1950)
• Niels Hoven: From Blair to ‘Beauty and the Geek’| Silver Chips Online
• Beauty and the Geek(2005–2008)

Tools & Products

• PickFu
• Optimizely
• Claude
• ChatGPT
• Dropbox’s Referral Program
• Coyote
• Alpha School
• TiE
• Maui Nui Venison

People

• Kamal Agarwala
• Alec Baldwin
• Jacob Becraft
• Adam Carolla
• Jensen Huang
• Joe Liemandt
• Merlin Mann
• Anita Manwani
• Marc Maron
• David Ogilvy
• Lenny Rachitsky
• Srinivasa Ramanujan
• Eric Ries
• Joe Rogan
• Robert Scoble

Timestamps

[00:00:00] Start.

[00:01:32] What Mentava is—and the toddlers reading before age three.

[00:08:31] Game design, slot-machine motivation, and lowering the hoop.

[00:11:54] Tim’s red pen: rewriting the bio and positioning.

[00:16:59] The real problem: wasted early years, high-school pressure.

[00:23:55] Learning at your own pace—and “what if you did nothing?”

[00:29:32] Dog-fish, fish-dog: readiness, failed trials, and follow-ups.

[00:35:06] The $500 price, school pilots, and videos-for-tuition scholarships.

[00:41:39] Teach a kid to fish: selling relief, not nagging.

[00:47:49] Viral posts, the culture-war trap, and why exaggeration is death.

[00:55:05] Put the ask on top: investor updates and what actually converts.

[00:59:35] The thirty-year phonics war—and it’s not with teachers.

[01:01:10] A $1,000 coupon, zero takers: why the referral bribe flopped.

[01:08:04] Lead with the love letters: testimonials, homepage, and who’s buying.

[01:20:03] “No scam charges $500 a month”: pricing and who you’re not for.

[01:34:16] Uncrowded channels and workshopping like a standup.

[01:42:08] Don’t let Amazon be your debutante ball: testing what sells.

[01:46:42] Alpha School, the competitive map, and the eager investor.

[01:48:39] Reaching the already-converted: be the painkiller, TiE, surround sound.

[02:08:18] Niels’s charge: advocate for your child, unapologetically.

“Kids are these little sponges. They want to learn everything.”

— Niels Hoven

“The metaphor for motivation that I like to use is it’s like trying to get someone to jump through a hoop. You can either increase the size of the reward on the other side or you can lower the hoop.”

— Niels Hoven

“If you allow kids to learn at their own pace, you can pack the entire school day into a very small amount of time.”

— Niels Hoven

“Everybody in cognitive science—everybody in the rest of academia—completely understands that phonics is the only way to teach reading.”

— Niels Hoven

“Being able to say, ‘My kid can already read. You need to give them more opportunity,’ is one of your strongest negotiating levers.”

— Niels Hoven

“Never ever let anybody make you feel guilty for advocating for your kid.”

— Niels Hoven

**Want to hearanother episode with someone fixated on the outer limits of how fast humans can learn?**Listen to my conversation with chess prodigy andThe Art of LearningauthorJosh Waitzkin, in which we discussed initiating flow states, cognitive biases, fixed versus growth mindsets, the hazards of a rigid identity, presence in parenting, cultivating quality as a way of life, the principle of scarcity in the learning process, thematic interconnectedness in education,and much more.

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