Tim FerrissWhy Kids Can Learn 10x Faster Than We Think — Niels Hoven of Mentava (Tim Coaching Session)
Tim Ferriss
A Third Grader Doing Eighth Grade Math 0:00
Niels Hoven opens by describing how his own son, once given permission to study independently during math class in third grade, finished eighth grade math while still in third grade. He frames this as evidence of how much faster kids can go when allowed to learn at their own pace rather than the pace assigned to their age.
What Mentava Is 1:30
Hoven explains that Mentava is software designed to let kids learn as fast as they are capable of learning instead of at a pace tied to their age. Its first product is early literacy software aimed at preschoolers as young as two or three, with the goal of reaching a second grade reading level, meaning the ability to independently read easy reader books like Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop, and the Elephant and Piggie series.
Stories of Fast Readers 3:01
Hoven shares several anecdotes, including two-year-old twins who could read Hop on Pop and Green Eggs and Ham before turning three, a three-year-old who learned to read in about three months, and a kindergartener who was behind and caught up so quickly that his teacher had never seen anything like it. He also recalls a mother describing how her son went from admiring a classmate's reading ability to telling her, proudly, that he could read just like that classmate now.
How Mentava Began 7:00
Mentava started during the pandemic, when Hoven and his wife, both working full time with three young children in a small one-bedroom apartment, wanted their kids to be able to teach themselves since they didn't have time to supervise every step. Existing apps did not work well, so Hoven, drawing on his background designing games and tutorials, realized the real problem was that no one had designed software specifically for three and four-year-olds to use independently, and he set out to solve it.
Curriculum and Motivation Design 9:00
Hoven credits Mentava's effectiveness to two things, an optimized curriculum and strong motivation design. He notes that teaching reading through phonics, sounding out letters and blending them, is already a solved problem, so Mentava focuses on making that process smooth and usable even for toddlers, citing a design flaw in a competitor app that used to crash whenever a toddler's belly accidentally touched the screen. On motivation, he compares the challenge to getting someone to jump through a hoop, either by raising the reward or lowering the hoop, using slot machines as the purest example, and explains that Mentava tries to lower the difficulty of learning phonics while building genuine intrinsic motivation rather than relying on external rewards.
Refining the Company Bio 12:34
Tim walks through Mentava's written bio line by line, suggesting edits such as dropping the word unusually from unusually fast learners and cutting high achieving in favor of a simpler word like eager. He also pushes back on the phrase about raising the floor versus removing the ceiling, saying it made him stop and overanalyze the meaning, and Hoven agrees the company is still searching for the right way to describe its niche audience of parents who deeply value education and have kids being underserved academically.
The Core Problem and School Pressure 18:01
The two discuss the framing that elementary school years are low pressure and underused while high school piles on pressure later, and that schools actively slow down fast learners, as happened with Hoven's own son being blocked from learning algebra. They also note the idea that early acceleration could mean less pressure later in a child's schooling.
Marketing a Hard to See Advantage 19:01
Hoven says Mentava has built a product customers rave about, but the company struggles with marketing because many parents don't realize their child could be doing more until it's already too late to act on the biggest opportunities. He adds that the product's advantage comes from thousands of small design decisions that are hard for customers to evaluate themselves, though some parents, especially immigrants who compare US schools unfavorably to their home countries, or Montessori parents frustrated by a lack of phonics instruction, recognize the problem immediately.
Balancing Acceleration With Childhood 22:00
Tim raises a concern using a doula's brain framework for weighing benefits, risks, alternatives, intuition, and doing nothing, asking whether pushing a child years ahead academically might leave them bored and disconnected from same age peers, sacrificing social development. Hoven responds that this concern shaped Mentava's design from his own experience skipping ahead in math starting in third grade, doing independent study for four years until rejoining classes for pre-calculus in seventh grade, which built his ability to teach himself while keeping him with his peers the rest of the day.
Fitting Into Public School 25:30
Hoven says he believes in public schools, having attended one himself and sending his own children to one, and that the ideal setup is for kids to attend school with neighborhood peers while spending part of the day, such as an hour of math class, using Mentava at their own pace before rejoining their class. He compares this to Alpha School's approach of using adaptive software so kids can complete a full day's academic work in a much shorter time, noting Mentava aims to offer a similar benefit more widely and affordably than a specialized school.
A Real Customer Case Study 26:31
Niels shares feedback from Jake Bcraft, founder of Strand Therapeutics, who tried Mentava with his son, a boy called Rob for privacy, who was two years and two months old and had already taught himself the alphabet by 17 months. Jake noted that the app has a sequencing milestone check that Rob had not yet reached, and that the curriculum's sequencing test seemed harder than necessary, pushing Rob into an easier track that Jake could not override. The family paused after the 14-day trial, planning to restart in three months, but the most telling detail was that Rob kept pointing at the iPad asking to play the letter game, showing the product had real pull even when the timing wasn't right.
How the Trial and Readiness Test Work 30:01
Niels explains that the 14-day free trial exists because Mentava struggles to describe what makes its software different, so the best approach is to let families experience it directly. A common issue is that kids often learn letters and letter sounds well before they're developmentally ready to blend those sounds into actual reading. To catch this, Mentava runs a simple test showing two emoji pairs, a dog and a fish arranged one way and labeled, then reversed and labeled differently, asking the child to identify which is which. Older kids find this trivial, but younger kids who haven't yet grasped left-to-right order find it nearly impossible, and hitting that wall triggers a redirect to letter-sounds practice along with a suggestion to try again in three to six months.
Free Access, Fraud, and Pricing 32:31
Tim asks whether Mentava is free for schools, and Niels says pilot programs currently run at no charge, with a broader philosophy that schools using it as a teaching aid should pay little or nothing, while families using it as a private tutor substitute pay full price, currently $500 a month. Self-serve signups for teachers are in progress but complicated by the risk of parents falsely claiming to be teachers. Tim points to another successful paid app whose creator simply lets anyone email in and ask for a free version if they can't afford it, with fraud staying negligible, and Tim's own past business used a no-questions 110 percent money-back guarantee with little abuse. Niels mentions Mentava already offers a $100-a-month option for trial users who can't afford full price, in exchange for weekly videos of their kid using the product for marketing, though not everyone follows through on sending them.
A Faster Readiness Quiz 37:30
Tim suggests putting a short, two-minute "is your kid ready" quiz directly on the website instead of requiring signup first, which would still capture email addresses while giving families a quick answer and acting as shareable, self-filtering marketing content. Niels responds that the team has already been considering this idea.
Selling Relief, Not Just Speed 38:30
Tim argues the pitch should emphasize that Mentava spares parents from having to be the teacher, not just that it makes kids faster learners, since even at equal effectiveness to a tutor, teaching a kid to become self-directed beats a system where an adult must keep motivating them. He suggests anchoring the $500 monthly price against the cost of tutors, books, and simple the value of parents' time, noting that busy parents with multiple children especially can't be everyone's dedicated teacher. Niels agrees, adding that the parents most resistant tend to be first-time parents who actually want the experience of teaching their child themselves, while busier or multi-child households see the value immediately. Tim also cautions against language like "gifted," "elite," or "top 1%," arguing it needlessly narrows the market since a child doesn't need to be exceptional to benefit, and he praises the existing website line "we don't push kids, we stop making them wait" as strong, honest framing worth building around.
Positioning, Honesty, and Investor Updates 42:30
Tim frames the free-for-schools angle as a defensive move against criticism that Mentava is "just for rich kids," suggesting the company could instead focus on families earning $500k or more as a large enough market on its own. He warns that with only four full-time employees, answering unqualified leads and special requests is costly, and suggests a blunter response for skeptics questioning the price, comparing it to what they already spend on strollers or kids' clothes. He also cautions against exaggeration, sharing that his Chinese name roughly translates to "too honest" because he was known for blurting out blunt truths, and warning that any falsifiable claim invites competitors to discredit everything else a company says. Niels agrees but resists overpromising that kids will never need pushing, since some nagging is still sometimes necessary, and Tim suggests reframing around what parents truly want, like not having to police or reward their child, rather than absolute promises. Niels notes that at this age, mostly three and four year olds, sessions are essentially all initiated by parents. Tim closes this stretch by giving feedback on Niels's investor update emails, suggesting that any specific asks for investors should be placed at the very top, ahead of general updates, numbers, runway, and new hires.
Investor updates and the ask 53:00
Niels is advised to put clear asks at the very top of investor updates, since investors mostly help by being useful and are busy, so a specific request gets more action than burying it in nitty-gritty detail. This leads into a broader question about which channels actually convert and retain paying customers, rather than just generating cheap trial signups.
X and word of mouth as top channels 54:30
Niels says the best customers come from X and word of mouth, because the message reaches people already receptive to it. On X, arguments he gets into about accelerated learning, often when someone claims kids are learning too fast, spread his mission-driven message. Meta ads, by contrast, generate cheap but unqualified leads, because Meta's algorithm optimizes for engagement rather than for people who care about accelerated learning.
Phonics wars and motivation as differentiator 56:00
Niels explains that phonics has been debated in education for thirty years, with cognitive science and academia broadly agreeing phonics is the right way to teach reading, while schools and teachers colleges have resisted it in favor of teaching kids to love reading through guessing from pictures. He stresses that Mentava tries not to position itself as against teachers, since teachers are often victims of bad training too. He also notes that motivation design, keeping kids engaged, is one of Mentava's biggest differentiators, but he hasn't found a way to talk about it that gets traction, prompting a suggested tagline built around faster learning for kids and less nagging for parents.
Word of mouth and referral incentives 58:00
Parents typically hit a wow moment within the first week, sometimes the first day, and word of mouth follows from there, though there is some shame around admitting to spending five hundred dollars a month on the app, since some wealthy parents feel guilty giving their kids an advantage. A referral incentive offering a free month to both referrer and referred, essentially a thousand dollar acquisition cost, produced zero referrals despite known word of mouth activity, because the social currency of referring or the guilt of mentioning it outweighed the cash value for this wealthy customer base. The people who do refer tend to be selective, telling only specific friends they think would be receptive, not driven by the incentive itself.
Testing scarcity and messaging 1:02:00
Rather than abandoning incentives, the suggestion is to test variations such as framing a five hundred dollar credit differently, or limiting an offer to the first hundred referrers to cap downside cost while creating scarcity. The conversation returns to positioning at the very top of the funnel, weighing taglines like teaching a preschooler to read against messaging built around mission and acceleration, and noting that Meta, Instagram and X ads currently drive the most volume.
Leading with testimonials 1:07:01
The recommendation is to open marketing and even the homepage with a strong testimonial, such as a parent saying their daughter made more progress in one week with Mentava than in six months of kindergarten, since testimonials sidestep the skepticism that greets a company simply claiming to be the best. The AIDA framework, attention, interest, decision, action, is mentioned as the underlying structure, with a nod to the Glengarry Glen Ross scene as an example worth watching.
Customer demographics and the wow video 1:10:00
Niels reports the customer base is now roughly fifty-fifty male and female, though it skewed male early on, and the ideal buyer profile is framed as thirty five to forty five year old first generation immigrants at tech companies who value education as a ladder to a better life. For video content, the advice is to show actual kids using and learning with Mentava, since that demographic may not be a good fit for TikTok as a medium.
Auditing the current homepage 1:11:31
Reviewing the live homepage on a laptop, the top of the page is taken up entirely by an autoplaying video with no audio, sitting above a tagline about removing the ceiling rather than lifting the floor, with the try it for free button falling right at the screen's edge. The audio being unreachable is flagged as an overlooked bug, and testimonials further down the page are seen as doing far more persuasive work than the video and tagline above them.
Reworking the mockups 1:14:00
Going through Claude-generated mockups, several changes are floated: replacing get started with is my child ready, swapping the ceiling and floor tagline for something like faster learning for kids, less nagging for parents, and being explicit or upfront about the five hundred dollar monthly price, since some customers have said the high price itself signals the product isn't a scam. Testimonials are singled out as the strongest asset, including ones about a child learning to read a bedtime story to a sibling or families dropping a tutor after switching to Mentava, and the plan is to test versions that lead with these testimonials rather than burying them below the fold.
Refining the Homepage Mockup 1:20:02
Tim gives feedback on Mentava's homepage design, comparing it to a print advertisement and noting that visual attention should flow cleanly from graphic to headline rather than jumping around like a pinball machine. He suggests possibly placing the video on the left and headline on the right to match how people read left to right, and asks Niels to confirm details shown in the mockup, including the claim of a real coach and the two-minute readiness check.
Defining the Right Age Range 1:21:00
Niels confirms that a real coach is part of the offering, since new users are prompted to book a call with him to discuss where their child is stuck, and parents can also message the team through an app for ongoing support. When Tim asks about the ideal age range for the product, Niels says three to five is the sweet spot, and after more discussion settles on three and a half as the age he would highlight, agreeing that two-year-olds are rarely a good fit.
Being Clear Who It Is For 1:23:01
Tim argues that being explicit about who a product is for, and who it is not for, makes every other decision easier, drawing on his experience with The 4-Hour Work Week, which he built for people with jobs who wanted to design their own lifestyle rather than for employees at big companies. He also brings up Maui Nui Venison, a premium wild-harvested meat he is invested in, as an example of a business that does not apologize for its high price because it targets people unwilling to compromise on nutrition quality.
Framing Mentava's Message 1:26:30
Tim brainstorms possible framings for Mentava, including the idea of teaching kids to fish rather than force-feeding them information, and the idea of speaking to parents who recognize that fast learners cannot move at their own pace in the traditional education system. He connects this to his own upcoming book on saying no, explaining that he plans to narrowly define who the book is for, people who already have some success and too many demands on their time, rather than trying to please everyone.
Finding Uncrowded Marketing Channels 1:29:31
Tim describes his approach of always searching for a fast-growing, undervalued channel when launching something, recalling how he bet on blogs for The 4-Hour Work Week in 2007 after other authors told him blogs outperformed television, and how he later bet on podcasts for The 4-Hour Chef in 2012 by appearing on Joe Rogan's show before it was widely known. He also mentions experimenting with giving away a free audiobook through BitTorrent, which did not work as well as hoped, and stresses that in-person conversations are the fastest way to get real feedback because you can see whether someone leans in or asks a follow-up question.
Testing Messages Through Conversation 1:38:00
Tim explains that watching whether people ask follow-up questions during casual conversations reveals which parts of your messaging are actually working, and that this kind of organic reaction is more reliable than simply asking people to choose between two options. He compares it to workshopping stand-up comedy, noting that The 4-Hour Work Week itself began as notes from a class he taught twice a year, where he cut any material that fell flat.
Split Testing With PickFu 1:40:00
Tim recommends a service called PickFu for fast, affordable split testing, describing how he used it to test packaging for the Coyote card game he made with Exploding Kittens, since he did not want a major retail launch to be the first real test of the design. He notes that for a statistically meaningful signal you may need thousands of responses, which can cost around five hundred to six hundred dollars for five thousand votes within seventy-two hours, and warns against stopping a test too early since larger sample sizes often flip the results.
Inviting Audience Feedback 1:42:31
Tim suggests ending the discussion with a call to action, asking viewers to visit mentava.com and tell Niels on social media, tagging him at Neilshoven, which parts of the messaging resonated most. He and Niels briefly touch on competitors, noting that cheap reading apps, teach-yourself kits, live tutors, and comprehensive programs like Alpha School are different categories that do not need much direct comparison, and Niels mentions that Alpha School is actually an investor in Mentava.
Reaching Parents Who Don't Know They Have a Problem 1:45:00
Niels asks how to reach parents who are not actively searching for a solution because they do not yet realize their child is falling behind their potential, or that early reading gives strong leverage when negotiating with schools that might otherwise hold a fast learner back. Tim responds by suggesting two directions, first focusing on referrals among existing customers whose friends likely share similar values, and second, giving those customers the language to explain the problem to friends who have not yet recognized it. He also proposes making the two-minute readiness check itself genuinely illuminating and useful, even for parents who never end up using Mentava.
A Playful Idea for a Readiness Test 1:47:32
Tim recalls an old sex compatibility test app that spread virally because people wanted to share their results, and wonders if something similar could work for Mentava. He proposes a free two minute readiness test that gives parents information they find fascinating enough to share with friends. The appeal, he explains, is that recommending a free short test carries no social risk, unlike suggesting someone spend five hundred dollars a month on an app, even though Tim considers that a fantastic investment.
Tapping Into Immigrant Entrepreneur Networks 1:49:01
Tim shifts to a concrete distribution idea, pointing Niels toward TiE, the Indus Entrepreneurs, a large nonprofit network he once volunteered with in Mountain View to meet people otherwise out of reach. He notes its board includes figures tied to Infosys and Jensen Huang, and that the audience, largely first and second generation immigrants deeply invested in education, would be unusually receptive to Mentava's pitch. He suggests Niels try to get a speaking slot at a TiE chapter event, even in Seattle, or at flagship gatherings like the TiE Global Summit, using his background at ClassDojo and Pocket Gems as credibility. Success from such a talk should be defined beforehand, whether that means recruiting, feedback, or something else, and slot timing matters since closing slots lose people who leave early.
Narrow Targeting and Surround Sound Marketing 1:56:31
Tim revisits his own early marketing of The 4-Hour Workweek, where he deliberately targeted a narrow group, tech savvy men aged twenty to thirty five in San Francisco, not because that was the whole market but because a focused target creates a surround sound effect, making a product feel ubiquitous to a small audience. He suggests Mentava could similarly build concentrated presence within Indian or Chinese immigrant parent communities in the US, who already prioritize education and just need to discover the product exists. He mentions a real customer, a Chinese or Vietnamese mother with limited English, who used Mentava because she felt unable to teach her child to read herself. Niels closes with a request to listeners to always advocate for their children's education without letting anyone make them feel guilty for doing so.
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