By Shubhangi Chowdhury
Indian American entrepreneur Balaji S. Srinivasan, well known in the tech and crypto worlds, has taken a bold step toward bringing his idea of a “Network State” to life. He has acquired a private island near Singapore to build an all-new tech world.
Srinivasan, who co-founded Counsyl and was formerly Coinbase’s CTO, aims to build decentralized, digital-first nation for founders, technologists, and innovators. His book, “The Network State” lays out the idea — a digital-first community bound by shared values that eventually secures physical land and pushes for global recognition, according to TechCrunch.
This is the place where he runs programs on crypto, longevity and other tech related aspects in order to create “a technocapitalist college town,” as said in the post shared by Srinivasan on X.
One of his currently enrolled students, Nick Peterson on Instagram shared his experience, calling it as “an oasis for gym rats and startup founders.” “I’ve been living in this real-life experiment called the Network School, run by Balaji Srinivasan, where we are kind of testing what creating a new nation would feel like,” he said. Peterson’s Instagram handle has a story highlight as well with the name, Network School.
Srinivasan launched this “Network School” initiative back in September 2024 under his umbrella vision of “Network State”. This is living prototype for his vision. The purpose is to “revitalize democracy for the internet era” and to “pursue truth, health, and wealth by levelling up our attendees personally, physically, and professionally.”
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This three-month live-in program brings together budding startup founders and fitness lovers to a private island retreat near Singapore. “The Network School is for people of all ages, not just the youth. And it’s meant to be lifelong rather than one-off, with both a structured and an unstructured component. The structured part is about continuous daily self-improvement: learning skills, burning calories, and earning currency. Meanwhile, the unstructured part is about having fun and hanging out with people of similar values,” Srinivasan added while highlighting the fact that this School is open to all age groups.
The Network School is all about lifelong learning. It’s made for remote workers, engineers, creators, and digital nomads who want to keep learning while living their lives.
Their course touches on everything such as crypto, AI, and social media to history, politics, and filmmaking. For now, enrolled students engage in physical fitness, AI, crypto, innovation and entrepreneurship.
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“We’re seeking dark talent. We’re seeking people who want to create win-and-help-win societies, focused on both individual and collective self-improvement. We’re seeking remote workers, digital nomads, online creators, personal trainers, event planners, self-improvers and technologists of all stripes. And we’re specifically seeking those who want to help our nascent community learn technology, earn cryptocurrency, burn calories, and have fun,” Srinivasan said.
He further elaborated that “ I should mention that the Network School is a ‘product’ that I built for the young version of myself — the aspiring young engineer. This is the community I want to live in: a technocapitalist college town, a Stanford 2.0 that’s globally affordable and genuinely meritocratic.”
Srinivasan is an Indian American entrepreneur who co-founded Counsyl, (later on acquired by Myriad Genetics for $375 million in 2018). He was also related to 21 Inc. where he served as CTO from 2018 to 2019. He’s a former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, co-founder of Teleport and Coin Centre, and an early investor in major tech and crypto projects like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and OpenSea. He also wrote a book, “The Network State,
promoting the idea of building tech-powered digital societies.