Growing up in Palo Alto, most kids attended one of a dozen neighborhood elementary schools. But parents also had the option of sending their kids to two ‘choice’ elementary schools.

One, Hoover, was extremely structured and disciplined; if the class was doing math, everyone was open to the same page in the same book working on the same problem at the same time.

The other, Ohlone, was the complete opposite. No tests, no grades, no homework; kids learned in mixed-grade classes, called teachers by their first names, and met in small seminar groups with the teacher for part of the day while self-supervising project and problem set work the rest of the day.

I went to Ohlone.

As a result, by the time I headed off to Yale, I still couldn’t place all fifty states on a map. (Seriously.) But I had mastered the kind of learning I’d be doing at Yale, and the kind of work I’d be doing thereafter running companies.

As the old saw goes, I really did learn everything I needed to know in kindergarden.