🧑💼 For people who are done asking permission
Name the floor rate. Then build the thing that has to clear it.
Your floor rate is the hourly price below which your month does not close — rent, food, health cover, divided by the hours somebody will really pay for. The calculator below works it out in two minutes. Three weeks in you have that number, a scoped offer, and a list of the people you can realistically keep warm. 106.3 hours of recording sit behind that if you want the long version — and it is all open the day you join.
A path is one subscription and a fixed order. The school teaches one catalog of classes; this is the route through it for someone starting a company. You get every class on the path, the recordings, the tools, and the weekly standups — not a per-class ticket.
$250 a month — on your own clock.
All 7 classes recorded, every exercise, all the tools, the written
curriculum, and the standups Mon–Thu. You can be three weeks into the material before
you ever join a live hour.
$500 a month — plus the live rooms.
A seat in every class on this path, every time it runs, including the Founding
Federation cohort. No limit on how many times you sit through the same one.
Most founders start at
$250 and move up the month a cohort they want begins.
Switch either direction whenever.
The two-minute version of the Pricing Bench (a ten-step worksheet you keep)
What do you actually need to charge?
Not what feels reasonable. The rate below which the month does not close. Put your real costs in. Nothing is sent anywhere: the arithmetic runs in this browser, and the rate it lands on is saved in it.
Your floor, per billable hour
$96 an hour, before tax, before the business costs anything
To cover $3,000 a month you need 31.2 paid hours out of 52 sellable ones.
What the same costs demand as the fill rate falls
Halve the fill rate and the required rate doubles. It is a reciprocal, not a discount. Every row of that ladder covers the same monthly cost; the only thing that moves is how many hours are left to carry it.
Twelve sellable hours have to buy all forty. The other 28 are the business — selling, invoicing, fixing the thing that broke — and a rate that covers them is what makes the company a job you can keep.
That is the two-minute version. The bench you get inside the cohort — the Pricing Bench, ten stations, the first thing Week 0 puts in front of you — does Survive, Sustain and Thrive as three separate numbers, works out your runway, costs the leaks you have not noticed, and turns the whole thing into a transition plan with a date on it. Later, the Pipeline measures the fill rate you actually got against the one you just guessed.
The climb, in unsold hours
What the company can do once you can do this
The hours nobody is paying you for are the budget. Spend them here and every line below turns into something the company can do without hiring for it — scope the offer, price the job, keep the list of people warm. Put in the week you actually have.
Spend it. Each class costs what it really takes.
- follow a model quickstart
- locate a tool in an open tool hub
- execute a first touch outbound sequence on schedule
- execute a tool call round trip by hand
- locate the standard that governs a system you are building
- name an audience and its success criterion
- run an open model locally
- configure inference hyperparameters
- elicit output from a model
- express a data shape as a schema
- operate a boundary on unpaid work
- operate a hosted assistant over uploaded documents
- operate a no code automation that calls a model
- produce a budget for work whose timeline you have observed
- produce a refusal boundary that fires on cases you did not list
- produce a reusable system prompt
12 more on this rung
- produce a segment definition from observed behaviour
- produce a stopping condition an agent can check on itself
- produce an account of an audiences current workaround
- produce an inventory of what you pay for and what it holds
- produce an itemised bill for what your running system costs
- produce an offer page that answers a cold message
- produce the three numbers your life costs
- segment text into tokens and cost it
- transform a corpus into an embedded index
- transform a transcript into a structured record
- transform an incoming message into ask deadline and claimed sender
- transform naive hours into billable capacity
- characterise one audiences path and where it breaks
- characterise what a tool costs you beyond its price
- characterise what one user costs you to serve
- characterise where a teams work stalls
- classify each recurring AI cost by keep downgrade or replace
- classify models by fit for a workload
- classify the personal data a system holds and when it is deleted
- classify which activity in a buyers chain your work displaces
- classify which framework applies where you are in the lifecycle
9 more on this rung
- classify which of your offerings can reach thrive not just survive
- constrain model output to a schema
- generalise a reasoning prompt pattern
- generalise a tool interface for model use
- generalise several sources into a position you can defend
- parameterise a prompt template
- parameterise an agent persona
- parameterise an offering backwards from its floor
- parameterise an outcome into the buyers unit of account
- falsify a models alignment guardrails
- falsify a prompt with a benchmark
- justify a price when the buyer pushes back
- justify a safety case for a system that acts without you
- justify a vector index for a latency and corpus budget
- justify an embedding model and its dimensionality
- measure a delegations outcome against what was asked
- measure a models value alignment against a stated standard
- measure the price a segment will pay before anyone has paid it
8 more on this rung
- measure whether a fine tune changed behaviour
- measure whether a user pays more than they cost
- verify a displaced cost against a second independent estimate
- verify a model output you thought was random
- verify a spending limit declines the charge you did not intend
- verify an agents actions with a critic
- verify the reach you have supports the rate you set
- verify you would know your system broke before a user tells you
- construct a multi agent conversation with turn taking
- construct a retrieval system
- construct an agent that uses tools
- design a chunking strategy against measured retrieval
- design a packaged assistant over your documents
- design a recursive summariser for oversized documents
- design a system you can afford to keep running
- design an agreement that says what happens when it goes wrong
- design an offer for one segment end to end
- govern a swarm by information hierarchy
- re architect an agent as a stateless reducer
- reconcile a failing retrieval by reranking and rewriting
- reconcile a working set with the context window it must fit
- reconcile agents from different toolchains into one run
- reconcile an agents run with a tool that failed
- reconcile several segments on one price surface
- select among agent architectures
- synthesise a memory hierarchy for an agent
2 more on this rung
- synthesise a self extending agent behind a review gate
- synthesise an agent that carries notes across its own runs
4 of these 7 classes fit in 39 hours, and they open 43 of the 83 things above, as far up as scale it.
That opens the recordings, the exercises and the written curriculum on this path, and the standups every week. $500 a month adds a seat in every class on it that runs this month.
What a point is. Ten hours of your time — the recordings you watch, the exercises you work through, and the session itself. Move either slider, or pick the classes yourself and see what the hours come to.
Today — Thu
Week 1 of 3 — Go To MarketOn the calendar
The next 5 sessions on this path. Your seat is in all of them.
Recordings, exercises, curriculum, standups. So the question is not which class you can afford this month — it is which mornings and evenings you are going to give it.
Automate Your Email: No Code AI Automation
The repetitive hour of your week, running without you and calling a model to do it.
10:00 am Pacific
Control AI Spending
What the model bill actually is, line by line, and what one user costs you to serve.
10:00 am Pacific
Context Engineering
Your own documents through nine stations, until the model answers from them and not from the air.
10:00 am Pacific
Intro to Agents
The build session: an agent of yours that calls real tools and comes back with an answer.
10:00 am Pacific
AI Security: Governance, Standards and Safety Cases
The safety case a buyer asks for, written the way their security review reads it.
10:00 am Pacific
Every one of these is included. The pricing hour, the automation class, the security session, the cohort — no second ticket for any of them, and no limit on how many times you sit through the same one.
Start solo $250/monthNew dates go up as sessions are scheduled. All 106.3 hours of recording open the day you join — start whenever, at whatever pace the company allows.
The two-minute version of the Social Budget (a networking plan sized to your real week)
How many people can you keep warm?
Your first customers come from people who already know you, and a relationship you never touch stops being one. A dinner for four costs the same evening as a coffee for one. Put your real week in and the arithmetic hands you the size of the list it can carry.
The three assumptions
These are the rates the arithmetic runs on. Change any of them you disagree with — the answer moves with you.
People you can keep warm at once
70 people, every one of them touched 6 times a year
This week holds 70 people. Reaching 80 is one more block a week, or one more person in the blocks you already spend — and the Social Budget in Week 0 works out which of the two is cheaper for you.
Where your list stands
- New conversations a week3.6
- Weeks to fill the list18.1
- Touches a year, in total420
Reach costs no extra evenings. Set the reach box to 1 and the same four blocks a week carry a list of 23. Set it to 3 and they carry 70. Nothing else changed — the difference is a dinner instead of a coffee, or a call anybody can join.
Cadence is the other dial. Twelve touches a year halves the list; three doubles it. Sorting who gets monthly from who gets yearly is the work the tiers do.
That is the two-minute version. Inside the cohort, the Social Budget runs the same arithmetic across every way you have of seeing someone, prices each one in blocks, reach, depth and recovery, and gives you a plan for the year that fits in the life you actually live. The Pipeline then puts real names in the tiers, and Outreach drafts the first-touch sequence you send on a schedule.
The live cohort at the center of this path
Founding Federation: pick one lane, come back for the other
Founding Federation is the live cohort program where you work alongside other founders. Everyone starts together in Week 0, and then you choose which lane (track within the cohort) your company needs first — Go To Market (find the buyer) or Build an MVP (ship the smallest sellable thing). The cohort runs again, so the other lane is yours whenever you want it.
Week 0 · everyone in the same room
Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)
Pricing and the economics of the thing you want to sell. The exercises and the two tools you keep: Pricing Bench and Social Budget. Nobody has to choose a lane yet. Everybody produces the three numbers their life costs and the capacity those numbers have to come out of.
Outbound Hour — GTM
9:00 Pacific · Mon-Thu · led by Spencer
You spend the hour finding the people who will pay, and asking them.
- An offer for one segment, end to end
- A first-touch outbound sequence you run on a schedule
- A pipeline with real names in it and a measured fill rate
Make & Do
9:00 Pacific · Mon-Thu · led by Neek
You spend the hour making the smallest sellable version of the thing exist.
- Ship something a stranger could actually buy
- Cut scope until the floor price fits the build
- Leave with a thing, not a plan for a thing
Why founders run it more than once
Both hours run 9:00 Pacific, Mon-Thu. You give the hour to whichever your company needs this season, and the founders sitting in it with you are working the same week of the same problem you are.
Then you come back and take the other. The second time through, Week 0 runs on measurements: the fill rate you invented in your first one is a real figure by your second, and the floor you guessed has a year of invoices behind it. The room holds founders at every stage on purpose, so the people a season ahead of you are in it with you.
Both lanes are on this path, so one pass covers them both and the second run is a decision about which season you have room for rather than another checkout. Sitting in on both hours in the same cohort is allowed too — nobody counts the doors you walk through.
The order, and it is the order
What you take, and what each one leaves you able to do
Curated, not sorted. Each class stands on the one above it, and the note under each one is what it leaves you doing differently in the company.
-
01
Control AI Spending
Guided app -
02
Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)
Live cohort work, everyone in the same room. You leave with two benches loaded with your own numbers instead of somebody else's worked example.
Pricing Bench Social Budget -
03
Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing
Where you choose your lane, and where four of the tools live — they open the moment you enroll, before the room does.
Guided app Front Page Audit Offer Designer Outreach The Pipeline Guided app -
04
Automate Your Email: No Code AI Automation
Guided app Guided app Automation Blueprint -
05
Context Engineering
Run on your own documents rather than a sample corpus.
Guided app Guided app Guided app Guided app Reference Reference Reference -
06
Intro to Agents
Ending with an agent of yours that calls real tools.
Guided app Guided app Reference -
07
AI Security: Governance, Standards and Safety Cases
Guided app Agentic AI Security Map Agentic AI Security Frameworks
All of it opens the day you enroll — you can be three weeks into the material before your first live hour comes around. 106.3 hours of recording sit behind the sequence, most of it in Intro to Agents and Context Engineering.
What is in the box
The tools
Signed in, these open now — before a cohort starts, before a class runs. Each one says below it which class it belongs to and what it does with an afternoon.
Three numbers, your real capacity, the floor rate and the leak calculators. Nothing leaves your browser.
Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)
How much social energy you actually have, and a networking plan that fits inside it.
Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)
Your front page read the way a cold visitor reads it, one question at a time.
Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing
Resume to service lines to a sharpened offer to a scoped deliverable, priced against your floor.
Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing
Seven message templates through your target shape, the follow-up discipline, the Mon-Thu cadence. It drafts; it never sends.
Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing
The sheet, three warmth tiers, and the network audit that measures your fill rate against the one you guessed in Week 0.
Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing
The reference for the no-code automation you build in that class.
Automate Your Email: No Code AI Automation
The map of agentic security standards, drawn as one picture.
AI Security: Governance, Standards and Safety Cases
Which governance framework applies where you are in the lifecycle.
AI Security: Governance, Standards and Safety Cases
Exercises throughout. Work them on your own business rather than a toy example — start the day you join, at whatever pace the company allows.
Standups every week, Mon–Thu. On either plan there is always a room this week whether or not a class is scheduled. Bring the number you just worked out and the people around you are working the same problem.
The rooms themselves. $500/month is the live side: all 7 classes, every time they run, as many times as you want to sit in. The month you need the pricing hour twice, you take it twice.
Two of 7
The company runs on your accounts
When you are one person, your phone is the company's root credential and your inbox is its front door. Two classes on this path are about holding both: a recovery path that survives losing the device, a rule for what happens when somebody calls claiming to be your payment provider, and the standard that says which one applies to what you are building.
One of them makes you falsify your own account recovery by attempting it — locking yourself out on purpose, on a day you chose. Another has you justify a safety case for a system that acts without you, in writing, the way a buyer's security review asks for it. All 5 are listed in the rail.
Not quite right?
If this is not your path
You already run a business
If the company exists and what you want is the repetitive work handed off rather than a new thing started, you can skip the pricing-first sequence and go straight at the operations. The AI Executive starts where you already are.
The creative work is the business
If the thing you sell is the making — the writing, the images, the performance — you want a studio rather than a go-to-market lane. The AI Creative is built for exactly that, and it ends with a price you can say out loud too.
You want to build the tooling
This path uses models to make a company work. If what you want is to engineer the systems themselves — agents, pipelines, the infrastructure under other people's products — The AI Builder goes all the way into the machinery.
Same school, same standups, same people in the hallway. Whichever of the four you pick, you can change your mind next month.
The first move
Name your floor rate. Then build the thing that has to clear it.
Three weeks in you have the number, a scoped offer, and a list of the people you can keep warm. 7 classes in a fixed order, a cohort you can run as many times as your company needs. The next room opens Friday 16 October.
$250/month — recordings, exercises, tools, standups · $500/month — the same plus every live class · any single class can be taken on its own, pay what you can · full scholarships exist