The Academy Experience
The Founding Class Fellowship
An experience in San Francisco built around what you want to pursue. Develop your own projects, learn from industry leaders, work inside a company, and take a project abroad.
Follow your obsessions.
Pursue what matters to you.
There are no prescribed projects at The Academy. You might devote yourself to one thing for months, or follow several interests at once. You might start a company, conduct research, make art, master a skill, or disappear down a question you cannot stop thinking about.
Take responsibility for your time.
The freedom to decide what to do can be exhilarating, but it asks you to be proactive, independent, and honest about how you use your time. Be clear about what you’re pursuing, why you care, and what you want to accomplish or understand.
Share your progress.
You are independent, but not alone. Each week, you meet with peers and mentors to share what moved forward, where you got stuck, and what you want to do next. Progress is measured in the work itself and the commitments you follow through on.
Ask for feedback and help.
Faculty, mentors, staff, peers, experts, and the wider Academy network are there for feedback, introductions, or help getting unstuck. Part of becoming more capable is learning to recognize what you need, finding the right person, and asking.
Learn from the people at the frontier.
Go deep with founders, researchers, and practitioners teaching what they know firsthand. Choose courses that take your work further, tackle a subject you’ve always wanted to understand, or discover an interest you didn’t know you had.
Course
Build a Team That Wins
Track
AI Research & Models
+3
Course
The Geometry of Luck
Course
Brand and Visual Identity Development
Track
Venture Capital
+5
Course
AI Inference Engineering
Track
Health & Human Performance
+1
- Explore all courses55 more
Selected guest lecturers
Sam Altman
CEO, OpenAI
Brian Armstrong
Co-founder & CEO, Coinbase
Cyan Banister
Co-founder & General Partner, Long Journey Ventures
Jensen Huang
Founder, President & CEO, NVIDIA
Travis Kalanick
CEO, Atoms; Co-founder, Uber
Garry Tan
President & CEO; General Partner, Y Combinator
Celine Halioua
Founder & CEO, Loyal
Bryan Johnson
Founder, Blueprint / Kernel
Mike Cannon-Brookes
Co-founder & CEO, Atlassian
94 more
Explore the network
Take your education into the world.
Some things cannot be learned on a campus.
Selected hiring partners
- Anduril
- Anthropic
- Coinbase
- Meta
- NVIDIA
- OpenAI
- Palantir
- Replit
- Stripe
Work inside a company.
Every Academy student spends at least three months working full-time inside a company.
Students work with The Academy to find organizations that match your interests and ambitions. Pick from our hiring partners or use the broader Academy network to find the perfect fit. For three months, you become part of a real team, contribute real work, and see from the inside how an ambitious organization operates.
Pursue a project abroad.
Every student gets a $5,000 travel budget for independent research and travel. Spend three to four weeks in another country.
You might study a craft where it originated, visit a research community, or explore how an industry works in a different part of the world. Leverage The Academy’s network to get connected to the right people in your chosen destination.
There is no typical week at The Academy.
Your time takes shape around what you’re pursuing.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
People who’ve done it, in your corner.
The Academy mentors are here for when you need expertise, feedback, an introduction, or simply someone who has encountered the problem before.
Mentors
Michael Adams
Founder & CEO, CivLab
Augustus Doricko
Founder & CEO, Rainmaker
Jayden Clark
Podcast Host, MOTS
Jackson Dahl
Podcast Host, Dialectic
Gena Gorlin
Founder Psychologist & Coach; Clinical Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin
Alana Goyal
Founder & Managing Partner, Basecase Capital
Sabrina Halper
Host, Sabrina Halper Show
Madison Kanna
Engineer, Fireworks AI
Hannah Ahn
Head of Design, Superpower
Quincy Childs
Partnerships, Climeworks; Previously DoE
Anna Gát
Founder, CEO & Editor-in-Chief, Interintellect
Gaby Goldberg
Partner (New Media), Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
Zack Radisic
Software Engineer & Builder
Flora Guo
Designer, Ramp
Guillaume Verdon (Beff Jezos)
Founder & CEO, Extropic
Elena Turkalj
Biology Researcher, Schmidt Fellow & Postdoc, Stanford
What will you pursue?
Applications for the Founding Class Fellowship are open.