Two ways to learn how one person plus agents builds real ventures. One is for teens and is taking applications now. One is for founders who have already shipped.
Your teen's first real business, built with AI. Founding cohort forming.
In one semester, a teenager goes from an idea to a business that has made its first sale to a stranger. Six stages with real pass/fail gates, an AI cofounder that coaches instead of doing the work, and the Make First Academy, a lesson library that teaches building with AI tools rather than coding. Built by the studio's founder and run the way the studio runs.
The Path
Applications open for the founding cohort. See the Academy →
A free, private community for solo founders. Founding cohort forming.
For founders who have built a business past $100K in revenue on their own. Small on purpose, free during the founding cohort, and shaped by the people who join first.
For founders with shipped products and real revenue
We teach what we use. The studio builds its own ventures with these tools.
Learn to build systems that ship, not demos. The patterns come from the ventures the studio is building.
Learn principles and patterns that work across platforms. Own your stack, own your future.
Make First and The Foundry are both being built with their founding cohorts. Early members set the direction.
Blog
How the studio builds, in the founder's own words.
Earned Autonomy · Part 1
9 min read
Agents got good at producing work. Deciding it's done is the hard part now. What the field learned about loops, judges, and evals, and how I'm changing Faber.
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Earned Autonomy · Part 2
10 min read
Agents grade their own work generously. Why a separate judge with evidence and tools beats self-review, what it should see, and what it must never be told.
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Earned Autonomy · Part 3
9 min read
An agent stops when the work looks done. A four-layer definition of done, written before the build and enforced by code, is how looks done becomes is done.
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Whether you're a teen with a first idea or a founder who has already shipped, there's a path here.