Build your startup with agents doing the work.
A Playbook generated for your startup. A VC you can pitch at 2am. An AI sidekick wired into your inbox. Plus 40,000 mentors and investors, and a real Demo Day at the end. This is how founders go from zero to funded now.
- Companies launched
- 9,000+
- Raised by graduates
- $2BN+
- Portfolio value
- $20BN+
- Mentors & investors
- 40,000+
- Cities
- 200+
- Countries
- 100+
- Years running
- 17
AI rewrote the rules of company building.
Skills are no longer the barrier. Direction is. Here is what changed, and what we built for it.
Launch an MVP this week.
Building product is no longer the hard part. Knowing what to build is. Your Playbook tells you.
See your PlaybookProve it, then raise from strength.
Bootstrap to real metrics, then raise. Practice the pitch a hundred times before it counts.
Step into Pitch GymNo co-founder? No problem.
Agents get you to first traction and first funding. Solo founders go further than ever.
Meet Frank and AI Assist“A founder with agents and no direction builds an impressive demo for a problem nobody has.”
What’s missing is everything around the tools: the judgment to pick the right problem, the sequence of moves that turns a product into revenue, the local knowledge of someone who has already sold in your market, in your language, under your regulations. A growth path built for your business. That is precisely what we do.
Connor Sattely
CEO, Founder Institute
Read the manifesto
A curriculum written for one founder. You.
Tell us where you are. We build your Playbook: the Sprints your startup needs, in the order it needs them, re-planned every week as your company changes.
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Built from your inputs. Stage, industry, team, traction, and goals.
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Adapts as you go. Landed a pilot? Sales moves up.
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One-to-one at cohort scale. Every founder follows their own Playbook.
The cohort format, and Adeo pushing hard on market size and scope, cut a broad marketplace idea down to one product: point a camera, get a listing, let an agent sell it and haggle for you.
Pitch a VC at 2am. Get torn apart. Go again.
A voice agent that plays the investor across the table. It interrupts, pushes on your numbers, scores you, and tells you exactly what to fix. Unlimited reps, any hour, no audience.
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Pick your investor. Friends, Angels, Early or Late-stage VCs.
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Feedback you can act on. A transcript with your weak spots marked.
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Iterate endlessly. Founders log 20 to 40 reps before Demo Day.
Every FI cohort ends at a real Demo Day. Pitch Gym is how you arrive calm.
Never stuck. Never alone.
We put agents where the work happens. One sidekick, always on. One button on every deliverable.
Frank. Your always-on sidekick.
Ask Frank what is due, what a mentor meant, or what to do next. Connect your email, calendar, and project tools, and Frank works on your real company, not a template.
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Frank knows the program. Every Sprint, deliverable, mentor, and deadline.
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Frank knows your company. Connect Gmail, Calendar, Asana, Stripe and more.
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Frank runs your agents. Research or outreach? The right agent delivers it.
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Frank is frank. If your traction deliverable is thin, Frank says so.
Frank plugs into the tools you already use.
// And on every deliverable
AI Assist, on every deliverable.
Every Sprint deliverable has an Assist button. Press it and AI Assist drafts, researches, critiques, or finishes the work, using what your Playbook knows about your startup.
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Draft. A first version in your voice. Never a blank page.
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Research. Market sizing, competitor scans, customer lists, all cited.
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Critique. Graded the way a mentor would, before the Feedback Session.
You still do the thinking. Assist does the typing, the digging, and the first pass.
Agents are not a strategy. Direction is.
Anyone can open a chat window. What a chatbot cannot do is sequence your next ten weeks, put you in front of forty mentors, or hand you to an investor. FI does all three, with agents doing the busywork in between.
| What you need | A chatbot | A course | FI Agentic |
|---|---|---|---|
| A plan built for your startup | Only if you prompt it right, every time | One syllabus for everyone | Your Playbook, re-planned weekly |
| Someone to tell you it's not good enough | No | Rarely | Mentors rate you weekly. Frank is frank. |
| A place to practice the pitch | Text only | No | Pitch Gym, voice, unlimited |
| Deadlines that actually move you | No | Soft | 11 sessions, deliverables due every week |
| Investors at the end | No | No | Demo Day, FI Venture Network, Founder Capital $25K first checks |
| A network after you finish | No | Sometimes | 40,000+ mentors and investors, for life |
A plan built for your startup
- A chatbot
- Only if you prompt it right, every time
- A course
- One syllabus for everyone
- FI Agentic
- Your Playbook, re-planned weekly
Someone to tell you it's not good enough
- A chatbot
- No
- A course
- Rarely
- FI Agentic
- Mentors rate you weekly. Frank is frank.
A place to practice the pitch
- A chatbot
- Text only
- A course
- No
- FI Agentic
- Pitch Gym, voice, unlimited
Deadlines that actually move you
- A chatbot
- No
- A course
- Soft
- FI Agentic
- 11 sessions, deliverables due every week
Investors at the end
- A chatbot
- No
- A course
- No
- FI Agentic
- Demo Day, FI Venture Network, Founder Capital $25K first checks
A network after you finish
- A chatbot
- No
- A course
- Sometimes
- FI Agentic
- 40,000+ mentors and investors, for life
10 sessions. One Demo Day. Every week, something ships.
One path for every stage: ideation, validation, product, revenue. Your Playbook sets the depth; the sessions set the pace. Tap a session to see what is live that week.
Session 01 of 11
Kickoff
Set up your Playbook and agents, meet your cohort, get AI-proficient on day one.
| Sprint | Starts | Ends |
|---|---|---|
| Pitching | Session 1, Kickoff | Continues after the program |
| Customer Development | Session 1, Kickoff | Continues after the program |
| Leadership Development | Session 1, Kickoff | Continues after the program |
| Sales & Customer Acquisition | Session 3, Validation | Continues after the program |
| Product Development | Session 4, Model | Continues after the program |
| Revenue Modeling | Session 4, Model | Session 8, Launch |
| Legal & IP | Session 5, Development | Session 10, Fundraising |
| Branding & Design | Session 5, Development | Session 11, Demo Day |
| Financial Planning | Session 7, Formation | Continues after the program |
| Team & Advisors | Session 7, Formation | Continues after the program |
| Fundraising Prep | Session 11, Demo Day | Continues after the program |
| Post-Program Onboarding | Session 11, Demo Day | Continues after the program |
- Session 1, Kickoff: Set up your Playbook and agents, meet your cohort, get AI-proficient on day one.
- Session 2, Vision: Go big on the idea, validate the customer problem, define your purpose.
- Session 3, Validation: Deep customer development, landing page live, mailing list growing.
- Session 4, Model: Test pricing, design a scalable revenue model and org structure.
- Session 5, Development: Mockups become working prototypes, built with customers.
- Session 6, Idea Review: First milestone. A mentor panel scores viability, presentation, and research. Epic Sprints are assigned.
- Session 7, Formation: Incorporate, protect IP, set up advisors and legal foundations.
- Session 8, Launch: Go to market. Get paying customers. Define victory conditions.
- Session 9, Traction: Chase 10 percent weekly growth. Track business and AI metrics.
- Session 10, Fundraising: Investor materials, pipeline, and strategy, with Pitch Gym reps in the background.
- Session 11, Demo Day: Five minute pitch and live demo to angels and VCs.
- Post-program: Alumni onboarding. Frank and every agent stay with you; the mentor and investor network opens up for life.
- Clear your calendar
- 15–20 hrs
- a week, more in the final stretch
- Graduation is earned
- Under 40%
- of accepted founders graduate
- Not our first cohort
- 1,200+
- cohorts run since 2009
Applications for the next cohort are open.
New cohorts start throughout the year in 200+ cities. Applying takes about 15 minutes.
What a week looks like when agents do the busywork.
A composite week from the Silicon Valley AI cohort. Your Playbook will differ. The rhythm will not.
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Mon
Frank: “3 deliverables due Thursday. Pricing test is 40% done.”AI Assist drafts your pricing interview script -
Tue
2 customer interviews (from the Customer Outreach agent's list)Pitch Gym: 2 reps with an Early-stage VC, 11pm -
Wed
Office Hours with a mentor, 30 minFrank surfaces 4 replies from your outreach and drafts follow-ups -
Thu
Feedback Session (live, cohort + mentors)Founder Hotseat: one-sentence pitch -
Fri
Mentor ratings arrive. Playbook re-plans: Sales sprint moved up. -
Sat
Working Group, 90 minPitch Gym: 3 reps, Angels -
Sun
Off. Frank holds your questions until Monday.
Total
Built with the Agentic Track. Now building for real.
Founders from recent cohorts, in their own words.
The agentic curriculum is the reason Sellster exists in its current form. The cohort, and Adeo pushing hard on market size and scope, cut a broad marketplace idea down to one product: point a camera, get a listing, let an agent sell it and haggle for you. We've been in closed beta, running the selling loop live with real sellers, and the first reviews are raving.
- Closed beta live
- Real sellers
- Raving first reviews
I came in already using AI heavily. The curriculum pushed me past research and content into the company itself: customer discovery, pilot design, pricing, unit economics, KPIs, investor prep, a repeatable pilot-to-enterprise sales process. Our first construction deployment started at one site. The customer asked us to expand to two more. We're in two live proposals and already discussing an annual subscription.
- 1 site → 3 sites
- 2 live enterprise proposals
- ~20 customer discovery interviews
FI taught me the Silicon Valley playbook for turning an idea into something focused, scalable, and fundable. Then Adeo's OpenClaw bootcamp convinced me I could build almost anything with vibe coding. I took that literally: over about four months I built TheCutList.com myself, front end, back-end CMS, award production tools, and an e-commerce advertiser portal.
- Built the full platform solo in ~4 months
Our LA cohort was beneficial, largely because of the connections we made inside it. Since graduating we launched the full platform, raised two pre-seed rounds through our own angel network, onboarded three customers, and were named by IDC in a market note defining a new category: Compliance Intelligence.
- 2 pre-seed rounds
- 3 customers
- Featured by IDC
What an amazing journey. The level of support FI invests in its founders, the time, talent, and treasure of Adeo, Mercedes, the staff and mentors, is top notch and more than a program. It feels a lot more like family. I completed every session, and we start pilots next week.
- Every session completed
- Pilots starting
Applications are open.
You have been saying someday. AI just made it today. No co-founder, team, or finished product needed, just an idea and the ambition to build it. You bring the vision. We bring everything else.
- Entrance fee
- $999 to $1,649 USD
- Equity
- 2.5% pledged to the Equity Collective
- Time
- 15 to 20 hours a week, 11 sessions
The world's largest agentic company builder, since 2009.
- 9,000+
- companies
- $2BN+
- raised
- $20BN+
- portfolio value
- 200+
- exits
Questions founders ask before applying
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Yes, if you are between “I have an idea” and “I have early revenue.” The Agentic Track is one path for every stage. We generate your Playbook from where you actually are, so a pre-product solo founder and a founder with three paying customers sit in the same cohort and work on different things. If you already have a fundable product and a team, look at the FI Venture Network instead.
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