How it works
Your teen moves through six stages over twelve weeks. Each stage ends at a pass/fail gate that only passes with real evidence: a URL, a stranger's name, a payment. Nothing here is graded on effort alone.
Principles
Four rules run through every stage of the Path, from the first lesson to the last gate.
The AI cofounder asks questions, checks your evidence, and points at the next smallest step. It never writes the product, the posts, or the sales messages for your teen.
Every stage ends with a gate that only passes with real evidence: a URL, a stranger's name, a payment. There is no partial credit and no gate skipped.
Twelve weeks, five to eight hours a week, timed to fit around school instead of replacing it. Your teen keeps their classes; the business is the extra thing they made.
The last stage hands the repeat work to AI agents so the business doesn't eat every free hour. That's what makes it something a teenager can actually keep running.
The Path
Every stage names an outcome, a gate, the evidence the gate requires, and the First it earns.
Weeks 1-2 · First Idea
Find a problem worth building for.
Your teen picks one problem they've actually felt, then proves other people have it too. No idea is validated until ten real people have said so out loud.
Gate: Write your one-liner
Evidence: The one-liner and the list of ten names, each with a note on what they said.
Weeks 3-4 · First Build
Build the smallest version that works.
Your teen builds a working version of the idea with an AI builder and ships it to a public URL. Nothing here needs to be polished. It needs to work.
Gate: Ship to a public URL
Evidence: The URL, plus a short note on what it does and what's still missing.
Weeks 5-6 · First User
Put it in front of strangers.
Your teen tells people who are not friends or family about what they built, then watches what happens when a stranger tries it. This is where the idea meets reality.
Gate: First user retro
Evidence: The outreach log and notes on what strangers said and did.
Weeks 7-8 · First Dollar
Turn it into an offer.
Your teen sets a price, turns on a way to get paid, and asks a stranger for money. A parent owns the payment account; the ask itself is the teen's.
Gate: Ask for the money
Evidence: A record of the payment and a note on how the ask went.
Weeks 9-10 · First $1K
Do more of what worked.
Your teen tracks a weekly profit and loss, builds the habit of telling people what they're making, and repeats whatever got the last sale. Growth here is a loop, not a launch.
Gate: Repeat the loop
Evidence: The weekly P&L showing the running total.
Weeks 11-12 · First $10K
Hand the repeat work to AI.
Your teen maps what they do every week, builds their first AI agent to take over the repeat parts, and gets the business running in under 10 hours a week. This is what makes it fit around school.
Gate: Run it in ten hours
Evidence: The P&L total and a week's hours log.
The rhythm
Five to eight hours a week, most weeks, split four ways.
Objective, watch, make, checkpoint. About an hour, tied to whatever stage of the Path your teen is on.
A deliverable that becomes evidence for the current gate: a draft, a list of names, a working screen.
Talking to people or shipping, depending on the stage. Spark and Launch lean on outreach; Make and Run lean on building.
A short, written account of what happened this week: what shipped, what stalled, what is next.
The guarantee
If the business your teen builds in the program has not earned back the tuition in gross profit within 12 months of enrollment, we refund the tuition in full.
This page is a summary. The enrollment agreement governs.
Read the full guarantee →Apply for the founding cohort, or see the app that runs the Path day to day.