Fourteen masterclasses from someone who took a moonshot from an idea on a forum to a company with global headlines, real engineering and real investors. You don't finish with notes — you finish with a business plan, a financial story and a pitch deck that exist because you built them.
Masterclasses 1 and 2 are free in the app — try the teaching before you pay for it. 14-day refund either way.
Every masterclass ends with a mission applied to your idea, and Vault accumulates the output. The deliverables aren't a bonus — they're the point.
Problem, customer, model, market and plan — written down, argued through, and pressure-tested rather than assumed.
The numbers a founder has to be able to defend: unit economics, the model behind the model, and what the money is actually for.
A deck built masterclass by masterclass, then run against an AI investor that interrupts you the way a real one will.
Being honest about who this is for saves you $129 and saves me a refund.
$129 covers your first three months. Then $20/month, cancel anytime. 14-day refund.
Sequenced the way real companies actually happen, not the way textbooks wish they did. The first two are free in the app so you can judge the teaching before you buy.
What a startup actually is — a search for a repeatable business model, not a small version of a big company — and an honest look at what the next few years of your life will cost.
You finish with: a clear-eyed decision, and the reason you're doing this written down.Where real ideas come from, why the good ones look wrong at first, and how to find the thing you believe that almost nobody else does yet.
You finish with: your idea stated as a secret — something you believe that the market doesn't.Getting out of the building. Who to talk to, what to ask so they can't just be polite to you, and how to hear the answer you didn't want.
You finish with: real customer conversations done, and a problem statement rewritten because of them.The cheapest possible test of the riskiest assumption. What an MVP is and, more usefully, what it isn't. Measuring so you learn instead of confirming yourself.
You finish with: your riskiest assumption named and a test designed to break it.Value, capture, cost and channel as one connected system. Pricing as a strategic decision rather than a number you pick at the end.
You finish with: your business model mapped end to end in Vault.Why the same product can be a failing business and a great one depending only on how it's sold. Where the leverage really sits — and how HyperloopTT was built on exactly this.
You finish with: two or three alternative models for your own idea, compared.What a two-person team can now ship, what it still can't, and how to scope a first product so it's small enough to finish and real enough to sell.
You finish with: a scoped v1 with what's in, what's out, and why.The unglamorous part: finding the first ten customers by hand, then working out which of those motions actually repeats and scales.
You finish with: a go-to-market plan with a named first channel and first ten targets.How to build with crowds, communities and partners instead of headcount you can't afford. This is the model that put 800+ contributors across 40 countries behind one company.
You finish with: a plan for the assets and people you'll use without owning.Structure, vesting, splits and the conversations founders avoid until it's expensive. What to decide early and write down while everyone still likes each other.
You finish with: your equity and co-founder terms drafted, and the hard conversation had.What investors are actually buying, when raising is right and when it's a mistake, how the process really runs, and what your deck has to do in the first ninety seconds.
You finish with: a pitch deck out of Vault, rehearsed against the AI investor.Running out of money, losing a co-founder, killing a product you love. The parts that decide who's still standing in year three, from someone who's been through them.
You finish with: your own pre-mortem: what kills this, and what you do when it starts.The transition that breaks most founders: from doing everything yourself to building the hiring, the rhythm and the systems that make you replaceable.
You finish with: your first org and operating rhythm sketched.What changes when a company is built AI-first from day one — team shape, cost structure, speed, and which of the old rules genuinely no longer apply.
You finish with: your plan rewritten as an AI-native company.Two full masterclasses, free in the app. If the teaching isn't for you, you'll know before you've spent anything.
You don't leave with notes. You leave with the documents and the skills you'll raise with.
A structured workspace where your business plan, financial story and pitch materials take shape masterclass by masterclass. Nothing has to be assembled at the end — finish the course and the deck exists.
A pitch coach that pushes back, an investor-objection trainer that interrupts like a real VC, and a business-plan interviewer that finds your blind spots — powered by your included AI workspace. Rehearse on a machine before you spend a warm intro.
Bite-size lessons, streaks and missions. Built to be finished, in twenty minutes a day, around a job you probably still have.
Read them. They're good. Here's what they don't do.
| Startup books & free content | This course | |
|---|---|---|
| Sequence | Each book is a complete worldview; you assemble the order yourself | Fourteen masterclasses in the order the work actually happens |
| Output | Highlights and notes | A plan, a financial story and a deck built in Vault as you go |
| Pressure-testing | Nobody argues back with your assumptions | AI sparring partners that interrupt, object and find the blind spots |
| Who wrote it | Often an investor or an academic, looking from outside | A founder who raised, shipped, scaled and got two HBS case studies written about it |
| Finishing | You start the fourth one before finishing the third | Streaks and missions, on a phone, designed to be completed |
I don't teach what I've read. I teach what I've built.
Banking in Berlin in 1993, quit at nineteen. Companies in alternative energy and interior design in Italy through the late nineties, one of them sold to a global energy conglomerate in 2006. In California, incubating high-tech startups spinning out of NASA Ames research. In 2013 I founded JumpStarter and used its crowd-collaboration model to turn an open whitepaper into Hyperloop Transportation Technologies — 800+ contributors across 40 countries working for equity, partnerships with Hitachi Rail, TÜV SÜD and Munich Re, and feasibility work with governments on three continents. Two Harvard Business School case studies came out of it. I've also killed products, missed payroll deadlines and been wrong in public, and that half is in the course too.
Invest in people, not products. The entrepreneurial spirit is what carries a business through adversity.— the principle behind everything I build and teach
Not for you? Email mail@dirk.it within 14 days of purchase and you get your money back, to the original payment method. This isn't a launch gimmick — it's already written into the Terms, alongside your statutory rights.
Both courses together — Startup Founder: Zero to Launch and AI in Practice — are $179 instead of $208.
You won't find student testimonials on this page, because this course is new and I'm not going to invent them. What I can offer instead: two complete masterclasses free in the app, a 14-day refund, a public record you can check, and a founding price that's lower than it will be once the reviews exist.
Judge the teaching, not the marketing. That's what the free masterclasses are for.
First-time founders, operators who want to go out on their own, and anyone who wants to think like a builder. No technical or finance background is assumed — the parts that need numbers are taught from zero.
It helps, but no. Masterclasses 1–3 are largely about finding and sharpening one, and every mission works on whatever idea you're holding at the time — including one you replace in week two.
Every masterclass ends with a mission applied to your idea, and Vault accumulates the output. By masterclass 11 you're rehearsing a pitch that exists because you built it, not because you downloaded a template.
About twenty focused minutes a day for the lessons; the missions take longer because they're real work on your own company. Everything is unlocked from day one — go at whatever pace your life allows.
$129 today covers your first 3 months of everything: all 14 masterclasses in the app, Vault, and the AI sparring tools. After 3 months your membership continues at $20/month — cancel anytime.
The plan, the financial story and the deck are yours. Export them before your membership ends and they're yours to keep — your company's documents shouldn't live behind my paywall.
No course can promise that, and you should distrust any that does. What this does is make you fundable: a real problem, a defensible model, numbers you can defend, and a pitch you've already been interrupted during.
An accelerator gives you money, a network and a deadline, and takes equity. This gives you the curriculum and the documents, takes no equity, and costs $129. They're not substitutes — this is what makes you ready to apply to one.
This page and the course are in English, and the site is also available in German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian — use the language bar at the top.
Yes. Checkout is in US dollars through Stripe and accepts Brazilian credit cards. A local reais checkout with Pix and boleto is not live yet.
Email mail@dirk.it within 14 days and you're refunded. No form, no exit interview.
$129 covers your first three months. Then $20/month, cancel anytime. 14-day refund.