Tech curriculum
Talks, essays, interviews and guides from startup experts and WNC founders, including Y Combinator, Paul Graham and First Round, in 12 modules. Each lesson comes with a short summary and one thing to do this week.
Create a free account to track your progress and get a path that fits where your company is.
Deciding to start
Helps you decide whether to start now, and which kind of company you're building: a fast-growing startup, a small business or a lifestyle business.
Go deeper: 8 more lessons
Finding an idea
Helps you choose a problem worth working on, test it against reality, and decide who to build it with.
Building with AI
Helps you use AI tools to build your product and run your company with a smaller team.
Go deeper: 2 more lessons
Sales and getting users
Helps you find your first users, talk with them well, and turn conversations into paying customers.
Go deeper: 6 more lessons
Forming your company
Helps you decide when to form your company, which kind fits, and how to do it in North Carolina. You don't need one to start: talking to customers, testing prices and building a first version can all come first.
Go deeper: 3 more lessons
Product-market fit
Helps you tell whether people truly need what you've built, measure it, and decide what to change if they don't yet.
Go deeper: 5 more lessons
Metrics, pricing and growth
Helps you pick the numbers that show whether your company is working, set a price, and choose where growth will come from.
Go deeper: 4 more lessons
Bootstrapping or raising money
Helps you decide whether to grow on your own revenue or raise outside money, and how fundraising works if you do.
Capital beyond venture
Helps you find money that doesn't cost you equity: loans, revenue-based financing, grants and crowdfunding, including what's available in North Carolina.
Go deeper: 5 more lessons
Growing the company
Helps you hire, manage and organize a growing team once your product works, from your first North Carolina employee to a board if you raise venture money.
Go deeper: 9 more lessons
Founder stories (pick one)
Pick one long founder interview, from venture-backed giants to bootstrapped and lifestyle businesses, and take a single habit from it into your own company.
Any one of these finishes the module.
Founders from here (pick one)
Pick one story from a founder building in Western North Carolina, and take one idea from it into your own company.
Any one of these finishes the module.