Master the skills you need to lead
The Unusual Academy is a hands-on program for founders learning to level-up from day zero. In addition to tactical, expert advice, you may also be eligible for a meaningful investment of capital (up to $1M).
Master Practitioners
Guidance from world-class experts
At the Unusual Academy you’ll have the unique opportunity to learn The Unusual Method™ from the best in the industry. We’ve identified the seven most difficult challenges early entrepreneurs have to face, then found the perfect Master Practitioner to teach you the process they followed.
A craft best mastered by doing
Take 30 hours and save your team 3000
Each workshop focuses on a critical obstacle for your startup and opens with a case-based, practical lesson presented by the Master Practitioner.
The Master Practitioner guides an interactive workshop where you apply the tactics learned in the lesson to your own situation.
At the end of each session, you teach the tactics they learn to the class and receive feedback from them so you can fully master the skill.
Your application checklist
Unusual Academy is for founders at every point in their early stage journey. Let’s say you’re sitting at your day job but can’t stop scribbling an idea on the backs of napkins, envelopes, or whatever you can find—Unusual Academy is for you. You don’t need an official deck or an LLC. There’s no such thing as too early.
Likewise, if you’ve closed your first round and already have a small team—Unusual Academy is for you. Any founder who’s raised up to $10M can apply to sharpen their strategy and lay the foundation for future growth. The material applies to every entrepreneur looking to gain a serious edge.
You should apply if you want to learn to conquer common seed stage obstacles including:
- Hiring and compensating high-caliber talent
- Finding product/market fit
- Messaging your product and value proposition in a way that customers resonate with
- Getting your first customers & devising an early sales process
- Managing yourself as a leader of a fast-growing team to mutual success
- The ideal process and pitch for your next fundraise
To give founders a truly unusual advantage, we’re pairing this learning experience with the capital founders need to put it to work. Depending on where your company is on its journey, founders may be eligible for an investment of up to $1 million. Essentially, we’re inviting founders to learn from the best minds in the business while extending their runway.
We want to make it an easy decision for entrepreneurs to choose us as their seed stage partner. In the process, we're looking forward to partnering with founders hailing from a variety of backgrounds and experiences—the more unusual the better.
The program has a killer trifecta that helped me apply leading knowledge to my business.
Scaling the core principles across our team was invaluable as a second-time founder.
Questions we get asked
You are definitely eligible! One of the key goals of the Academy is to support not only founders who are just kicking off, but also those who are looking to bridge between their Seed and Series A fundraising efforts.
None! Our Academy is focused on finding entrepreneurs who are at any stage of founding a new company — from concept to MVP to revenue generation.
Absolutely! No idea is too early for Unusual Academy.
No! You can join the Academy now and accept the investment once you become incorporated later. We want Engineers who want to grow into Entrepreneurs.
We’ll share details about the next Academy soon. Sign up to join our mailing list and be the first to hear when this information is released.
The cohort will include about 20 startup teams (this counts both enterprise and consumer tracks). We're intent on keeping the experience small so that everyone gets to spend quality, interactive time with the master practitioners.
The amount of funding ($250K to $1M) will be tailored to the amount of progress you've made on your concept or company. We'll look at several factors in our decision-making process, including the viability of the idea, traction, team strength and growth potential.
We’re looking forward to running more Academy programs and keeping you up to date on those opportunities. Sign up above to make sure you’re on our radar, and we’ll let you know if we’re coming to a city near you.
We are considering virtual sessions for the upcoming Academy.
We have yet to release the dates and location for the next Unusual Academy in the fall of 2019. There will be seven sessions, 3 hours each. That’s 21 hours spent to learn what the average founder aspires to figure out in a year. For this reason, it’s critical that everyone is able to attend every session. Note that acceptance is contingent on your ability to be there.
