Sarah Anto

Your Research Could Be a Startup. Here’s How to Know.

Techstars

Y Combinator

Conception X

Scaled $1M→$30M as Chief of Staff. CPA. PhD. Mentors founders at YC & Techstars

A simple framework to check whether your breakthrough is a business or a project, before you quit your lab.

Test if your research solves a real market problem

Why most researchers never make the leap, and the specific patterns I see in the ones who do.

Spot the 3 traps that keep scientists stuck in the lab

The exact sequence: IP, team, customer, that separates a side project from a fundable company.

Map your first 3 moves from research to startup

Learn how to stand out, get real responses, and turn investor interest into commitments.

ex-VC Partner | 50+Investments | 8 Exits

Bloomberg

Forbes

FORTUNE

TechCrunch

CNBC

Haris Khurshid, CFA, MBA

ex-VC Partner | ex-Startup CFO | 50+ Investments | 8+ Exits

 Cohort I (2026) 

2026 Cohort II 

❌ What I’ve seen repeatedly from the investor side:<ul><li>Founders treating fundraising as a series of pitches instead of a process.</li><li>Strong products failing to raise due to poorly structured, reactive fundraises.</li><li>Good founders losing leverage because of weak sequencing and timing.</li><li>Momentum fading quietly from confusion (not from rejection).</li></ul>✅ What This Course Gives You<ul><li>A repeatable investor narrative investors understand and can sell internally.</li><li>Intentional sequencing and outreach that builds momentum across meetings.</li><li>A clear, time-boxed fundraising process investors recognize.</li><li>Momentum that turns interest into real commitments (not the dreaded 'let's stay in touch').</li></ul>⚠️ Why This Program Exists<ul><li>Fundraising has fundamentally changed.</li><li>Capital is more selective and investor attention is scarce.</li><li>Old playbooks no longer work (and a revamped deck isn't the answer).</li><li>Founders need process and judgment, not more opinions.</li></ul>📌 Bottom Line<ul><li>If you need to raise capital, you don’t need generic advice.</li><li>You don’t need theories from people who’ve never run a fundraise.</li><li>You need a clear process that serious investors recognize and respond to.</li><li>That’s exactly what this program is designed to give you.</li></ul>

Fundraising Has Changed. Most Founders Haven’t Caught Up.

How Investors Actually Decide in 2026

Build Investor Relationships (Even Without a Warm Network)

Craft a Fundable Story Investors Repeat Internally

Build Investor FOMO (Without Faking It)

Build a High-Velocity Investor Pipeline

Run a Tight, Time-Boxed Fundraise

Founders actively raising or planning to raise who want a structured, investor-tested approach instead of trial and error.

Founders stuck in “interest but no commitments” mode who need to create momentum, urgency, and real investor movement.

Founders who want to run a tight, time-bound raise, attract multiple investors at once, and compress decision timelines.

How to create and execute a strong business plan. Assignments focus on actual development of your own plan and Shopify store.

Founder, Rei Cosmetics. IPG, J&J, Dyson

Interpublic

Johnson & Johnson

Dyson

Kenvue

Nami Soejima

Strategy to execution. Global marketing exec turned successful eCommerce founder

Amazon, Nintendo, Revlon, Hulu, Converse

UCLA

Amazon

Disney +

Revlon

Converse

Patricia Galea

eCommerce marketing lead and celebrated UCLA Instructor

Cohort 1

Cohort 2 - May 2026

Ready to turn your dream into reality?You have the vision. We have the roadmap to make it happen—and help you avoid the common mistakes that derail most startups.This interactive course brings you into a community of aspiring founders (capped at 15 students) where you'll learn our playbook for launching a successful bootstrapped eCommerce business.We'll show you how to create a business that puts you on a path to profitability. Learn exactly what to expect and how to execute successfully—eliminating that scary feeling of flying blind.What you'll learn: • Brand concept and product positioning that stands out • Business planning that shows the path to profitability • Shopify Store setup, product sourcing &amp; shipping, operating plan, inventory management • Marketing tactics that drive sales without draining your budgetWhat we bring: • Actionable strategies, battle-tested shortcuts, and insider knowledge from founders who've been there.Your mentors and community, empowering you every step of the wayWith personalized guidance and assignments, you'll craft a business plan and roadmap that will turn your vision into reality.Ready to take the first step? Learn more and enroll now. 👇

Avoid rookie mistakes. Gain the knowledge and confidence to launch strong.

Explore and Validate your Business Idea

Develop a Business & Financial Plan

Set up your business operation: source product, build your Shopify store

Enjoy the experience of being your own boss

Low cost marketing tactics that build your brand and drive repeat sales

Scaling your eCommerce business

Lean into your idea or desire to start your own business. We're here to show you how that dream becomes real. 

Entrepreneurial curiosity 

Aspiring eCommerce founders who want to understand the steps, budget and requirements to launch a sustainable eCommerce business.

Established career professionals who are curious about launching their own eCommerce business.

Go from full-time tech worker to successful solopreneur and launch your client-ready business in 2 weeks.

Cohort 2

Tech pro who replaced salary going solo

GitHub

Neo4j

Vail

Clair Sullivan

20+ year tech veteran who who created a successful solo business from scratch.

Cohort 3

You're competing with thousands of applicants for every role, submitting hundreds of applications that go nowhere. Meanwhile, going out on your own feels terrifying because no one's shown you how to make money at it. You've got the skills companies need, but you're stuck applying instead of converting your expertise into income.Here's what I learned: I started my GenAI business in less than 24 hours and replaced my corporate income in less than a week. That timeline might not be typical, but here's what is: building your own business is often faster than landing another corporate job when you have the right framework. Most tech professionals waste months figuring this out alone. This course gives you the exact system. You'll learn how to calculate your required income, design the right business model for your expertise (freelance, consulting, fractional, or product), set up operations, develop a client acquisition strategy, and set rates. Complete the optional capstone and you'll go live with your business by the end of the course! Whether you're employed or laid off, you'll have everything you need to start generating revenue from your expertise.

Tech layoffs keep coming, and the job market is a nightmare

Apply the Financial Readiness Framework to determine your income requirements

Design your personalized solopreneur model for your tech expertise

Set up your business operations and infrastructure

Develop your client acquisition strategy and set competitive rates

A big portion of what we will be talking about is leveraging your network. So it will help to have worked a corporate job or two already.

Tech workers with a few years of experience working for a company/in corporate

Senior ICs and managers who are worried about layoffs and want to build a business that replaces their corporate salary.

Tech workers between jobs who want to replace their salary through independent work, not through another vulnerable corporate role.

Managers and ICs creating career stability who want to build a side business now that can become primary income if they get laid off.

This is a hands-on transformation blueprint. In just 4 weeks, you'll go from "hoping it works" to "knowing it will work"

Chief Product Manager and Co-Founder

JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Market Axess

Goldman Sachs

Software AG

Anil Jaising

Anil Jaising helps product leaders thrive by unpacking innovation 

Principal Product Consultant

TiVo

Persistent Systems

Bernie Maloney

From breakdowns, through breakthroughs, to $1B and beyond

Cohort Based Course

You've watched engineering spend months building something that flopped at launch. You've sat in prioritization meetings arguing about which bet to make, with nothing but opinions and gut feel.There's a better way.This course gives you a systematic method to validate product ideas before you ask engineering for a single sprint. Using AI-powered prototyping, structured experimentation, and real market testing, you'll learn to separate winning ideas from expensive mistakes in weeks or days rather than quarters.By the end of this 4-week course, you'll have validated (or invalidated) a real product concept using techniques you can repeat on every initiative you touch.<h2>THE PROBLEM THIS COURSE SOLVES</h2>Product leaders face a credibility gap:• Competitors ship faster because they've figured out how to test before they build• Your roadmap is built on assumptions, but stakeholders expect certainty• Engineering capacity is scarce, and you can't afford to waste sprints on unvalidated ideas• AI tools exist that could accelerate validation, but you're not using them systematicallyMost PM courses teach you frameworks for thinking. This one teaches you a system for proving.

The systematic approach to validating product bets before engineering commits. 


Map and Prioritize Your Riskiest Assumptions

Prototype Without Engineering Using AI and Vibe Coding

Design Experiments That Generate Evidence, Not Opinions

Create Offers That Convert Interest to Commitment

Folks who are early career, or are meaningfully involved in content creation should not enroll

This course is NOT FOR everyone

It is almost certainly the most advanced product validation course, suited for PMs, Design, Eng, Data, etc 

This IS NOT a beginner level course

It IS NOT for folks who like to outsource their thinking to others and just follow directions or Anyone looking for theoretical frameworks 

It is FOR YOU if you like think for yourself and WANT to WIN

Product Focused Startup founders and Corporate Product Managers frustrated by the gap between their products's potential and current result

Product Directors accountable for portfolio-level outcomes, need to de-risk multiple bets and adopt validation as a standard practice

Product Managers Building new products or major pivots to prove product-market fit signals before scaling investment in high risk assumption