We’re helping 20 software engineers launch their first startup with $10,000-$50,000 USD in funding, and 12 months of mentorship.
Meet your host
Your host is Rob Liu, founder of ContactOut, 50 staff, $10million USD revenue, $5million profit. Limited Partner at HustleFund.vc, Iterative.vc, Blackbird.vc, angel investor and 500 Startups alum.
Rob’s course The Most Actionable Startup Course has over a million views on Youtube and LinkedIn.
No startup experience required.
We’ll teach you step by step how to build a business to 8 figures in revenue. You can participate in the program whilst studying at university.
Curriculum
Over the next 12 months
we’ll cover:
Your first business idea
You’ll go through 1000s of startup pitch videos on Youtube, and study 100s of companies on Crunchbase, analyzing their product, UX, sales and marketing.
You’ll combine all this to come up with your own business idea.
Talking to customers, mentors & industry experts
You’ll schedule 100s of customer interviews to understand user problems and workflows. We’ll show you how we found mentors like Alexis Onahan (Reddit Founder) and James Clear (NYT best selling author). You’ll build your own board of advisors of 5 mentors with expertise in your industry.
Building Products
Product that is 10x better than the competition. Building the smallest thing that provides the most value to your customers in 1-4 weeks. We’ll show you via screen share recording our end to end product development process, from Figma designs, customer interview notes, Jira boards, engineering process and real product meeting recordings.
Sales & marketing
We’ve made a library of sales processes of 100s of billion dollar software companies: real sales demo recordings, pitch decks, email sequences. We’ll show you how to get 100s of sales and marketing ideas by studying competitors, and run through how we made $10million via SEO marketing.
Program structure
Focus group
6 founders meet for 1 hr/week to share learnings and discuss challenges, either in person or online. This is the core of Athena Founders. The discussion structure is based on YPO forum a learning group attended by 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs.
Online community
Founders will share weekly updates on: goals, learnings, activities, challenges, and provide feedback and hold each other accountable.
Mentorship sessions
Meet with successful founders who have built $1million+ businesses. We’ll invite speakers and we’ll teach each founder group how to find their own industry relevant speakers via Linkedin outreach.
Founder’s curriculum
12-month curriculum featuring actionable startup resources, including exclusive content like screenshares, step by step tactics. Topics covered include customer calls, design drafts, engineering processes, and sales calls from 100s of companies.
Self directed learning
Athena is focused on peer to peer learning and self directed learning. You’ll get out what you put in.
Nobody is going to “teach” you entrepreneurship, because by definition entrepreneurs define new paths.
Athena is here is guide you on the journey with:
12 months of curriculum covering the most actionable startup resources online.
A peer group and community to learn from and hold each other accountable.
Starting a company is challenging. You have to make difficult decisions every day with imperfect information on problems you’ve likely never faced before.
In our experience, the best way to overcome the challenges is to surround yourself with founders doing the same thing. Learn from the wins and mistakes of others. Support each other and hold each other accountable.
Athena is
Strategies and tactics. Gain insights, ideas, and guidance from fellow founders.
Safe space. Judgment-free zone where you can share successes, failures, and challenges
Hitting goals and accountability
Making friends. Find your next cofounder. Create business relationships.
Raising money. Our community has raised over 40 million and are connected to major VC firms.
Time commitment
The program requires a 30 hour a week time commitment. Most of the time will be spent as self directed learning and building your business.
27 hours / week: Learning and building your business
1 hour / week: Focus group discussion with six other founders.
1 hour / week: Write up goals, learnings & discuss challenges
0.5 - 1 hour / week: Mentor coaching sessions
You can study while building a business, but it requires a full-time commitment of at least 30 hours per week
Athena accepts only smart, driven members serious about startups. Chat with a member and learn together.
Funding
Mth 1
Athena Founder is free for the first 8 weeks
Members sign a commitment to 30 hours per week building their business whilst attending focus groups and writing up learnings and goals.
Mth 3
1% equity for a 12 month program
Starting month 3, participants will incorporate a company & Athena will take a 1% equity stake.
Additionally, Athena may choose to invest $10,000-$50,000 USD for a 5%-7% equity stake and help with further fundraising from 700+ investors.
Athena will choose to fund founders based on:
Progress made with their business
Weekly learnings and goals write-ups
Contribution to the community discussion
The amount of funding will also depend on the above.
Founders must continue to:
Commit 30 hours/ week building their business
Attend focus groups
Write up learnings
To be eligible for continued funding.
Funds will be distributed every 3 months, in 4 tranches.
What we’re looking for:
Coding ability
We’re looking for coders right now, but will accept other technical students in future, e.g biologists, engineers, etc
You don’t need to be a university student, self taught programmers welcome.
Fast learner
You consume lots of books, podcasts, and courses in your spare time.
You’re a self directed learner and independent thinker.
Grit and determination
You can commit 30 hours a week full-time to working on a startup and learning without giving up.
It takes 5 years to become an engineer, 7 to be a lawyer, and 10 to be a doctor, yet most founders quit after 2-3 years. Success usually takes 5-10 years, and those who persist often succeed.
Ready to join?
Appendix
Athena Founders vs University?
Instead of paying for university. Athena will pay you to learn.
Instead of learning about business from textbooks. You’ll actually go build a business.
Instead of learning from academics who’ve never built a company before. You’ll be mentored by successful founders.
Is what I’m learning in university actually useful?
What if we could learn how technology is used in industry and how companies are built before learning the academic theory to avoid learning useless stuff?
For example if I wanted to start a engineering, biotech or deeptech company I could:
Youtube “day in the life” & factor tour videos e.g: BioNTech, Tesla, Samsung, GE Aerospace
Study 100s of companies in the industry via Crunchbase & public company annual reports.
Talk to industry mentors on Linkedin and intro.co
Read science journal articles on nature and google scholar. Start with the editorial and summary articles that summarize the research (not the actual research papers).
Finally go study the curriculum once you know how it's applied
Start with Wikipedia and Coursera introductory courses
Find the Stanford, Harvard, or MIT undergraduate curriculum and read all the textbooks used in the course by searching for the pdf version on google.
Read research papers. Search using google scholar, free access using Sci Hub or Unpaywall.
Reach out to researchers that wrote the papers, collaborate on projects, or volunteer to work in their labs. Put together a team of researchers.
Raise venture capital funding if needed and start your company
What’s Athena’s ultimate goal?
Create a university for entrepreneurship and replace business degrees. Instead of learning about business, actually build a business.
Help 1 million founders start a business
Create Silicon Valley ecosystems all around the world
Create trillions in wealth and solve global poverty
Round 1 deadline: 27th May, 2024!
We’re helping 20 software engineers launch their first startup with $10,000-$50,000 USD in funding, and 12 months of mentorship.
We’re helping 20 software engineers launch their first startup with $10,000-$50,000 USD in funding, and 12 months of mentorship.
We’re helping 20 software engineers launch their first startup with $10,000-$50,000 USD in funding, and 12 months of mentorship.
Meet your host
Meet your host
Meet your host
Your host is Rob Liu, founder of ContactOut, 50 staff, $10million USD revenue, $5million profit. Limited Partner at HustleFund.vc, Iterative.vc, Blackbird.vc, angel investor and 500 Startups alum.
Rob’s course The Most Actionable Startup Course has over a million views on Youtube and LinkedIn.
Your host is Rob Liu, founder of ContactOut, 50 staff, $10million USD revenue, $5million profit. Limited Partner at HustleFund.vc, Iterative.vc, Blackbird.vc, angel investor and 500 Startups alum.
Rob’s course The Most Actionable Startup Course has over a million views on Youtube and LinkedIn.
No startup experience required.
We’ll teach you step by step how to build a business to 8 figures in revenue.
You can participate in the program whilst studying at university.
Curriculum
Over the next 12 months we’ll cover:
Your first business idea
You’ll go through 1000s of startup pitch videos on Youtube, and study 100s of companies on Crunchbase, analyzing their product, UX, sales and marketing. You’ll combine all this to come up with your own business idea.
Talking to customers, mentors & experts
You’ll schedule 100s of customer interviews to understand user problems and workflows. We’ll show you how we found mentors like Alexis Onahan (Reddit Founder) and James Clear (NYT best selling author). You’ll build your own board of advisors of 5 mentors with expertise in your industry.
Building Products
Product that is 10x better than the competition. Building the smallest thing that provides the most value to your customers in 1-4 weeks. We’ll show you via screen share recording our end to end product development process, from Figma designs, customer interview notes, Jira boards, engineering process and real product meeting recordings.
Sales & marketing
We’ve made a library of sales processes of 100s of billion dollar software companies: real sales demo recordings, pitch decks, email sequences. We’ll show you how to get 100s of sales and marketing ideas by studying competitors, and run through how we made $10million via SEO marketing.
Program structure
Focus group
6 founders 1 hr meeting/ week. Share learnings and discuss challenges. You can meet in person or online. This is the core of Athena Founders. The discussion structure is based on YPO forum which is a learning group attended by 30% of Fortune 500 CEO every month.
Online community
Founders will share weekly updates on: goals, learnings, activities, challenges, and provide feedback and hold each other accountable.
Mentorship sessions
Meet with successful founders who have built $1million+ businesses. We’ll invite speakers and we’ll teach each founder group how to find their own industry relevant speakers via Linkedin outreach.
Founder’s curriculum
12-month curriculum featuring actionable startup resources, including exclusive content like screenshares and step-by-step tactics examples. Topics covered include customer calls, design drafts, engineering processes, and recorded sales calls from 100s of companies.
Program structure
Focus group
6 founders meet for 1 hr/week to share learnings and discuss challenges, either in person or online. This is the core of Athena Founders. The discussion structure is based on YPO forum a learning group attended by 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs.
Online community
Founders will share weekly updates on: goals, learnings, activities, challenges, and provide feedback and hold each other accountable.
Mentorship sessions
Meet with successful founders who have built $1million+ businesses. We’ll invite speakers and we’ll teach each founder group how to find their own industry relevant speakers via Linkedin outreach.
Founder’s curriculum
12-month curriculum featuring actionable startup resources, including exclusive content like screenshares, step by step tactics. Topics covered include customer calls, design drafts, engineering processes, and sales calls from 100s of companies.
Self directed learning
Athena is focused on peer to peer learning and self directed learning. You’ll get out what you put in.
Nobody is going to “teach” you entrepreneurship, because by definition entrepreneurs define new paths.
Athena is here is guide you on the journey with:
12 months of curriculum covering the most actionable startup resources online.
A peer group and community to learn from and hold each other accountable.
Starting a company is challenging. You have to make difficult decisions every day with imperfect information on problems you’ve likely never faced before.
In our experience, the best way to overcome the challenges is to surround yourself with founders doing the same thing. Learn from the wins and mistakes of others. Support each other and hold each other accountable.
Self directed learning
Athena is focused on peer to peer learning and self directed learning. You’ll get out what you put in.
Nobody is going to “teach” you entrepreneurship, because by definition entrepreneurs define new paths.
Athena is here is guide you on the journey with:
12 months of curriculum covering the most actionable startup resources online.
A peer group and community to learn from and hold each other accountable.
Starting a company is challenging. You have to make difficult decisions every day with imperfect information on problems you’ve likely never faced before.
In our experience, the best way to overcome the challenges is to surround yourself with founders doing the same thing. Learn from the wins and mistakes of others. Support each other and hold each other accountable.
Athena is
Strategies and tactics. Gain insights, ideas, and guidance from fellow founders.
Safe space. Judgment-free zone where you can share successes, failures, and challenges
Hitting goals and accountability
Making friends. Find your next cofounder. Create business relationships.
Raising money. Our community has raised over 40 million and are connected to major VC firms.
Athena is
Strategies and tactics. Gain insights, ideas, and guidance from fellow founders.
Safe space. Judgment-free zone where you can share successes, failures, and challenges
Hitting goals and accountability
Making friends. Find your next cofounder. Create business relationships.
Raising money. Our community has raised over 40 million and are connected to major VC firms.
Time commitment
The program requires a 30 hour a week time commitment. Most of the time will be spent
as self directed learning and building your business.
27 hours / week: Learning and building your business
1 hour / week: Focus group with 6 others founders to discuss learnings and challenges
1 hour / week: Write up goals, learnings & discuss challenges
0.5 - 1 hour / week: Mentor coaching sessions
You can study while building a business, but it requires a full-time commitment of at least 30 hours per week.
Athena accepts only smart, driven members serious about startups. Chat with a member and learn together.
Funding
Month 1
Athena Founders is free for the first 8 weeks
Members sign a commitment to 30 hours per week building their business whilst attending focus groups and writing up learnings & goals.
Month 3 onwards
1% equity for a 12 month program
Starting month 3, participants will incorporate a company & Athena will take a 1% equity stake.
Additionally Athena may choose to invest $10,000-$50,000 USD for a 5%-7% equity stake and help with further fundraising from 700+ investors.
Mth 1
Athena Founder is free for the first 8 weeks
Members sign a commitment to 30 hours per week building their business whilst attending focus groups and writing up learnings and goals.
Mth 3
1% equity for a 12 month program
Starting month 3, participants will incorporate a company & Athena will take a 1% equity stake.
Additionally, Athena may choose to invest $10,000-$50,000 USD for a 5%-7% equity stake and help with further fundraising from 700+ investors.
Athena will choose to fund founders based on:
Progress made with their business
Weekly learnings and goals write-ups
Contribution to the community discussion
The amount of funding will also depend on the above.
Founders must continue to:
Commit 30 hours/ week building their business
Attend focus groups
Write up learnings
To be eligible for continued funding.
Funds will be distributed every 3 months, in 4 tranches.
What we’re looking for:
Coding ability
We’re looking for coders right now, but will accept other technical students in future, e.g biologists, engineers, etc
You don’t need to be a university student, self taught programmers welcome.
Fast learner
You consume lots of books, podcasts, and courses in your spare time.
You’re a self directed learner and independent thinker.
Grit and determination
You can commit 30 hours a week full-time to working on a startup and learning without giving up.
It takes 5 years to become an engineer, 7 to be a lawyer, and 10 to be a doctor, yet most founders quit after 2-3 years. Success usually takes 5-10 years, and those who persist often succeed.
Ready to join?
Appendix
Athena Founders vs University?
Instead of paying for university. Athena will pay you to learn.
Instead of learning about business from textbooks. You’ll actually go build a business.
Instead of learning from academics who’ve never built a company before. You’ll be mentored by successful founders.
Is what I’m learning in university actually useful?
What if we could learn how technology is used in industry and how companies are built before learning the academic theory to avoid learning useless stuff?
For example if I wanted to start a engineering, biotech or deeptech company I could:
Youtube “day in the life” & factor tour videos e.g: BioNTech, Tesla, Samsung, GE Aerospace
Study 100s of companies in the industry via Crunchbase & public company annual reports.
Talk to industry mentors on Linkedin and intro.co
Read science journal articles on nature and google scholar. Start with the editorial and summary articles that summarize the research (not the actual research papers).
Finally go study the curriculum once you know how it's applied
Start with Wikipedia and Coursera introductory courses
Find the Stanford, Harvard, or MIT undergraduate curriculum and read all the textbooks used in the course by searching for the pdf version on google.
Read research papers. Search using google scholar, free access using Sci Hub or Unpaywall.
Reach out to researchers that wrote the papers, collaborate on projects, or volunteer to work in their labs. Put together a team of researchers.
Raise venture capital funding if needed and start your company
What’s Athena’s ultimate goal?
Create a university for entrepreneurship and replace business degrees. Instead of learning about business, actually build a business.
Help 1 million founders start a business
Create Silicon Valley ecosystems all around the world
Create trillions in wealth and solve global poverty