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What this course is
You will build and launch an AI agent product, get real users, and try to get one of them to pay. You do it in a team of two or three, on a weekly cadence, in public in front of nine other teams.
This is not a survey of agent architectures and it is not a business plan course. There is no midterm and no final exam. There is a number you report every week and a room full of people who notice when it does not move.
What it costs you
- Roughly 10 hours a week outside class. More in weeks 6, 7, 12, and 13.
- Your product must be live and used by someone outside the class by week 7. This deadline does not move.
- You report a number publicly every week, including the weeks it is bad.
- You are in the room. Every team presents every week, so an absence is a hole in the session.
If any of that is a problem, take a different course. You will be happier and so will your teammates.
Admission
You apply as a team. There is no individual admission. A team is 2 or 3 people. Every member submits their own form, names the others, and is interviewed. There is no solo option.
Teams are admitted whole or not at all. A team of three is admitted as three or rejected as three. We never split a team and never admit two of you. Your teammates' applications are now your application, so choose them accordingly. A person who does not submit their own form by the deadline is not on your team.
No team yet? Find one on the discussion board. You do not need to be enrolled to join it. Post what you build, what problem you care about, and a link to something you have shipped, then go talk to people. This is deliberately your job and not the instructor's. Finding two people who will commit a semester to an idea is the first real test of whether you can start a company, and it is the easy version of that test.
One round, one deadline. See the application page for the form, the questions, and the dates.
The form asks for a link to something you have built, the problem you want to work on and who you would sell to, whether you have talked to anyone who has that problem, what you personally build or sell, your realistic weekly hours, and a commitment to stay enrolled. Shipping evidence and evidence of customer contact are weighted heaviest. Credentials and GPA are not considered.
Interviews are 10 minutes, the same four questions for every team, scored by the instructor against a fixed rubric written before any application is read. Every team member speaks.
Teams
- Size is 2 or 3. Not one, not four.
- Teams are fixed at admission. You were admitted as a unit, so you cannot re-form into different teams once the term starts. If your team is genuinely broken, talk to the instructor rather than reshuffling on your own.
- If you lose a member: a team of three continues as two. A team of two that drops to one joins another team as a third. Because admission is by team, there is no bench of individuals to backfill from. This is one more reason your choice of teammates is the most consequential decision you make before the term starts.
- Idea veto. In week 1 the instructor will veto ideas that cannot reach real users in twelve weeks. Regulated health, hardware, and anything with an enterprise sales cycle longer than a term are out. This protects you from spending the term on something structurally unwinnable.
Grading
| Weight | Component |
|---|---|
| 40% | Weekly execution. Eleven updates, weeks 2 through 12, lowest one dropped. Graded on whether you shipped, talked to users, and reported honestly. Not on whether the number went up. |
| 20% | Contribution. How useful your questions and critiques are to other teams, in the round and in deep dives. Sitting silently through nine other teams every week fails this component. |
| 20% | Demo Day. |
| 20% | Final submission. Product, writeup, what you learned. |
| 0% | Traction. Deliberately zero. See below. |
Zero percent of your grade is traction. A team that runs five honest experiments and concludes their idea was wrong will outscore a team that quietly stalls and shows a polished demo at the end. This is deliberate. The moment your grade depends on your metrics, you will hide bad news, and hiding bad news is the one thing that makes this format useless.
Late updates are not accepted. It is five lines and you get one drop.
Prerequisites
There are no formal course prerequisites. Admission is by application and interview instead. You need to be able to build and ship a working product without being taught how, because this course does not teach it. Prior entrepreneurial experience is helpful but not required.
Policies
Using AI. Expected. You are building agents. In the final submission, note which parts were generated and which were written.
Intellectual property. You own what you build. The university's default position is that student work created without significant use of university resources belongs to the students. Talk to Columbia Technology Ventures before you incorporate, and settle equity with your teammates before you launch in week 7, not after Demo Day.
Conflicts of interest. The instructor is a startup founder and advises and invests in early-stage companies. Visiting mentors and Demo Day judges are active investors. No mentor or judge will discuss investment or recruiting with any team until final grades are submitted. If you think a mentor has a conflict with your idea, tell the instructor and that mentor is recused from your deep dives and office hours.
Privacy. Applications and interview scores are education records, read by the instructor and the teaching staff. You consent to this by applying.
Attendance. Two absences. Tell the class in advance. The point of being here is watching the other nine teams, not delivering your own four minutes.
Team conflict. Tell the instructor in week 4, not week 13. Almost every team problem is fixable early and almost none are fixable late.
Collaboration and Academic Honesty
Please read the Computer Science Department’s Academic Honesty Policies & Procedures and Columbia College and Columbia Engineering’s Academic Integrity policies.
What your team turns in must be your team's own work. Cite all sources you reference, including conversations with other teams and any tools or code you did not write. Using AI is expected and does not need citing beyond the note required in the final submission. Misrepresenting your metrics, your users, or what you shipped is the one form of dishonesty this course cannot tolerate, because the entire format depends on honest weekly reporting.