High School Elective · Grades 9–12
You won't study business this year — you'll build one. A real venture, taken the whole way: problem, offer, brand, launch attempt. And at Demo Day, you'll defend the evidence — whatever the market said back.
Week 01 · Begin With the End · Quarter 1This year you don't take a class — you join a studio. Pods, real seats, one venture carried across four quarters, and a Demo Day where you defend the evidence.
A real offer, priced honestly, and a real launch attempt — you'll practice selling to real people. Whether the market says yes isn't the grade; what you learn from the result is.
A portfolio of evidence — research, brand, landing page, campaign data, launch report — not a participation grade.
The discipline to verify, cite, and own every output — trained through an AI License you earn, level by level.
The verse opens the hour. Then a quick round: your name + one thing you'd love to create or fix in the world.
The destination is real. The campaign work, Demo Day, the portfolio — none of it is decoration. It's the standard this course builds to, and this year you build toward your own.
We begin with the end on purpose. When you know what you're working toward, every week has a why — nothing in this course is busywork.
And we start today. Not with a textbook — with the professional habit: by the end of this hour, your problem backlog exists and has its first entries.
An agency is a team of specialists who take a real problem and turn it into something real. That's us — and every seat has a job. Teams come soon; today, start imagining your seat.
Every builder keeps one. Real agencies log every problem before they solve any of them. Your sketchbook is your personal backlog — problems, sketches, ideas, all of it.
Observe is the foundation. Problems hide in plain sight — frustrations, workarounds, "I wish someone would just…" Once you start looking, they're everywhere.
It feeds everything. The problems you capture become the raw material for everything the agency builds this year.
For each: the class names one thing that's strong (the cheer) and asks one sharpening question — "Who exactly has that problem?"
The sketchbook is each student's first artifact of the year. Log it before anyone leaves the hour.
Sign the roster, claim your wall — then hunt across the safari categories with your capture sheet. Triage at the end: circle the ONE you'd bet on.
Your starred problems go on screen — save 2–3 designs that make you stop. Then write your postcard from Demo Day, present tense.
Sketchbook, safari sheet, saves, and vision card photographed in. 2 hours logged. One word out the door.
Next week: Inspiration & Design Thinking — one problem from your sketchbooks goes live, and you learn to read design through six lenses. Sketchbooks come to every class from now on.
Own It — I am the proof.