Foundation. Friends. The frame for what comes next.
Five weeks online. A small cohort of bright minds ages 9 to 14 who finally do not feel alone. This is the foundation. Time management. Journaling and self-knowledge. Decision-making. The truth about success and failure. And a clear preview of where it all leads in the two year program.
We do not try to ship a startup in five weeks. We build the foundation that everything after rests on. And we make sure your kid walks out with friends like them, finally.
Mid-June to Late July 2026
5 live sessions + async
9 to 14 (gifted / highly gifted)
Foundation. Cohort. No shipping pressure.
Here is the part nobody likes to say out loud. Bright kids are often the loneliest kids in the room. They have ideas no one around them is curious about. They notice things their friends do not. They get bored faster. School barely scratches the itch. Summer makes it worse, because the only thing left is video games and the same six neighborhood kids.
Parents feel it too. You start summer with good intentions. A sports camp. The "essential summer reading" list. A coding class. Maybe music. Maybe a math packet to stay sharp. Doing something feels safer than nothing. By mid-July, the same three video games are on, the reading list is untouched, and you hand your child a book hoping it sticks. It does not stick.
Founders Liftoff is built to fix both halves of this. For your child. Five weeks with smart kids exactly like them. Real friends. Real conversations. Real respect for their actual mind. For you. A foundation summer that sets up the school year and previews the two year program that follows.
This is not a startup bootcamp. We do not try to ship a company in five weeks. We build the foundation. Self-knowledge. Decision-making. Mindset for the long game. The friends who finally get it.
The summer is the foundation, not the finish line. Five weeks to know yourself, find your people, and set the path. The shipping, the AI agents, the real customers all come in the two year program after this.
The cohort meets live each week for a 90-minute session, plus a weekly mentor office hour and an async cohort channel where kids talk all week. Two of the eight calendar weeks are intentional "skip weeks" so they have time to journal, sit with the ideas, and let things settle. The arc lands on a path-forward showcase where each child commits to where they are headed next.
Most bright kids never get formally taught how their own brain operates. Week one is the foundation. The 11 executive function skills. Two dimensions (Thinking and Doing). The personal weekly system every cohort member uses for the rest of the summer.
Bright kids have a lot going on inside their heads. Most of it never gets written down. Week two teaches the most underrated tool in the operator's kit. Daily journaling. Voice notes. Self documentation. And then how to use AI as a mirror to read your own thinking back to you. The guidance every founder eventually finds, your kid starts finding now.
Week of June 29. No live session. Keep journaling. Mentor office hours stay open. Cohort chat stays alive.
Founders do not invent problems. They notice them. Week three trains the eye. How to walk into a room and see friction. How to read a market. How to interview a real adult like a researcher. How to ask better questions than the people around you.
Here is a fact. Most "successful" people are miserable. The award, the job, the school, the milestone. None of it makes the inside quiet on its own. Week four is the conversation nobody has with bright kids. How to handle wins. How to handle losses. Why both are building blocks of the person they are becoming. And how the experiences they are collecting right now actually play out in the next 10 years of life. Real talk, from real operators.
Week of July 20. No live session. Journaling continues. Cohort chat is open. Mentors run extra office hours for path forward conversations.
The last week is about choosing. Each child takes what they have learned about themselves, picks a direction for the school year, and presents it to the cohort and their family. No "ship a startup" pressure. Just clarity. Then we share what comes next in the two year program, and how every kid in the cohort can stay connected through the school year, even if they do not enroll.
No week is one dimensional. Each session, each piece of homework, and each conversation touches three tracks at once. The foundation has to be built across all three or it does not hold.
Most gifted kids do not have a smarts problem. They have an executive-function problem. Their brain runs ahead of their behavioral habits, school stops being a workout, and the operator-layer never gets built. Founders Liftoff teaches the layer explicitly. The framework is grounded in the well-known Smart but Scattered research literature, adapted for kids ages 9 to 14, and for the way gifted kids actually struggle.
We use the framework's five principles as the bedrock of how we teach: do not assume the skills are there, teach them explicitly, support external before internal, assist without controlling, and fade support gradually as mastery grows. This is the same approach therapists and EF coaches use. Translated for a cohort of gifted founders in training.
Gifted kids are not addicted to games because they love games. They are addicted because games are the only loop in their week that gives them clear progress, clear feedback, and clear rewards. Liftoff borrows the loop and points it somewhere real.
Show up. Journal. Ask a real question. Interview an adult. Finish a habit streak. Help a peer. Every action earns growth tokens. The leaderboard is live for the whole cohort to see.
Tokens cash in for 1:1 mentor sessions, advanced AI tools, founder-fireside seats, swag, and prizes. Some are individual. Some require the cohort to pool together.
Best Journaler. Most Curious Question. Biggest Growth. Most Helpful to the Cohort. Cohort MVP. Real awards. Real medals. And the top performers get an automatic seat in the Fall cohort of Raising Future Founders.
90-minute facilitated sessions with the founder + guest mentors. Small cohort. Camera on. Active participation.
Weekly drop-in or 1:1 time with the team. For the journaling, the questions, the path forward, or just to talk.
A private cohort chat where the kids talk all week. Peer feedback, journaling prompts, and friendships that last.
2–3 short fireside sessions with real founders, investors, or AI builders. Q&A run by the kids.
A printable and digital time-block, habit tracker, and journaling toolkit. Fit to your child's executive function profile.
Real-time progress, real rewards, real friendly competition. The dopamine the games stole, pointed somewhere that compounds.
A live final cohort showcase to parents and invited mentors. Each kid shares their direction. Recordings. Memories of the cohort that started it all.
Top performers are invited to the two year Raising Future Founders program starting in the fall. No pressure to commit.
You are not on the sidelines. We host a parent kickoff call, a mid-program update, and the Path Forward showcase finale. Plus optional virtual parent meet-ups during the program for the families that want to build their own peer group.
Founders Liftoff is the small ticket entry point. A foundation that gives you and your child a real taste of how we work, with friends they have been missing for years. The two year Raising Future Founders cohort starting in the fall is where the real building happens. Top performers from Liftoff get an automatic invite. Everyone else can apply.
The Operator Year. Build with AI. Ship the first small thing. Get the first real customer. Start the network. Real reps, with real support.
The Founder Year. Real revenue. AI agents as a team. Quarterly demo days. A personal portfolio that follows them into college applications and beyond.
Cohort friendships. Mentor relationships. Annual gatherings. The kind of network most adults do not have at 22, let alone at 14.
You do not have to commit to the two year program now. Liftoff is the foundation. If it clicks, the next door is right there. If it does not, your child still walks away with the EF tools, the journaling habit, and a small group of friends who actually get it.
Let me tell you why I am building this.
I am an investor and a tech founder. I am 47. I have spent my career around startups. Early stage, scaling, fundraising, hiring, failing, restarting. I see, every single day, what makes one founder go on to build something real, and what makes another founder, equally smart and equally credentialed, quietly stall out in their twenties.
It is almost never about intelligence. It is about three things. Executive function. Judgment. The habit of shipping in public. Almost no school formally teaches them. The founders I back who do well were not the "smartest" kids in their class. They were the ones who, somewhere along the way, learned to operate.
My son Abdullah is 10. He is a gifted student. He is the chess champion of the state of Nevada. He has already started building with AI. He is exactly the kind of kid who, left to school and screens alone, would arrive at 22 with a great transcript and a soft operating system. I am not willing to let that happen. Not to him. Not to the other kids I keep meeting who are just like him.
Founders Liftoff is the program I wish existed when I started looking for it. It is my brainchild. Built on what I see in my work every day. Built on what I am living with at home every night. It is the first step toward something much bigger. A real online program, running alongside school, that prepares gifted kids for the world they are actually walking into. Not the one their grandparents trained for.
If you have read this far, you are probably the kind of parent I am building this for. I hope you apply.
About 3 to 5 hours per week. One 90 minute live session, one mentor office hour, plus 1 to 3 hours of journaling, reading, and habit work. Skip weeks are lighter on live and heavier on reflection.
Get in touch. We hold the line at 9 to 14 for the standard cohort because the social, EF, and cognitive range really matters at this age. We make narrow exceptions for clearly ready 8 year olds and a separate older cohort track for 15 and up.
Both. The frame is "smart but scattered." Kids whose intelligence is real, whose challenge in school is underwhelming, and whose habits and direction need a serious upgrade. 2e kids (gifted plus ADHD, anxiety, dyslexia, autism, etc.) are explicitly welcome. The EF and journaling work is the part of the program that usually moves their lives most.
Right. We do not pretend you can ship a real company in five weeks. That is a parent fantasy that sets kids up to feel like failures. Liftoff is the foundation. Self knowledge, decision making, friends, and the mindset for the long game. The shipping, the AI agents, the real customers, the real revenue all live in the two year program that picks up after.
A personal EF playbook. A working journaling habit. A 90 day plan for the school year. The "path forward" one pager they built themselves. A small group of friends who actually get them. And honest clarity about what they want to do next.
Pricing varies by cohort and includes mentorship density. Limited scholarship seats are available for families who cannot afford the full tuition but whose child clearly belongs in the cohort. Apply and we will be honest with you.
Because the future they are training for is virtual-first, and because virtual lets us pull a real cohort of extraordinary kids from anywhere on earth. Not just from one city.
Cohort 1 is small on purpose. We accept families who want their child to spend five weeks of summer with smart friends, real mentors, and the foundation that everything after rests on. If that is you, apply. We will read every word.