Cohort 1 — July 2026

Most students never get access to a practitioner who will
sit with their work and tell them what is actually wrong with it.

A 6-week industry fellowship
built around real work.

Real assignments. Real mentor feedback. A published portfolio and a completion certificate for ambitious students at state schools, HBCUs, and regional universities.

The gapMost students graduate without ever having a practitioner review their work, challenge their thinking, or explain how business decisions actually get made.
The programSix weeks. One mentor. One real assignment per week. Weekly 60-minute calls. Everything you produce gets published publicly.
The outcomeBusiness fluency, a public portfolio, a GitHub with real work, and a mentor relationship that outlasts the program.

The 6-Week Program

Project-based, not lecture-based. Every week builds one business muscle and produces one artifact that goes on your public portfolio.

Week 1Business model

Follow the Money

Pick a real company. Map how it makes money, who pays, what they pay for, and where the profit actually is.

Week 2Customer thinking

Who Is the Customer, Really?

Talk to real users. Write a customer research piece. Learn the difference between what people say they want and what they do.

Week 3Market analysis

Who's Winning and Why

Map a competitive landscape. Three companies, one market. Explain who is winning and why, not just what they do.

Week 4Output

Build Something Real

Create a tangible artifact: a working script, a dataset, a product concept. Something that lives on GitHub or your portfolio.

Week 5Executive communication

The Memo

Write a one-page business recommendation. Problem. Context. Options. Recommendation. Risk. No fluff.

Week 6Synthesis

Final Presentation

Present a complete case study live. Business model, customer, market, your build, your recommendation. Published publicly.

What Fellows Get

Not a certificate from a platform. A body of public work and a practitioner who knows your name.

01

A public portfolio

Five published pieces of original work on a personal website you own. Not private assignments nobody reads.

02

Real work on GitHub

Code, datasets, or structured research that demonstrates how you think, not just what you studied.

03

Industry mentor feedback

Weekly 60-minute calls with a practitioner who reviews your work the way a manager would, not a professor.

04

AI Fellows Certificate

A signed completion certificate from the Program Director. Something you can show and point to.

Projects

Ideas, products, and tools across AI, SaaS, marketplaces, and education. Fellows pick one as their case study and run with it.

24 projects
ViaoLive

AI-powered suite for local service businesses: receptionist, call center, commerce, and marketing. Done-for-you, not do-it-yourself.

Local Business
StackSignalLive

Sales intelligence that turns a company name into a precision outreach brief using Apollo and Claude. Built at a hackathon.

Sales Tech
SaasMatchupLive

Three-sided marketplace for B2B SaaS stack decisions. Buyers get AI-powered recommendations, vendors get placement.

B2B SaaS
VantageLive

AI marketing intelligence agent for brand marketers. Cross-account benchmarks from 10,000+ real accounts.

MarTech
Porino AILive

Infrastructure patterns library for teams building multi-agent AI systems. Written for practitioners, not demos.

AI Infra
AgentLearnBuilding

Learning platform where AI agents teach people how to use AI, personalized to their background and career outcome.

EdTech
ReflexBuilding

Passive learning system that watches what you consume and turns it into targeted practice for the skills you are building.

Consumer
ThresholdBuilding

Mentorship initiative connecting Indian diaspora professionals with students in tier-3 cities in India aged 15-22.

Nonprofit
AI FellowsBuilding

This program. Industry fellowship connecting practitioners with ambitious students outside the standard pipeline.

Nonprofit
ObsGapBuilt

AI observability auditor. Connect your GitHub and an agent scans your actual codebase for AI and ML observability gaps.

Dev Tools
BlackmereBuilt

Browser game for kids. Play a plague doctor in 1348. Every decision requires structured reasoning, not gut feel.

Gaming
Leadgen SystemBuilt

Outbound lead generation pipeline chaining Apollo, Claude, and custom scoring. Validated with a real consulting client.

Sales Tech
Model RouterIdea

Smart API proxy that routes AI requests to the right model by cost, speed, and quality. BYOK, no config needed.

AI Infra
India Influence PlatformIdea

Two-sided marketplace connecting Indian micro-influencers and regional athletes with brands and sponsors.

Marketplace
Crowd CapitalIdea

Community-powered funding platform for early-stage startups. AI evaluates the opportunity, crowd backs the founder.

Fintech
Tycoon USIdea

Platform that lets solo founders run a one-person company by delegating operations to an AI CEO.

AI Ops
FigcareerIdea

AI-powered career roadmap generator for Gen Z. Input your skills and aspirations, get a personalized path forward.

Career Tech
RunwayIdea

Real-time job discovery platform for college students. Scrapes fresh listings, surfaces roles before they hit LinkedIn.

Career Tech
Structured Speech CoachIdea

Communication coaching for non-native English speakers in US corporate settings. AI feedback on structure and fluency.

EdTech
Agent StudioIdea

Done-for-you AI ops layer for solopreneurs: course sellers, newsletter writers, Shopify merchants. BYOK, $19/mo.

AI Ops
UTM GovernanceIdea

UTM parameter management and enforcement for marketing agencies. Consistent tracking across all campaigns.

MarTech
Vela / Entrepreneur OSIdea

VC evaluation platform that gives founders a structured investment decision in minutes using the same framework VCs use.

Fintech
Workspace Add-onsIdea

Portfolio of small, focused Google Workspace add-ons that automate repetitive tasks for business teams.

Productivity
PaarIdea

Community platform for digitizing, translating, and preserving Bengali literature. Starting with Jokher Dhan.

Culture

Writing

Essays on agentic systems, AI infrastructure, and how practitioners actually build with AI.

All posts →

The Mentor

Program Director

Director of Product, Data & AI
TapClicks

Fifteen years working across engineering, product, data, and AI at enterprise SaaS companies, early-stage startups, and consulting engagements. I know what companies look for when they hire, what business decisions look like from the inside, and what separates people who advance from people who stall.

Most of that knowledge is not taught in school. It lives in conversations between practitioners, the kind that happen in certain rooms and don't happen in others. AI Fellows is an attempt to change that.

Every week I review your work the way a manager would. I tell you what is sharp, what needs sharpening, and what a real business audience would think. That feedback compounds.

Apply for Cohort 1

Cohort 1 starts July 7, 2026. Limited spots. Remote. Free. The only requirement is commitment: show up every week, do the work, publish it.

Send an application

Email angshuman@ai-fellows.org with your name, college, major, year, and one paragraph on why you want this. No resume required.