A school for founders who build, not fundraise

Build companies
that print cash,
not pitch decks.

F-School is a tiny, invite-only program for bootstrapped founders building AI companies. No VCs. No demo days. No bullshit. Just the playbook to go from zero to revenue.

2–3
Companies per cohort
$5k
Tooling grant
5%
Equity. That's it.

This is not
an accelerator.

The Deal

$5k

Tooling Grant

Enough to cover Claude, Google Workspace, Stripe Atlas incorporation, domains, hosting, and everything you need for the first 6-12 months. No strings beyond the equity.

5%

Equity

A clean advisory equity agreement. No convertible notes. No SAFEs. No complicated cap tables. You keep 95% of your company from day one.

∞

The Network

Lifetime access to every founder who's been through F-School. A small, tight network of people who build the same way you do, with customers, not committees.

What you'll actually
learn.

Every module is taught by a working founder. Not a professor. Not an "entrepreneur in residence." Someone with skin in the game.

MODULE 01

Find a Problem Worth Solving

Stop building solutions looking for problems. Learn to identify painful, expensive problems that real people will pay to solve today, not after your Series A.

MODULE 02

Incorporate the Right Way

Stripe Atlas, QSBS election, trust setup, operating agreements. The boring legal stuff that saves you millions later. Done in a day.

MODULE 03

Build with AI, Ship Fast

Configure Claude as your co-engineer. Set up your dev stack. Go from idea to deployed product in weeks, not months. AI isn't a feature, it's your entire workflow.

MODULE 04

Sell Before You're Ready

Revenue cures everything. Learn to close your first 10 customers before the product is "done." Cold outreach, positioning, pricing. The uncomfortable stuff.

MODULE 05

Scale Without Permission

Content engines, referral loops, partnerships. Grow with customer cash, not venture capital. Build a business that funds its own growth.

MODULE 06

The Founder's Operating System

Time management, mental health, decision-making frameworks. The stuff nobody talks about when you're building alone at 2am.

How it actually works.

8 weeks. Small group. Structured curriculum. No fluff.

Format

Group + 1:1 + Async

Weekly group sessions where the cohort works through the curriculum together. Weekly 1:1s with your instructor for your specific business. Async feedback and support between sessions. You get all three.

Duration

8 Weeks

One module roughly every week, plus buffer for going deep where you need it. Short enough to maintain intensity. Long enough to get from zero to something real.

Location

Remote. Always.

No relocating. No coworking space. Build from wherever you are. The cohort meets over video. The work happens in your world.

What if I don't have an idea yet?

That's fine. Module 01 is specifically about finding a problem worth solving. Having an idea is preferred but not required. What matters is that you're ready to commit to building something real.

What if some founders are further along than others?

The group sessions cover the curriculum. The 1:1s meet you where you are. A founder with paying customers will get different coaching than one still searching for a problem. The cohort learns from each other's differences.

What happens after the 8 weeks?

You keep building. You stay in the network. You have lifetime access to every F-School founder, past and future. The 8 weeks are the foundation. The network is forever.

Who teaches?

The core curriculum is taught by working founders who are actively building companies. For specific modules, we bring in advisors and operators with deep expertise in their field. Everyone who teaches at F-School has done the thing they're teaching, not just studied it.

This is for you if:

You have a chip on your shoulder.

You didn't grow up with a trust fund or a warm intro to Sequoia. You've always had to work harder, and that's exactly why you'll win.

You're already building with AI.

You're not AI-curious. You're AI-native. You've shipped things with Claude, GPT, or open-source models. You just need the business playbook.

You're high agency.

You don't wait for permission, mentors, or funding. You figure things out. You just want someone who's done it to compress the learning curve.

You want to own what you build.

You've seen what happens when founders hand over the keys to VCs. Not you. You want a business that pays you, not a board.

F-School Founder

Andy Wilson

Andy Wilson

LinkedIn →

Military brat.
Problem child.
Founder.

"If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent." - Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia
The early years

Grew up in a military family. New school every 3–4 years. No trust fund. No connections. Couldn't sit still in class, spent most weekends in detention, and narrowly avoided juvenile hall more than once. Started businesses at 10: landscaping, then anything that paid: paper routes, pizza delivery, bagel making, tuxedo salesman, American Eagle stocker, concessions cashier at Wolftrap, waiter, busboy, door-to-door siding sales, windows telesales (cold calling), lifeguarding, and a brief stint selling . The hustle was always there.

The detour

Played lacrosse in high school. Recruited to play at Maryland, until a shoulder injury senior year ended everything. Scrambled to find a new path. Landed at the University of Kentucky, then transferred to Virginia Tech, where I fell into computer science and web design in the late '90s. Graduated in 2001 with a degree in Management Science, right into the dot-com bust and 9/11. Zero tech jobs. Took a job at a printing company that was literally printing emails for lawyers to read.

The build: Logik Systems → Logikcull

At that printing company, I reconnected with fellow VT alum Sheng Yang. We left to start Logik Systems, an eDiscovery data processing company. No investors. No funding. Just customers. We built it to millions in profit, 100% bootstrapped.

2009: Inc. 500 #181, Fastest Growing Companies
The pivot

That same year, we saw the cloud coming. We reconfigured hundreds of hand-built servers and built Logikcull.com, the first self-service eDiscovery application. Moved the company from DC to California. Eventually raised ~$40M from Storm Ventures (Jason Lemkin [now at SaaStr], Alex Mendez), OpenView Ventures (Blake Bartlett), and NEA (Chetan Puttagunta [now Partner at Benchmark], Colin Bryant [now COO at Coatue]). I learned the SV GTM playbook for scaling from $1M to $100M. In 2019 we rebuilt the entire go-to-market around a flywheel model. Two years of painful rewiring that changed everything.

The exit

In 2023, we sold Logikcull for $280 million, all cash. Today it does over $100M in ARR and is the #1 self-service eDiscovery platform in the world, serving thousands of customers from solo practitioners to Fortune 10 companies and the US government.

$280M exit · $100M+ ARR · Bootstrapped foundation
Now

After the exit, I started advising early-stage founders, the ones who remind me of myself. The ones building with AI, bootstrapping with customer cash, and refusing to play the VC game. That's why I built F-School. I also recently cofounded Geocast.ai, because I can't stop building. That's the disease.

Do NOT apply if:

You can't handle honest feedback.

You think you already know everything.

You're looking for a shortcut to getting rich.

You'd exploit customers or employees to hit a number.

You have a trust fund and a comfortable Plan B.

Still here? Good. 2 to 3 spots. Fall 2026.

Applications close August 1

Before you apply

This application is designed to filter.

You're about to walk through five statements about how F-School works. At each step, you'll have two choices: keep going or walk away. There's no shame in walking away. It just means this isn't the right fit. We'd rather you find that out now than in week three.

Gate 01 of 05

I will give you brutally honest feedback. Often.

Not to be cruel. Because time is the only resource that matters and I'm not going to waste yours by telling you what you want to hear. If your idea sucks, I'll say so. If your pitch is weak, I'll tear it apart so we can rebuild it. If you can't handle direct feedback from someone who wants you to succeed, this will be a miserable experience.

Gate 02 of 05

You must be willing to admit you don't know what you don't know.

The most dangerous founders aren't the ones who lack knowledge. They're the ones who think they already have it. F-School is for people who are smart enough to be capable but humble enough to be teachable. If you're coming in to validate what you already believe, you're wasting a seat.

Gate 03 of 05

There is no shortcut to building something real.

This is not a "launch in a weekend and flip it" program. You're here to build a company that generates revenue from real customers solving real problems. It will take longer than you think. It will be harder than you expect. The reward is a business that pays you for decades, not a TechCrunch headline that evaporates in a week.

Gate 04 of 05

Your customers and your people are sacred.

We don't build dark patterns. We don't exploit users. We don't treat employees like expendable resources. The company you build here will make money, good money, by creating so much value for customers that they can't imagine going back. If your instinct is to extract value rather than create it, we're not aligned.

Gate 05 of 05

This works best when there is no Plan B.

The founders who build the most extraordinary companies are the ones who have to. Not because they want to be entrepreneurs. Because they can't afford not to be. If you have a trust fund, a fallback offer from McKinsey, or parents who'll cover rent indefinitely, you might build something good. But the founders I'm looking for build something great because the alternative is unacceptable.

You made it. Now show me.

Five gates down. This is the real application. Be direct. Be honest. Write like you talk. Not like you're pitching a VC. I read every single one of these myself.

About You
The Idea
If you don't have an idea yet, that's fine. Tell me the problem space you're obsessed with.
0 / 1,500
Name a real type of person or company. "Everyone" is not a customer.
0 / 1,000
You as a Founder
I want to know what you're made of. This matters more than your resume.
0 / 1,500
Did you grow up with it? Without it? What does financial freedom mean to you?
0 / 1,000
0 / 1,000
One Last Thing
There are no wrong answers. But boring ones won't help you.
0 / 1,000

You'll hear back within 2 weeks. If I want to talk, we'll schedule a 30-minute call. No group interviews. No panels. Just a conversation.

✓

Got it. Stay sharp.

Your application is in. I read every one myself. No assistants, no AI screening. If there's a fit, you'll hear from me within two weeks for a one-on-one conversation. In the meantime, keep building. Don't wait for permission.