Cohort 5

Stop chasing tricks. Master the durable skills and vetted tools to build real-world AI solutions.

Yuzheng Sun, PhD

Statsig.com Data Scientist | Ex Tencent Director | Ex Meta/Amazon/BCG | Tech channel with 200k+ subscribers and 5k+ paid members

Yan Wang, PhD

Applied Scientist @ Samsara | Olympic Torchbearer | Ex Pinterest/Microsoft | Ex Tech blogger with 100k+ subscribers

From Users to Builders: A Practical Path to Real AI Expertise

Amazon

Microsoft

Pinterest

Tencent

If you're like many ambitious professionals, you're not new to AI. You use the tools, follow the news, and see the potential. Yet, you feel a persistent gap between your current usage and what's truly possible. You probably recognize these challenges: 1. Your AI usage feels ad-hoc. You can write impressive prompts and accomplish isolated tasks, but you lack a systematic way to build reliable, scalable solutions that integrate into complex workflows. You see impressive demos online but don't have a clear path to building them yourself. 2. You're struggling to distinguish signal from noise. The relentless stream of new models, research papers, and "ultimate guides" is impossible to keep up with. You worry that you're investing time in learning skills and tools that will become obsolete in a few months. You need a way to identify the foundational principles that last. 3. You see a massive career opportunity but aren't sure how to seize it. You don't just want to be a user of AI; you want to be the person who can confidently lead projects, architect solutions, and guide your team. You want to become the go-to expert, but you need a structured path to get there. If this sounds familiar, it's because you've moved beyond the beginner stage. You're ready to tackle the next set of challenges, and that is precisely where our course begins. It is built on a single yet prfound premise: the most effective way to master AI is to build with it. We teach you how to create practical applications and then connect them to the underlying research. This ensures you not only know how to build, but why your solutions work, allowing you to adapt to any new tool or model in the future. More importantly, building with AI energizes you to keep learning, develops your taste, and enables you to seize opportunities. What You Will Be Able to DoThis course is about acquiring practical capabilities. By the end of this course, you will be able to: 1. Build and Deploy Functional AI Prototypes You will move from ad-hoc prompting to engineering reliable systems. You will learn to write code that integrates LLMs with other tools and data sources to solve real-world problems. Specifically:- Build a Q&amp;A bot over your own documents (e.g., Confluence, internal wikis) using AI native methods beyond RAG.- Create automated workflows, such as generating a weekly summary report from Jira tickets or processing inbound emails.- Connect AI to external tools and APIs to perform actions, moving beyond simple text generation.- Evaluate, debug and improve the output of LLMs in a systematic way. 2. Develop a Durable Framework for Learning New Concepts You will learn how to distinguish between temporary trends and fundamental principles. This will enable you to learn effectively, cut through the noise, and focus on what truly matters. Specifically:- Understand the core mechanics of LLMs, such as context windows and attention, and how they impact performance.- Confidently assess new AI models, papers, and tools to determine their actual value for your work.- Develop a first-principles approach to prompt engineering, moving beyond simple templates.Identify the inherent limitations of current AI (e.g., hallucination, reasoning failures) and design systems to mitigate them. 3. Become the Go-To AI Strategist in Your Role You will gain the confidence and clarity to lead. This course provides the structure to not only enhance your own work but also to guide your team and organization. Specifically:- Identify and scope high-value AI opportunities within your own business workflow.- Lead an AI project from an idea to a working prototype.- Clearly articulate the capabilities, costs, and limitations of a proposed GenAI solution to stakeholders.- Establish best practices for integrating AI into your team's existing processes. How You Will Learn: A System for MasteryOur course is a comprehensive system designed for deep, practical learning. It combines live instruction, hands-on application, and an extensive knowledge base to ensure you can build with confidence. 1. Live Sessions: The Core Framework Your learning is anchored by four hours of live sessions. These sessions are not about a collection of tricks; they are designed to give you a durable mental framework. We distill the most critical information on how AI works, teach you how to learn effectively in this rapidly changing field, and provide concrete principles to guide you from your first line of code to a functional application. The goal is to equip you to push through challenges and build with sound judgment. 2. Projects &amp; Office Hours: Real-World Application Knowledge is solidified through hands-on projects and direct support. You will work on building applications relevant to your daily work, pushing past self-imposed limitations to see what is truly possible. In our office hours, we provide personalized guidance to unblock you and demonstrate advanced problem-solving in real-time. We use cutting-edge tools like Cursor and Claude Code to build solutions live, showing you how to leverage the most powerful development workflows available today. 3. Reference Materials: A Library for Builders Your learning is supported by an extensive library of original materials. Developed with over 300 hours of effort and spanning more than 200 pages, this resource is your detailed guide for independent building. It is continuously updated to stay current. When you encounter a specific problem weeks or months after the course, this library is designed to give you the concrete answers and guidance you need to solve it. Join a Professional Network of 5,000+ AI BuildersYour enrollment includes lifetime access to our private network. This is a community for sharing technical solutions, discussing new research, and advancing your career alongside other serious practitioners. The community has a dedicated Q&amp;A section and we will answer your questions there even after the cohort. Ready to Build?We recommend the immersive experience of our cohort-based course. A self-paced version is also available if your schedule requires flexibility at https://www.superlinear.academy/c/ai/. All Maven students receive complimentary access to the self-paced version, and lifetime update of new course materials. Who This Course Is Not ForWe are committed to transformative outcomes, which means being transparent about who will get the most value from this demanding program. This course may not be the right fit if: 1. You are completely new to programming. This is not a 'learn to code' course. While you don’t need to be an expert developer, you should be comfortable with basic programming concepts and at least know how to install Python. Being completely new to programming also suggest that you job doesn't require automation, and it may not benefit much from AI. 2. You are looking for a passive, theoretical overview of AI. This is an intense, hands-on program that requires active building. Our methodology is centered on learning by doing. If your primary goal is to listen to lectures without writing code, you will not get the intended value. 3. You want to train a foundational model from scratch. This course teaches you how to build valuable applications with LLMs, not how to build the models themselves. When the web browser emerged, the great opportunity was to build websites, not competing browsers. We believe the same is true for AI today, and our focus is entirely on application. 4. You are looking for a list of "100 best prompts" or quick hacks. We focus on teaching the durable, first-principles understanding needed to build real applications. We do not teach temporary tricks even when they may be desired at times. 5. You cannot identify any problems you want to solve. The course teaches you how to build solutions. If you have no professional or personal context where you can apply these powerful new skills, the learning will remain abstract and you won't benefit from the core, practical value of the program.

The future is here, but unevenly distributed

You are using AI, but feel like you can be much better at it. You want to apply AI to your daily work and actually boost productivity.

You want to understand what AI is, how to learn it well, and where it falls short—so you don’t waste time on things that won’t matter.

You want to become the go-to-expert in AI and capture this opportunity of a lifetime.

Who is this course for

What you’ll get out of this course

Go beyond basic tools. You'll learn to code and deploy functional prototypes land automated workflows using APIs, latest tools, and advanced frameworks.

Build Real-World AI Solutions, Not Just Prompts

Stop chasing fleeting trends. We teach you the core principles of LLMs so you can confidently evaluate new models and future-proof your skills.

A Lasting Framework to Navigate AI's Future

Learn to identify high-value opportunities, lead AI projects from idea to prototype, and clearly articulate strategy to your stakeholders.

Become the Go-To AI Expert on Your Team

The AI tool landscape is noisy. We save you hundreds of hours by rigorously testing the latest tools, showing you which ones work best for specific tasks in our live office hours and community Q&amp;A during and after the class.

Leverage the Best AI Tools, Vetted for You

Receive our 200+ page, continuously updated knowledge base. This is your go-to reference for solving building challenges long after the course ends. Join a community of 5,000+ like minded AI trailblazers.

A Lifetime Library and Community of Builder Knowledge

We update course materials with every cohort. We constantly try out different tools and share what's working.

Lifetime access of Q&A and lastest tools

We created a stand-alone community that merges all Maven cohorts. We are dead serious in cultivating a community of builders.

Community of peers

200 pages of library for Builders

Share your new skills with your employer or on LinkedIn.

Certificate of completion

Provide a brief description for each module as a way to sell the value of what students will be learning throughout the course.

First Module

Second Module

Third Module

Course syllabus

AI Company Builder & Investor (Landing AI, XVerse) | Author of the Bestselling Book 'Reimagined: Building Products with Generative AI'

Director of Software Engineering @ Salesforce | Ex-Google, Ex-Microsoft

What people are saying

Meet your instructor

Walkthrough building prototypes together. Learn their implications through LLM research and our technical insights.

Live Sessions

Content similar to the live sessions without the need for interactions. Fit your busy schedule and learn on your own pace.

Offline/Async Courses


Build your own GenAI solution for your particular use case. Apply the tools and mindsets learned in class

Weekly projects

Get feedback and coaching on your class project. Learn what other students have built.

Office hours

Course schedule

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Active hands-on learning

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Interactive and project-based

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Course completed by

About this course

Get notified about the next cohort

Learn from live sessions