Flagship Program
Build With Me — a real founder journey, walked together.
An open community of practice for students, aspiring entrepreneurs, and career explorers. Built around the lived experience of building KinTrades — translated into teaching material, conversations, and a cohort that comes together quarterly.
The Promise
Every decision, cost, mistake, and shortcut is documented as teaching material. The curriculum is free. The story is honest.
— Build With Me
01 · What You'll Learn
Build, validate, and launch — with real skills, not abstractions.
Across cohort gatherings, the open curriculum, and the Stories archive, we cover both the technical and business skills needed to ship something real.
Technical Skills
- Modern web development (frontend and backend)
- Database design and management
- Cloud deployment and DevOps basics
- User authentication and security
- API design and integration
- Testing and debugging strategies
Product & Business
- Customer discovery and validation
- Product design and user experience
- MVP scoping and prioritization
- Pricing strategy and revenue models
- Go-to-market planning and execution
- Business entity setup and legal foundations
- Analytics and measuring success
Founder Mindset
- Time management and productivity
- Dealing with uncertainty and setbacks
- Iterating on customer feedback
- Building in public
- Legal basics (terms, privacy, structure)
02 · The Path · Areas We Cover
From idea to launch — and what comes after.
Across cohort gatherings, written guides, and the Stories archive, we walk through every phase of building something real. Each area builds on the last.
Phase 01
Foundation & Business Setup
Validate your idea & set up for success
Before writing a single line of code, validate your idea with real customers and establish your business foundation.
- Business formation (LLC, EIN) and legal structure
- Customer discovery interviews
- Interview guides and outreach scripts
- Competitive analysis and market research
- User personas and journey maps
- Measurable success metrics and KPIs
- Domain purchase & professional email setup
- Tool selection: GitHub, IDE, collaboration
- Writing your Product Requirements Document (PRD)
- Accessibility & inclusion requirements
Phase 02
Design & Architecture
Design your product & choose your stack
Design your user experience and make informed decisions about technology choices and infrastructure.
- Wireframing and prototyping your MVP
- Defining MVP scope and core features
- Cloud platform selection (Azure, AWS, GCP)
- Multi-environment strategy (DEV/Staging/PROD)
- Choosing the right tech stack
- Development environment setup
- Repository structure & version control
- Security & data protection planning
- Licensing & subscription costs
- Database design and system architecture
Phase 03
MVP Development
Build your product, hands on
Build your MVP with guided sessions on solution architecture decisions and feature implementation.
- Data collection strategy (forms, APIs, inputs)
- User intake flow design & implementation
- Workflow automation (low-code vs custom)
- Database implementation & data modeling
- Landing page with email capture
- CI/CD pipeline setup (GitHub Actions)
- Authentication & authorization
- Multi-environment deployment
Phase 04
Testing & Launch Prep
Polish & prepare for launch
Ensure your MVP meets professional quality standards and prepare your go-to-market strategy.
- Comprehensive test checklists
- Functional, integration, regression testing
- Accessibility testing (WCAG 2.1 AA)
- Cross-browser & mobile device testing
- Security hardening basics
- Performance optimization & load testing
- Pricing strategy and revenue models
- Landing page and marketing materials
- Email marketing and early user outreach
- Beta testing with real users
- Terms of Service & Privacy Policy creation
Phase 05
Launch & Scale
Go live & grow your user base
Launch to production, get your first customers, and learn to iterate based on real user feedback.
- Public launch strategy and execution
- Production deployment & smoke testing
- Monitoring, logging & alerting setup
- Customer onboarding and support
- Analytics & measuring user behavior
- Support processes & incident response
- Pilot user feedback collection
- Post-launch optimization & scaling
- Next steps: growth, sustainability, scaling
03 · How It Works
A community of practice. Open. Quarterly. Yours.
Build With Me is not a course you finish. It's a cohort you join — built around the reality that founders, students, and career explorers all have full lives.
The model
- It starts with one session. Attend a kickoff session like the one coming up in July — that's how you become part of Build With Me.
- From there, the cohort gathers quarterly. Live group sessions four times a year to share progress, work through blockers, and learn together.
- Open curriculum in between. The full Build With Me material — written guides, templates, example repos — stays available to you. Read it at your pace.
- The Stories archive documents the real KinTrades founder journey as supplemental material.
- Async community support for questions, peer help, and conversation between gatherings.
Commitment: as much or as little as fits your life. Show up for the quarterly cohort gatherings; engage with the material on your own terms.
How to Join · The Next Session
This is the room where it starts.
Attend a kickoff session and you're part of Build With Me. From there, you join the cohort for quarterly gatherings going forward.
Cohort 4 · Dates being scheduled
Build With Me — Next Kickoff
An introduction to Build With Me for middle school, high school, college, and post-secondary students exploring entrepreneurship, technology, and what it actually takes to build something real.
Three cohorts have been delivered to date — two to adult founders, and one to high school students, co-led by a student instructor. Attend a session and you're in the cohort; quarterly gatherings begin from there.
Tell us you're interested and we'll send the date as soon as it's set. Bring your questions. Bring a friend. Bring a parent.
Teams meeting link will be shared after RSVP.
04 · What You Get
Cohort, community, and the curriculum.
Quarterly live group gatherings with your cohort, recorded for anyone who can't make it live.
Written guides, templates, and example repos — read and use at your own pace.
Baseline GitHub project with step-by-step issues to guide your build.
The full KinTrades founder journey, documented as supplemental learning material.
Peer help and conversation between quarterly gatherings.
Every script, doc, and resource — yours.
05 · Tech Stack
Industry-standard tools, beginner-friendly.
These are the same tools used to build KinTrades. You're learning from real-world implementation, not toy examples.
- Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Hosting: Azure Static Web Apps
- Version Control: GitHub (version control + CI/CD)
- Backend: Azure Functions (serverless)
- Database: Azure Cosmos DB or Azure SQL
- IDE: VS Code with GitHub Copilot
- Automation: GitHub Actions workflows
Ready to start?
Step into the room where it gets built.
The next cohort opens soon. Reach out to learn more, ask questions, or share that you're interested.