Cohort 01 — Forming
Grades 9–12 · Six weeks · One artifact you would actually ship.
First-principles innovation training for high school students.
Drawn from real graduate-level product design, exponential technologies, and ethical systems thinking — translated for students ready to do the work.
Built on the work of one founder, in public.
01 Academy is built on the interdisciplinary graduate work at USC (Iovine & Young, Viterbi, Marshall) — three years of coursework distilled into five themes: Product, Data, Systems, Ethics, and Research.
And on the applied exploration at Longitudinal.ai — a journal of innovation exploring exponential technologies, product design, and digital transformation through an ethical compass.
The result is a curriculum that treats students as capable of graduate-level thinking, scaled down only in vocabulary — not in ambition. We begin with grades 9–12. The eventual physical school spans K-12, in north San Diego County.
“This is the school we wish existed for our own children — and the school we are building so it does.”— Soren DeOrlow, founder
Lift up something you love about your local community.
Six weeks. One thing you love about your local community — a place, a practice, a tradition, an institution, a person. You will conduct interviews, draft a point of view, ideate against constraints, prototype something tangible, test it on real people, and reflect — with the rigor of product designers and the stewardship of systems thinkers.
- 01Empathize
- 02Define
- 03Ideate
- 04Prototype
- 05Test & Iterate
- 06Launch & Reflect
Three years of graduate coursework, distilled into five themes a high school student can actually use.
Echoing the synthesis at sorendeorlow.vercel.app — adapted, never diluted.
Product, Prototype & Design
How to make tangible artifacts from concept through critique. The discipline of shaping technology toward human ends.
Data, Models & Decisions
From exploratory notebooks to consequential decisions. Reasoning under uncertainty in a world saturated with data.
Systems & Operations
Why the Apple Newton failed and the iPhone succeeded. How Walmart bent supply chains to its will. Patterns that compound.
Health, Ethics & Society
An ethical compass for exponential tools. Where innovation meets human dignity, public health, and the rule of law.
Research & Directed Study
First-principles inquiry. Asking better questions before reaching for better answers.
Whether you build, teach, or believe — there is room.
Apply
Join the next cohort. Bring a problem; leave with a portfolio piece you would show at a college interview, a pitch competition, or your kitchen table.
Collaborate
Build this with us. Co-author a module from your domain, mentor a cohort, host a guest seminar, or borrow the curriculum for your classroom.
Waitlist
01 Academy is the digital provocation for a future physical school. Add your name. The depth of your interest helps us decide where, when, and how.
“We are entering an era in which the tools of creation — generative AI, programmable matter, distributed manufacturing, decentralized capital — are accelerating faster than the institutions meant to prepare young people to use them. The students who will shape this century are sitting in classrooms designed for the last one.”