Elite Guide
Founders School combines Alpha School's elite academics with real-world experience and mentorship from world-class entrepreneurs, organized around three commitments to every student: Build a million-dollar business. Identify problems in the world worth solving. Master AI before adults do.
The Role
As an Elite Guide you work with a core group of students every day as they go from aspiring founders to building real companies and developing the life, entrepreneurship, and AI skills that come with it.
You are their program coach, not their startup advisor. You should be able to talk shop and give useful feedback, but you're not doing the heavy lifting of their business strategy. FounderOS (the curriculum platform), our part-time EIRs, and visiting mentors handle the core teaching and skill-building. Your job is motivation, accountability, and keeping them moving. You hold high standards, give high support, and coach them through the hard parts.
This is a pure coaching seat. You won't manage or lead the other guides on campus; your focus is your students and the piece of the program you own.
We're building the future of education. Founders School is not just about the $1M outcome, it's about showing the world what teenagers can do in the right environment with the right resources. Join the year-one founding team and help shape the culture and the program.
The Jobs of the Elite Guide
Everything you do serves these outcomes:
Keep students moving. Your students should get better every single day because you keep them motivated and engaged. When they face a challenge or start coasting on a past win, you know how to reach them and push them through it.
Hold the standard. The program is built for our students to do what most people think is impossible, and high standards are how they get there, often before they believe it themselves. A freshman earning $100,000. A sophomore landing a brand deal with a big-name influencer. A junior grinding through the messy middle of growing their business.
Support and connect. You know each student well enough to get them the right resource at the right moment: an introduction to a mentor in our network, a two-minute pep talk before a first sales demo, or an idea on how to level up their skills.
Build the program. Beyond your own students, play to your strengths and own a piece of the school experience. What this team builds in year one becomes the playbook for every Founders School campus that follows.
What You'll Be Doing
On-site every day, joining morning kickoffs and running standups with your students
Weekly 1:1 coaching with your students, plus daily informal check-ins
Staying on top of progress in FounderOS and flagging who's stuck
Making mentor intros and pulling in resources
Running or contributing to workshops and events
Helping build the day-to-day experience and community of the school
Traveling with students on 3-4 trips per year
What You Will NOT Be Doing
Managing, hiring, or leading the other guides on campus.
Providing the heavy strategic and tactical business coaching as students build their companies. That's what FounderOS, the EIRs, and visiting mentors are for.
Accepting subpar performance when you know a student is capable of more.
Teaching academics. The academics software and team own that.
Running workshops outside your expertise.
Sharing surface-level resources that aren't Founders School caliber.
What This Becomes
By the end of year one you know every one of your students deeply: their strengths, opportunities for growth, and exactly what motivates each of them. Your students' progress is some of the best proof of what the program can do, and the piece of the program you own runs better because of you.
As Founders School grows to more cities, the opportunities grow with it, including leadership roles for the guides who prove they're key to the quality of the program. None of it is handed out. Expectations are high, and the path belongs to the guides who earn it.
Then there's the network. Founders, investors, and operators come through the school constantly, and many of the families who join are entrepreneurs themselves. Part of your job is building those long-term relationships.
What We're Looking For
You've spent 3+ years in high-impact roles inside startups or growing businesses. You don't need a company of your own behind you, but business conversations with teen founders should come easy, and you know when to pull in an EIR or a mentor.
You bring a core skill beyond guiding: workshop facilitation, a mentor network, event design, content, or something we haven't thought of yet.
Teenagers respond to you. You can hold a room of them at 8 am and have them glad they showed up.
You can tell a student their week wasn't good enough and have them leave more motivated, not less.
You use AI across your work every day, and you can show us how.
You're willing to work on-site (relocation support provided), and you're authorized to work in the United States.
Nice to Have
Founded or co-founded a business
Experience coaching, mentoring, or running programs for teenagers or young adults
A network of founders, operators, or mentors you can pull into the building
Early-stage startup experience where you wore every hat
Do Not Apply If
You don't believe teenagers are fully capable of building million-dollar companies. Students can tell within a week whether the adult in the room truly believes them or not.
Coaching teenagers hard makes you uncomfortable. We treat our students the way elite youth athletes get treated: we expect a lot, we push hard, and we back them just as hard. The students who choose this school are asking to be pushed.
The $150,000 tuition makes you flinch. Four years here costs $600K, and we believe teaching a teenager how to make a million dollars is worth it. If any part of you would apologize for the price, you don't get what we're building.
The most ambitious teenagers in the country show up in September. You can be the person they count on every day.
Apply below and we'll reach out if you're a potential fit.
Apply