The HAA Experience
Build your education around what you want to pursue.
At HAA, your pursuits are at the center of your education. Start a company, build a new technology, conduct research, make art, master a skill, read deeply, or follow a question wherever it leads. Courses, mentors, peers, companies, and the wider HAA network are there to help you go further.
Follow your obsessions.
- Start a company
- Build a robot
- Conduct independent research
- Write a book
- Make a film
- Learn a new field
- Create an artwork
- Explore a difficult question
- Train a model from scratch
- Design a game
- Compose an album
- Build a synthesiser
- Prove a theorem
- Start a magazine
- Restore something broken
- Learn a language properly
- Photograph a place
- Design a building
Pursue what matters to you.
There is no prescribed kind of project at HAA. You might devote yourself to one thing for months, or follow several interests at once. You might start a company, conduct research, make art, master a skill, or disappear down a question you cannot stop thinking about.
Own your direction.
No one is going to hand you a checklist of what to work on next. You should be able to say what you are pursuing, why you care about it, and what you want to accomplish or understand. The direction is yours.
Make your progress visible.
You are independent, but not alone. Each week, you meet with your peers to share what moved forward, where you got stuck, and what you want to do next. Progress is measured in the work itself and the commitments you follow through on.
Learn to ask for what you need.
Faculty, mentors, staff, peers, experts, and the wider HAA network are there when you need perspective, feedback, introductions, or help getting unstuck. Part of becoming more capable is learning to recognize what you need, find the right person, and ask.
Learn from people at the frontier of their fields.
Courses at HAA are concentrated, multi-session experiences taught by people with deep firsthand expertise.
You choose the courses that are most relevant to what you’re pursuing or what you’re curious to understand, so the time you spend in a classroom is valuable and fun.
Faculty will spend several weeks taking you deep into an area they know exceptionally well. Guest speakers come to HAA for one-off conversations, lectures, workshops, and other encounters that expose you to remarkable people and ideas.
Course
How to make highly successful products
Track
AI Research & Models
+3
Course
Building for a Million Users
Track
AI Products & Platforms
+1
Course
The Growth Engine
Track
Software & Developer Tools
+2
Course
The Modern Software Developer
- Explore all courses33 more
Selected guest lecturers
Jacob Kimmel
Co-founder & CEO at NewLimit
Ramtin Naimi
Founder & General Partner at Abstract
Max Altschuler
Founder & General Partner at GTMfund
Kevin Weil
Technology executive; Operator in Residence at Scribble Ventures
Ryan Petersen
Founder & CEO at Flexport
Alex Pall
Musician & investor at The Chainsmokers / Mantis VC
Logan Green
Co-founder of Lyft; Venture Partner at Autotech Ventures
Fei-Fei Li
Co-founder & CEO at World Labs; Professor at Stanford
Akash Jain
85 more
Explore the network
Take your education into the world.
Some things cannot be learned on a campus.
Go somewhere your question takes you.
Every student also spends three to four weeks pursuing a project somewhere in the world.
The destination begins with the pursuit. You might travel because a particular technology, craft, community, ecosystem, industry, culture, or field of research can be understood differently there.
HAA helps make the experience possible with funding and access to people in its global network.
The point is not simply to travel. It is to let the world become part of your education.
Selected co-op partners
Work inside a company.
Every HAA student spends at least three months working full-time inside a company.
You choose an organization that matches your interests and ambitions. HAA helps you access strong opportunities through its network, while you take responsibility for finding the environment where you will learn the most.
For three months, you become part of a real team, contribute real work, and see from the inside how an ambitious organization operates.
There is no typical week at HAA.
Your time takes shape around what you’re pursuing.
One week might pull you deep into a project. Another might include a course you’ve been waiting to take, a conversation with a mentor, or a guest speaker whose work opens up an entirely new direction.
What stays constant is that your time is yours to use deliberately, with Friday Reviews bringing you back together with your peers to share progress and decide what comes next.
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Sunday
A network within reach.
When you need expertise, perspective, feedback, an introduction, or simply someone who has encountered the problem before, HAA gives you people to turn to.
Mentors from across technology, entrepreneurship, creative fields, leadership, and other areas hold recurring office hours and make themselves available to students.
The expectation is not that someone will tell you what to do next. It is that when you need help, you learn to seek out the right person and ask.
Selected mentors
Madison Kanna
Engineer at Fireworks AI
Zelda Poem
Founder at Nautilus Foundation
Sabrina Halper
Host, Sabrina Halper Show
Olivia Koshy
Product Lead, AI at Hex
Gena Gorlin
Founder psychologist/coach and clinical associate professor at University of Texas at Austin
Verda Korzeniewski
Robotics builder & organizer
Zack Radisic
Software engineer & builder
Michael Adams
Founder and CEO of CivLab
What will you pursue?
Applications for the next cohort are open. Tell us what you want to work on, and we will tell you what HAA can do for it.