# AI for Entrepreneurs & Business Startups Course (Self-Paced) Canonical URL: ## Overview This self-paced course takes you from your first Claude conversation to a fully configured AI workflow built for entrepreneurs and startup founders. You’ll learn to write effective prompts, organize ongoing work with Projects, build reusable templates with Artifacts, and connect Claude to workplace tools — all using startup-specific examples, exercises, and real business documents. By the end, you’ll have a personalized Claude system designed around your business and your most pressing operational priorities. Early-stage founders and small business owners wear every hat: strategist, marketer, salesperson, operations manager, finance lead, and customer support. You don’t have a team to delegate the research, writing, and analysis to — which means those tasks either consume your evenings or don’t get done. Claude changes that equation. This course teaches you to use AI across every function a startup needs: market research and competitive analysis, business plan and pitch deck development, customer outreach and sales communications, marketing copy and content creation, financial projections and investor updates, and the operational documentation that keeps a growing business organized. The capstone produces a complete investor-ready or launch-ready business package using your full Claude system — built around your actual business, not a hypothetical one. ## What you'll learn - Write structured prompts that produce accurate results for writing, analysis, summarization, and research - Set up and use Projects, Artifacts, Styles, and Memory to build a personalized Claude workflow - Apply advanced prompting techniques including role-based prompting, chain-of-thought reasoning, and the You Ask Me method - Connect Claude to workplace tools including Google Drive, Gmail, Excel, and PowerPoint - Apply Claude across core startup functions including market research, business planning, pitch development, customer communications, marketing, and financial projections - Build a complete startup Claude system and produce a capstone business package ready for investors, customers, or launch ## Curriculum #### Module 1: Getting Started with Claude AI - Explain how Claude works in plain language and identify the model tiers, plans, and interface - Understand the context window, how Claude processes information, and when to start new conversations - Practice your first Claude conversation using an entrepreneur-specific prompt - Identify what Claude does well, what it doesn’t, and when founder judgment is essential #### Module 2: Prompting Fundamentals - Apply the five-part prompt framework: context, task, format, constraints, and examples - Write effective prompts across five use cases: writing, summarization, analysis, research, and creative problem-solving - Recognize and fix common prompting mistakes that produce vague or unusable output - Practice prompting with startup scenarios: drafting a cold outreach email, summarizing a competitor’s website, and writing a company description for a pitch deck #### Module 3: Working with Files & Documents - Upload and analyze images, PDFs, spreadsheets, and documents directly in Claude - Use Claude to extract, compare, and summarize information from uploaded files - Work with startup-specific file types: business plans, pitch decks, financial projections, market research reports, and customer survey results - Complete a hands-on file analysis exercise using provided startup sample documents #### Module 4: Projects & Knowledge Bases - Explain how Projects use custom instructions and knowledge bases to organize ongoing work - Write effective Project instructions that encode your role, audience, format preferences, and rules - Upload reference documents and understand how RAG retrieves relevant content - Create a startup Project for your business with business plans, competitive research, and brand guidelines #### Module 5: Artifacts, Styles, Memory & Usage Management - Create reusable deliverables with Artifacts and edit them directly or through conversation - Build custom Styles that match your professional communication voice - Configure Memory to retain key context about you and your work across conversations - Apply usage management techniques to extend your plan value #### Module 6: Advanced Prompting & AI Tool Selection - Use role-based prompting, chain-of-thought reasoning, and multi-step workflows - Apply Extended Thinking, web search, and the You Ask Me technique for complex tasks - Compare Claude with ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini to choose the right tool for each task - Practice advanced prompting with startup scenarios: stress-testing a business model, building a go-to-market plan, and researching a new market opportunity #### Module 7: Introduction to Claude Cowork - Explain what Cowork is and how it differs from the claude.ai chat interface - Read, write, and manage files from your desktop environment - Configure guardrails, file permissions, and network settings for safe use - Understand prompt injection risks and how to protect against them #### Module 8: Context System, Connectors & Integrations - Build foundational context files and set Global Instructions for every Cowork session - Connect Claude to Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, and workplace tools - Use Claude in Excel and PowerPoint with the Office add-ins - Configure your context system and connections for startup workflows, including Excel modeling and investor presentations #### Module 9: AI for Entrepreneurs — Core Workflows - Use Claude and web search for market research, competitor analysis, and customer validation - Draft and refine business plan sections, executive summaries, and pitch deck narratives - Build customer outreach and sales communications: cold emails, follow-up sequences, demo scripts, and partnership proposals - Create marketing content: website copy, launch announcements, social posts, email campaigns, product descriptions - Produce financial projections, investor update templates, and operational documentation - Complete a hands-on lab producing a multi-document startup content package #### Module 10: Capstone — Build Your Startup Claude System - Audit your daily and weekly tasks to identify where Claude creates leverage - Configure a personalized startup Claude system with Projects, context files, Styles, and tool connections - Run a complete end-to-end workflow: market research brief, pitch deck narrative, outreach sequence, investor update - Create a Week 1 action plan for integrating Claude into your daily operations ## Instructors ### Steve Pesklo — Instructor Steve is an energetic trainer who focuses on applying technical concepts to everyday work practices. He is the founder and president of SoftLake Solutions, a company that specializes in providing data and AI applications to identify fraud for Internal Audit, Criminal Investigations, Forensic Accounting, Privacy, and Compliance. Steve brings a large amount of experience across multiple industries and government agencies. He is an expert in implementing large data analysis projects across the world, including Inland Revenue in the UK and Argentina, New Zealand, Africa and across Europe. Previously, he was the manager of Data Architecture and Data Services for a large mortgage company. He is a frequent speaker on data analytics and project management topics and speaks fluent German. He has been teaching at the Graduate School for over 10 years. Steve has an M.B.A. from the University of St. Thomas and a B.S. in Computer Science from California Lutheran University and the Universität Salzburg in Austria. He is certified as a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Project Management Professional (PMP), and a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM). ## Pricing **Tuition:** $899