Why?

August 15, 2022 - A Note from Amasia

“We see many companies whose core mission is to drive positive behavior change. But as is the case with many areas of knowledge, the depth and breadth of research-led findings percolate rarely and with difficulty into the startup ecosystem.”

This paragraph comes from a note we wrote announcing the launch of our cohort-based course, AxBC, last September. A year later, we believe this statement to be just as true, if not more. That’s why we are excited to open applications for the second cohort of AxBC today.

This year, as it did last year, AxBC is focused on equipping founders with knowledge and tactics they need to catalyze behavior change at scale. By the end of the course, we expect that every member of the cohort will be well-versed in the principles and tools of behavior change, have a specific, actionable plan for applying these to their own product, and have the ability to convincingly share this vision with potential supporters.

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As in the first cohort, participants in this cohort can expect content of a very high caliber, thanks to the work of our co-conspirators on this project, the UK non-profit Behaviour Change. Behaviour Change brings extensive subject knowledge, having developed a number of behavioral interventions in the public and private sectors and designed The Academy of Change, a course on behavior change tools for nonprofits. We had a blast working with them last year, and are excited to continue our partnership this year.

In this cohort, the marriage between theory and practice will be hugely strengthened by the addition of Natalie Rothfels to AxBC’s core team. Rothfels is a product leader and coach with a decade of experience building, launching, and scaling products at Quizlet, Khan Academy, and Reforge. She and the folks at Behaviour Change have designed two new workshop sessions in which participants will apply their learnings to their own products in real time.

Participants can also expect to receive more exposure to venture capital through the addition of a capstone presentation session with a panel of venture capitalists.

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We believe that this course is singular among the offerings available to founders and product leaders today, thanks to the expertise of its team, its marriage of theory and practice, and its potential for building a movement around behavior change for climate. If you're a founder or VP Product committed to saving the planet, we hope you'll join us.

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We can’t end this note without expressing our gratitude for the participants of our first cohort, which was truly an MVP. It is their active participation, willingness to experiment, and thoughtful feedback that have allowed us to make significant improvements to the course for this second cohort and those that will follow.