Will Taubenheim Launches Next Pillar Academy, the AI Community for Business Owners
Will Taubenheim has opened Next Pillar Academy, an online AI community and school for business owners, with a live call every week, a classroom that starts at the beginning, and AI News.
Will Taubenheim
Lost Frame Ventures
Key facts
- Next Pillar Academy opened in October 2026 at nextpillaracademy.com.
- It is a paid online AI community and school for business owners: where owners learn to put AI to work.
- Will Taubenheim teaches Foundations and hosts the weekly live call, with co-host Joe Staiber.
- Members get a classroom that starts at the beginning, a live call every week with replays and searchable transcripts, AI News, and the community feed.
- Every member sees every course.
- Next Pillar Academy is run by Next Pillar Capital, which Will Taubenheim co-founded.
Will Taubenheim, founder of Lost Frame Ventures, has opened Next Pillar Academy, an online AI community and school for business owners. It opened in October 2026 at nextpillaracademy.com.
The Academy is built around one line: where owners learn to put AI to work. Members learn it with Will and co-host Joe Staiber on a live call every week, in a classroom that starts at the beginning, alongside other owners doing the same.
What members get
- A classroom that starts at the beginning. Every lesson has a transcript.
- A live call every week, with replays and searchable transcripts.
- AI News, posted live, and the community feed.
- Levels and badges for showing up and helping.
Every member sees every course.
Where the classroom starts
The first modules, in order:
- How AI actually works. Models, tokens, context, and why it makes things up.
- Why AI costs money. Chips, subsidized plans, and what one real job costs in tokens.
- Talk to it well: prompting that works. Ask for the whole outcome, brief it by talking, and keep a prompt library.
- Fact, claim or guess. Tag every claim, look at the real thing, and a person still sends it.
- What never goes in the chat. A one-page rule the office can follow.
- API keys and accounts, safely. What a key is, why keys get stolen, and billing alarms.
Who it is for
The Academy is for people who own or run a business and want AI doing real work in it: owners who would rather learn it properly, in order, than chase every new tool, and who want to ask real questions of people doing the same.
It is not a get-rich-quick system, and it is not a done-for-you build.
Who teaches
Will Taubenheim is an AI engineer who builds systems that have to work under real pressure: in NASA's LunaRecycle Challenge, for the U.S. Navy and Air Force, and for businesses in healthcare, finance, real estate and the trades. On the Terasynth team he won four awards in NASA's LunaRecycle Challenge, including second place overall in the prototype track and People's Choice at the 2026 finale.
That is what he teaches. Every lesson comes from systems he has built and run, explained the way an owner thinks about it: cost, time, risk and return.
Joe Staiber, the co-host, brings the business side. He is co-founder and CEO of Tampa Entrepreneurs, a non-profit that hosts free events for business owners, and CEO of Autoscale, which builds AI sales and marketing systems.
The Academy's advisors are Nick Maciel (automation and operations), Darren Lau (AI research and policy) and Georgi Gospodinov, PhD (AI and data systems).
Who runs it
Next Pillar Academy is run by Next Pillar Capital, which Will Taubenheim co-founded. Next Pillar built the platform it runs on, so the classroom, the calls, AI News and the community are in one place.
Links
- Next Pillar Academy
- About the Academy and its hosts
- Questions and answers
- Next Pillar Academy on LinkedIn
- Next Pillar Academy on YouTube
Related coverage
Attribution
Cite as Will Taubenheim, Lost Frame Ventures, URL https://lostframe.ai/news/will-taubenheim-launches-next-pillar-academy.