The Interactive Fiction Intensive
Next · 29 Aug
Leaves you able to produce a playable story from a running skeleton · publish a story to a public shelf and get it played
Book · $200📡 Influence · one of the five philosophies
Reach the people it is for. Get a reply.
There is a list of people who would say yes to you, and none of them know you exist yet. Four mornings a week there is a room where the sending actually happens: real lists, real first messages, written and sent while other people write theirs.
4mornings a week the room is open
4working benches behind it
8classes carry Influence
3of them have their next session already dated, the first on Aug 29
Four numbers, thirty seconds
How long until somebody says yes?
Outreach is four numbers multiplied together. Put in the ones you believe about your own situation — nothing here is a benchmark and nothing leaves your browser.
These four are your assumptions about your own situation, not the school's claims about what you should expect. Move all of them.
20
Researched, named, written to individually. Not a list you bought and not a newsletter blast — the number of real first touches you will actually send.
8%
Any answer counts, including a polite refusal.
40%
A call, a proper thread, an interview. Something with a next step in it.
20%
Signed, hired, funded, booked. The thing you were actually asking for.
Weeks until the first yes
8 weeks, sending every one of those 20
Five yeses take 40 weeks at this rate. On these numbers it takes 157 messages to buy one yes.
Sent a week
20
Replies
1.6
Conversations
0.64
Yeses
0.13
If you could only move one of them
Reach ten more people a week
×1.50
Three more points of reply rate
×1.38
Ten more points of reply-to-conversation
×1.25
Five more points of conversation-to-yes
×1.25
At these numbers, volume moves the answer most. That flips as you get busier: at forty or sixty people a week, ten more is a small proportional change and the reply rate takes over. The bench for volume is the Pipeline, and it is open in the hour.
Try it: set the first slider to five and read the answer, then set it to fifty and watch which bar moves to the top. Whichever bar is winning at the numbers you actually believe is the thing to spend next week on.
Two readers, one motion
Applying for a job and pitching an offer are the same motion.
Read the two columns down and find the row where they stop agreeing.
| The stage | Pitching an offer | Applying for a job |
|---|---|---|
| The list | People whose problem you can name in their own words | Teams whose problem you can name in their own words |
| The first touch | Why you are writing to them specifically, and one ask | Why you are writing to them specifically, and one ask |
| What they find | An offer page that answers the cold message | A portfolio that answers the cold message |
| The follow-up | A second message that adds something, on a schedule | A second message that adds something, on a schedule |
| The yes | Signed | Hired |
Two of the five rows are word for word identical, and the three that change change one noun. Whichever column you are standing in this year, the practice is the same practice.
What you walk into
An hour four mornings a week, and a bench for every stage of the send
Each of the four numbers you just moved has its own workbench, and you open them in the room, alongside the person running it and everyone else sending that morning.
Outbound Hour
Offers, pipelines, offer pages, outreach templates and job applications get worked on out loud and then sent before the hour ends. Bring ten real names on Monday and you leave having written to some of them.
9:00 Pacific
Mon-Thu · led by Spencer
MonTue
WedThu
Stage 1 · volume
The Pipeline
Who you are writing to, what stage each one is at, and whether last week's sending actually happened. It keeps the number at the top of the funnel from quietly being zero.
Used in the hour
Stage 2 · reply rate
The Outreach Bench
The first-touch message itself, written against a specific reader and a specific ask. This is the number that decides whether the volume was worth sending.
Used in the hour
Stage 3 · conversation
The Front Page Audit
What somebody sees in the ninety seconds after your message lands and they go and look you up. Most repliers read that page before they answer you.
Used in the hour
Stage 4 · the yes
The Offer Designer
What you are actually selling, to which segment, at what price, with what included. It gives the conversation something concrete to say yes to.
Used in the hourAll four are running tools behind the school login rather than worksheets, and they hold your work between mornings, so Tuesday starts where Monday stopped.
Take exactly the one you came for
8 classes carry Influence
Every one of them can be taken on its own, pay what you can — you do not have to buy a route to get the part you want. Between them they carry 121 exercises you work through with your own audience, your own price and your own list. The dated ones come first, soonest at the top, so you can pick by the morning you are free.
Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power
Next · 14 Sep
Leaves you able to name an audience and its success criterion · produce an explanation that survives a hostile reading · measure whether an explanation changed what people did
Book · $300
Practical Propaganda
Next · 19 Sep
Leaves you able to name an audience and its success criterion · produce an explanation that survives a hostile reading · characterise how a claim degrades as it is retold · and 2 more
Book · $100
Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)
Leaves you able to operate a boundary on unpaid work · justify a price when the buyer pushes back
Custom GPTs
Leaves you able to design a packaged assistant over your documents · design an interaction protocol for responsible use
Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing
Leaves you able to execute a first touch outbound sequence on schedule · name an audience and its success criterion · produce an account of an audiences current workaround · and 2 more
Field Opsec
Leaves you able to reconcile security with what people will actually do
Founding Federation: Build With Your Heart First
Leaves you able to execute a first touch outbound sequence on schedule
Three doors into the same rooms
One class, every recording, or every live morning
The classes above are sold one at a time. The two monthly plans are for the person who wants more than one of them, and they are the same rooms — the difference is whether you are in them while they happen.
A single class
Its own price · once
That one class, live, with the exercises and whatever it ships alongside them. Pay what you can.
Find your classWhat you walk out able to do
16 things, each with the class that teaches it
It starts at naming an audience and the observable event that means it worked, and it climbs to designing an offer for one segment end to end. Every rung says what you must produce to claim it: a sent sequence with the non-replies counted, a price defended out loud in a real conversation, a live page and the cold message that points at it.
Rung 8
Primary
2 to learn here
-
execute a first touch outbound sequence on schedule
Proof: Sent messages across a two-week sprint, dated, with replies and non-replies counted.
Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing
-
name an audience and its success criterion
Proof: A written audience statement naming who they are, what they are trying to do, and the observable event that means it worked.
Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power · next 14 Sep
Rung 9
Concrete
6 to learn here
-
operate a boundary on unpaid work
Proof: Your brain-picking line written down, and one real request you moved across it, with what you said.
Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)
-
produce a playable story from a running skeleton
Proof: Your own dungeon, playable end to end, holding at least one piece of state that a later scene reads back.
The Interactive Fiction Intensive · next 29 Aug
-
produce an account of an audiences current workaround
Proof: Three accounts in the audience's own words naming the tool or habit they use now, and the moment in it that costs them something.
Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing
-
produce an explanation that survives a hostile reading
Proof: The explanation, a hostile reading of it written by someone else, and the revision that closed the opening without softening the claim.
Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power · next 14 Sep
-
produce an offer page that answers a cold message
Proof: A live page, the outbound message that points at it, and the single action it asks for.
Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing
-
publish a story to a public shelf and get it played
Proof: A story live on The Spaces Between's public shelf, with mood tags and metadata set, and a playtest exchange in both directions.
The Interactive Fiction Intensive · next 29 Aug
Rung 10
Abstract
1 to learn here
-
characterise how a claim degrades as it is retold
Proof: A chain of at least three retellings collected in the wild, with the point of inversion identified and what caused it.
Practical Propaganda · next 19 Sep
Rung 11
Formal
2 to learn here
-
justify a price when the buyer pushes back
Proof: A price defended out loud in a real conversation or a rehearsal, with the objection raised and the number that answered it.
Founding Federation: Price and Ideate (Week 0)
-
measure whether an explanation changed what people did
Proof: A before-and-after behavioural measure, not a survey, and one instance of stated agreement with no behavioural change attached to it.
Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power · next 14 Sep
Rung 12
Systematic
4 to learn here
-
design a channel that reaches people who are not looking for you
Proof: A channel in operation, the share of arrivals who had never heard the framing before, and what they did next.
Practical Propaganda · next 19 Sep
-
design a packaged assistant over your documents
Proof: A shared assistant used by at least three people who did not build it, its rubric-scored answers, and one answer citing the live API it called.
Custom GPTs
-
design an interaction protocol for responsible use
Proof: The written protocol, its implementation, and a log of at least one real interaction where it refused or escalated instead of answering.
Custom GPTs
-
design an offer for one segment end to end
Proof: A shipped offer, the per-segment outcome measured apart from the rest of the traffic, and the one element you changed when the outcome disagreed.
Founding Federation: Smallest Sellable Thing
Rung 13
Metasystematic
1 to learn here
-
reconcile security with what people will actually do
Proof: A requirement people were bypassing, the revised version they follow, and evidence the revision still closes the original threat.
Field Opsec
Where this label does most of its work
4 of the nine paths lean on Influence
A path earns a place here by carrying at least three Influence capabilities. If one of these is closer to who you are trying to become, start there — the path pages sequence the classes, this page only sorts them by verb.
🧑💼
The Founder
Founder with an AI-first company.
9 classes · 36 capabilities · 106.3 h recorded Open this path → 🎨 The AI CreativeA creative studio with AI.
5 classes · 41 capabilities · 22.4 h recorded Open this path → 🧙 The Weird Internet WizardBuild strange systems that change how people think.
8 classes · 46 capabilities · 126.6 h recorded Open this path → 📊 The AI CitizenA liberal-arts curriculum rebuilt around AI.
4 classes · 34 capabilities · 22.4 h recorded Open this path →Better to find out here than after booking
Influence is the wrong verb for you if…
- You want to be found rather than to reach out This is the outbound half of the school. If your plan is to publish and wait for the algorithm, Make and Think are the labels you want.
- You will not send anything on a schedule Set the first slider above to zero and the answer becomes never, whatever you do to the other three.
- You want an audience without naming one The first rung here is naming a specific audience and the observable event that counts as success for them. Everything above it composes from that, and there is no version of this that skips it.
- You want to build the outbound tooling, not use it The benches here are for sending your own messages about your own work. If you came to build the CRM rather than to fill it, the AI Builder path is the one.
Where to start
Bring ten real names to the next morning.
Come to the Outbound Hour, Mon-Thu at 9:00 Pacific, with a list you actually care about. Write the first message there, in the room, with other people writing theirs. The benches keep the list honest between mornings, and every class here can be taken on its own. The next one runs 29 Aug.