Announcing a second cohort of Speedrunning the Idea Maze. Experience 10 multi-year journeys to product market fit … in four weeks.
In July last year we launched our very first live course, titled Speedrunning the Idea Maze. It was open to 30 participants, and sold out within the first 18 hours. At the time, the course was somewhat experimental, since it was the first time we tested the Calibration Case Method in a course format.
I’m pleased to announce that the second cohort of Speedrunning the Idea Maze is now available. Full details follow.
For most people, launching a new product is the scariest thing they’ll do.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a founder, launching your first startup, or a product manager, launching a new initiative for your company. As you build your thing, you begin to wonder:
This is normal. Creating and launching a brand new product is the closest thing to pure uncertainty that most folks will face.
And! If you’re like most folks, you’d reach for books and frameworks that TELL YOU HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL — with the implication that you can increase the odds of your success.
And maybe they will!
But the odds are actually pretty good that they’re not going to work, and that your experience is going to be very different from whatever your framework teaches you.
Because — and this is something that anyone honest will tell you — there is no silver bullet to finding product market fit.
This is a course designed to accelerate your expertise through compressed experience. Synthetic experience, sure, but experience nevertheless.
What do we mean by this?
Think about going on a first date. If you’ve never gone on a first date before, you’re probably going to be very nervous. You’ll make mistakes. You may say things that — with the benefit of hindsight — you will see as dumbass moves.
But you get better. The more first dates you go on, the better things will go — even if you don’t read books or articles or watch YouTube videos or have conversations with your friends about what to do.
Why?
The glib answer is that you have more experiences. You know what to expect. You are better calibrated to do first dates.
Notice the following:
The same applies to searching for product market fit (PMF).
With one catch.
First dates last at most one night. A search for PMF can last years.
Which is where this course can help.
Over the course of four sessions, we will walk you through ten journeys of companies and products that have found PMF. Most of these journeys took between two and 15 years.
You’ll experience these cases as they happen, with enough detail to make you feel like you’re experiencing the journey for yourself.
We will make sense of these cases as a group – comparing the different paths with each other, and also with your experiences, before introducing the tiny handful of frameworks that actually work under such uncertainty.
In other words, we’re trying to give you memories, without the cost of years.
Speedrunning the Idea Maze costs $1500 per person and is limited to 45 people.
The program is first come, first served, and the deadline for purchase is Friday, 16th January 2026.
The program consists of 90 minute slots held once a week, for four weeks. There are two time slots for each session. The dates for the program are:
Sessions are conducted live, on Zoom, by Commoncog publisher Cedric Chin and case researcher Rhea Purohit.
Once you sign up, you’ll gain access to a Discord group, and will receive course materials before and after sessions.
There will also be special events and special materials that will be announced once the course gets going. But the main bulk of the work will be a 90 minute call each week, and about two hours of additional work (watching cases, filling in worksheets, thinking) each week for the four weeks.
How do we know this approach works?
Speedrunning the Idea Maze is built around an expertise acceleration approach called Cognitive Flexibility Theory, that has been used by the US military (amongst other organisations) to speed up training.
The theory explains why investors and businesspeople think in terms of fragments of cases when reasoning about their domain. It tells us why folks like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger read and collect large amounts of biographies and company reports ... and more importantly how they consume them.
All of the cases in this course will be taught in this very same way.
You may read more about the method here.
You've got questions. We've got answers.
This cohort will have a maximum of 45 people. This is first come first served, with a purchase deadline on 16th January 2026.
After the completion of each session, the course materials as well as video recording will be uploaded and made available to the group. The participant may consult these materials to catch-up. They may also pose any questions in the Discord chat!
There will be two sessions a week, and folks can choose to drop by on either session.
If you want to attend but can't make any of these times, please fill in this 15 second form.
A loose format for each session is: 50% of interactive teaching time led by the instructors discussing two cases (and applicable frameworks), and 50% discussion time between participants. Two additional cases will be assigned as class reading. There will also be two worksheets to be done before Sessions Three and Four (mandatory), and some optional experiences during the week.
Total time commitment outside of class should be no more than two hours per week.
Since Speedrunning the Idea Maze is an experiential course, no refunds will be allowed after the course is concluded.
Yes, but only in the first week (no more refunds will be issued after 29 January). Because seats are limited, we request that you do not purchase if you cannot make the commitment. The date+times are fully available to you before purchase.
This course is taught by Cedric Chin and Rhea Purohit. They have both written many of the cases that are covered in this course. Some sessions will be taken by Rhea, and others will be taken by Cedric.