Acta School of Life

The most interesting people we know didn't follow the script. They dropped out, started companies in garages, built audiences from nothing, wrote code that changed industries. They took a year—or two, or five—to bet fully on themselves. And that bet paid off in ways a conventional path never could.

The Acta School of Life exists for people who sense they're capable of more than the default trajectory offers. For the content creator who knows their audience but wants to build something bigger. For the engineer who can build anything but hasn't found the thing worth building. For the business-minded operator who's ready to stop optimizing other people's companies.

We're not an accelerator, incubator, or bootcamp. We're something rarer: a year to go deep on yourself, your craft, and your ideas—surrounded by people who are doing the same. A year of intense structure combined with radical freedom to follow your intellectual and creative curiosities.

Our approach draws from contemplative traditions, modern psychology, and neuroscience. We take seriously what the research shows: that self-knowledge, emotional regulation, and the capacity for deep attention are trainable skills—and that these skills compound into everything else. Meditation, embodiment practices, and philosophical inquiry aren't separate from building; they're the foundation.

The premise is simple: given the right environment, the right peers, and the right inner work, remarkable people produce remarkable work. Not because they're told what to build, but because they finally have the clarity to discover what they must build.

We're recruiting cohorts of content creators, builders, and business minds. People in their early twenties, primarily—though age is not a gate. What matters is the willingness to drop everything else and commit fully to a single year of focused intensity.

This is not a retreat from ambition but an acceleration of it. Our participants will emerge with clearer vision, deeper skills, stronger networks, and—in many cases—projects already in motion.

The pages that follow outline our model, our methods, and our invitation to those ready to take the leap.

Each cohort is deliberately composed of three types of people: content creators who understand audiences and distribution, technical builders who can make things real, and business operators who know how to scale. This mix isn't accidental—it's the DNA of every successful venture.

The Structure. The year follows a strict daily rhythm. Mornings are structured: meditation practice, physical training and embodiment work, skill-building workshops, and cohort sessions. But the majority of each day—afternoons and evenings—belongs entirely to you. This is time for deep work on whatever intellectual or creative pursuit calls to you.

The Philosophy. We draw from contemplative traditions, depth psychology, and neuroscience. The morning practices aren't wellness add-ons—they're the foundation. Self-knowledge, emotional regulation, and the capacity for sustained attention are trainable capacities that compound into everything else: clearer thinking, better decisions, deeper relationships, more creative work.

The Intensity. This is not a sabbatical. It's the most demanding year of your life. We expect full commitment—no side jobs, no half-measures. You're here to discover what you're capable of when you remove every excuse and distraction.

The Network. Your cohort becomes your founding team, your first investors, your collaborators for decades. The people who bet on themselves alongside you become the people you build with later. This network compounds over time.

The program runs for one full year, residential in Berlin, starting early fall 2026. There is no age requirement, though our primary audience is people in their early twenties—the moment when the opportunity cost of betting on yourself is lowest and the potential upside is highest.

We encourage applicants to leave their jobs, defer their degrees, drop their existing commitments. Half-measures don't work here. This year demands everything—and gives everything back.

The inaugural cohort launches in early fall 2026, residential in Berlin. We're starting with 10 participants—small enough for genuine relationships, large enough for diverse perspectives and potential co-founder matches.

Fall: Foundations. The first quarter establishes rhythm and relationships. You'll develop a meditation practice, learn how to learn, build foundational skills across domains, and begin identifying the questions and projects that will define your year. The cohort bonds through shared intensity and contemplative practice.

Winter: Deep Work. With foundations set, winter is for going deep. This is when most participants lock onto their primary project or area of exploration. The structure holds; the exploration is yours. Guest practitioners and visiting founders punctuate the quarter.

Spring: Building. Theory becomes practice. Whatever you've been exploring, spring is when you ship. A product, a body of work, a skill demonstrated. The cohort supports each other through the hard parts of making something real.

Summer: Launch. The final quarter is about transition—from the protected environment of the school back to the world. But you leave with momentum: projects in flight, skills honed, and a network of peers who are now scattered across industries and geographies, building alongside you.

Berlin is chosen deliberately: affordable enough to make the economics work, cosmopolitan enough to attract talent from anywhere, and home to one of Europe's most vibrant creative and startup scenes.

Housing, workspace, and core programming are included. You arrive with your commitment; we provide the environment.

This is a impact-first venture with a sustainable economic model. We deploy an Income Share Agreement (ISA) structure that eliminates upfront financial barriers while aligning incentives across all stakeholders. The thesis is straightforward: invest in human potential, share in the upside.

Revenue Model. Participants pay €0 upfront. Post-program, they contribute 10% of gross income above a €50,000 threshold for 48 months, with a payment cap of €60,000. Below-threshold earnings incur no obligation. This structure de-risks participation while creating a direct correlation between program efficacy and revenue generation.

Unit Economics. Fully-loaded cost per participant: ~€60,000 (housing, facilities, program delivery, personnel). At cap realization, each participant represents a 1.0x return on direct costs. Conservative modeling assumes 70-80% cap attainment across the portfolio, with top-quartile performers significantly exceeding cap within the payment window.

Capital Deployment. Seed raise of €600,000 funds the inaugural 10-person cohort plus 18 months of operational runway. Use of proceeds: facility buildout and lease (25%), program delivery and personnel (45%), participant housing subsidy (20%), working capital reserve (10%). Path to break-even: cohort 3, assuming stable ISA recovery rates.

Impact Metrics. Beyond financial returns, we track outcomes that matter: ventures launched, employment trajectories, income mobility, self-reported wellbeing and life satisfaction, and network density. We're building the infrastructure to demonstrate measurable human capital ROI—data that institutional impact allocators increasingly require.

Return Structure. We offer a revenue-share model with a 2x return cap over a 7-year horizon, plus optional co-investment rights in alumni ventures. This structure reflects our commitment to patient capital and long-term alignment over short-term extraction.

Investor Selection. We are deliberately selective about our capital partners. We seek aligned investors—family offices, impact funds, and individuals—who understand that institution-building requires patience and that the highest returns come from genuine value creation. We prioritize partners who bring strategic value beyond capital: networks, operational expertise, and shared conviction in our mission.

Detailed financial model, scenario analysis, and term sheet available upon request. We welcome conversations with investors who measure success in decades, not quarters.

Acta is led by two founders who've built companies, made unconventional bets, and learned firsthand what it takes to turn ambition into outcomes. They're building the program they wish had existed when they were starting out.

Bjoern Keune co-founded Invincible Brands, scaling it from zero to €100M in annual revenue within five years. Henkel acquired the company for €400 million in 2020. What followed was a multi-year journey into Zen meditation, embodiment practices, and contemplative traditions—exploring what conventional success couldn't provide. Today he integrates both worlds through ReallyAlign, running intensive programs for founders, and as an active angel investor.

What Bjoern brings: the operator's perspective on what actually matters when building companies, deep experience in contemplative practice and personal development, and the hard-won wisdom of someone who's looked beyond conventional success to ask what actually makes a life worth living.

Louis Morgner taught himself to code at thirteen and has been building ever since. He's co-founder and Managing Director of jamie, an AI startup backed by leading European investors. He was selected for the Pioneer accelerator in San Francisco and graduated from Maastricht University (BSc International Business, Cum Laude).

Beyond building companies, Louis is a writer, musician, and podcast host exploring how founders think. He brings product sense, community design expertise, and a builder's obsession with making things that work. He's the person who will be hands-on with every cohort, every day.

The founding team is supported by advisors from the European startup ecosystem, contemplative education, depth psychology, and alternative education space. Names to be announced as commitments are finalized.

A generation is waking up to the fact that the traditional script—degree, job, career ladder—is increasingly disconnected from how value is actually created and captured in the modern economy. The most successful people in tech, media, and business didn't follow the path. They made their own.

The Creator Economy. 50+ million people globally now identify as creators. YouTube, TikTok, newsletters, podcasts—distribution has been democratized. Yet most creators plateau at "content" rather than building real businesses. They have audiences but not leverage.

The Technical Talent Glut. Coding bootcamps produce hundreds of thousands of developers annually. Yet most end up in interchangeable roles at companies whose missions they don't believe in. Technical ability without vision is a commodity.

Demographic Tailwinds. Our primary audience—people in their early twenties—face a unique moment. They've seen the traditional path fail their parents and older siblings. They've watched peers succeed through unconventional routes. The opportunity cost of betting on yourself has never been lower; the potential upside has never been higher.

Why Now. Universities are losing the plot. Accelerators are too short, too narrow. Bootcamps teach skills but not judgment. There's a gap in the market for something more ambitious: a full year to develop as a complete person—intellectually, practically, and socially—surrounded by others doing the same.

We're recruiting the people who know they're capable of more but haven't yet found the environment to prove it.

The landscape for ambitious young people is full of options, yet most fall short. Accelerators are too narrow, universities too slow, bootcamps too shallow. We've studied what works and designed something different.

vs. University. Four years, massive debt, curriculum designed decades ago. You graduate with credentials but often without skills, relationships, or clarity about what to build. We offer one year of focused intensity that produces more growth than four years of lectures.

vs. Accelerators (YC, etc.). Three months, company required, immediate fundraising pressure. Great if you already know what to build—but most people don't. We provide the space to discover what's worth building before the clock starts ticking.

vs. Bootcamps. Intensive skill training, narrow focus, optimized for job placement. Useful for learning to code, but they produce employees, not founders. We develop complete people who can build, ship, sell, and lead.

vs. Gap Years. Unstructured time often dissipates into travel and drift. The structure is the feature: we provide the container that transforms potential energy into kinetic energy. Freedom within constraints produces more than freedom alone.

vs. Wellness Retreats. Meditation retreats and personal development programs offer depth but not duration or practical application. We integrate contemplative practice with building—the inner work grounds the outer work. You don't choose between self-knowledge and shipping; you do both.

Our Moat. The integration is the moat: contemplative depth plus entrepreneurial intensity, for a full year, with a deliberately composed cohort. Content creators, technical builders, and business operators together—developing both inner capacities and outer skills. This compounds over time in ways a 12-week program never can.

We're not competing with any single alternative. We're offering something that doesn't exist yet.

The Acta School of Life is a new venture, but it builds on years of relationship-building, community-testing, and ecosystem development. We've been preparing for this—deliberately, methodically—while building the networks that will feed the first cohort.

Pilot Programs. Through ReallyAlign and informal gatherings, we've run intensive programs for over 200 individuals—founders, creators, and builders—combining contemplative practice with practical skill-building. The feedback validated our core thesis: ambitious people crave both depth and structure, not just content or networking events.

Inbound Interest. Our initial soft launch generated interest from 340+ prospective participants without paid marketing. The signal is clear: there's pent-up demand for something more substantial than accelerators or bootcamps, and more focused than traditional education.

Early Commitments. We have verbal commitments from 18 individuals ready to join the inaugural cohort. The mix is exactly what we're looking for: creators with audiences, engineers from top companies, operators from high-growth startups—all ready to bet on themselves.

Advisor Network. We're in conversation with founders who've built and exited, investors who've backed generational companies, and educators who've shaped unconventional programs. Several have committed to advisory roles and guest sessions with our cohort.

Founder Networks. The founders' combined networks span Berlin's startup scene, the European creator economy, and global tech communities in San Francisco, London, and beyond. These relationships provide pipeline for participants, practitioners, and partners.

The ingredients are assembled. Fall 2026 is about bringing them together.

The most valuable networks in the world were forged in shared environments: Stanford dorms, YC batches, Paypal Mafia dinners. We're building the environment that produces the next generation of founders, creators, and builders—starting with a single cohort in Berlin.

Year 1–2: Prove. Launch the inaugural cohort fall 2026. Graduate our first class. Track what they build, who they become, how the network compounds. Refine the model based on what we learn. The first cohort sets the culture for everything that follows.

Year 3–5: Scale. Expand to multiple cohorts per year, potentially across cities. Berlin remains home base; additional locations follow demand. The alumni network becomes a competitive advantage for new applicants—and a deal flow source for investors.

Year 5–10: Network Effects. At scale, Acta becomes the default answer to "where do ambitious young people go to figure out what to build?" Alumni hire alumni. Alumni invest in alumni. The network becomes self-reinforcing, and the brand becomes synonymous with a certain kind of person: capable, curious, connected.

The Long View. The best outcome isn't an exit—it's an institution. A place that keeps producing remarkable people, decade after decade. The returns come from being connected to that network, from the companies our alumni build, from being early to the people who will shape the next century.

Exit Considerations. We're building for durability, not a quick flip. Investor returns come through revenue share on tuition, carried interest in alumni ventures (for participating investors), and potential acquisition by an educational platform seeking our brand and network.

The world doesn't need another accelerator. It needs an environment that produces whole people—grounded, self-aware, and capable—who are worth accelerating.