Training course · AI Agents · Founders & Startups

AI Agents for Founders and Startups

Agentic AI for business teams: understand AI agents, automate workflows safely and keep control with human-in-the-loop and governance.

Duration
2 days (14 hrs)
Format
Online or on-site
Language
German or English
Participants
open dates or exclusive for your team
Certificate
Certificate of attendance

Overview

This course connects AI Agents with the everyday processes of Founders & Startups. Participants work on realistic scenarios and leave with prompts, workflows and checklists they can use straight away.

AI agents go a step beyond conventional chat assistants: they plan sub-tasks, use tools such as search, files or business applications and complete multi-step work largely on their own. Over two days you will learn how agents are built, how they differ from chatbots and traditional automation, and which tasks genuinely justify their use. Widely used platforms serve as practical examples, including Microsoft Copilot Studio, custom GPTs and Claude with projects and tool connections.

In the hands-on sessions you design agent workflows for tasks from your own area of work, from triaging requests through research and drafting to handing results over to business systems. You decide where a person reviews and approves, which permissions an agent receives and how errors are detected. A dedicated block covers governance, data protection and accountability, so that your agents not only work but remain controllable, traceable and defensible within your organisation.

Founders have to juggle many roles with a small team and limited budget: product, sales, marketing, finance, hiring and investor relations. Generative AI acts like an extra team member. It helps with market research and competitor analysis, drafts pitch decks and investor updates, writes landing pages and sales emails, structures customer interviews and supports the financial model. With vibe coding, prototypes, clickable mock-ups and internal tools come together in hours rather than weeks, so hypotheses can be tested in the market much sooner. AI agents automate lead research, onboarding emails or support replies. The key is to combine speed with critical review and to get the legal basics right from day one.

The course is delivered live – either online in a virtual classroom or on-site in our training rooms in Munich, Salzburg, Berlin, Augsburg, Hanover, Bremen, Stuttgart and Kaiserslautern. We can also run it exclusively for your team.

Who is this course for?

  • Early-stage founders
  • Founding teams in incubators and accelerators
  • Early employees at startups
  • Corporate venturing and intrapreneurship teams
  • Solo entrepreneurs with product ideas

Typical challenges we address

  • Little time and few resources for many parallel tasks
  • Hypotheses need to be validated quickly and cheaply
  • Heavy effort for pitching, investor relations and grant applications
  • No in-house experts for legal, finance and development in the early stage

What you will be able to do

  • You can explain how AI agents are structured and clearly distinguish them from chatbots and classic automation.
  • You can select a suitable agent platform for your requirements using transparent criteria.
  • You can design an agent workflow for a real process in your area and build a working prototype.
  • You can define human-in-the-loop checkpoints, test cases and escalation rules.
  • Validate business ideas faster with AI through research, interviews and prototypes.
  • Produce pitch decks, investor updates and sales materials efficiently with AI.
  • Build simple prototypes and internal tools through vibe coding and understand their limits.

Course outline

Day 1

Module 1 What makes an AI agent
  • Agent building blocks: language model, instructions, knowledge, tools and memory
  • How agents differ from chatbots, macros and classic workflow automation
  • Levels of autonomy: from suggestion-making assistants to agents that act independently
  • Realistically judging which tasks suit agents and which do not
Module 2 Platform overview: Copilot Studio, GPTs and Claude
  • Microsoft Copilot Studio: agents grounded in company data and connected to Microsoft 365
  • Custom GPTs: configuring instructions, knowledge files and actions
  • Claude with projects, knowledge bases and tool access via the Model Context Protocol
  • Selection criteria: data access, integrations, administration and licensing
Module 3 Designing and building agent workflows
  • Breaking tasks into steps and defining hand-offs between agent and human
  • Writing system instructions, examples and knowledge sources for consistent output
  • Connecting tools: search, documents, email, spreadsheets and business applications
  • Building a prototype agent for a real process from your own area
Module 4 Human-in-the-loop, quality and error handling
  • Setting approval steps, escalation rules and thresholds for human review
  • Test cases, evaluation criteria and spot checks for quality assurance
  • Common failure modes: wrong tool choice, endless loops and fabricated facts
  • Using structured user feedback to improve the agent over time

Day 2

Module 5 Governance, security and roll-out
  • Roles and responsibilities across business units, IT, data protection and works council
  • Least-privilege permissions, logging and protection against prompt injection
  • Positioning under the EU AI Act and GDPR: transparency, documentation and data flows
  • From pilot agent to production: operation, maintenance and measuring success
Module 6 Practice lab: Founders & Startups
  • Market and competitor analysis
  • Analysing customer interviews
  • Pitch decks and investor updates
  • Prototypes via vibe coding
  • Sales and marketing
  • Grants and business plans
Module 7 Data protection, quality & transfer to daily work
  • Startups must comply with the GDPR, imprint requirements and unfair competition law from the outset, for example for waitlists, newsletters and outreach. For AI-based products, the EU AI Act, copyright in generated content, code licences and the confidentiality of investor and customer data must be considered.
  • Ground rules for safe AI use in your team
  • Checking results: facts, sources, tests and the four-eyes principle
  • Personal action plan for the next 30 days
  • Open questions, outlook and resources for further learning

Practical scenarios from your field

Market and competitor analysis

AI structures market segments, target groups and competitors, derives positioning options and helps identify research sources – figures and facts are then backed up with reliable references.

Analysing customer interviews

Guides for problem interviews are created, notes are analysed for pain points, willingness to pay and quotes, and insights are condensed for the next iteration.

Pitch decks and investor updates

Storyline, slide copy and answers to typical investor questions are developed; regular updates for investors and advisers are generated from KPIs and milestones. Investors stay informed with little effort.

Prototypes via vibe coding

Landing pages, clickable prototypes and simple MVPs are built with AI coding tools to test demand and user behaviour before investing in professional development. Scaling up follows once demand is confirmed.

Sales and marketing

Ideal customer profiles, outreach sequences, website copy and social posts are written for the target audience and prepared in variants for A/B testing. Test results feed straight into the next iteration.

Grants and business plans

AI helps make sense of funding programmes, structure applications and business plans and explain financial assumptions clearly; the figures themselves are checked by an expert.

Prerequisites

You should already use an AI assistant such as ChatGPT, Copilot or Claude on a regular basis. No programming skills are required. A startup idea or a role in a young company; no programming skills required.

Technical requirements

You will need a laptop with an up-to-date browser. Ideally you have access to at least one agent platform such as Copilot Studio, ChatGPT with GPTs or Claude; practice accounts can be provided if needed.

Data protection & compliance

Startups must comply with the GDPR, imprint requirements and unfair competition law from the outset, for example for waitlists, newsletters and outreach. For AI-based products, the EU AI Act, copyright in generated content, code licences and the confidentiality of investor and customer data must be considered.

Suggested dates

All dates are suggestions – your preferred date is always possible.

  • Thu, 26 November 2026 – Fri, 27 November 2026 Online Request
  • Tue, 8 December 2026 – Wed, 9 December 2026 Berlin Request
  • Tue, 15 December 2026 – Wed, 16 December 2026 Online Request
  • Wed, 20 January 2027 – Thu, 21 January 2027 Online Request
  • Thu, 4 February 2027 – Fri, 5 February 2027 Hanover Request
  • Thu, 11 February 2027 – Fri, 12 February 2027 Online Request

Frequently asked questions

Do I need programming skills to build AI agents?

No. The platforms used on the course rely on visual interfaces, plain-language instructions and ready-made connectors. You learn to specify agents precisely from a business perspective, connect tools and test workflows. Where deeper technical integration would be needed, you will know which requirements to put to your IT team.

Which platform will we use during the course?

The course is vendor-neutral and uses Microsoft Copilot Studio, custom GPTs and Claude as examples. You build your prototype on the platform that is available or planned in your organisation. The principles of workflow design, control and governance you learn carry over to other agent solutions as well.

How do I stop an agent from acting without control?

Through deliberate design: agents receive only the minimum permissions they need, critical actions such as sending, booking or deleting require human approval, and every step is logged. In addition, you define test cases and escalation rules. These are exactly the control mechanisms you develop for your own use case during the course.

Can I build an MVP with AI without knowing how to code?

For landing pages, clickable prototypes and simple web apps, yes – often enough to test demand. For a scalable, secure product handling user data and payments, however, you need development expertise. The course shows where that line lies and how to hand prototypes over cleanly to developers.

Can investors tell a pitch deck was written by AI?

Generic copy stands out. What matters is that the storyline, numbers and insights come from your own work. AI helps you structure, sharpen and prepare for tough questions. In the course we practise making your story more compelling with AI without sounding interchangeable.

How much does “AI Agents for Founders and Startups” cost?

The course costs a flat €949 plus VAT per participant – whether online or on-site. This includes 2 training day(s) with a live trainer, course materials, a lab environment and a certificate of attendance.

Can I suggest my own date?

Yes. Our suggested dates are just a guide. In the request form you can always describe your preferred date or period in free text – we check availability and confirm within one working day.

Is the course online or on-site?

Both are possible: live online in a virtual classroom or on-site in Munich, Salzburg, Berlin, Augsburg, Hanover, Bremen, Stuttgart or Kaiserslautern. We can also run the course exclusively for your team.

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