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Custom GenAI Models for Business

Your business data is valuable. Get supercharged with the power of custom GenAI models that understand and prioritize your business.

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Guest speakers or lecturers on tech at:

Stanford University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Harvard University

Course overview

It's time to level-up! Embrace custom GenAI models tailored to your business

Problem: Today many enterprises are experiencing suboptimal results and high costs with large general purpose models. Importantly a vast majority do not trust current foundational models with their data and brand.


Since 2023 we've been underscoring that the future of AI for business is based on small open source models fine-tuned with high quality data and built on safe/responsible frameworks. While the DeepSeek R1 moment proved that open source solutions can deliver powerful GenAI at low cost, it's critical to upgrade the data your models use for inference plus the frameworks they rely on to move to the next level.


Solution: With our course, dive into the current trend of smaller, open source models tuned to your business. By using high quality, domain specific datasets, the right training methods, and your own algorithms, you can build custom GenAI models that are better, faster, and cheaper to operate. Also, ensure that your models are built on safe/responsible frameworks to safeguard your corporate governance plus data privacy & confidentiality.


We’ll guide you through a proven process we’ve honed over the last few years. Our team’s practical experience in deploying custom GenAI models in high performance use cases has resulted in big cost savings vs general purpose models, much lower inference latency, and exemplary results on company specific KPIs.


We’ve got you covered: We’ll take you from AI basics to the latest techniques and use cases to implementing the best training methods (like Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback, RLHF). We'll also give you insights into the most productive responsible AI frameworks and key principles behind AI safety, plus hands-on practical methods for deploying agentic AI models. You’ll leverage our extensive expertise to gain valuable know-how, frameworks, and strategies to take your business to the next level.


Future proof your understanding: Get ahead with the latest advances, like RAG, fine-tuning, agents/MCP/A2A, and responsible development. Get hands-on experience in a guided workshop with both tech and non-tech tracks focused on a project of your choice.


The Results: Upon completing the course you'll understand how to design and build custom GenAI models tailored for greater efficiency, accuracy, safety, privacy, security, and compliance. A perfect fit with your business objectives.

This course is for

01

Business and technical leaders looking to optimize the results from their GenAI models

02

C-Suite executives and VCs focused on maximizing upside from their GenAI investments

03

Visionary startup founders and creative innovators intent on building the next AI Unicorn

What you’ll get out of this course

Understand how to optimize the results and maximize the returns from GenAI

Produce better results that are fit for purpose at much lower cost than generic pre-trained models by leveraging custom models with your proprietary data.

Discover the best frameworks for designing custom GenAI models

Go beyond AI fundamentals by leveraging the best strategies and frameworks to craft custom GenAI models that are tailored to your business needs.

Explore how companies can use GenAI successfully for real use cases

Determine the best approaches for integrating GenAI custom models with your applications to maximize the business opportunity.

Know how to minimize risks and challenges in your custom GenAI models

Gain insights from tech policy experts on how to navigate the rapidly changing regulatory landscape and how to overcome inherent challenges in current GenAI models.

Get hands-on experience with the latest models and techniques

Investigate the most current tools and open source LLMs in a dedicated guided workshop session in either a no-code or coding environment

What’s included

Live sessions

Learn directly from Jorden Woods & Radhika Iyengar in a real-time, interactive format.

Lifetime access

Go back to course content and recordings whenever you need to.

Community of peers

Stay accountable and share insights with like-minded professionals.

Certificate of completion

Share your new skills with your employer or on LinkedIn.

Maven Guarantee

This course is backed by the Maven Guarantee. Students are eligible for a full refund up until the halfway point of the course.

Course syllabus

5 live sessions • 13 lessons • 4 projects

Week 1

Dec 8—Dec 14

    Dec

    9

    Session 1

    Tue 12/912:00 AM—2:00 AM (UTC)

    AI Basics (Tuesday)

    In this class there are 2 sessions. The first session is a primer that will cover a bit of the theory and history behind artificial neural networks (ANNs). ANNs are the basic structure behind AI and machine learning that are derived from biological models of the human brain. The second session discusses the current models available commercially and in research that are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in AI/ML and GenAI.

    • 📄

      Overview of AI / ML models & approaches (theory)

    • 📄

      Discussion of current key platforms (practice)

    • ✍️

      Homework Project #1 - General Purpose Models

      Submit by Dec 10
    • 📄

      Materials for Further Reading

    • 📄

      Popular Models

    Dec

    13

    Session 2

    Sat 12/1312:00 AM—2:00 AM (UTC)

    How are Companies Using AI? (Thursday)

    In this section we discuss the business case for AI & GenAI. Why are businesses adopting, which industries are early adopters, and the economic potential. We also discuss the interplay between standard AI/ML (predictive/optimization) and GenAI across many common types of use cases. We conclude this section with a high-level discussion of retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and fine-tuning, both of which provide important benefits to businesses above and beyond the off-the-shelf LLMs.

    • 📄

      How are enterprises and consumers leveraging GenAI?

    • 📄

      Where it's at: real-world examples & deployments

    • ✍️

      Homework #2 - Your Key Use Case

      Submit by Dec 15
    • 📄

      Materials for Further Reading

Week 2

Dec 15—Dec 21

    Dec

    17

    Session 3

    Wed 12/1712:00 AM—2:00 AM (UTC)

    What are the Risks & Challenges? (Tuesday)

    In its short history under mainstream adoption, GenAI has become quite controversial. We explore some of the key cases where GenAI has created harm and consternation due to bias, hallucinations, and flaunting social and legal convention. With this backdrop we then discuss the foundation for responsible AI and what world governments are doing to regulate this nascent industry. There is time for group discussion and we'll also discuss your projects in the context of responsible AI frameworks.

    • 📄

      Overview of Risks & Challenges plus Regulatory Frameworks

    • 📄

      Responsible AI Frameworks

    • ✍️

      Homework #3 - Responsible GenAI

      Submit by Dec 17

    Dec

    19

    Session 4

    Fri 12/1911:00 PM—1:00 AM (UTC)

    Building Custom Models (Thursday)

    In this session we will cover best practices for building custom models based on existing open source LLMs. This approach saves a tremendous amount of time and cost vs developing an LLM from scratch and is much better, faster and cheaper to run than a general purpose LLM since it is smaller and tailored to your needs. We'll discuss the best models to use, optimization techniques, and the types and specific tools to use for maximizing performance with different use cases.

    • 📄

      How to Build Open Source Custom Models

    • 📄

      Specific Tools & Practices to Use with Custom Models

    • ✍️

      Homework #4 - Building Your Custom Model

      Submit by Dec 22

Week 3

Dec 22

    Dec

    23

    Session 5

    Tue 12/2312:00 AM—2:00 AM (UTC)

    Hands-on Workshop (Tuesday)

    In this session you will have the opportunity to share a favorite use case and your thoughts around how you would build a custom GenAI model and execute it. Your hosts will provide guidance and feedback on the approach and you'll also have the opportunity to comment, ask questions, and learn from other members of your cohort. This is a great opportunity to get all your questions answered and really understand how to make your GenAI project a reality.

    • 📄

      Discussion of Your Specific Use Case and Custom Model

    • 📄

      Interactive Q&A Session

What students are saying

Meet your expert instructors

Jorden Woods

Jorden Woods

Lead Instructor

  • Successful 3-time Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur and pioneer in advanced tech
  • Founding Partner, StarChain Ventures, Silicon Valley Advanced Tech Venture Studio and AI/web3 R&D Lab
  • Strong architecture & technical systems expertise with 12+ years in AI and 7+ years in web3
  • Tech advisor to Fortune 500: Apple, VMware, Verisign, HP, GE, and Cisco with $MM ROI
  • Author of Enterprise Blockchain Has Arrived, Amazon #1 Best Seller, predicted rise of web3 and AI in business
  • Extensive experience advising top companies, investors and startups in US & globally across GenAI, AI/ML, web3, and other advanced tech
  • Invited speaker at Stanford, Google, Berkeley, MIT, Draper + major AI & advanced tech conferences, events, podcasts
  • BS (Astrophysics) Caltech, MS (Physics) University of Washington

 

Radhika Iyengar

Radhika Iyengar

Lead Instructor

  • Top 100 Women of the Future, TEDx Speaker, Silicon Valley Woman of Influence, recognized female trailblazer in multiple books; expert in responsible & explainable AI
  • Founding Partner, StarChain Ventures, Silicon Valley Advanced Tech Venture Studio and AI/web3 R&D Lab
  • Author of Enterprise Blockchain Has Arrived, Amazon #1 Best Seller, predicted rise of web3 and AI in business
  • 10+ years experience advising top companies, investors, and startups in US & globally in advanced tech including Big data predictive analytics, AI/ML, GenAI & blockchain
  • Keynote speaker at Google, Intel, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley, Draper U, major CxO forums, AI & tech conferences + podcasts
  • Interviews w/ Forbes Japan, CNN International & Business/Tech Insider
  • Member California Gov Ops Blockchain Working Group advising State Legislature & Governor Newsom on the responsible use of web3
  • AB Bryn Mawr College, MBA Chapman University, Certified Network Engineer (CNE)

Course schedule

6 hours per week

  • Mondays & Wednesdays

    4 pm - 6 pm PST

    All sessions have a 2-hour duration & take place from 4 -6 pm PST.

  • First Day is December 2

    The course takes place during the month of December with a hands-on guided workshop session in week 3

  • Weekly projects

    2 hours per week

    Each class will have a homework project that you can complete in about 1 hour. The homework will give you hands on experience with each topic.

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Frequently Asked Questions