Will Schulz is a multidisciplinary founder, engineer and creative technologist who has spent the last decade at the intersection of code, capital and culture.
Crafting thoughtful digital experiences with 15+ years in software development and an eye for the details that make interfaces feel alive.
As the creator of AW3 Technology, a San Francisco venture studio, Will has led the design, development and go-to-market execution for dozens of startups across AI, Web3, SaaS and education. The studio's work has helped seed clients raise over $5 million in early-stage capital, generate millions in ARR, and scale to national and global visibility.
B.A. Computer Science and Economics.
Silicon Valley software engineer, business intelligence consultant and data analyst.
Founded a 501(c)(4) non-profit and a B2B e-learning software company.
Startup consulting from 2020, incorporated as AW3 Technology in 2022. Plus VC Lab and Newchip Accelerator.
A fractional CTO costs $150 to $500 an hour, or $12,000 to $20,000 a month for two days a week. Where those ranges come from, what moves them, and the first-year arithmetic against a full-time hire.
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Published MVP estimates run from $2,000 to $500,000 because "MVP" names three different things. The honest ranges for each, what Clutch's 2026 data says the market really charges, the five decisions that move the price, and how to read a quote.
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Only about 31 percent of IT projects land on time, on budget and in scope, and the buying process is most of the reason. Twelve questions to ask any software development agency before you sign, from who will do the work to what happens when it goes wrong.
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Fixed price, time and materials and a monthly retainer each fail in a predictable way. Which model fits which stage of a project, the hybrids that work, and the five questions that settle most of the risk before you sign.
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AW3 published Building a Startup in 2026 and Beyond: a free, narrated course of twelve lessons in four modules, with 108 sources, weekly assignments and no sign-up. What is in it, how it works, and why a venture studio wrote it.
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Stripe says 63% of new Atlas startups now have a single founder, and the gap between the top decile and the median has nearly doubled. The four early choices that separated them, and the month-two number every new founder should watch.
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Y Combinator's free tool lets founders, and their AI agents, send a SAFE in two minutes. A worked example of how a few small post-money SAFEs plus a normal seed round take founders from 100% to about 58%, and five rules for raising a pre-seed without losing count.
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Anthropic is showing investors its Q3 numbers today ahead of a November listing. Firmus pulled a $5 billion IPO last week. The market is not closed, it is selective, and the line runs between realized revenue and forecasts.
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Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 two years after Google paid $2.7 billion to hire its founders and license its models. Disney's $20 million opening bid is what a reverse acquihire leaves behind, and what founders should learn from it.
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September CPI came in at 3.7%, above forecasts, with gasoline accounting for half the rise and core accelerating to 2.6%. Odds of an October hike jumped. What the report says about the Fed's next move and how founders should reprice for it.
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Today's Nobel went to the economists behind modern central banking, four weeks after the Fed raised rates for the first time since 2023. What their work says about the next few months, and how founders should plan for it.
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SpaceX, Broadcom and Oracle are lining up tens of billions in debt to buy AI chips. The build-out is moving from equity to credit markets, backed by collateral that loses most of its value in a few years.
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Seed dollars are concentrating in fewer companies, but some funds still back founders at the idea stage. Twenty that invest before traction, thirty-one more writing early checks, and how to work the list.
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Supply has gone sideways near $300B while two issuers hold 85% of it. With GENIUS Act rules due in November, the issuance layer is becoming a regulated utility. Build one layer up.
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Young-graduate unemployment looks normal. Underemployment does not. AI is quietly deleting the apprenticeship work that turned graduates into professionals, and founders will pay for it later.
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Local resistance has blocked or delayed roughly $130B of AI data centers. The constraint on AI is now the grid and the zoning board, and it changes the math for everyone building on inference.
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Nearly every enterprise has an agent. Most are stuck in pilot. The gap is a production problem, not a model problem — and it is the market.
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AI-native companies post nearly 6x the revenue per employee of traditional SaaS. What actually changed, where lean teams break, and how we staff a founding team now.
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February's software selloff was not a shock, it was a correction. Why per-seat pricing broke, what is replacing it, and how we price in the studio.
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Depending on the tracker, tokenized RWA is somewhere between $33B and $43B. The disagreement matters more than the total — and the real signal is elsewhere.
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Infrastructure and applications are in completely different conditions. Conflating them is making founders make bad decisions in both directions.
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Seed dollars rose 31% while seed deal count fell 30%. Both are true, and the gap between the headlines and your fundraise is not your fault.
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How venture studios work, how they differ from VC, and why operator-led building ships 3.4x faster.
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Its answer was better than I expected. What it left out was more interesting than what it said.
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With over $20 billion in tokenized assets on-chain and major institutions launching RWA products, 2026 marks the year tokenization moved from experiment to infrastructure.
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Autonomous AI agents are no longer experimental—they are managing supply chains, negotiating contracts, and allocating capital. Here is what the agentic economy means for founders and investors.
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Neither pure automation nor pure human effort wins in the long run. The founders who succeed will be those who master the art of human-AI collaboration.
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The narrative around blockchain has matured dramatically. Here's why 2026 marks the transition from crypto speculation to genuine enterprise infrastructure adoption.
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As AI agents evolve from assistants to autonomous decision-makers, we explore how this shift will fundamentally transform business operations and create new investment opportunities.
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Two of the most transformative technologies of our era are on a collision course—and the implications are profound.
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JustiGuide ReLo, the AI immigration support agent AW3 helped build, made TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025. What it does, who it serves, and why it matters.
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Your technology can handle millions of users. The question is: can you?
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The deeper task is not to become more like them, but to become the best version of yourself.
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If the world is unknowable and outcomes are lottery-like, then unfairness has no remedy; it belongs to the nature of things.
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To live without risk is to stagnate, but not every risk is worth taking. How founders tell methodical risk-taking from recklessness, and keep the line clear.
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Money is not created equally. Who gets to create it, why that power concentrated, and what it means for anyone building financial products today.
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Humility is the price of entry in this game. Notes from a founder who got it wrong first: on ego, listening, and what separates a second attempt from a repeat.
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There are certain truths that reveal themselves only after you’ve failed enough times.
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There comes a time in every person’s life when the illusion of control collapses.
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Not many endeavors in life are as challenging as starting and building a successful business.
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Being 33 in 2025 carries a weight that previous generations never knew.
Read →Tell us the thesis. If it's right for the studio we'll put a team on it — and our own capital behind it.
