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Onboarding session - 21 September 2026

The opening session of the Fund 12 cohort, run by Jonathan Adjei and Harry Hellyer on Monday 21 September 2026, 16:00-17:00 UTC.

This page is the catch-up record for anyone who could not attend. It summarises what was covered and what participants need to do next.

tip

Recording available. A recording of this session is now up, minus the first ~15 minutes, which were lost to a storage-space limit on the recording account. The summary below covers that opening stretch.

▶ Watch the session recording (unlisted)

Sessions from 28 September onward will be recorded in full and linked here. Zoom announces recording to everyone present whenever it is running.

What the Academy is​

A Project Catalyst funded course on the business and marketing side of running a stake pool, deliberately not the technical side. Technical questions are still answered when they come up, they are simply not the subject.

The premise put to the group: a pool can be technically excellent, hit every block and keep uptime clean, and still not grow. That gap is not a technical problem, so technical work does not close it.

How the course runs​

  • Eight modules on the Andamio platform, worked at your own pace.
  • Four live sessions, on consecutive Mondays at 16:00 UTC.
  • Roughly two to three hours a week for about a month.
  • Each module ends in a short assignment, 15 to 30 minutes. The assignments accumulate into a business plan you keep.
  • An on-chain credential is issued on completion, held in your own wallet.

The live sessions are the forcing function rather than the content. The material stands on its own and is available whenever it suits you.

See the module reference for the full structure.

What was discussed​

The session covered the state of delegation in the current market and why growth is hard for smaller pools. Themes raised by the group:

  • The size of the stake that has never been delegated to anything, and whether pool growth is better understood as activating non-delegators than as competing for stake already placed.
  • That different ecosystem projects need different value propositions when a pool talks to prospective delegators, rather than one general pitch.
  • How visibility of staking rewards, or the lack of it, affects whether delegators stay engaged.
  • The scale of the competitive field, and that the chain parameters target 500 pools rather than that number already operating at optimal size.

What participants need to do​

  1. Have a mainnet Cardano wallet ready. A fresh, separate wallet is fine. This is where your credential is issued, so it needs to be one you control.
  2. Mint the Andamio access token when the link is sent. This costs a small amount of ADA on mainnet, and Fluid7 refunds that cost.
  3. Work the modules asynchronously, allowing two to three hours a week.

Next session​

Monday 28 September 2026, 16:00 UTC. The same Zoom link is used for every session in the series.

Places remain in this cohort. Operators who would like one are welcome to ask.