Next Pillar Academy Opens: Where Business Owners Learn to Put AI to Work
Will Taubenheim has opened Next Pillar Academy, an online AI community and school for business owners. It opened in October 2026 at nextpillaracademy.com.
What it is
Next Pillar Academy is where owners learn to put AI to work in the business they run. Members learn it with Will and co-host Joe Staiber on a live call every week, in a classroom that starts at the beginning, alongside other owners doing the same.
- A classroom that starts at the beginning. Every lesson has a transcript.
- A live call every week, with replays and searchable transcripts.
- AI News, posted live, and the community feed.
- Levels and badges for showing up and helping.
Every member sees every course. The classroom starts with how AI actually works, why it costs money, prompting that works, telling a fact from a claim or a guess, what never goes in the chat, and handling API keys and accounts safely.
Who it is for
People who own or run a business and want AI doing real work in it, who would rather learn it properly, in order, than chase every new tool. It is not a get-rich-quick system, and it is not a done-for-you build.
Why Will teaches it
Will is an AI engineer who builds systems that have to work under real pressure: in NASA's LunaRecycle Challenge, in work for the U.S. Navy and Air Force, and for businesses in healthcare, finance, real estate and the trades. On the Terasynth team he won four awards in NASA's LunaRecycle Challenge, including second place overall in the prototype track and People's Choice at the 2026 finale.
That is what he teaches. Every lesson comes from systems he has built and run, explained the way an owner thinks about it: cost, time, risk and return.
Joe Staiber, the co-host, brings the business side: he is co-founder and CEO of Tampa Entrepreneurs, a non-profit that hosts free events for business owners, and CEO of Autoscale, which builds AI sales and marketing systems.
Where it fits
The Academy sits beside Will's other work: Lost Frame Ventures, the AI engineering company he founded in 2018, and Next Pillar Capital, which he co-founded and which runs the Academy.