About
Amplify your thinking.
Learn to understand, choose and act. Practical education, entrepreneurship and the responsible use of artificial intelligence.
Startup School is an educational project of SA Andrei Gritskov Foundation. We help people develop professional skills, learn to use new tools and turn knowledge into practical decisions. Our focus is learning that helps people act with greater confidence at work, in business and in everyday life.
Our mission
To help people think more independently and act more deliberately. We bring together practical knowledge, critical thinking, professional experience and contemporary tools. Technology is not an end in itself: its value depends on the problem a person actually needs to solve.
Our approach: augmented thinking
By augmented thinking, we mean the ability to combine personal knowledge and experience with suitable tools, including artificial intelligence, to understand a problem, compare options and make well-informed decisions. A convincing answer is not enough: it is important to understand its basis, verify the result and recognise its limitations.
We do not present AI as an alternative to knowledge or professional expertise. Knowing how to operate a service does not remove the need to understand your work. Our approach therefore emphasises task framing, verification, independent judgement and responsibility for the final decision.
From a problem to a result
Our practical working cycle is goal, context, options, verification and decision. We first define the problem and the criteria for a good result. We then gather relevant facts and constraints, consider possible solutions, check their basis and choose an action. We use tools where they help, not simply to demonstrate technology.
This is a working educational framework that we develop and refine through practice. Its value should be visible in completed tasks, understandable decisions and a person’s ability to explain their choices.
Learning areas
Startup School’s learning areas include digital skills and AI use, entrepreneurship and management, HoReCa and service, and languages and communication. They share an emphasis on applying knowledge. Each area retains its own substance: language learning is not reduced to technology, and professional training is not reduced to using a chatbot.
Current curricula, entry requirements, study volume, format, price and completion conditions are published on the relevant course pages. This overview of our approach does not replace approved curricula.
People and responsibility
We support thoughtful use of technology: checking important information, respecting confidentiality and being honest about the limits of our knowledge. What matters is not only the result, but understanding how it was obtained, what its limitations are and who is responsible for its use.
Education is also a way of supporting people. We remain attentive to those changing careers, adapting to a new environment or looking for their next step. Participation opportunities depend on the conditions of the specific programme or project.
The initiator
The Augmented Thinking educational direction is initiated by Dr. h.c. Andrei Gritskov, MBA. It connects education, entrepreneurship and the practical use of AI around one question: how can we help people understand problems better and act more responsibly?
“Amplify your thinking” is our educational direction. It is not a rejection of knowledge or a promise of automatic success, but an invitation to learn, verify and apply.