Hard Calls Pro
The free Stack (the method as plain files for Claude or ChatGPT) teaches it. Pro is what happens when the system knows your company, argues back from every angle, and remembers every call you've made: the named calls, the sparring partners (eight fixed lenses that argue your call at full strength), and the memory that compounds.
Join Pro$197, one time. No subscription. The files are yours for good.
What's inside
01
All 28 skills. The ten named calls (raise, fire, price, pivot, sell, quit, hire, focus, split, crisis), each built from what real founders did at the moment they had to decide. The sharpeners: /conviction, the six-check interrogation that separates a priced bet from an expensive feeling. /premortem, /base-rates, /tripwires, /postmortem, /advice. The long game: /game, /enough, /runway, /leverage, /fears, the sovereignty layer everything else points at.
02
Run /context once: twenty minutes, and the system knows your entities, numbers, people, constraints, ruin lines, and your enough number. Every future call starts informed instead of cold. Then the journal: every memo appended, every prediction recorded, every review graded. Ten calls in, it knows where you run overconfident and which currency you underprice. No advisor billing hourly can offer that, because it's built from your own record.
03
Sparring partners: eight fixed lenses grounded in the documented operator record. The Bootstrapper, the Maximalist, the Wartime CEO, the Risk Officer, the Allocator, the Seller, the People Chief, the Editor. Pick three, and they argue your call at full strength, including at least one from the lane you're not in. No friendly rounds, no pulled punches, and you answer the two hardest hits in writing before you commit.
04
The first founders who buy Pro get a one-time 1:1 with Michael. Partly user research, partly white glove, the way Stripe's founders onboarded early users themselves. It comes out of the box once the founding cohort is full.
05
The case files: one real decision a month, what the people making it knew at the time, and where the story people tell differs from what happened. Each one excerpted in the newsletter and complete inside Pro. And the calibration report: quarterly, generated from your own journal, your personal base rates in black and white.
The free Stack is complete on its own. Pro is the system above. Past Pro, there's one more altitude: the Company Brain install. We build the whole thing around your company, the brain built, the feeds wired, done with you rather than by you. Installs from $12,500. Application only, and it starts with three questions.
Answer the three questionsClaude (Projects, Skills, Claude Code), ChatGPT (Projects or a custom GPT), and any agent product that reads markdown. Plain files, no lock-in, yours to keep.
No, and it refuses to. The partner contract is explicit: it recommends, it argues, it prices, and the call is yours. Every session ends with you deciding, dating, or naming the missing fact.
Then you know the method works cold. Pro is the same method warm: your context, your journal, your patterns, plus the named calls and the sparring partners. Nothing you've written is lost; your memos carry straight over.
Pro members get $23,000+ in negotiated deals on tools founders use. It is a bonus, not the reason to join.
No. All sales are final. The free Stack exists so you can run the method before you pay for the system: that's the trial, and it's complete. If the method works cold, Pro is the method warm. Decide the way this whole site teaches you to decide: worst case priced, on paper, before the purchase.
Answer the three questions at /free and you'll be routed to the right conversation. Installs from $12,500, application only, and the calendar is the constraint.
One hard call gotten right pays for this a few hundred times over. You can check that against the last big call you got wrong.
Not ready? Get the Sunday issue first.
Or install the free Stack