Oakland Essentials Fellowship: One-Month Follow-Up Report

The Essentials Fellowship is built on a simple but profound premise: innovation thrives when ideas from different perspectives collide. 

The Oakland cohort brought together classroom teachers, nonprofit leaders, aspiring founders, and AI tinkerers, all united by a deep commitment to their communities.

One month after the pilot Oakland Essentials workshop, we conducted AI-powered follow-up conversations with participants to understand what they learned, how they used their $500 stipend, and where their ventures are headed.

High-Impact Ventures

• Ventures span EdTech, workforce development, mental health support, civic dialogue, creative arts, and social connection
• Participants gathered feedback from hundreds of potential users collectively, demonstrating a commitment to user discovery and validation for their ideas
• Projects addressing everything from elementary math anxiety to school leader burnout to ageism in hiring

Across projects, participants found clear signals that communities want what they're building:

• "There was no participant that said, " I don't want this." — Pia Z
  
  
• "[Counselors] say things like, wow, that's amazing or magical... [it] shows the possibilities and the breaking point around the admin work that counselors are doing." — Priyanka F
  
  
• "It was real, it was raw. And just understanding that like, this is something they want. This should be scalable, like this should be in the hands of many people." — Justin H

The Value of $500: How Participants Tested Their Hunches

The $500 stipend was used creatively and strategically across very different approaches.

User Research (Most Common)

• $350–400 on incentives (Amazon gift cards) for participants in listening sessions
• $100–150 on supplies for in-person research sessions

This User Research resulted in deep qualitative insights from target users.

Go-to-Market Testing

• Conference booth fees and attendance at professional convenings
• Website development for credibility and lead capture

Go-to-Market Testing resulted in increased access to ideal customer profiles, bringing in more users to their work.

Mindset Shifts 

1. The Importance of Customer Selection
Multiple participants learned they needed to narrow their ideal customer profile significantly:

• "Making sure to select and further narrow down the ICP and the type of school I'm targeting as one that is innovative and has capacity is kind of a key learning." — Priyanka F

2. The Power of Starting
For participants who had been sitting on ideas, the fellowship provided momentum:

"Sometimes when you kind of have these ideas and ventures that you want to pursue, the hardest part is getting started. And I definitely needed the push to kind of get started." — Pia Z

3. Clarity on the Problem
Several participants shifted from proving their solution to understanding the root problem:

"The shift I have felt in this process has really been to going back to the hunch. I'm getting greater clarity in what the problem is that we're trying to solve rather than to prove the value of the partial solution that I already had." — Symon H

4. Finding the Right Format
Participants learned that their idea's format might need to evolve:

"I think what I took about the fellowship was new ways of approaching how to come up with the ideal solution, so maybe an app isn't the right way to do this." — Priyanka F

Where They're Going Next

Of the substantive projects with clear momentum:

• All are moving forward (none pausing or significantly pivoting)
• Most are seeking additional incubator/accelerator support to scale
• Several are preparing for pre-seed fundraising within 3–5 years

Participants articulated ambitious but grounded visions spanning education, community, workforce, and social connection:

Education Infrastructure:

• "In three to five years, if we're successful, we have millions of kids using the product, and more importantly, they're also really excited about math and they see the math around them in the real world." — Vaishnavi S

Community Building:

• "This would be a go-to gathering where school leaders are attending regularly to provide mental and emotional support for themselves." — Symon H

Workforce & Economic Impact:

"The long-term vision would be to launch and see how many people, you know, 60 plus we could get back in the workforce and make sure they have what they need in order to retire." — Pia Z

Cultural Shift:

• "In three to five years, we have scaled past a million creators on our platform." — Justin H

The Oakland Essentials pilot achieved its core mission: helping diverse innovators test their hunches and gain clarity on their next steps.

Every substantive project is moving forward. Participants gathered real evidence of demand, learned crucial lessons about their customers, and refined their approaches based on actual user feedback. The $500 stipend proved sufficient to enable meaningful experimentation across remarkably different methodologies.

Most importantly, participants aren't building vanity projects, they're addressing real pain points in education, workforce development, and community support that they've witnessed firsthand. The combination of personal commitment, tactical experimentation, and peer learning created genuine momentum.

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Report compiled November 2025 by Project Kindred, Inc. For more information on their AI-powered follow-up conversations, contact hello@projectkindred.co.

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