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Common Ground Ventures

How Common Ground built CG Academy

Common Ground's own learning product is a plan, not a catalog: twelve weeks, a task on real work in every lesson, and a quiz to pass.

CG Academy is Common Ground's own learning product, and the hub has no engagement record for it, so this page works from the site itself. What the site shows is a plan for people who do real work in fields like construction and development and who have heard about AI without learning it. Its examples are subcontractors, RFIs and commercial build-outs, and it opens by saying no degree is required.

The site makes one clear choice: it is a plan, not a catalog. Instead of recording its own lectures, it sends the learner to free courses from established providers, ties every week to a task on the learner's own work, and ends each lesson with a quiz that has to be passed. The paid part is two certification exams, $75 each, for a $150 total investment.

What the site shows about how it was built

  • A fixed 12-week structure. Four phases, with a final assessment closing each of the first three, and a certification and portfolio phase to finish.
  • A task before a quiz. Every lesson lists that week's tasks, most of them on the learner's real work, and then a quiz with a 70% pass mark.
  • One primary tool. The lessons teach five AI tools side by side and name Claude as the program's primary tool.
  • Progress the learner can see. A dashboard shows lessons done, quizzes passed, average score and a day streak.
  • A published credit. The site's description reads "Built by Common Ground," and its footer credits the branding to Lip Loi Creative, one of the two practices that became Common Ground in April 2023.

The full record of what the program teaches is on the other tab of this wiki.

Credits

CG Academy is one of several places where Common Ground packages what it does so a person can use it without a meeting: an AI readiness standard, an estimating engine, an evidence-graded reference and the group's own CRM. The common thread is a standard that holds up when someone checks it.

Search and AI readiness: the Common Ground standard for sites that search engines and AI answer engines can readSearch and AI readiness is the Common Ground standard for making its sites readable to search engines and AI answer engines.Kanopi: an estimating engine with an accuracy claim that survives checkingLÏEF's estimating engine, in place with eight builders and developers and over $600 million bid in 2026, publishing only the accuracy it earns blind.Ground Truth Peptides: the site that earns its gradesA free, independent, evidence-graded reference for 42 research peptides built because honest information did not exist; sells nothing, takes no vendor money, and does not change a grade when the news changes.Common Ground's CRM: migrated twice in three weeksMoved Common Ground's relationship book off a marketing-funnel CRM onto a records-and-relationships CRM in one day, weeks after the first move.

On the record

About Common Ground Ventures

Common Ground Ventures is a principal-led venture group built around one premise: we build. It builds, funds, operates, automates with AI and protects companies from the inside, and it carries the work from strategy through execution instead of stopping at the recommendation.

The group works across related industries on purpose. Construction, capital, brand, technology and law sit in one room, so a developer's problem can borrow from a product launch, and a deep tech company's sales plan can borrow from how a builder wins a bid. Every engagement is a chance to carry what worked somewhere else into the next company.

Common Ground grew out of two practices: Jesse Fowler's fractional work, running since 2016 and as Three Trails since 2019, and Lip Loi Creative, since December 2019. The principals brought them together as Common Ground in April 2023, when Alex Prince and Prince Capital came in as well. Zen Aegis came in the same way in December 2025.

Jesse Fowler, Execution and Development · Alex Prince, Capital and Investment · Jimmy Khounlavong, Brand · Robby Prochnow, Technology and AI Architecture · Nick Scavio, General Counsel