Leland+ Content Library

90-Day Action Plan Template for VC Recruiting

Create a comprehensive 90-day action plan for breaking into VC with your unique positioning.

Consortium Example Essays

These essays helped an ally be admitted to Consortium and to UC Berkeley Haas and UCLA Anderson. They stand out due to the clarity in career goals, specific ways the applicant supported unrepresented groups, and multi-faceted plans for involvement and support in the future.

Crafting an MBA Essay That Actually Stands Out [5/12/2026] (Recording)

FREE LELAND + FOR 1 MONTH FOR ALL LIVE ATTENDEES. Strong MBA essays aren’t just well-written, they clearly communicate who you are and why you belong at a program. This session is for applicants who want to move beyond generic advice and craft essays that genuinely stand out. You’ll learn how to develop a focused personal narrative, avoid common mistakes that dilute your story, and align your essays with what admissions readers are actually looking for. Join live to hear from MBA admissions experts and ask questions about your own essay ideas. The panelists regularly work with applicants on essay development and will share the patterns they see across successful submissions. Expect practical feedback and insights similar to what’s covered in 1:1 coaching conversations.

Home for Ambition #9 — Weekly Live Show [5/13/2026] (Recording)

Home for Ambition is a weekly live show, by Leland, for people trying to stay ahead as work, learning, and opportunity keep changing. Each episode tackles a handful of timely, high-signal topics across AI, careers, education, and the future of work. We expect thoughtful debate, unique perspectives, and practical takeaways you can actually use. It is not a typical interview show or a generic news recap. It is a live roundtable built to help ambitious people make sense of what is changing, understand what matters, and leave with a sharper point of view on how to navigate what comes next.

Build a Job Search Operating System (JSOS) [5/13/2026] (Recording)

Build Anything Series · Event 01 · Free · Live The job search is the most expensive workflow most people will ever run — and the one they're least equipped for. Spreadsheets, sticky notes, half-tracked outreach, lost interview notes. By the end of this hour, you'll learn how to create a complete Job Search Operating System to help you land your next offer. What we'll walk through live: - A real applicant tracker | every role, company, and contact in one view. Status, last action, next step, follow-up date. - Automated outreach + research | pull company context, drafts personalized outreach, surfaces the right people to message. - Synced notes, prep, offer comparison | interview notes that auto-link to the role, prep doc generation per company, structured offer comparison when it's time to choose. Who it's for: - People actively job searching or about to start - Career switchers, returning-to-work folks, recent grads - Anyone who's run a search before and remembers losing track of half of it Not a fit if: - You enjoy manual data entry and Excel-tab chaos - You'd rather pay $300 for a static prompt template that fails instead of learning the principles yourself - You want a one-click magic button I'll be honest about where AI helps and where it doesn't, and how to keep the system running without me. Bring your laptop and follow along, or lean in, watch, and replicate after.

Sector Overview: Fintech

Learn about the Fintech Industry, its sub-sectors, key players, valuations, and how VCs approach it

Sector Overview: Marketplaces

Learn about marketplaces, their key growth drivers, key players, metrics and benchmarks, and what VCs look for.

New Ways to Use Claude Cowork to Land Your Dream Job [5/14/2026] (Recording)

BOOTCAMP SEAT GIVEAWAY FOR LIVE ATTENDEES ($999 VALUE). In this session, you'll learn how to use Claude's cowork features to actively strengthen your job search, from drafting tailored outreach messages to refining your positioning for specific roles. We'll cover how to prompt Claude effectively for marketing and sales applications, how to use it to pressure-test your personal narrative, and how to build a repeatable workflow that saves time without losing your voice. Attending live means you can describe your actual situation and get a response shaped around it, not a general answer. The coach works with job seekers on this daily and will share the patterns that consistently move candidates forward.

Banking to Buy-Side: IB & Venture Playbook [5/18/2026] (Recording)

After this session, you'll understand how investment banking experience translates into a credible VC narrative and where most candidates lose the thread making that transition. We'll cover how to position deal experience for early-stage fund interviews, what VC firms actually look for in candidates coming from IB versus other paths, and how to think about sourcing as a differentiator when you have limited buy-side exposure. Attending live means you can bring your specific background and get a direct read on how it lands, which a recording cannot replicate. The coach works inside this industry and will share the patterns they see across candidates who successfully make this move, giving you a real look at how practitioners evaluate this transition.

What AI Can’t Do in MBA Admissions [5/18/2026] (Recording)

Artificial intelligence has transformed how applicants brainstorm, draft, and prepare for business school applications, but the strongest MBA applications still require far more than polished prose. This session will break down where AI can help, where it often hurts, and the critical aspects of strategy, reflection, and storytelling that technology cannot replicate. Attendees will learn why top admissions committees continue to reward authenticity, judgment, and narrative depth, and how to use AI as a tool without allowing it to dilute what makes an application compelling.

Getting Started With an Always-On AI Agent for the Working Professional [5/19/2026] (Recording)

After this session, you will know how to set up an AI agent that runs in the background of your work life, handling recurring tasks without requiring your attention each time. We will cover how to identify which professional workflows are worth automating first, how to choose and configure the right tools for a working professional's setup, and how to keep an agent running reliably after the initial build. Attending live means you can describe your actual job and get a direct read on where automation would give you the most leverage, something a recording cannot replicate. The coach works with AI agents daily and will share the patterns that separate setups that hold up over time from ones that quietly break.

Targeting M7 Schools? What It Really Takes [5/20/2026] (Recording)

1YR FREE LELAND+ GIVEAWAY FOR LIVE ATTENDEES ($119 VALUE). After this session, you'll know how to assess whether your profile is genuinely competitive for M7 schools and where the real gaps tend to appear. We'll cover how admissions committees at these programs actually differentiate candidates at the margin, what a strong post-MBA narrative looks like for the most common applicant profiles, and how to decide where to apply given your specific background and goals. Attending live means you can hear how experienced coaches thinks through cases like yours in real time, context a recording simply cannot replicate. These coaches work with M7 applicants daily and will share the patterns that separate candidates who get in from those who fall short at the final round.

Freeing the People's Data: AI Agents for Legislative Transparency [5/20/2026] (Recording)

Struggling to make sense of fragmented legislative data or build tools that surface it in a usable way? This session is for builders, policy professionals, and researchers who want to use AI agents to unlock and structure public legislative data for real transparency. You’ll learn how to design agents that gather and normalize data across sources, create workflows that turn raw information into searchable insights, and evaluate outputs for accuracy and bias. Attending live gives you the opportunity to ask technical and strategic questions about your own use cases and get clarity in real time. The speaker works closely with practitioners and will share the patterns they see when building systems that actually get used, along with what they look for when evaluating effectiveness and trust. If you’re serious about turning legislative data into something actionable, it’s worth joining live.

Haasome (ie. Awesome Haas) Essays

These winning Haas essays show a clear vision of the applicant's career, a plan for how to make the most of her time at Haas, and the self-awareness and personal growth that Haas values. Talking points for the "What Makes You Feel Alive When You're Doing It" video essay are also included.

Product Requirements Document Template

Stop reinventing the wheel every time you kick off a new product. This battle-tested PRD template walks you through everything from TL;DR overviews and user flows to system requirements, metrics, and launch planning, so your team stays aligned and nothing falls through the cracks. Whether you're a first-time PM or a seasoned lead, this is the structure that keeps stakeholders happy and engineers unblocked.

What McKinsey, BCG, and Bain Look For [5/19/2026] (Recording)

FREE COACHING SESSION GIVEAWAY FOR LIVE ATTENDEES. Breaking into McKinsey, BCG, or Bain is highly competitive, and many candidates aren’t sure what actually sets top applicants apart. This session is for those targeting MBB who want a clearer understanding of how these firms evaluate candidates. You’ll learn what interviewers look for across resumes, case interviews, and behavioral assessments, how to demonstrate structured thinking and impact, and the patterns that consistently show up in successful candidates. Join live to hear from a panel of experts with backgrounds at MBB firms and ask your questions about the recruiting process. The panelists regularly work with candidates and will share what stood out to them when evaluating applicants. Expect practical insights and guidance similar to what’s covered in 1:1 coaching conversations.

The Mental Habits of High Performers [5/19/2026] (Recording)

Your thoughts, interpretations, and mental patterns have a direct impact on how you perform at work. Many high-performing professionals experience patterns like overthinking, perfectionism, fear of failure, self-doubt, or harsh self-criticism, often without realizing how much these patterns influence decision-making, confidence, communication, and performance. In this session, we’ll explore how the mind works, how thoughts shape performance, and practical tools to build more intentional and supportive mental habits in high-pressure professional environments. We’ll cover: • How thoughts influence emotions, behaviors, and performance outcomes • Common mental patterns experienced by high performers • Why the mind is wired to detect risk, pressure, and potential failure • A practical framework for questioning and reframing unhelpful thoughts • How awareness creates more intentional responses under pressure • Practical mindset shifts and habits that support stronger mental performance over time You’ll leave with practical tools to better manage your internal dialogue, improve resilience and decision-making, and approach your work with greater clarity, confidence, and intentionality. This session is designed for professionals who want to strengthen their mindset, improve performance, and build a healthier relationship with pressure, growth, and high expectations.

Claude Essentials for Engineers [5/19/2026] (Recording)

Most engineers use Claude like a smarter autocomplete. Type a prompt, read the answer, type again. That's not a workflow — that's just waiting. In this 45-minute live session, I'll show you exactly how I've configured Claude to work in the background while I keep shipping. You'll see my real setup: Git worktrees running parallel agents on separate branches, async notifications that ping me when Claude's done, skills that produce production-quality output every time, and a CLAUDE.md that gives Claude deep context on my codebase without me repeating myself. WHAT YOU'LL WALK AWAY WITH → Git worktrees set up so you can run multiple Claude agents simultaneously without branch chaos → An async notification workflow that frees you from watching progress bars → A reusable skill you can use to get consistent, high-quality output on repeat tasks → A CLAUDE.md file structure that makes Claude immediately useful in any project WHO THIS IS FOR This session is built for engineers at all levels — whether you've never heard of CLAUDE.md or you're already using Claude daily and want to go deeper. Non-technical founders who work alongside engineering teams will also find the workflow principles directly applicable. WHAT MAKES THIS DIFFERENT Everything in this session comes from shipping real projects with Claude. No theory, no slides full of bullet points. I'll be live in my actual environment, showing the tools and configs I use every day. You'll leave with things you can set up in under 30 minutes — and that will still be working for you months from now.

Build an AI-Powered Lead Gen System in 45 Minutes (No Code) [5/30/2026] (Recording)

A practical build-along where you design a simple, end-to-end AI-assisted outbound workflow — from prospecting and enrichment to first-touch drafting — tailored for lean service businesses. Leave with a concrete, working outbound system you can implement immediately. Agenda: • 10 min: Overview of the agentic approach (browser agents + human-in-the-loop) and why it beats hiring another SDR • 25 min: Structured build steps — you demo, they follow along with a provided checklist template • 10 min: Qualify who should get DFY support vs. continue DIY Who this is for: Founders of agencies, consulting firms, and service businesses who want to build a repeatable AI-powered outbound engine without writing code. CTA: If you want this system fully built and wired into your tools in 2 weeks, book a System Builder call.