First AI employee, live
A solo founder who has never briefed an AI employee books a session, brings their first real task, and leaves with it actually set up and working.
Academy Live Sessions
Learn how to put an AI employee to work in a live session with an Applied AI Engineer, tailored to your business. Sessions run about an hour, one on one or in a small group, and walk through the same curriculum as the free Academy course. Free for founders, one hundred dollars per session otherwise.
Reading about AI employees only gets a new user so far. Academy Live Sessions pair a person with the founder for about an hour, working through their first real task with an AI employee instead of a generic demo.
The session follows the same nine-module curriculum as the free self-paced Academy course, in the exact same order: meeting your AI employee, delegation and what to hand off, describing the work so it gets a task right the first time, how it thinks (context, tokens, reasoning), what it knows (memory, training, knowledge), what it can do (tools, integrations, MCP), shaping a specialist with skills and duties, putting it to work with automation and teams, and trust, quality, and responsible use.
What makes it different from just reading the course: the modules are the same, but here the founder walks through them live against your actual business instead of you reading alone, and the session ends with your first real task already set up and working, not just explained. The free course still exists for anyone who would rather learn at their own pace.
Booking is a request form, not an instant calendar link. It asks for your name, a website link, and an optional company name and message. The website is required because the founder reads it before replying, to see what you actually run and confirm the session fits. Once submitted, the founder personally reviews it and follows up by email to schedule a time; there is no automatic booking confirmation.
Pricing is not enforced by an automated founder check. The founder judges eligibility from what you submit in the form and decides the price when he replies. Founders get the session free; everyone else pays a flat one hundred dollars per session, billed outside the product (this is not a credit-based feature and does not touch your plan or credit balance).
Who it is for
Founders and solopreneurs, agency and small-business owners, operators, marketers, consultants, and anyone new to AI who wants a guided first step instead of a pile of documentation.
It is aimed at people who already have a specific task in mind, since the session is built around getting that one task working, not a general product tour.
What is covered
The session walks the same nine modules as the free written course: meeting your AI employee, delegation and what to hand off, describing the work clearly, how it thinks, what it knows, what it can do, shaping a specialist, putting it to work, and trust and responsible use.
Because both the live session and the course pull from one shared set of course modules, updating the course content updates what the live session covers too. There is no separate live-session curriculum to keep in sync.
How booking actually works
There is no calendar widget or self-serve time slot. Clicking Request a Session opens a short form: your name, a website link, and optional company and message fields.
The website link is there so the founder can look at what you are building before replying, not just to collect contact details. After you submit, the founder reviews it personally and emails you to find a time. Founders are recognized when they reply, not by an automated account check, so pricing is decided on the reply, not at submission.
How It Works
A guided session, not a sales call
The Academy Live Sessions page lists what the session covers, pulled from the same module data as the written Academy course, so the live version and the self-paced version never drift apart.
A visitor clicks Request a Session, fills out a short contact form describing their business and what they want to get done, and submits it. That opens a conversation with the team to find a time.
During the call, the Applied AI Engineer works through the visitor's first real task with an AI employee live, rather than presenting slides. The visitor leaves with a working setup, not just an explanation.
Use Cases
Agency onboarding a client
An agency owner books a small-group session so their own team learns the basics together instead of everyone reading the course separately.
Unsticking a stalled setup
An operator who tried the self-paced course but got stuck on connecting tools or knowledge books a live session to work through the same material with a person watching in real time.
Deciding between reading and booking
Someone unsure whether they need a live session can browse the same nine modules for free first, then submit the request form if they would rather have the founder walk through it applied to their own business.
FAQ
Is the live session really free?
Yes, for founders. The page states the session is free for founders and one hundred dollars per session for everyone else. This is charged outside the product, not from your credit balance.
How long is a session?
About an hour, run either one on one or with a small group.
Do I need to know anything about AI beforehand?
No. The session is built for people new to AI as much as for experienced operators; the curriculum starts from the basics of briefing an AI employee.
How do I book one?
Click Request a Session on the Academy Live Sessions page and fill in the short form: your name, a website link, and optional company name and message. The founder reviews it personally and emails you to schedule a time. There is no instant booking confirmation.
Why does the form ask for my website?
So the founder can see what you actually run before replying. It is used to confirm the session is a good fit, not just to collect a lead.
How is this different from the free Academy course?
Same nine modules, same order. The course is text you read on your own; the live session is the founder walking through those same modules with you, applied to your actual business, ending with your first task set up and working.
Where Academy Live Sessions fits
Academy Live Sessions is part of Things you hire or set up.
Browse a marketplace of pre-built AI agent roles and full teams, or build your own from scratch. Organize them into teams with leaders, set up your org chart, and onboard new hires in minutes. Every employee arrives configured and ready to deliver from day one.
- Things you hire or set up: A full workforce. Hired in seconds.
Read the guide
More in Fast Onboarding
- Hire an AI Employee: Browse the Marketplace and hire an AI employee for a specific role: a department specialist, a personal assistant, or a custom role you define from scratch. Hiring is free and instant. You land straight in the new employee's chat, and every skill, duty, and tool it starts with can be changed afterward from its dashboard.
- Interview Before Hiring: Chat with any employee template before you hire it, on the public marketplace pages or inside the app, to see how it thinks and communicates about your actual work. When you're convinced, say so in the conversation or click Hire; nothing is added to your team until you decide.
- Employee Builder: Employee Builder is the "Build Your Own" card in the Marketplace: instead of hiring a pre-built role, you start from a blank template and set the name, role, and persona yourself. The new hire starts with one skill, Research & Brief, and nothing else pre-assigned, so you add skills, duties, and tools from the Skills, Duties, and Tools tabs to match the exact job you need done. It is a Custom-plan feature; every other plan hires from the marketplace's pre-built roles instead.
- Personal Assistants: Every account starts with a Personal Assistant already hired, ready to talk before you decide who else to bring on. No marketplace trip, no setup, no decision to make first.
- Get Started Through Conversation: When you hire an AI employee, they land in your chat with a short greeting that names their role and what they handle, then ask what you need first. There is no setup wizard, no progress bar, and no settings panel to fill in before they can work. You customize name, persona, skills, and tools later from their dashboard, but none of that is required before the first message.
- Model Selection: Every employee runs on a model you choose, not one fixed default. Switch models per employee from the AI Models page whenever a job calls for more reasoning power or a cheaper, faster response.
- Manage Employee Status: Pause, resume, or let go of an AI employee without losing anything. Suspend an employee when you don't need them right now and bring them back exactly as you left them, or terminate one and keep their full chat history and work record in your Alumni list. Terminated employees stop counting against your plan's employee limit, and you can re-hire the same role later.
- Hire a Full Team: Hire a complete pre-built team from the Marketplace in one click: every member configured, a leader assigned, and sprint planning ready to start. Or build a custom team from your existing hires, pick a leader, and set it up yourself. Either way, you talk to one leader and they coordinate the rest.
- Keep Former Team Members: When you let an employee go, they don't disappear. Sistava moves them into your Alumni list, where their chat history and work stay intact and readable. If you need them back, one click restores them to active with everything they knew still in place.
- Marketplace: The Marketplace is where you browse and hire AI employees: two personal assistants, a specialist for every department (Marketing, Sales, Support, HR, Operations), and a Custom AI Talent card if none of the pre-built roles fit. Click a card's photo to preview its skills, duties, tools, and persona before you commit, then click Hire to add it to your workforce and land straight in its chat. Hiring is free; you only spend credits when an employee does work.
- Employee Avatar Upload: Upload a custom profile photo for any AI employee straight from their Profile tab, replacing the default generated avatar. JPEG, PNG, GIF, and WebP files up to 5 MB are accepted, and the change takes effect immediately. The photo appears everywhere that employee shows up: chat, the org chart, the virtual office, notifications, and task cards. Any member of your workspace can change it, not only the person who hired that employee.
- Multiple Workspaces: Create additional workspaces under the same login, each with its own AI employees, conversations, training data, billing, and collaborators. Nothing crosses a workspace boundary by default, so a separate client, business, or department stays fully isolated. Your plan sets how many workspaces you can create, and you switch between them without signing out.