The industry will invest up to $3 trillion by 2030. Almost no one outside it understands how it actually works. We're changing that — 271 operator-built lessons, twenty minutes a day.
Foundations is free, no account. Pro is $39/mo or $290/yr — see pricing.
Data centers are the backbone of AI and the cloud, yet the knowledge of how to develop, power, cool, and underwrite them lives in a few thousand heads. The people trying to break in have almost nowhere to turn.
No sign-up to look inside. The Power module below is the real lesson — fully playable, start to finish. This is the bar for all 271 lessons.
The Power module is fully playable in the demo above. The full curriculum — 7 tracks, 38 modules, 271 operator-built lessons — takes you from the physical plant all the way to how these projects get financed, leased, and won.
Understand the physical infrastructure behind every data center — power, cooling, redundancy, efficiency economics — and the CRE crossover: why a data center is not a warehouse ($/MW, time-to-power, the tenant, the exit) and who governs what.
02ProTurn a blank floor plate into a commissioned data center: space planning, electrical topology, mechanical design, AI-density readiness, and commissioning.
03ProNavigate the real-world process of securing utility power for a data center site — from preliminary load letters to energized substation.
04ProSite selection, zoning, permitting, environmental review, and the community opposition playbook — what it really takes to get a site entitled.
05ProFollow a data center from raw land through commissioned operations: the full development sequence, budget anatomy, and long-lead procurement discipline.
06ProBuild the underwriting model, structure leases, understand cap rates and valuation, and negotiate the architect and vendor contracts that govern your project.
07ProTake one real deal — a 48 MW AI campus — from raw land to a commissioned, leased facility, making every major call a developer, engineer, and investor actually makes.
Planned next: Hyperscaler procurement — how AWS, Azure, Google and Meta buy capacity, and what they require of the sites they lease.
The fundamentals are free and stay free: the physical plant, and why a data center is not a warehouse. What costs money is the depth almost nobody publishes: the power queue, the entitlement fight, the underwriting model, the capital stack, the close.
Seat licensing with the employer dashboard: a team competence matrix by module, time-to-competence against the cohort, and inactivity flags. From $250 per seat per year, minimum 10 seats.
Or write to teams@firstmegawatt.com
The honest answers to what people ask most. Still curious? Reply to any email we send — a person reads it.
The app is open now — Foundations is free, no card. Leave your email if you want a note when new tracks land, plus the occasional operator breakdown of a live deal.
We'll email you when Pro opens. You don't have to wait for it — the 46 Foundations lessons are open now, no account needed: start the free track.
Know someone else trying to break into the space? Send them the demo — free, fully playable, no sign-up.