Exclusive: Bootup Studios Launches At Morehouse College, Providing Students A Chance To Power Their Business With An AI-Powered Chief Of Staff
Chandler Malone is on a mission to help people launch, operate, and scale their businesses successfully.
Malone has been the founder of several venture-backed companies and is deeply intertwined with technology. His initial exposure in the field can be traced back to his time playing in the AAU circuit in middle school, when the father of a teammate sold a company to AT&T for $2 billion, which allowed the team to travel on private jets, he told . When he played for Washington University in St. Louis, his teammate’s father was Joe Lacob, the owner of the Golden State Warriors, who has also made his wealth through investments in medical technology, the internet, and energy companies, according to Stanford Graduate School of Business.
While playing basketball, seeing friends from different socioeconomic backgrounds inspired him to build technologies focused on education and the future of work.
In 2020, he launched Bootup, an alternative education marketplace with over 130 bootcamps that helped over 3,000 participants secure their first jobs in technology, and led to over
Bootup Studios
Malone’s latest brainchild is Bootup Studios, a startup that provides users with an AI-powered chief of staff and AI agents for the following areas: go-to-market, product, operations, and finance. Subscription tiers start at $50 per month or $300 per year.
The goal is to level the playing field for first-time or under-resourced founders. He hopes to target displaced workers, which is timely given that more than 300,000 Black women were laid off in 2025, according to Forbes.
AI has also transformed the job market. Malone believes technology can level the playing field, giving a new generation of entrepreneurs the same opportunities as well-funded startups. His goal is to empower 10 million entrepreneurs by 2030.
“I want to be able to provide a tool to folks who are going to struggle on the employment side, but they have some sort of insight. They have already shown and proven they are down to put in a level of work … and competence in a certain direction and can be set up to win,” Malone told
Bootup Studios’ Offering
To get started on the platform, users can decide if they are looking for support with a new idea or a current business, project, or side hustle. The assistant will share directions to guide users in the right direction, and a daily plan will be created to support the implementation over a three- to six-month period.
A roadmap can encompass, but is not limited to, targeting customer segments, researching funding options, organizing workspace, building and analyzing surveys, identifying key competitors, creating preliminary budgets, and compiling a list of potential investors.
Additionally, the chief of staff can automate tasks on your behalf and integrate with tools such as Slack (team communication), Google Workspace (email management), Stripe (payment management), Notion (project documentation), and Airtable (sync and structure databases).
A feature allowing users to text the chief of staff is in the works.
“We’re helping guide you step by step and understand what you need to do next. But we’re also giving you tools to take actions for you. So even if it’s a one-woman, one-man show, you really still have a team around you in all those core functional areas of the business,” Malone said.
Morehouse College Partnership
Bootup Studios’ launch coincides with its partnership with the Morehouse Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center’s Startup Studio, the brainchild of angel investor Kylan Kester. Students are another key demographic for Malone.
The Launch48 challenge is now underway at the HBCU, and all 56 students at Morehouse College’s Startup Studio are using Bootup Studios.
“This platform is the perfect marriage of our core values: increasing economic opportunity and the urgent need to put cutting-edge tools, like agentic AI, directly into the hands of our student innovators,” Kester, founding director of the studio and director of student initiatives for the Morehouse Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center, said in a statement.
“We are equipping them not just to weather this next wave in the technology revolution, but to lead it and define its future. We look forward to carrying this story forward, establishing a replicable model of success, and bringing this essential technology to other institutions committed to preparing their students for the future of work,” Kester continued.
Robert Robinson Jr. is one of the 56 students in the program, and he has been able to nearly fully automate his venture, New Age Security, which provides fire safety solutions to businesses.
“I’ve built an AI-powered automation system that runs through Monday.com, which we use as our main operations hub,” Robinson Jr. said in a statement.
“When I first started working on it, I had to really take the time to understand how every part of the business connected, from employees to contractors, and how automation could make things simpler for everyone. Now, all of our projects run through Monday.com, and everything updates automatically across departments,” Robinson Jr. continued.
“What makes Bootup Studios stand out from other AI platforms is that it doesn’t just give you generic responses. It actually gives you business knowledge and structure. It breaks things down step by step, showing you how to map out your idea, what direction to take, and how to turn it into something tangible. It’s like having a real roadmap built for startups,” he added.
The winners of the challenges will be announced in November, with a monetary award to follow.
Funding
Bootup Studios has been supported with a family and friends angel round that includes individuals who have “invested on behalf of, or had companies acquired by, organizations such as Coinbase, the Golden State Warriors, Accenture, Goldman Sachs, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” according to information shared with .
The exact amount raised was not disclosed.
