A guide for how to think about paying to learn AI.

Written by Aish & Kiriti.

First created: July 17, 2026 * Last updated: July 17, 2026

Course: Building Agentic AI Applications with a Problem-First Approach (https://maven.com/aishwarya-kiriti/genai-system-design)

If you landed on this page, you are probably somewhere on this spectrum:

1. "I'm overwhelmed by the pace of AI and I want a structured path." It looks like there are tons of AI courses and tons of AI experts everywhere, and there is endless free content, so you are wondering whether it makes sense to pay at all when AI itself can teach you.
2. "I know I want to buy a course, and I'm comparing my options." You just want to know how to decide well.
3. "I want to buy your course. I'm 80% there." You want to know exactly what you get when you sign up, and everything you should know going in.

We think it is our job to answer all 3 of these for you. The goal of this document is not to sell you our cohort. It is to give you an honest overview of how we think about this. We're not your typical coursebois trying to move something that is not worth your time or your money. Treat this as a guide for how to think about education in general.

We've split this into three parts, and you can exit at any point:

• Part 1 goes deep on the first question: should you buy a course at all? Buying a structured course and a live cohort at this price point might not be for everybody. This is to make sure that you know what you are getting into and whether this is worth your money.
• part 2: and if you've decided that you want to get the course and you want to expedite your learning, this is a framework for how you can think of buying different courses and whether they'll help you deliver your outcomes. Use this as a guide while buying any course.
• Part 3 are where we make the case for our cohort. If you decide our cohort is not for you, leave. We would rather that than have you in the wrong room. If you do, we talk about some of the best reasons for taking our course.

Part 1: Should I even buy a course if I want to learn AI?

Or, put more specifically:

"There's so much free content out there. Why pay someone? AI itself can teach me."

There might be a genuinely good reason for you not to buy a course. Several things are learned better through experience, trial, and error than through any structured program.

In fact, we've open sourced a lot of our best work for exactly this reason. We've shared interview prep resources, roadmaps, guides, and learning paths from 101 to 301 on our GitHub repository so people can pursue them on their own.