ADG Advisory has just been accepted into the Claude Startups programme. Good news is easy to dress up, so here it is plainly, including the part where we benefit from telling you.
What the programme includes
Anthropic's programme page lists four things. A free year of Claude Team for up to five seats, for companies that are new to Team. API credits. A set of partner discounts called the Startup Stack. And office hours with Anthropic's Applied AI team, alongside events and community meetups.
Two details on that page matter more than the headline. The Team offer is for companies new to Team. And the API credits expire six months after they are granted, so they are a clock, not a balance.
Why it fits how we already work
Claude is not a new tool for us. It is the model that carries the heaviest use across our practice, and this website is built and maintained with Claude Code. The routine that reads a week of our git history and drafts a post for review runs on it too. We wrote up how we built the routine writing this post, and how the AI specialist bench works.
So this is not a pivot. It is a better price on work that was already happening, plus access to the people who build the thing.
What we plan to do with it
Two things, both deliberately dull.
First, point the credits at work we already run. The weekly routine is the obvious candidate. It has a real workload, a real schedule and a real cost, which makes it a fair test of whether the credits do anything useful.
Second, use the office hours to have our guardrails challenged. We have written down what our AI agents are not allowed to decide alone. A rule you wrote yourself is the one you are least likely to break honestly, so we would rather have it questioned by people who see how other teams get this wrong.
What this does not change
You should read this knowing we receive these benefits. That is a conflict of interest, and it is better stated than left for you to find.
It does not change how we advise. The recommendations we make for client work are made on fit, and that was true before this programme and stays true after it. Claude carries most of our own use because it has earned that, not because it is now cheaper for us.
What a founder can take from this
If you run a small company, programmes like this are worth applying to. The sensible way to use them is not obvious, so here is ours.
Spend free credits on a workload you already have. Inventing a project to use up a discount gives you a demo, not a decision.
Never let a discount choose your architecture. A tool adopted because it is cheap this year is a tool you will pay full price to leave. Decide what the system needs first, then see whether the offer happens to cover it.
Read the expiry dates before the headline numbers. Credits that lapse in six months reward the team that has a plan on day one.
This is the Intelligence pillar of The Hexagram in practice: measure what the work actually costs and returns, then choose the tools. It is also the ground our analytics and AI operations service covers, and the founder's page explains who is behind it.
Credits run out; the system you build with them is the part you keep.
If you want a second pair of eyes on where AI belongs in your own marketing system, the Hexagram Diagnostic is where we start.
