Est. 2026 · Forest Lake, Minnesota

An incubator for AI ideas and concepts.

Viper Concepts Group takes practical ideas from everyday life and turns them into working products and communities, built with AI and tested with real people from day one.

Viper Concepts Group seal

What we do

Small ideas, built fast, proven with real users.

We are a founder-led studio. Each concept starts with a problem we know firsthand, gets a working version quickly with AI doing the heavy lifting, and earns its next step by being used.

Start close to home

Our best ideas come from groups we already belong to: small business owners, hunting camps, hobby communities. We build for people we can talk to every week.

Validate with real people

We put early versions in front of a real first group instead of waiting on outside approval. Their feedback decides what ships next.

Build lean with AI

AI lets a small team research, design, code, and teach at the pace of a much larger one. That is how we keep several concepts moving at once.

How the incubator works

Every concept moves through four stages.

Concepts advance only when the stage before them proves out. Some graduate into their own business. Others are shelved, and what we learned goes into the next one.

  1. Spot

    Find a real, recurring problem inside a community we know well.

  2. Validate

    Test the idea with a first group of real users before investing heavily.

  3. Build

    Ship a working product with AI in the build loop, then improve it weekly.

  4. Launch

    Open it to a wider audience, or shelve it and carry the lessons forward.

The concept ledger

What we are building now.

Each concept is filed in our ledger with its current stage.

the chat: AI for Small Business

A community where business owners learn to put AI to work.

An active online group where owners trade real examples, ask questions, and learn practical skills like giving AI better context and having AI write prompts for them. It is also where we hear firsthand what small businesses need next.

150+Members

SpotValidateBuildLaunch
  • AudienceSmall business owners exploring AI
  • FormatOnline community, guides, and how-to sessions

Camp Notebook

The deer camp notebook, carried into the next generation.

Most hunting camps keep a worn notebook where each season gets written down: who sat where, what came through, and the stories worth retelling. Camp Notebook keeps that tradition and adds what a modern camp needs, for grandparents, parents, and kids alike.

SpotValidateBuildLaunch
  • Shared camp journalEvery season's stories and harvests in one place the whole camp can add to.
  • Private camp leaderboardFriendly competition kept inside the family, never public.
  • Camp logisticsWho is coming, when, and who is bringing what.
  • First usersBuilt alongside our own hunting camp.

Next concept under review

New ideas are scoped and tested quietly before they earn a spot in the ledger. Have a problem worth solving? Tell us about it.

Camp Notebook beta

Sign your camp up to test Camp Notebook.

We are opening Camp Notebook to a small group of hunting camps before launch. Beta camps get early access, a direct line to the founder, and a real say in what gets built. Sign up now and we will email you when your spot is ready.

  • Free access during the beta
  • Early look at the shared journal and camp leaderboard
  • One email when it is ready, no newsletter spam
Phones at your camp

Built with Claude

Claude is part of how every concept gets made.

We run a lean studio, and Claude is the main tool that makes that possible. Here is where it shows up across our work.

Research and validation

Sizing up an idea, studying existing tools, and finding the gap a new concept can fill before we build.

Product design and code

Planning features, drafting screens, and writing and reviewing the code behind products like Camp Notebook.

Community education

Creating the prompting guides and examples we teach to the members of the chat.

Studio operations

Writing, planning, and the day-to-day work of running several concepts with a small team.

Founder

Chad Schmidt

Founder · Viper Concepts Group

Chad is a Fortune 500 IT leader with more than ten years in IT asset management and end user computing, leading hardware management and deployment for a large enterprise.

He is also a serial entrepreneur. Before Viper Concepts Group, he built and ran ventures in photography, car detailing, and 3D printing. The incubator brings that habit of starting things together with a career spent putting technology into people's hands.

  • Fortune 500 IT leader10+ years in IT asset management and end user computing
  • Master's, Managing Innovation and ITChamplain College
  • Bachelor's, Digital Forensics and Digital InvestigationsChamplain College
  • Serial entrepreneurPhotography, car detailing, 3D printing
  • Community builderRuns the chat: AI for Small Business, 150+ members

Contact

Have an idea, a question, or a partnership in mind?

Viper Concepts Group · Forest Lake, Minnesota

Email us