The Founder Sprint

The Founder Sprint is a 48-hour “anti-hackathon” for AI-native builders — a two-day startup-building experience where the goal isn’t shipping the most features, but finding the strongest evidence that an idea actually matters to real people. It’s application-only and capped at 100 hand-picked builders.
Day 1 — The Forge (Sat, July 11, 11am–7pm): A day of workshops on the methodology founders use to validate ideas — finding problems worth solving, rapid validation, and AI-native building with tools like Claude, Cursor, v0, and Lovable — plus team formation and experiment design.
Day 2 — Launch Day (Sun, July 12, 8:30am–7:15pm): A 10-hour build sprint with two mentor rounds, a science-fair demo round, and final pitches to a panel of judges and investors. The winning team takes $3,000 cash, $10K in credits, and three months of mentorship, with $23K+ in total cash and credits across the top three teams.
Who it’s for: Builders from any field, swinging at ambitious problems — robotics, climate, longevity, frontier compute and more. No CS degree required; what matters is AI fluency. Teams of two to four (no solo entries this year).
What’s included: The full two-day experience, food and coffee, credits for the AI tools you use, mentors and judges who’ve shipped real products, and a builder network that continues after the event.
Location: Bellevue, WA (Eastside Seattle). The exact, ADA-accessible venue is revealed to confirmed attendees ahead of the event.
How to apply: Submit the free application (about five minutes); every application is read by a human, with rolling decisions through the June 30 deadline.
Apply and find full details here.