An 8-week, squad-based AI career accelerator — pick a real problem, build a real product, and ship the proof.
You weren't enrolled. You were selected. 🎉
Whether you write code in your sleep or have never opened a terminal, you're here because you can do the one thing that matters most in the AI era: frame a real problem, guide AI to solve it, and ship something people actually use.
Over the next 8 weeks, your squad will take one sharp idea, talk to real users, build a working AI product in the open, and present it at Demo Day — walking away with a public portfolio you can point any recruiter, founder, or customer to and say: "I made this. People use it."
🤝 The Cohort 1 Pledge: I will show up for my squad · I will own my tasks · I will build in public · I will test, document, and ship real work · I will help someone else level up.
Let's build something real. Welcome aboard! 🚀
Everything starts here. Read it before your first squad meeting.
Inside you'll find 10 ideas (a menu, not an assignment), the product-thinking mindset, the Week-by-Week validation bar, and the rules of the game. Your squad picks one, narrows it to a sharp wedge, and ships it. 💡
Each squad has its own repository — your home base for code, commits, and proof of work. Find yours and say hi! 👇
The 17 Cohort 1 squads 🐾
| Squad | Repository | Squad | Repository | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🦊 Margalla | cohort-1-squad-margalla |
🐝 Ravi | cohort-1-squad-ravi |
|
| 🐯 Deosai | cohort-1-squad-deosai |
🦈 Bolan | cohort-1-squad-bolan |
|
| 🦅 Chenab | cohort-1-squad-chenab |
🐙 Siachen | cohort-1-squad-siachen |
|
| 🐧 Indus | cohort-1-squad-indus |
🦋 Hunza | cohort-1-squad-hunza |
|
| 🦉 Thar | cohort-1-squad-thar |
🐢 Neelum | cohort-1-squad-neelum |
|
| 🐺 Karakoram | cohort-1-squad-karakoram |
🦄 Mehran | cohort-1-squad-mehran |
|
| 🦁 Potohar | cohort-1-squad-potohar |
🐲 Himalaya | cohort-1-squad-himalaya |
|
| 🐻 Astore | cohort-1-squad-astore |
🦒 Makran | cohort-1-squad-makran |
|
| 🐦🔥 Shigar | cohort-1-squad-shigar |
A builder movement, not a course. We mirror how real product teams work: squads of four, weekly agile sprints, rotating roles, and one shared goal — launch a real, open-source AI product that real people use. No coding background required; the new builder is part product thinker, researcher, designer, tester, communicator, and AI operator.
| ✅ What it is | ❌ What it is not |
|---|---|
| A squad-based, project-driven AI career accelerator | A coding bootcamp |
| Real product work: research → build → test → launch → demo | A passive video course / certificate factory |
| Verifiable proof of work — commits, a shipped product, a case study | A hackathon or a solo tutorial |
| Visibility to mentors, recruiters & founders | An incubator |
💚 AI will not replace serious builders. It will replace passive learners collecting certificates.
Each week pairs a theme with a hands-on sprint and a real product-team role you play — so by Demo Day, you've worn every hat.
| Wk | Theme | The role you play |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Squad onboarding & agile foundations | 🔎 Customer Researcher |
| 2 | Product owner thinking | 🧭 Product Owner |
| 3 | AI-assisted prototyping | 🎨 Designer |
| 4 | AI-assisted building | 🛠️ AI-Assisted Builder |
| 5 | QA, testing & sprint review | 🧪 QA Tester |
| 6 | Launch, adoption & commercial thinking | 📈 Growth Thinker |
| 7 | Documentation & career packaging | 📝 Documentation Owner |
| 8 | Demo Day & leaderboard | 🎤 Demo Lead |
🕐 Time commitment: ~5–10 hours/week. Consistency matters more than intensity.
The weekly rhythm: Plan → Build → Test → Review → Document → Demo. Every week. Repeat. Improve. 🔁
You'll learn to operate the modern AI product stack — grouped by the role it equips you for.
| Role | Tools |
|---|---|
| 🔎 The Researcher | ChatGPT · Claude · Perplexity |
| 🧭 The Product Owner | Notion · Linear · Jira |
| 🎨 The Designer | Figma · Gemini · v0 · Bolt · Lovable |
| 🛠️ The AI Builder | Cursor · Claude Code · GitHub Copilot · Replit · GitHub · Supabase · Vercel |
Bookmark these — they'll sharpen both halves of your craft. 🧠
- 📖 The Mom Test — how to talk to users without being lied to (read this in Week 1)
- 🚀 YC Startup Library · YC Requests for Startups — what to build & how founders think
- 🧠 a16z — Notes on AI Apps in 2026 · Big Ideas 2026
- 🛎️ Sequoia — Services are the New Software — why "AI does the work" wins
- 🗣️ a16z — AI Voice Agents · Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps
- 🟢 Claude Code · Anthropic Docs — agentic coding from your terminal
- ⚡ Cursor · GitHub Copilot — AI-native code editors
- 🪄 Lovable · Bolt · v0 — prompt-to-app prototyping
- 🧱 Replit · Supabase · Vercel — build, store data, and deploy
- 📊 PostHog — product analytics to prove people actually use it
- 🐙 GitHub — Get Started · Git Handbook — clone, branch, commit, pull request
Every squad ships a public GitHub repo + a live, deployed MVP with an honest commit history showing everyone contributed. That openness is the whole point — it's the proof a recruiter can inspect. All squad repositories are released under the MIT License. 🪪
🏆 Top contributors become eligible for leaderboard recognition, prizes, recommendations, and referrals across the Comebck network — earned through contribution, never given.
Proud to learn alongside the partners helping power Cohort 1. 💚
