Stop building someone else's dream.
Launch your own.
The 6-week startup program for the global Vietnamese network. Build a real product with AI and get your first paying customer. No technical background needed.
BACKED BY OV · 1,000+ VIETNAMESE PROFESSIONALS · 40+ CITIES
Part-time: 5-7 hours a week. Applications close September 11, 2026. 25 seats.
Built for three kinds of builders
All three follow the same six weeks and finish with a paying customer.
The working professional.
You have a full-time career but also have an idea that never gets worked on. Build it on the side in 5-7 hours a week, with your job as your safety net and your work experience as your Edge.
The student.
Time, energy, and nothing to lose. Graduate with a business and a paying customer, not just a degree.
The entrepreneur.
Already building, or between ventures. Plug in the AI stack, the validation system, and a warm 1,000-person network to find your next pocket of demand faster than you found the last one.
THIS ISN'T FOR YOU IF:
You want to learn about startups without starting one
Your goal is a pitch deck and a seed round
You're waiting until the idea feels "ready"
WHY IDEAS STAY IDEAS
"I never know where to start."
"I can't tell which AI tools are real and which are hype."
"I don't know whose advice to trust."
"I'm not paying thousands for another course I won't finish."
Fair. Here's the answer to all four: a proven weekly sequence, one working AI toolkit, operators who've built and backed hundreds of companies, and a price that doesn't need a payment plan.
APPLY FOR THE COHORTYou'll build with AI
Building a business used to take capital, code, and quitting your job. Now one person can ship a real product in the evenings. The program assumes you'll do it that way.
No coding. No prior AI experience. Every build step happens in plain English, live in the labs, with the cohort. Most businesses in this cohort will be software built with AI, or services with AI behind them. A non-software business works too, as long as you can get it in front of a customer quickly.
Here's what six weeks looks like, with and without us:
THE HARD WAY
Building it alone
Guessing what to build, and for whom
YouTube tutorials that never become a business
Weeks lost to tool setup and basics
No deadline, so it slips to next month, every month
No one to ask when you're stuck
Months of effort, nothing shipped, no customers
THE LAUNCHPAD WAY
Building it with us
Build a real product with AI, step by step
Learn from founders and investors who've done it
Live labs and weekly office hours that get you unstuck
Weekly public accountability that keeps you shipping
25 peers and a 1,000-strong network beside you
A real business in six weeks, while you keep your job
What you actually need
THREE THINGS YOU GET
The right guidance.
A framework for every week, taught by two operators who've worked with 600+ founders, angel-backed 40+ startups, and bootstrapped to $500K+. Plus weekly office hours when you need direct time on your specific problem. You never wonder what to do this week.
The right community.
25 people building beside you and 1,000+ OV professionals behind you: first customers, warm intros, and people who notice when you don't ship.
Six weeks of commitment and accountability.
Goals declared every Monday, numbers shared every Sunday, live labs in between. It's hard to let a week slide when 25 people can see your numbers.
SIX THINGS YOU DON'T NEED
Coding skills. AI writes the code; you make the decisions.
A computer science degree. You describe what you want in plain English and check what comes back.
A brand-new idea. Week 1 derives the idea from your Edge; "no idea yet" is a fine application.
A following or public profile. A short list of the right people, emailed one by one, does the job.
Leaving your job. The program is built for 5-7 hours a week, deliberately.
Investor capital. Your first customer funds the business.
What you'll ship, week by week
Find Your Edge
Your Edge Map (why you, specifically), a 6-week goal, and 10 customer conversations booked
Talk to Humans
10 real customer interviews (Mom Test rules: facts, not compliments) and a problem statement backed by evidence
Build the Offer
A priced offer in the wild, plus a working demo built with AI in a few days: landing page, DM offer, or prototype
Sell Before You Build
10+ sales conversations and your first hard commitment: a deposit, pre-order, or signed pilot
First Paying Customer
Real money collected from a real customer, and a v1 of your product, built with AI, to deliver what you sold
Repeat & Find Your Channel
A second sale in motion, one acquisition channel backed by data, and a Demo Day in front of the OV network
Every week: one framework, one live working lab, one shipped artifact, and one question in public: What's the assumption most likely to kill this business, and how does this week's test attack it?
Who's behind it
Frankie Le Nguyen | Program Lead
Exited founder. Raised $1M+ for his last startup. Angel investor in 40+ startups, VC in 50+. Ran Entrepreneurs First in Singapore and Canada, with 600+ founders. Recently took a bootstrapped founder from $225K to $1.6M in annual revenue. He's compressing what works into 6 weeks.
Quang Do | Program Lead
Bootstrapped $500K+ in revenue. Ex-Google. Former VC. Built a community startup to 1,000 paid members and 40,000+ overall. He's done exactly what you're about to do, without permission or funding.
The guest bench: founders who have already done it
Live in the labs each week. Twenty-five people in the room, so you can put your own business in front of them.
Serial Founder | Bootstrapped to 7 figures
Has bootstrapped several businesses to seven-figure revenue.
Founder | Lumiere Education
Bootstrapped it into an eight-figure business, after dropping out of a Harvard PhD.
Founder | Ex-NASA Jet Propulsion Lab
Raised $4M for his last company. Now bootstrapping multiple AI businesses.
Founder | OV Ventures portfolio
Multiple-time VC-backed founder. MD from UC San Diego, undergrad at Harvard.
CTO | Martini AI (YC W26)
First engineer on the Growth team at Supabase ($10B+). OV Ventures portfolio.
Founder | Inflow
Bootstrapped an agency to acquisition, then raised $2M+ to bring AI to fashion brands.
Former VC | White Star Capital
Also invested with Ansible Ventures and Blueprint Ventures.
Founder | Lumius (YC S26)
Building next-generation 3D ultrasound. OV Ventures portfolio company.
More to come
New names announced before Sept 16
Why OV
Most founders start cold. You start with 1,000+ professionals across 40+ cities who help each other out. Here is the work that network does over your six weeks:
Your first customer pool.
Warm intros to real buyers, in the diaspora and in Vietnam.
Your interview pipeline.
Week 2's customer conversations start warm (then we push you into the open market, because politeness isn't validation).
Your accountability.
A cohort that sees your goal every Monday and your numbers every Sunday.
How it works
6 weeks, hybrid.
Video lessons, scripts, and templates unlock each week. You work them on your schedule.
Built with AI.
Research, demos, your product, sales assets: AI drafts them, you decide what ships. Week 1 gets your tools set up, even if you have never opened one.
2 x 90-minute live sessions per week.
One teaching session, one working lab with guest founders. Anchored for ET/PT evenings and Vietnam mornings; all sessions recorded.
Weekly office hours.
One open drop-in slot every week. Bring your build, your deal, or your blocker, and get direct time with the leads or a guest mentor.
Optional 15-min daily standup.
A quick check-in to keep your week moving. Skip it whenever you need to.
5-7 hours per week, total.
Designed for a full-time job. The lessons are short on purpose, so most of your hours go into outreach, interviews, and sales conversations.
DATES: SEPTEMBER 16 TO OCTOBER 28, 2026 · DEMO DAY IN THE FINAL WEEK
What it costs
All prices in USD. Non-members get a free quarter of OV membership included.
All six weeks, live sessions, templates and scripts, guest sessions, Demo Day.
APPLY FOR THE COHORTThe application
It takes about ten minutes. We read every one.
Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis; decisions within 3 days. Applications close September 11, 2026.
FAQ
It's designed for exactly that. 5-7 hours a week: 3 in live sessions (recorded if you miss), the rest in short lessons and real customer conversations. Both program leads built while employed or bootstrapped. With only a few hours you're forced to run small tests quickly, which is how the good businesses get found anyway.
Good. Week 1 exists because ideas chosen before knowing your Edge are usually the wrong ones. You'll map your unfair advantage first, then pick a problem you're unusually positioned to solve. Some of the strongest applications say "no idea yet."
Yes. We assume zero experience: Week 1 sets up your AI toolkit from scratch, and every build step happens in plain English, live in the labs. You'll use AI the way you'd use a technical cofounder: research first, a demo in Week 3, then a working v1 of exactly what your customer bought. And if your business isn't software, the same tools speed up everything else: research, outreach, copy, operations.
You already could have. Information was never the thing stopping you. A cohort gives you the rest: 25 peers, deadlines, weekly public check-ins, live labs where your actual pitch gets fixed, and warm intros to first customers that no video can hand you.
No. We use frameworks from the venture world, Entrepreneurs First's Edge among them, but point them at revenue: businesses that can earn money within weeks, on the side. If yours turns out to be venture-scale, OV Ventures is nearby. Neither investment nor funding is promised.
Our target is 75% of the cohort collecting a first payment by Demo Day. Some won't get there in the window. Timing varies by market and offer, and we don't guarantee outcomes. What we structure for: by week 6 you'll have interviewed real customers, put a priced offer in the market, run 10+ sales conversations, and either collected money or built a live pipeline with a close plan. That's further than most people get in a year.
Yes. The non-member price of $499 USD applies, and you'll be building alongside the network.
Six weeks from now, someone has paid you for something you built.
Or the idea stays in the someday pile. Your call.
COHORT 1 STARTS SEPTEMBER 16, 2026 · 25 SEATS
APPLY FOR THE COHORT