Build an App in a Day™ is a one-day, in-person event where non-technical founders walk in with an idea and walk out with a working app they built themselves, using AI assistance and The Luigi Method™.
The closest things on the market don’t actually ship software. Startup Weekend is a 54-hour volunteer hackathon focused on ideation. Most teams leave with slides, not code. Coding bootcamps like General Assembly and Lansing Codes take weeks or months. You learn to code, but you don’t leave with a shipped product. Online no-code courses are self-paced, lonely, and have 85%+ dropout rates.
Build an App in a Day compresses the full idea-to-shipped-software loop into one Saturday. The Luigi Method is our proprietary app-building framework (a registered service trademark) that lets non-technical people actually build and deploy a real app by dinner. No fluff. No “learn to code first.” No six-month program.
Every event features a special guest speaker, industry experts supporting participants live during the build, and judges evaluating the final demos. At the end of the day, every participant demos their working app live in front of the room, and the best app takes home a cash grand prize. Past special guests and judges include Zack Urlocker (former COO, Duo Security), Steve Pucelik (Microsoft), and Jenna Ritten (IBM).
Traction so far:
2 sold-out events, 37 paying attendees, $11,400 revenue in under 3 months
97% of participants finish a real, working app during the one-day event. 100% finish eventually, with post-event support for the few who need it. No one leaves stuck.
90+ person waitlist, 100+ additional inbound interest, three news features
10 scholarships awarded, $3,735 in scholarship value given to widen access
Winner of the $5,000 ALAB Capital Readiness Accelerator
Currently in the GVSU MVE Accelerator
Two registered service trademarks: Build an App in a Day™ and The Luigi Method™
Two Recurring paid partnerships: one to bring Build an App in a Day to returning citizens a second for a “Build a Business in a week” program. Our first two recurring B2B contracts and a new social-impact vertical.
Top 10 Finalist Company for U of M ClawCon competition of 375 companies that competed
The alumni flywheel is real. Lindsay Joseph, CEO of BedConnect, had never written a line of code before she walked into our inaugural Traverse City event. She won the $1,000 grand prize, came back to our second event as a judge, and has since paid for three of her BedConnect teammates to attend. The apps her team built at Build an App in a Day events are still in use at BedConnect today, saving them time, saving them money, and making them money. BedConnect was also one of only four PitchMI finalists competing for the $1,000,000 grand prize, Michigan’s largest pitch competition.
Participants don’t just leave with an app. They leave with The Luigi Method, the framework to build as many more apps as they want, forever.
We’ve proven the model works. Now we scale it.