Richard Wang, co-founder and former CEO of coding bootcamp Coding Dojo, is launching Idea to Launch, a 30-day program that helps would-be founders turn a startup idea into a working product using AI coding tools and hands-on engineering help.

Nearly four years after selling Coding Dojo to Perdoceo for $70 million, Wang was looking for a way to keep doing work that had a measurable impact on people’s lives. He found it in mentoring aspiring founders.

Wang thinks AI is about to do for software what smartphones did for video. Cheap cameras and cloud platforms gave rise to the influencer economy, and he believes AI will push the cost of building a product close to zero.

“We’re going to create this whole new builder economy that’s about to come in the next three to five years,” he said. “Baby boomers are gifted with cheap housing. I think Gen Z is going to be gifted with a cheap price to build.”

He sees plenty of demand. Citing a Shopify-Gallup study and a Zapier/Harris poll, Idea to Launch says 60% of Americans have a business idea but only 9% launch one. Wang said the reasons people hold back include fear of failure, not knowing how to get started, and not wanting to give up a paycheck or benefits.

Unlike accelerators such as Techstars or Y Combinator, Idea to Launch doesn’t take equity, and participants don’t have to quit their jobs. Over 10 evening sessions, founders get coaching, run customer interviews, build a product with AI tools such as Lovable, Replit and Cursor, and plan a launch. Each founder also gets 10 hours of one-on-one help from professional engineers.

Wang said people without technical backgrounds can now vibe-code 80% to 90% of a product on their own. The hard part, he said, is connecting it to other services, setting up the database correctly and making it secure.

“We’ll provide that type of knowledge with real engineering support,” he said. For engineers who have never done customer discovery or marketing, the program fills in the business side.

Security researchers have found serious vulnerabilities in apps built on vibe-coding platforms. A 2025 scan found 170 of 1,645 apps built with Lovable exposing user data, and another case this year exposed nearly 19,000 user records. Wang said the program’s engineers will make sure security holes are fixed “before they launch or before they get onto the first customer.”

The first cohort starts Jan. 11, followed by three more through April. Each is capped at 15 to 20 founders. Tuition is $3,500 for the inaugural cohort, down from the normal $5,000. Sessions will be held in person in Seattle or Bellevue, and Wang said he expects to pick a space within the next month. He is self-funding the venture.

Wang, who immigrated from China at 13 and was the first in his family to attend college, became Coding Dojo’s CEO in 2015. He left in 2017 for Trupanion and returned in 2019. The company grew to $50 million in peak annual revenue, according to Wang, and had 194 employees at the time of the sale, according to GeekWire’s earlier reporting. It operated campuses in several states before shifting online during the pandemic.

Wang sees Idea to Launch expanding to other tech hubs, then online, and eventually licensing the program globally, much as Coding Dojo grew to multiple campuses. If the first cohorts go well, he can envision a follow-up program, Launch to Traction, to help founders find more customers.

He doesn’t plan to invest in participants’ companies. Having spent years building and selling Coding Dojo, Wang said he knows how hard that road is and would rather “cheer them on from the sidelines.” He said taking VC money at Coding Dojo created pressure to grow 100% a year, something he calls “startup steroids.”

For Wang, the point isn’t to find the next unicorn. It’s to give more people a shot at building something now that AI has made it cheaper and easier.

“I think everyone should try at least once just to bring their idea to reality,” he said.

A new hub for women entrepreneurs is taking shape in Seattle and will host its official launch party tonight. Less than 10 weeks after opening, The SWELL has 53 members and quickly evolving programming that includes an accelerator, its own consulting startup and weekly “hot seats” where founders hash out challenges.

“What we’ve created is a community that happens to have a co-working space,” said founder Sally Revell. “I am not in the business of co-working. I’m in the business of building a women’s founder community, and we have a space that we convene in.”

Revell decided to launch The SWELL after 25 years in marketing leadership roles for tech companies including Google, Amazon Web Services, Philips and Intuit. Her parents’ deaths in 2024 were a “catalyst for change,” she said, prompting her to strike out as an independent consultant. But she still craved an in-person professional community.

The SWELL, an acronym for “Seattle women entrepreneurs leading and lifting,” is based at SURF Incubator, a longtime co-working and events venue in downtown Seattle.

Revell said the organization is built on three pillars:

• A shared physical workspace
• A structure that supports bootstrapping rather than pressuring founders to seek venture capital
• Programming supportive of women, including daytime sessions in a central location that leave evenings free for childcare, eldercare, pets and other obligations, as well as integrated self-care offerings such as midday meditation breaks

A membership costs $200 a month and includes access to the co-working space Monday through Friday. The hub is currently capped at 75 members, and Revell is exploring a virtual program.

A survey of participants found that 40% resigned from corporate roles to launch their own ventures and 30% were laid off. An overwhelming majority have worked for big companies, and the cohort has a median of 17 years of work experience.

About 60% said they never want to return to corporate roles, and all are using AI in their business.

“There’s this movement of middle-aged women [feeling] like, ‘I’m empowered. I can choose to do something different,'” Revell said. “And when they get together, then the magic starts to happen.”

The SWELL is part of a broader push toward women-led companies. Women launched 44% of new businesses last year, according to Gusto, a payroll and HR platform. A key reason mid-career women are leaving corporate roles for entrepreneurship is that the jobs “did not line up with their needs, values, or realities,” as they struggled to balance work and caregiving, said researchers from the Rutgers Center for Women in Business.

Seattle has long been the birthplace of ventures supporting women founders and leaders. The Riveter, a pioneering, investor-backed co-working space for women, launched in 2017 but shuttered its physical locations in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It pivoted to an online community with expert webinars, mentoring and retreats.

Other related efforts include Female Founders Alliance, which has grown into a national organization operated by its own investment fund, Graham & Walker; TheWMarketplace, an e-commerce platform promoting women’s businesses; and Intentionalist, a site highlighting small businesses with diverse owners.

Revell is working with other women-focused efforts in the city, including the University of Washington’s Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership program. The SWELL recently announced a partnership with Formidable Media, a Seattle-based media and membership organization that helps women nationwide promote their businesses. And Nicole Doyle, who leads the Founder Institute’s Pacific Northwest cohort, created a custom accelerator for SWELL members that kicks off in January.