From zero code to a deployed product.
Moonlabs is the operator-led AI Academy in Derby. We run three live companies — Homemove, home.co.uk and homedata.co.uk — and we teach twelve students per cohort to ship a real AI product, sell it to a real customer, and raise on it. Three pillars: Coding, Commercials, Investment. Twelve weeks. £6,000.
Moonlabs is what we are. Two operators — James Freestone and Louis O’Connell-Bristow — who run Homemove, home.co.uk and homedata.co.uk. We have taken students from zero code to a deployed AI product in twelve weeks more than once — operations leads, history graduates, accountants, life-science researchers, marketers, school leavers. The on-ramp on this page is what we have actually walked people through.
The Academy is what we do. A twelve-week, in-person, twelve-student cohort in Derby. You build a real AI product. You sign a paid pilot on it. You write a deck and a financial model. You leave with a deployed system, a paying customer reference and a live investor pipeline. Coding, Commercials, Investment — the three pillars taught in equal weight every week.
Why this page exists. Most coding bootcamps in 2018 spent their first six weeks teaching the syntax of JavaScript or Ruby. That on-ramp does not exist any more. With Cursor, Claude Code and Codex in the editor, the bar to writing your first useful piece of software is roughly “can you describe what you want, and read the answer carefully?” The bar is willingness, not background — you leave the Academy with a deployed product, a paying pilot, and a CV that opens doors at AI-native employers even though twelve weeks ago you had never written a line of code.
Coding · the working method, not the syntax
Cursor, Claude Code and Codex collapse the distance from “cannot code” to “has shipped something real”. You will not learn one programming language; you will learn the working method that AI-native engineers use every day. A deployed AI product by week twelve — built by someone who arrived twelve weeks earlier with no engineering CV.
Commercials · the domain fluency you already bring
Most non-coders bring something engineers do not: deep domain knowledge of an actual industry. That domain fluency is half the work of finding a wedge buyers will pay for. Five live discovery calls by week three. A paid pilot by week six — for many non-coders, sold back into the industry they used to work in.
Investment · the founder shape technical-only candidates miss
Most strong AI founders are not pure engineers — they bring domain knowledge plus the engineering capacity. That is exactly the shape investors are loudest about wanting. Cap table from week two, ten-slide deck, financial model. Warm introductions to UK pre-seed (Plural, Local Globe, Concrete VC, Pi Labs, EF). A live investor pipeline by demo day — built on the deployed product the cohort starts you on.
Common questions.
Honestly, can someone with zero code really ship in twelve weeks?
Yes — we have done it more than once. The candid version: the work is still hard, you will be tired, and you will hit walls that take a day to climb. But you will ship. The AI tooling does not remove the difficulty; it changes the shape of it.
Will I be in the same cohort as experienced engineers?
Sometimes — we mix cohorts deliberately. Experienced engineers in the room help the non-coders go faster, and the non-coders ask the questions that surface the assumptions experienced engineers gloss over. Both groups graduate stronger.
I do not even know what programming language to start with. Where do I begin?
You start here, by applying. The first fortnight of the Academy will pick the right stack for your project. There is no “learn the syntax first” prerequisite — the agentic tooling makes that approach obsolete for our purposes.
What about maths?
Not central. Almost no useful AI engineering in 2026 trains models from scratch. You need enough maths to read an eval and a P&L, not enough to write a research paper.
Will my certificate / qualification recognise this?
The Academy is a private vocational course, not an accredited degree. What you walk out with is a deployed product and a network — both of which tend to do more work in interviews than a certificate at this end of the market.
More Academy entry points.
The Academy is one course with many doors. Each of these pages is a different entry point into the same twelve weeks.
Build it. Sell it. Raise on it. In twelve weeks.
Tell us what you do today and which industry knowledge you would lean on. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
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