AI for product managers, built by operators.
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, have raised £5m+, and run product across three live consumer + data products every week. The AI surfaces on this page are surfaces we ship.
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. The PM job changed quietly in 2024 and loudly in 2025. The product managers being promoted now are the ones who can ship an AI surface themselves — eval a feature, prototype the agent, write the schema for the structured output, and hand engineering something that is most of the way there. The PMs being passed over are still writing a one-pager and waiting six weeks for a sprint. You leave the Academy as an AI-native PM — and for some graduates, as the founder of the product they were going to write the PRD for.
Coding · prototype, do not just spec
You ship working prototypes of AI features yourself — agents, structured outputs, retrieval, evals from week one. The PM who can write and own an eval suite is the PM who can ship AI surfaces confidently. A deployed AI surface by week twelve — the PRD-and-prototype your engineering team will actually thank you for.
Commercials · the AI-native PM market rate
Senior PM-who-also-builds is the most-asked-for shape on every AI-native CTO’s wishlist right now. Pricing your own AI product, the discovery call, a one-page pilot agreement, the first paying customer. A paid pilot by week six — sometimes inside the company you arrived from, sometimes the prototype you spec the rest of the year.
Investment · raising as a PM-turned-founder
PMs make outstanding founders — you already know how to do customer discovery and write a roadmap. Cap table from week two, ten-slide deck, financial model, term sheets walked line by line. A live investor pipeline by demo day — with warm introductions to UK funds and angels who back PM-shaped founders specifically.
Common questions.
I am a non-technical PM. Is this realistic?
Yes. AI tooling has collapsed the on-ramp. We have taken non-technical PMs through to shipped AI features in twelve weeks. Several have moved into “technical PM” roles inside the same company afterwards, with a meaningful pay bump.
I am a technical PM (ex-engineer). Will this still help?
Yes — and you will reach a higher ceiling. Technical PMs spend most of the course on the cutting-edge AI engineering work, less on the ramp. The output is materially stronger.
Will I learn agents and evals as a PM specifically?
Yes — both. PMs in 2026 are increasingly the ones writing the eval suites that gate agent rollouts. The course makes you fluent.
Can my employer fund this?
Often yes. L&D budgets, the Apprenticeship Levy and upskilling allowances all apply. Full funding routes here.
I want to leave PM and become an AI engineer. Is this the right course?
Yes — many career changers do exactly that. The Academy compresses the transition into twelve weeks. The career changer page covers the wider framing.
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 your product looks like today and what AI surface you would ship yourself first. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
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