Build a SaaS with AI. End to end.
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. All three are SaaS-shaped businesses we built and rebuilt with AI in the editor — auth, billing, multi-tenant, observability, Stripe, transactional email. The plumbing on this page is the plumbing we use ourselves.
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. Almost every SaaS in 2026 has an AI feature shipped behind it; almost none of them have been built by a single person, end to end, in twelve weeks. That is the gap we close. By week six you have a paid pilot. By week twelve you have a deployed SaaS, a deck, a financial model and a live investor pipeline. The shape of the work that used to take a year, compressed into twelve weeks with operators in the room.
Coding · the AI-native SaaS stack, end to end
Cursor, Claude Code and Codex on Laravel + Blade or Next.js, Postgres + pgvector, Tailwind, Stripe, auth, multi-tenant routing, transactional email, observability. AI features behind evals from week one. A deployed SaaS by week twelve — not a Notion-to-link demo, an actual product on its own domain.
Commercials · pricing, pilot, paid invoice
Pricing intuitions in week one, the first five discovery calls by week three, a one-page pilot agreement, the first paid invoice. A paid pilot by week six — the milestone that decides whether you keep going or pivot. AI-native SaaS retainers at £500-5k/mo are how most graduates first land.
Investment · the round on a SaaS, not a slide
Cursor ($2.5bn), Lovable ($200m+), Granola, Mem, Read AI, Replit Agent, ChatPRD, v0 by Vercel, Bolt.new, Magic, Pyrra — AI-native SaaS is the densest funded category of the cycle and investors are loud about it. Cap table from week two, ten-slide deck, financial model, term sheets walked line by line. A live investor pipeline by demo day.
Common questions.
Can I bring my own SaaS idea?
Yes — most students do. We pressure-test the wedge in week one and reshape it as the buyer conversations come in. If you do not have an idea yet, we will help you find one inside the first fortnight.
What SaaS stacks do you teach?
The defaults are Laravel + Blade or Next.js, Postgres, Tailwind, Stripe, modern deploys. The stack is matched to your project — what we will not let you do is build on something we cannot maintain alongside you in the room.
What about pricing and unit economics?
Central to the syllabus. Week one introduces pricing intuitions; week four runs a pricing stress-test against your actual buyer conversations; week six is the first paid pilot. By demo day you have margin, payback and unit economics that survive an investor question.
Will you help me incorporate, set up Stripe, and get my first invoice paid?
Yes — those are explicit milestones in the cohort, not afterthoughts. We will not let you graduate without the legal and billing wiring in place if you intend to keep selling.
Is this for solo founders or co-founder pairs?
Both. We have run both shapes. Pairs of co-founders apply together; solos apply on their own and often find a partner inside the cohort or the wider Moonlabs network.
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 SaaS you would build — or that you do not have an idea yet, which is also fine. James and Louis read every application personally and reply inside the week.
© 2026 Moonlabs Incubator. All rights reserved.