1WK: Walk In With an Idea, Walk Out With a Business and Customers

01.Not a course. A company-building week.

Early-stage founders lose time jumping between research, product, brand, pricing and go-to-market. 1WK brings that work into one intense, practical week, with a small cohort and the people to move it forward. Its promise is in the line on the front of its site: walk in with an idea, walk out with a business.

That business is the measure of the week. By the Friday it is ready for customers, and it has them: a full production product is live, not a prototype or a website, the company is set up to sell it, and the conversations founders start on the first day have turned into customers.

“Your idea doesn't need another six months in a slide deck.” 1WK

The week is built around four aims.

1. 01Know the marketUnderstand the customer, the competition and the opportunity before months go into building the wrong thing.
2. 02Build the right thingTurn the idea into a clear product, a practical roadmap and a working first release people can actually use.
3. 03Start finding customersSharpen the offer, identify real prospects and begin useful conversations while the product takes shape.
4. 04Leave equippedKeep the research, plans, brand, product, source code and commercial material made for the company.

02.How the week runs

The 1WK clock starts at 168 hours: one cohort, one week, Saturday to Friday. The work begins before anyone arrives.

1. Before 1WKApply, talk, prepareFounders describe the problem and the idea behind it. Promising applicants are invited to a real conversation, and the selected five arrive with tailored market, customer and competitor research already waiting.
2. Saturday 5 DecemberDay zeroMeet the cohort, challenge the assumptions and get every tool, account and working environment ready, so no time is lost on the Monday morning.
3. Sunday 6 to Thursday 10 DecemberBuild, learn, sellThe product build moves alongside focused sessions on positioning, pricing, go-to-market, company setup, funding and the numbers. Selling starts now, not after the week: founders work through real prospects and real conversations every day.
4. Friday 11 DecemberShip and pitchPut the full production product live, tell the company's story and walk out with a customer-ready business and customers, rather than another folder of workshop notes.

03.The engine: the build keeps moving

What makes the week possible is that the build doesn't stop when the founders do. Fractal Code, the coding-agent workspace Kevin Collins built at Echofold, coordinates coding agents around the clock. While the build moves, founders can learn, make decisions and speak to real customers. That is how a week is enough to end with customers: nobody waits for the product to be finished before selling it.

• Work starts before you arrive. Market and competitor research is prepared around each founder's idea.
• Build time is not workshop time. Product work continues while the cohort learns and sells.
• Nobody watches a progress bar. Every hour goes into making the company more real.

04.What founders walk out with

1WK isn't measured in workshop notes. It ends with three things that matter on the Monday after.

Kevin Collins is blunt about it: nobody has done this in a week before. Plenty of programmes help a founder plan a product. 1WK builds the real thing, a full production product, puts a business around it and finds its first customers, from a standing start in seven days. It works because the build never stops: Fractal Code keeps coding agents on the product day and night while the founders are out selling it.

Made along the way

Getting there takes real work, and all of it stays with the founder: 50 practical pieces in all, built around their market, their customer and their company rather than templates filled with filler. They fall into four groups.

Then there's the part most accelerators put in the small print. 1WK takes no equity at all.

“You keep 100%. We never take equity. Your company, source code, research and materials remain yours. We are here to change the trajectory, not the cap table.”1WK

05.Who it's for

1WK is for founders who are ready to move. They don't need all the answers, but they do need the honesty to test the idea, the energy to speak to customers and the focus to give it one serious week. The fit, in five points:

• You have a clear problem or startup idea.
• You are early enough to challenge your assumptions.
• You will talk to customers and act on what you hear.
• You can commit fully to an intensive week in Dublin.
• You want momentum, not another passive programme.

There is no need for a company name, a deck, a product or a customer before applying. The cohort is kept to five on purpose: small enough for close attention, and big enough for founders to challenge and help one another.

06.Who's in the room

Three people run the week, under the banner “Teach. Build. Open doors.”

• K.KevinAI training, curriculum and the systems behind the build.
• G.GavinProduct, engineering, go-to-market and founder experience.
• E.EoghanPartnerships, commercial connections and the rooms that matter.

Kevin Collins is the founder of Echofold, a Claude Code Ambassador for Dublin, Ireland, and a Manus Fellow. He led one of the three winning teams at the 2025 National AI Challenge and placed in the top six of 13,000 applicants at Anthropic's Claude Code hackathon. 1WK covers the same ground as Launch in a Day, the four-hour startup workshop he first ran in July 2025 (idea, brand, market, product, business model, go-to-market, prototype, website, financials and pitch), stretched to a full week with a working product at the end.

07.How to apply

Applications for Cohort 01 are open at 1wk.ai/apply and close at the end of Saturday 31 October 2026. There's no polished deck to prepare and no performance: the form asks founders to say what they want to build, in three short parts.

• You: name, email, where you're based, LinkedIn, one useful link, and what makes you the person to build this.
• The idea: what you're building, who has the problem and what hurts today, what makes you believe the problem is real, and where you are now: idea only, researching, prototype, or users or revenue.
• The week: why this idea, why you and why now, what would change if it were live by Friday, and whether you can commit to the full Saturday to Friday programme in Dublin.

A person reads every application. If the week looks capable of changing a founder's trajectory, the team invites them to a conversation before making a selection.

08.Frequently asked questions