Your training ground for what's next.
A five-week, in-person accelerator at Silicon Valley's longest-running hackerspace. No equity. No tuition. Just the room, the network, and the mentors to help you ship.
Reach your higher potential — together.
Hacker Dojo has been Silicon Valley's open-door hackerspace since 2009. The Accelerator extends that mission with a structured five-week program for builders who want to ship something real.
Our Mission
Help the next generation of founders build the future — without gatekeepers, without giving up equity, and without needing to already know the right people.
The Accelerator is for tinkerers, dreamers, and visionaries who dare to challenge the status quo. We give you the room, the network, and the discipline to launch.
Our Vision
A Silicon Valley where the room belongs to whoever shows up to build — not just to whoever already has the network.
Optimized for first-time founders, immigrants, and builders from outside the traditional pipelines. Small cohort. High standards. A community that lasts long after the five weeks end.
Built by people who've been there.
The Accelerator is led by a Hacker Dojo board member and the Executive Director — both committed to keeping the Dojo accessible to the founders who need it most.
Founder of OMNIAPATH and Wov3. Building tools and platforms for the next generation of builders. Board Advisor at Hacker Dojo, helping bring the Accelerator to life.
Five weeks. Five disciplines. One demo day.
Every Tuesday, the cohort meets at the Dojo for a morning lecture, cohort lunch, afternoon working session, and evening speaker. Friday is for mentor 1:1s. The other days are yours to build.
Build the smallest thing that proves it.
Most early-stage founders build too much, too fast, before they know what works. Week 1 forces clarity: who is your customer, what's the one problem worth solving, and what's the smallest version of your product that can prove the answer? You'll leave with a sharpened hypothesis, a scoped MVP, and a working product or prototype testable with real users.
How you show up is the product.
Brand isn't a logo — it's the reason a customer chooses you over the alternative, even before they understand what you do. Week 2 covers positioning, voice, founder story, and the single sentence that makes people lean in. By the end of the week, you'll have a name worth saying out loud, a one-liner you can deliver in any room, and a brand identity that feels distinctly yours.
Find the one channel that works.
Most founders waste months testing ten go-to-market channels with no real signal from any of them. Week 3 teaches how to pick one channel based on your customer and product, run a real experiment that actually tests it, and read the results honestly. You'll leave with a focused GTM strategy, your first 10–50 real customers in pipeline, and the discipline to say no to every channel that isn't yours.
The scaffolding that lets you move fast.
Legal mistakes in the first year are some of the most expensive ones founders make — equity disputes, broken cap tables, IP that doesn't belong to the company. Week 4 covers the basics every founder should understand: entity structure, co-founder agreements, equity splits and vesting, intellectual property, and the contracts you'll sign with employees, customers, and investors. You'll leave knowing what to set up now, what to put in writing, and which mistakes have already cost other founders their companies.
Pitch like you've already won.
The week before Demo Day is for building the story that closes a round. Week 5 covers when (and whether) to raise, the structure of an investor pitch, deck design, and how to handle the hard questions you'll get in every meeting. You'll work through your narrative, build a deck, run live practice pitches with feedback, and walk into Demo Day on June 26 with a story that's been pressure-tested in the room.
One day. Twenty founders. The room is built to convert.
Bay Area angels, pre-seed VCs, Dojo alumni, and corporate partners come to the Dojo. Each cohort founder gets the floor.
A different bench every week.
A specialist instructor leads the workshop and 1:1s for each week. Investors, operators, and technical leaders — each one a practitioner who's lived the topic.
MVP
Branding
GTM
Law
Fundraising
Full instructor lineup confirmed for Cohort 01.
Two days at the Dojo. The rest is yours to build.
The cohort meets in person on Tuesdays and Fridays. Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday are for execution. The Dojo is open 24/7 for cohort founders.
Ready to ship something real?
Five weeks at Silicon Valley's longest-running hackerspace. Twenty founders. Zero equity.
Submit Application →