One camp, thirty teams
Everyone lives on site in the Catskills from arrival to departure. Phones go in the box, cameras go up, and there is nowhere else to be.
336 hours to go from zero to revenue.
October 2nd to 17th, 2026 · Catskills, New York
The Launchpad is a two week experience for early stage founders to launch their companies in public, meet incredible mentors, and compete for cash prizes and capital investments from top investors. We’re bringing 30 founding teams to the Catskills October 2nd to 17th. Join us.
30
Founder teams
14
Days on site
$0
Starting revenue
100M
Impressions
What is Launchpad?
It is not an accelerator. It is fourteen days on the record.
There is no curriculum. No office hours, no partner intros, no demo-day theatre stretched across three months. You get a bed, a desk, a camera and twenty-nine other teams who have run out of excuses at exactly the same time as you.
Everyone arrives at $0. That is the only entry condition we care about. Not a deck, not a warm intro, not a seed round you already closed. You need a team and fourteen days you can disappear for.
The rule is simple: talk to humans, ship something, charge for it. Teams that pivot on day five keep the customer and drop everything else. Teams that find $40 on day six spend the next week finding $4,000.
And all of it is filmed. Most founders build in private and write the story afterwards, once the ending is known. Here the record is made while you are still inside it: every pivot, every 3am, every first dollar.
Everyone starts at zero
No deck, no warm intro, no round already closed. You need a team and something you can build and sell inside two weeks.
Talk, ship, charge
The whole method. Ten conversations before lunch, something live by dark, and a price on it long before you feel ready.
Pivot without penalty
Teams that drop the idea on day five keep the customer and the domain. Changing your mind quickly is the point, not the failure.
Filmed end to end
Four operators, two drones, one fixed camera and a confessional chair that runs nightly. Nothing gets edited out afterwards.
Pitch day, then out
One room, five minutes, investors watching. You check out with revenue, a team and a season of footage.
Every pivot, every 3am, every first dollar. Filmed.
Four operators, two drones, one fixed camera and a confessional chair that runs nightly. It gets cut into a season and pushed to up to 100M impressions.
Three acts, sixteen days, one direction.
The shape is fixed: explore, create, sell, ship. The detail is not. Half of it gets rewritten by whatever the teams find in week one.
Act IDays 1–5
Explore
Volume over polish. Test everything and throw most of it away.
Act IIDays 6–12
Create
Commit to the thread that got a reaction and build it properly.
Act IIIDays 13–16
Ship
Put a number on it, then one room with the investors in it.
We have done this ourselves.
$100K ARR
Stanley LinkedIn
Zero to a hundred thousand in 14 days, by the team running this camp.
$1.3M ARR
Stanley Short Form
Four months on the same playbook. One wedge, no outside curriculum.
777 customers
Stanley for X
Ten days. Cold outreach first, product second, price last.
Questions
How do I apply?
Click “Apply to camp”. It is one page and takes a few minutes. When you finish you are given a link of your own, which is how you check where your application has got to, so keep it.
When and where is it?
Friday, October 2 to Saturday, October 17, 2026. One camp in the Catskills, New York, 2.5 hours from NYC.
Who gets in?
30 founder teams. You need a team, not just an idea, and 14 days you can disappear for.
Do I need a product already?
No. You need something you can build and sell inside two weeks. Everyone starts at $0.
Am I on camera the whole time?
Yes. From check-in to checkout, and so is everyone else. Pitch day is filmed in front of investors.
How does it end?
Pitch day is Friday, October 16. One room, one shot. You check out Saturday, October 17 with revenue and a season of footage.