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The 12-Week Accelerator
Run an AI startup with $500k and 12 weeks. Free to play.
A free lean product game for aspiring PMs and founders. Pick one of four AI startups and spend $500k over 12 weeks: plan sprints, open real case files (Palm, Dropbox, Humane), make calls, and try to earn a term sheet at Demo Day. No sign-up, about 25 minutes.
G'day Product Hunt 👋 I'm Matt, the Lean CPTO.
I've watched a lot of founders spend their runway building things nobody wanted. Smart people, good teams. They just made the expensive calls before the cheap ones. So I built a game where you can make those mistakes with someone else's money.
The 12-Week Accelerator gives you $500k and twelve weeks. You pick an AI startup: a bike light that spots cars, a fridge-photo dinner app, an AI agent that chases invoices for tradies, or a floor-scrubbing robot on a monthly plan.
Every week you plan a sprint, hear a real case file (Palm's block of wood, Dropbox's demo video, Humane's AI Pin and more), and make one big call. I'm in there as myself, giving a verdict on every call. Your co-founder Rex wants fourteen features. Vale the investor wants evidence.
It's free, there's no sign-up, and it takes about 25 minutes. A weekly challenge gives everyone the same curveballs, so the leaderboard is fair.
Next up is Pro, where you play the twelve weeks with your own startup. The waitlist is open on the site.
I'd love to know two things: your score, and which call felt wrong. Rex is keeping a list.
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About The 12-Week Accelerator on Product Hunt
“Run an AI startup with $500k and 12 weeks. Free to play.”
The 12-Week Accelerator was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 2 upvotes and 1 comments, placing #144 on the daily leaderboard. A free lean product game for aspiring PMs and founders. Pick one of four AI startups and spend $500k over 12 weeks: plan sprints, open real case files (Palm, Dropbox, Humane), make calls, and try to earn a term sheet at Demo Day. No sign-up, about 25 minutes.
The 12-Week Accelerator was featured in Education (79.4k followers), Games (99k followers) and Startup Lessons (7.9k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 67.1k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted The 12-Week Accelerator?
The 12-Week Accelerator was hunted by Matt Ainsworth. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how The 12-Week Accelerator stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Matt Ainsworth