buildspace
Online builder community and education program founded by Farza Majeed. Launched as a project-based learning platform for Web3 and AI developers in December 2021, pivoted in 2023 to a free six-week cohort program called Nights & Weekends, and closed in August 2024 at the founder's initiative despite strong finances. Roughly 150,000 people moved through its programs; its Fort Mason campus, anime aesthetic, and no-pitch ethos influenced a generation of independent builders, and four of its team members now work at Founders, Inc. 12.
Origins: ZipSchool to buildspace
The legal entity was founded in December 2019 as ZipHomeSchool (later ZipSchool), a live science-class platform for children aged 4–12, and was admitted to Y Combinator's S20 batch 5. Majeed shut ZipSchool down in August 2021 after a period of depression and lost conviction in the children's-education direction, and in December 2021 he pivoted the same entity to buildspace — a project-based learning platform where developers built self-paced "builds" in Solidity, Ethereum NFTs, and Solana, earning NFTs as completion certificates 2. Sponsorships from companies like OpenAI drove revenue to roughly $1.5M in 2022 2.
Series A
On November 11, 2022, buildspace closed a $10M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $100M valuation. The round included Y Combinator, Weekend Fund (Ryan Hoover), Vayner Fund, Shrug Capital, Protocol Labs, Balaji Srinivasan, Orange DAO, Solana Ventures, OpenSea, Alchemy Ventures, Dreamers VC, Kevin Lin (Twitch co-founder), eFounders, Earl Grey Capital, and Founders, Inc. 4. The public framing Majeed used at the raise — "Hogwarts for builders and dreamers" — became the program's identity 7.
Nights & Weekends
Across 2022–2023 buildspace pivoted from self-paced courses to a free six-week cohort program open to builders working on any idea — indie software, hip-hop albums, short films, hardware, community gardens. The "nights and weekends" name referred literally to when working people could build 26.
The weekly rhythm had a specific arc: week 1, define the idea in one line; week 2, build a toy prototype; week 3, public launch to find ten people who care; week 4, iterate with early users; week 5, experiment with distribution channels; week 6, ship a 90-second demo video to buildspace's ~200K-subscriber list 6. Graduating required four of six weekly progress reports. A community-voted demo day awarded a $100,000 prize each season, and the program leaned hard on a Harry-Potter-style four-houses competition structure for community identity 6.
Seasons scaled steeply: S1 ~500 participants, S2 ~3,000, S3 ~7,500, S4 ~18,000, and S5 over 120,000 29. By mid-2024, 3,000+ participants had shipped projects and more than 12 million people had seen buildspace content on Instagram and Twitter 2. At the end of each season, ~1,000 graduates were invited to a three-day in-person IRL event 6.
Majeed's anime-inspired, lowercase, meme-heavy persona — "homies," "build cool shit," Naruto references throughout — gave the brand a distinctive voice. Cam Houser, a reviewer of seasonal programs professionally, wrote that buildspace delivered "a more modern, engaging, and relevant education in entrepreneurship and marketing than 99% of what I've seen on the internet" 6.
The Fort Mason campus
In July 2023 buildspace opened a physical campus at 2 Marina Blvd, Building B, Suite 200 — inside Fort Mason, the same building Founders, Inc. had been renting space in since 2022 2. Two longer-form in-person residencies, called SF1 and SF2, brought 35-ish builders onsite for 77-day cohorts alongside the big three-day IRL gatherings for seasonal graduates 2.
In June 2024 buildspace launched Sage (sage.buildspace.so), a social platform for builders to share and discover work — ranked #3 Product of the Day on Product Hunt 8.
Shutdown
On August 23, 2024 Majeed posted a tweet and a letter announcing buildspace was closing the next day. The post reached 2.4M views 1. The letter ruled out the usual reasons: the company had more than two years of runway, S5 had just been its biggest season ever, and a sponsorship model could comfortably generate $3–5M ARR — none of that was the issue 1:
"At this point I'm out of ideas to try that I can really put my all behind to take us further. All the paths I wanted to explore, I did. And I don't have a clear idea on the next path to go down. The desire to push like hell isn't burning as it once did." 1
Asked later why he hadn't handed the company off instead of closing it, Majeed replied: "passing onwards a company like Buildspace wasn't easy, but, was possible. It was more of a community/brand versus a product that someone could come in and continue running" 3.
Aftermath
The physical campus closed; Founders, Inc. expanded into the space and now operates its 42,000 sq ft Fort Mason campus from the same building 2. Four buildspace team members joined f.inc directly: Stavan Patel (founding team → Creative Director), Adrianna Lakatos (Portfolio & Ecosystem), Aiden Blumenstein (Programs & Storytelling), and Dante Lentini (Growth). Majeed himself became a founder-in-residence at f.inc after six months of travel through Morocco, the Czech Republic, and Pakistan, and has since launched several small experiments including Tidbit, Clicky, and makesomething.so 3.
The buildspace.so domain remains live in memorial mode — "this was buildspace" 1.