Every once in a while, someone glances at their summer calendar and makes a quiet, life-changing decision. Instead of vacation or internships, they chase their obsession.
We found four data points. Make of them what you will.
1975 – Instead of spending summer like a normal Harvard student, Bill Gates teaches himself BASIC at 3 AM. Paul Allen supports by showing up with coffee and increasingly elaborate schemes for monetizing software. The result: Microsoft, $16,005 in first-summer revenue.
1976 – Steve Jobs turns his parents' garage into a manufacturing facility, combining Wozniak's engineering skills and an irrational confidence in consumer demand for DIY computers. They hand-wire and sell 50 Apple I computers. Revenue that summer: $33,330.
2004 – Mark Zuckerberg makes an unusual geographic bet: while his Harvard classmates head home for summer, he moves to Silicon Valley. He rents a house with Dustin and a few friends, codes 18 hours daily. Result: Facebook grows by 50,000 users per week.
2007 – While classmates chase beaches, 19-year-old Melanie Perkins drags a second-hand laser printer into her mom's home to launch "Fusion Books". She teaches design classes, watches students wrestle with Adobe, and sketches a drag-and-drop alternative. This prototype would snowball into Canva and rewrite how 100 million people create.
The pattern is obvious once you see it.
This summer, you are at the exact crossroads they once were. Take a deep look at your calendar.
And instead of vacation, think
Off Season.
Off Season isn't about taking a break — it's about breaking away from the expected path to build something extraordinary.
Join us for six weeks at our campus in Fort Mason. You and 50 others. No curriculum, no distractions — just time to obsess, a playground to play in, and people that share the same mindset.
AI, hardware, robotics, software, vertical farms — whatever you can't stop thinking about.
June 23 to August 1.
Ends with demo day with top teams getting up to $250K in funding + $500K in credits.
48 spots left
Deadline June 12