A 90-day internship where you don't fetch coffee — you start a real software business. We build the engineering, you run the customers. Counts for academic credit.
No experience required
Entry-level hiring dried up, and a degree doesn't open the doors it used to. Most grads do one of two things: take whatever they can get, or wait for a callback. We think there's a better move.
Chase unpaid internships that teach you filing and busywork — not how to build something that's yours.
Send out hundreds of applications and hope for a callback. Months pass, and you're no closer to real experience.
Spend 90 days starting a real software business — with our team building it for you, and a shot at owning it.
You don't need years of experience or a single line of code. You need curiosity about an industry and the willingness to talk to the people in it. We point you at the market, hand you the playbook, and build the product. You lead the customers; Populus handles every line of engineering and all the back office.
We seed your entire build — design and engineering — for the 90 days. You never write code or pay for it.
How we identify customers, run discovery, and turn conversations into software. The system, handed to you.
A weekly cadence with our team, plus the tools that guide you on exactly what to ask and build.
Land a customer and you have a revenue-sharing business — a lifestyle company you run from a laptop and a phone.
We point you at a compliance-heavy industry with real demand and the software it needs. No prior experience in it required.
We hand you the lead list and the playbook to land your first customer — no network required, no cold calls.
Every meeting becomes requirements, requirements become tickets, and our engineers ship the product around them.
Meet customers, capture what they need, and grow the book. We keep running the engineering and back office.
You don't need a decade of experience — you need drive, curiosity, and the willingness to show up. If you're in school or just out and hungry for something real, you're exactly who this is for. These are the markets you could build for:
Illustrative, based on a property-tax software license. Your numbers depend on your industry and pricing — but the shape holds: build once, license many, keep the back office off your plate.
No. This is built for students and early-career people. Curiosity about an industry and the willingness to talk to people matter far more than years on a résumé. We point you at the market and teach you the rest.
You meet with customers, understand their problems, and run the demos. You're the front of the business. You never write code — every requirement you capture goes to our engineering team, who build the product for you.
Yes. It's a remote, 90-day internship that fits around your classes — and it counts for academic credit. Most of the work is calls and follow-ups you can run from a laptop and a phone.
It's an unpaid internship — but instead of a paycheck, we front the entire engineering and design budget, roughly $50K of build, as our investment in you. If you land a customer, that becomes a 50/50 revenue-share business you own.
No harm, no foul. If it doesn't work out in 90 days, you walk away with real operating experience, a completed internship, and a system you can use anywhere. The willingness to try is the only entry fee.
Tell us where you're studying and the kind of industry you'd love to build for. If it's a fit, we'll set up a call and walk you through what the 90 days looks like.