Building Without Permission: Akshay Singh on Entrepreneurship, Education and AI

At eleven years old, Akshay Singh was building websites for a few pounds. By fifteen, he had sold his first digital agency. A decade after his earliest experiments with entrepreneurship, he is working on a different challenge: making artificial intelligence more accessible to students, educators and institutions.

Akshay Singh’s journey has been unconventional. A self-taught entrepreneur, he began building businesses long before entering the professional world, eventually moving into technology leadership, startup operations and AI-powered education.

Along the way, he has helped bring together thousands of aspiring makers through NoCode Weekend, supported early-stage founders with microgrants, and worked on education technology products reaching learners internationally.

Despite the variety of projects, one idea has remained consistent throughout his career: technology should make opportunities more accessible, not more complicated.

Starting Small, Building Early

Akshay Singh’s introduction to entrepreneurship came at eleven, when he began building websites for small fees. What initially started as a way to earn some extra money gradually developed into a digital agency of 12 creatives and makers, which he scaled and sold at fifteen. During this time he worked with founders and small businesses across the world and tried and failed at a dozen businesses every year, giving him an intro to the world of Silicon Valley founders and a lot of business lessons.

Those early experiences gave Singh an unusually practical introduction to building companies. Rather than learning business through conventional routes, he developed his understanding by finding customers, creating products, managing operations and navigating the uncertainty that comes with starting something independently.

His approach was shaped by having limited resources and learning as he went. Building quickly, testing ideas and focusing on what customers actually needed became recurring principles in his later work.

That experience also shaped his interest in helping other people build, particularly those without conventional technical backgrounds or access to funding.

As Akshay Singh gained experience building his own businesses, he became increasingly interested in helping others bring their ideas to life. This led him to Nobody Studios, a venture studio built around the belief that anyone with a promising idea should have the opportunity to become an entrepreneur, regardless of their background, connections or access to capital.

At Nobody Studios, Akshay Singh was involved in zero-to-one company building, helping turn early ideas into products and businesses. His experience included working on a no-code platform that later pivoted to an AI native data x internal tool-building platform, from zero to one to acquired, giving him early exposure to the practical challenges of developing and bringing AI-powered technology to market.

The work reinforced his belief that entrepreneurship is not simply about having a great idea, but about knowing how to execute it. From validating concepts and building products to understanding customers and developing sustainable business models, Akshay Singh gained experience across the earliest stages of company creation.

This philosophy of making technology and entrepreneurship more accessible would also shape his involvement with NoCode Weekend, where thousands of aspiring builders were given the tools and community to bring their own ideas to life.

Making Technology Accessible Through NoCode Weekend

One of Akshay Singh’s most notable community initiatives has been NoCode Weekend, a global hackathon initiative designed to help people turn ideas into working products without traditional programming skills.

Akshay Singh’s involvement in the no-code movement began when he received a scholarship to join On Deck’s No-Code Fellowship, becoming the youngest person admitted to the programme. He was fascinated by the concept and wanted to accelerate the movement alongside his co-host and mentor, Vensy Krishna, who inspired him to join her in building this together.

The initiative attracted more than 10,000 registrations and brought together over 3,000 participants, including students, scientists, entrepreneurs and professionals exploring new careers. It partnered and has hosted events for industry-leading platforms like Notion, Bubble, Glide, Typedream, Softr, Fueler and more.

Through no-code tools, participants could build prototypes, test business ideas and launch digital products without first spending years learning software development.

The initiative challenged a conventional assumption about technology entrepreneurship: that building a software company necessarily requires advanced technical expertise or substantial capital.

For Akshay Singh, the appeal was straightforward. More people should have the ability to create technology, rather than simply consume it.

Following its final in-person edition in London, NoCode Weekend was open-sourced in 2024, allowing its approach and resources to remain available beyond the original event series.

Supporting Founders with Microgrants

Akshay Singh also explored ways to make early-stage funding more accessible through a microgrant initiative that supported entrepreneurs, creators and individuals pursuing small but meaningful ideas.

Typically worth less than $500, the grants helped recipients cover practical costs, whether purchasing software, hosting a website, buying raw materials or camera equipment, developing a prototype, shooting a short film or planting a small community garden.

Unlike traditional startup investments, the grants required no equity, elaborate pitch decks or commitment to building a commercially viable business. The idea was simple: sometimes a few hundred dollars, offered without strings attached, can be enough to help someone turn an idea into reality.

The initiative awarded more than 60 grants before closing in 2024 due to funding constraints and AI making information and starting costs phenomenally different from when this grant started. While the programme was not financially sustainable in the long term, it reflected Singh’s broader belief that access to opportunity should not depend on credentials, professional networks or the ability to attract conventional investment.

For Akshay Singh, the experience reinforced a principle that continues to shape his work: meaningful innovation does not always require substantial capital. Sometimes, it simply requires giving someone the resources to begin.

From Entrepreneurship to Artificial Intelligence in Education

Akshay’s career eventually brought him into education technology, where he became involved in building and scaling products at Flylane, an international education company operating across more than 30 countries.

His work spans product strategy, operations and the practical application of artificial intelligence in learning.

At Flylane, that has included work on AI-powered learning experiences designed to provide more personalised support to students, alongside technology intended to make educational operations more efficient.

The potential of AI in education extends beyond automating existing tasks. Personalised learning, which has historically been expensive and difficult to deliver at scale, can become more widely available when technology reduces the cost of individual support.

At the same time, institutions face their own challenges. Information is often scattered across disconnected systems, administrative processes consume significant time, and educators need reliable ways to understand and support student progress.

Across both student-facing and institutional technology, the emphasis is on making AI practically useful rather than introducing complexity for its own sake.

Building Systems That Last

A recurring theme in Akshay Singh’s work has been the importance of building systems rather than simply launching individual products.

His early entrepreneurial experiences demonstrated that a successful idea requires more than a functioning website or an initial group of customers. It also needs processes, clear responsibilities, feedback and the ability to adapt as circumstances change.

This thinking has carried into his work across startup operations, product development and education technology.

It also helps explain his preference for practical implementation over technological novelty. Whether developing learning tools or helping founders launch new businesses, his approach centres on identifying a problem, building a useful solution and improving it through real-world feedback.

For Akshay Singh, simplicity and ambition are not competing ideas. Making a product easier to use or deploy can be what allows it to reach a much larger audience.

Making Opportunity More Accessible

From building websites as a child to helping thousands of people experiment with no-code technology, Singh’s career has repeatedly returned to the question of access.

No-code tools made it easier for individuals without programming backgrounds to create digital products. Microgrants offered early financial support without the obligations of traditional investment. AI now presents an opportunity to make personalised education and sophisticated institutional technology more widely available.

At 23, Akshay Singh is still early in his career, but his experiences reflect a broader shift in technology entrepreneurship. Building companies no longer necessarily requires following a conventional academic or professional path, and increasingly powerful tools are reducing the resources needed to turn ideas into reality.

For Akshay Singh, the next chapter is focused on applying those advances to education, a sector where improvements in affordability, accessibility and effectiveness can have consequences far beyond individual products.

The journey that began with building websites for a few pounds has evolved into a wider ambition: helping more people access the tools, knowledge and opportunities they need to build their own futures.