Your young adult applies to a top engineering program — or their first job — and says “I’m interested in hardware.” The candidate next to them holds a portfolio of things they built on a factory floor in Shenzhen.
Guess who gets the spot.
The degree alone isn’t enough anymore. Everyone has a degree. Nobody has a soldered PCB they designed in the morning and submitted for fabrication in Shenzhen that afternoon. Nobody has drone swarm code they wrote and flew over a Chinese megacity. Nobody can say: “Here’s what I’ve already built. In China.”
What they walk away with
A hardware portfolio no university lab can match:
- A soldered PCB — surface-mount work most adults never touch
- A framed iPhone logic board — repaired under a real microscope in a Huaqiangbei stall
- A custom PCB design — Gerber files plus five boards shipped to their door
- Drone swarm programming video — code they wrote, six drones in the air
- A hacked RC car they modified themselves
- A portfolio site or Notion page documenting everything
A university or job application that doesn’t say “I’m interested in hardware” — it says “here’s what I’ve already built. In China.”
What the week looks like
- Huaqiangbei repair stall — dead iPhone, real microscope, fix it under real conditions
- PCB design → fabrication — design in the morning, submit to Shenzhen fab that afternoon
- Soldering surface-mount — components most adults can’t touch, with guidance
- Drone swarm coding — write the code, put six drones in the air over a Chinese megacity
- Robot hacking — modify an RC car, make it yours
- Hardware ecosystem literacy — the markets, the fab workflow, the speed. How things actually get built
No university lab puts a student through this. China is the lab. The portfolio is the proof.
Who runs it
A bilingual lead guide runs the week. Steven — 26 years owning factories in China — appears at the critical spikes. The doors open because the relationships are real.
The fee is small next to
The difference between “I’m interested” and “I already have.” Four years of university. A career that starts behind instead of ahead.
Pricing
| Early Bird | Standard |
|---|---|
| $8,888 | $13,888 |