From Idea to MVP: Inside Momen's AI + No-Code Workshop at SMU

Business students often possess the strongest market insights and startup ideas, but are frequently bottlenecked by a lack of technical engineering skills. The traditional route of finding a technical co-founder or outsourcing development is slow and expensive.

On April 11, 2026, Momen traveled to Singapore Management University (SMU) to tackle this challenge head-on. We hosted an intensive, hands-on workshop themed "From Startup Idea to MVP: Build Real Apps with AI + No-Code."

This event was made possible through a collaboration with our incredible partners: SMU IIE (Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship), an organization dedicated to nurturing entrepreneurial ecosystems and supporting student startups, and SMU BIA (Business Intelligence & Analytics), a student community focused on data-driven decision-making and technology in business.

Through this SMU no-code workshop, Momen demonstrated that with the right visual development platform, non-technical domain experts can take full control of their product architecture and ship real, production-ready MVPs.

A Hands-On Afternoon at the Jay & Marilyn Ng Greenhouse

Set in the Level 4 Event Space of the Jay & Marilyn Ng Greenhouse, the interactive live-building session ran from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Momen served as the primary host and technical mentor for the afternoon.

Our team guided students through the entire lifecycle of software development—from drafting the initial database architecture to constructing the frontend UI and integrating advanced AI capabilities. To ensure everyone could continue their startup MVP development after the event, we provided on-site technical support and gifted each participant $100 in platform credits.

The room was filled with around 40 highly engaged SMU students. The vast majority came from business backgrounds, majoring in economics, data analysis, and information systems, with zero prior coding experience.

How Participants Built an AI Image Generator from Scratch

We introduced the core philosophy of Momen: software development should be about structuring business logic, not wrestling with syntax. We showcased how Momen acts as a powerful AI app builder where users can manage their Data Model, design UIs, and configure backend logic without writing code.

During the hands-on segment, students were tasked with building a fully functional product image generator. They learned how to structure their database, set up an AI Agent to handle multimodal image processing, and connect an Actionflow to store the AI's results seamlessly. (For a closer look at the mechanics, you can read our guide on How to Build a Image Generator in Momen).

We also demonstrated how to implement advanced mechanics, such as deducting user credits per generation and setting up real payment systems.

Momen Founder Yaokai Jiang led the session, sharing his perspective as an experienced Silicon Valley engineer. He emphasized that business students already intuitively understand logic and processes; they just need a tool like Momen to translate that understanding into a functional architecture.

Empowering Business Students to Deploy Real Applications

The 40 attendees actively engaged with the platform, quickly grasping how to map their complex business requirements to relational database tables and visual actionflows.

By the end of the three-hour session, participants who had never written a line of code successfully deployed their own working AI applications. They experienced the "aha" moment of watching a static idea transform into a live, interactive software product.

This momentum mirrors the incredible student innovation we've seen at other university events, such as the Duke Kunshan University Hackathon and Hack&Roll at NUS.

Bring the Momen Building Experience to Your Community

We are actively looking to partner with university organizations, student hackathons, startup incubators, and entrepreneurship communities globally.

We offer hands-on workshops, technical mentorship, event sponsorship, and platform access to help your community members turn their ideas into reality. We want to help more domain experts build AI apps without coding.

Reach out to us at hello@momen.app to discuss hosting a Momen workshop at your campus or next big event.

Are you a student building your next big idea right now? Momen offers a 50% education discount to help you scale your MVP affordably.