Last week, 100s of us packed a zoom where our longtime friend Alex Dobrenko` showed us (read: put on a show about) his nonconformist computer uses. Someone called it peak performance art.
Next, we’re teaming up with Alex on a special Code for Creatives x Sublime cohort—a six week experience teaching you how to use AI to make the weird, specific ideas in your head real—and make them well.
Come with something you’re wanting to build, or just the curiosity of what becomes possible when you give yourself permission to explore. Applications are now open and space is limited. Read on for details.
There has never been a better time to not know how to do stuff.
Open any of these AI tools, ask it anything, and keep asking until you get it. What a relief! Except we don’t seem to like it very much?
Our parents think AI is not for them, artists run for the hills to save their souls, and the tech bros keep all the power and use it to flood our feeds with explanations of how their swarms of agents send 10,000 cold emails.
Mostly because the tech industry is bad at storytelling.
What happens if we tell a different story?
We’ve been seeing AI less as a God, an apocalyptic event, or a job-destroying alien intelligence, and more like what it actually feels like to use it… a tool that lets us automate the boring and use our imagination without being limited by our technical skills. It only has as much power as we give it, type s**t.
Alex Dobrenko` is the embodiment of this. A longtime Sublime creative collaborator and antithesis of the typical online course guru, he shocked us last year when he told us he’s a “terminal guy” now and launched *Code for Creatives, a six week cohort where he teaches people to make cool stuff with AI.
*He’s done three sold out cohorts since, with 100s of alumni including writers, designers, filmmakers, a broadway career coach, a father daughter duo, and more.
Alex is a comedian, writer, father, the list goes on. He has no formal training as a developer or anything tech for that matter. But Claude made him feel like a kid again, and once he realized he could build almost anything, he started building everything.
He taught Claude his visual taste so it can help him design websites that don’t suck:
He’s built a creative headquarters that remembers his work, knows his clients, and can act across files and projects:
A lot of what he makes is practical. But a lot of it is just… delightful? Like NICOLAS CAGE CONFETTI:
Or the Windows98 website he made for the Sublime Session:
The story of how he summoned the courage to start Code for Creatives is a perfect example of how Code for Creatives works.
Alex had been teaching comedic writing and was getting excited about teaching more people about creatively using AI. Scattered and scared to launch, Alex had Claude analyze his saved calls (using Granola ofc) through the lens of five people he respected—Seth Godin, Derek Sivers, (our very own) Sari, Robin Sloan, and one wild card. Claude selected Alex Hormozi (lol) and Hormozi basically said “you need to just do this.” And apparently that’s exactly what Alex needed to hear and he launched Code for Creatives that day.
Alex is not a confident tech salesperson gimmicking you with a formula on how to make X thing in X amount of minutes. What he has mastered is speaking to everyone’s insecurities around these tools and lightening everything the F up, erasing the rules of what we’re allowed to admit and do amongst each other and with the machines.
There’s effortless alignment in the mission of Code for Creatives and our Sublime quest to shrink the void between inspiration and creation, which is why we’re excited to be teaming up on a special cohort of Code for Creatives x Sublime this fall.
Whether you are a seasoned techie or a clueless artist, Code for Creatives x Sublime is an experience and experiment in giving form to the ideas that collect dust in our mind, and on the fuel of learning and creating with others.
This is the first time Sublime will be hosting week 3, where we will teach you how to use Sublime and any references across platforms to make the stuff you make feel YOU.
Code for Creatives Alumni have made everything from practical to whimsical. Creations include a mortality visualization that moved cohort-mates to tears, personal websites that don’t look like slop, Chinese translators, a myriad of variations on virtual personal assistants, and this site called you are enough (by Max Pete).
You walk away with:
A MINDSET OVERHAUL! Your computer is a database. Everything is a file. Claude reads and writes to your files. Once this clicks, you see possibilities everywhere.
YOUR OWN CREATIVE HQ! We mean headquarters! Built around your mind, work, and quirks.
COMFORT WITH THE TECHNICAL STUFF: Terminals, files, folders, paths – we demystify all of it.
CONFIDENCE! Give them a fish, eat for a day. Teach them how to Claude Code and they’ll build for a lifetime (this analogy doesn’t entirely make sense but you get what we mean)
If you know the future is for the taking but are not quite sure how to take it, this is for you, boo.
The cohort starts the week of September 28. *The full experience is $1,500. Sublime Lifetime and Premium+ members get 20% off.
*Includes live sessions twice weekly (schedule is set by student poll), 24/7 Slack, your own Creative HQ, lifetime course access, a week with the Sublime team on encoding your taste, and bonus of a year of Sublime Premium+ membership. (Invoice available if you’re expensing the course.)
Applications are now open and space is limited.
*Bonus: a note from our founder, Sari.
Alex’s catchphrase is “automate the boring, protect the weird.”
For me, AI first clicked as a way to explore creative possibilities beyond what I technically knew how to do. But I had my first HOLY SHIT experience with AI agents this week using an app called Instinct.
It was SO profoundly helpful that I spontaneously shared about it on my personal IG and accidentally started a mom revolution!!!! The moms (and probably everyone!) are drowning in admin hell and Instinct is a life raft.
Not to go civil war on it but I have some invite codes and I’m giving priority to Sublime Premium+ and lifetime members and anyone who signs up for c4c.
Just email me at sari@sublime.app and I'll send you an invite.
HECK YA THIS ALEX GUY SEEMS COOL AND WISE AND HUMBLE AND CUTE I WOULD DEF TAKE HIS COHORT
Thank you for the mention!