For Matt Landers, Birmingham’s Velocity Accelerator propelled him completely away from his original business plan – sort of.

Landers was accepted into the inaugural class of the 12-week entrepreneur boot camp with Gender Reveal, a business based around the growing number of ways expectant parents reveal the sex of their unborn child to family, friends and, sometimes, themselves.

But it turns out Landers was already working on a project with much greater potential and the Velocity Accelerator program revealed that he should focus his energies there.

Covalence is part of Birmingham’s Velocity Accelerator inaugural class from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.

So instead of Gender Reveal, Landers formed Covalence, a computer software development and coding training program that immerses students in a 10-week curriculum designed to give them skills that are in high demand in tech industries.

Landers knows about that demand. As the CEO of Platypi, he had trouble finding workers ready to work in coding. He heard the same from peers both at Innovation Depot and around the country.

So Landers started DepotU to offer a boot camp to give anyone from college students to those looking to make a career change the needed skills.

He then tweaked DepotU and turned it into Covalence with plans to move into other markets because the need for trained workers is only growing.

Velocity Accelerator is a 12-week program designed to give a select group of startups focused mentorship and guidance to speed their growth. The inaugural class of 10 companies was announced in December and started in January with $50,000 in seed capital. The program concludes with Demo Day on April 18.

Landers is seeking investment capital as part of his Demo Day pitch but what he really wants is to see people find better paying and more satisfying careers – regardless of their gender.