A venture engine, not a training program.
Four stages. One pipeline. Measured on economic outputs.
The pipeline in detail
Each stage has an owner, a duration, and an output. Nothing advances on attendance.
Select the right founders
Every cohort begins with selection. We identify African developers who show the technical depth and commercial instincts to become founders, not just build features.
- Demonstrated technical shipped work: GitHub, competitions, deployed products
- Commercial curiosity about African market realities
- Communication capability with technical and non-technical audiences
- Coachability and commitment to a 16-week structured program
- Vision for a specific African market problem worth solving
Form them technically and commercially
The 16-week formation program develops founders across four dimensions.
Incubate their ventures
Selected cohort founders enter structured incubation. LAB takes equity in every venture that emerges.
- Technical mentorship from the LAB team and external technical partners
- Commercial guidance from experienced African fintech operators
- Small pre-seed capital, structured per venture
- Access to LAB's institutional network
- Legal, tax, and operational infrastructure support
- Priority introductions to LAB's ecosystem of capital partners
Connect to capital and markets
Ventures flow into a curated network of aligned capital partners, corporate anchors, and government relationships. LAB is the top of the funnel.
- Founding Backer Circle members, which opens after Cohort 1
- Corporate anchor partners for pilot deployments
- Ecosystem grant partners: Stacks Foundation, Btrust, OpenSats, Spiral
- Government partnerships for regulatory support and market access
- International capital partners aligned with African infrastructure investment
What that looks like in practice
The venture engine runs across four connected parts. Each part has a distinct rhythm and produces a distinct output.
Developer Community
The foundation layer of the venture engine. It runs continuously through meetups, workshops, mini Buildathons, hackathons, and beginner training across partner universities and community networks.
- Regular meetups across regional cities
- Technical workshops on Bitcoin, Lightning, stablecoins, mobile money, and adjacent infrastructure
- Mini Buildathons focused on specific problems or technologies
- Beginner training for developers new to Bitcoin infrastructure, smart contracts, digital payments, and blockchain technology
- Hackathons, some of which serve as cohort selection funnels
- University sessions across partner campuses
The Cohort
A 16-week intensive founder formation program. Selection-based. Founders enter through hackathons, direct application, or community recommendation, all drawing from Part 1.
- Weeks 1 to 4, Foundation: technical, commercial and regulatory groundwork. Working thesis validated or evolved.
- Weeks 5 to 10, Formation: deep technical work on the venture’s infrastructure. Commercial testing of distribution, pricing and user acquisition.
- Weeks 11 to 14, Shipping: real users, real transactions, real evidence. The LAB team works alongside founders to remove obstacles.
- Weeks 15 to 16, Positioning: fundraising narrative, pitch preparation, introductions to aligned capital partners, post-cohort planning.
Incubation
After the cohort ends, the strongest ventures continue inside LAB through the incubation residency. Timing is flexible per venture, typically 6 to 12 months, based on what each one needs to reach its next stage.
- Continued technical mentorship from the LAB team and external partners
- Commercial guidance as the venture scales
- Introductions to capital partners aligned with the venture's stage and thesis
- Corporate pilot facilitation
- Legal, tax, and operational infrastructure support
- Access to LAB's wider institutional network
Demo Days
The public moments of the venture engine. They surface what the pipeline is producing to backers, partners, press, and the wider ecosystem.
- Cohort Demo Day: at the close of each 16-week cohort. Invite-only for backers, partners and ecosystem allies. Every graduating founder presents their shipped work.
- Annual Showcase: once a year, public. All active portfolio ventures present, open to press, corporates and the wider ecosystem.
What powers the venture engine
The developer community, Part 1 above, is the direct pipeline that feeds cohort selection. Around it sits a wider foundation of institutional partnerships that extend LAB’s reach and multiply its impact.
The community and its institutions together are what allow the venture engine to run. Without them, there are no founders to select, no ventures to incubate, and no pipeline to activate.