Meet the EMpower Founders Residency: Cohort 1
Da Nang is about to get noisier. In the best way possible.
From May 11 to May 29, 2026, eight Web3 startups will move into Da Nang for the inaugural cohort of the EMpower Founders Residency — a 3-week intensive residential program co-run by sqrDAO and Lisk Ventures, designed for builders from emerging markets who are ready to ship, raise, and scale.
This is the cohort. Let’s get into it.
Why we built EMpower
Most accelerators and residencies are built for founders in San Francisco, London, or New York. That’s fine. But the next wave of onchain payments, AI-native products, and infrastructure for the next billion users isn’t going to come out of those cities.
It’s going to come out of Lagos. Kigali. Manila. Jakarta. Ho Chi Minh City. Kuala Lumpur. Bengaluru. And yes — Da Nang.
The founders we care about are already in these markets. They live the problems. They know the payment rails, the regulatory landscape, the cultural texture of what works and what doesn’t. What they often lack is a concentrated, high-signal environment where they can sharpen the pitch, close the round, and plug into a regional network of operators and investors.
That’s what EMpower is: three weeks of 80% doing, 20% learning, anchored by a Clear Intent philosophy. Every founder arrives with concrete milestones. Every week is engineered to help them hit those milestones before they fly home. Culminating in a showcase at the Web3 Builders’ Summit and pitch slots at the Da Nang Venture and Angel Summit (DAVAS) 2026.
The numbers behind Cohort 1
We received 51 applications from founders across Southeast Asia, Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and North America. After a rigorous review and interview process, 17 teams made the shortlist. 8 made the final cut — a 16% acceptance rate.
The selection funnel:
51 applications received → 17 shortlisted for interview (33% advance) → 8 in the final cohort (47% advance)
Three weeks is a short runway. We needed every seat in the room to be earned.
What the applicant pool told us
The applications themselves were a signal. Founders weren’t picking tribes — they were picking the right tool for the job:
Base — 22 mentions · Solana — 14 · Ethereum — 13 · Lisk — 13 · BSC/BNB — 7 · Celo, Polygon, Arbitrum — 4 each · StarkNet — 2 · Horizen — 1
Multi-chain, multi-market, eyes on real-world utility. That’s the emerging-market builder posture we were hoping to see — and it showed up loud.
Cohort 1: Geographic spread
3 continents. 5 countries of operation. 7 nationalities.
Southeast Asia — 4 teams: Tide (Malaysia), Gaian Network, Fystack, PolyPay (all Vietnam)
Africa — 3 teams: Vouchify (Nigeria), TicketDaddy (Rwanda), Jamit (Nigeria)
South Asia — 1 team: KOKI’O (India)
A few cross-border threads worth calling out:
Gian Alarcon (PolyPay) is a Peruvian founder who’s been building in Asia for a decade, now operating out of Vietnam.
Ike Orizu (Jamit) is Nigerian, incorporated in the U.S., looking to expand into SEA.
Gavin Ngabonziza (TicketDaddy) is Rwandan, running operations across Uganda and Rwanda, targeting UAE and SEA next.
Emerging-market founders don’t stay put. The best ones are already operating across corridors. EMpower is built for exactly that.
Cohort 1: Sector mix
5 sectors. 8 companies. All solving real problems in markets that have been underserved for too long.
Onchain consumer infrastructure (3 co.) — TicketDaddy, Vouchify, KOKI’O
Payments & stablecoin rails (2 co.) — Gaian Network, PolyPay
DeFi & prediction markets (1 co.) — Tide
Custody & developer infrastructure (1 co.) — Fystack
AI × creator economy (1 co.) — Jamit
Meet the Cohort
🎫 TicketDaddy — the experiences economy, rebuilt for emerging markets
Founded by: Gavin Ngabonziza (CEO), Bruce Bagarukayo (CTO), Kayondo Edward (Co-CTO) · 🇷🇼 Rwanda · ticketdaddy.io
TicketDaddy is a one-stop platform for events, travel, stays, and experiences — unifying discovery, access, payments, and management across East Africa, with MENA and SEA on the roadmap. They’ve already processed 600K+ tickets and accreditations through 80+ business partners, Built on Base with NFT ticket verification and 48-hour Mobile Money payouts — against an industry standard of 7–30 days. A Lisk $20K grant recipient and AyaHQ × Lisk ‘25 accelerator selection, now actively raising a $6M seed round. AFCON 2027 is on their horizon.
🛡️ Vouchify — turning Africa’s informal service economy into recurring revenue
Founded by: King Chukwumere · 🇳🇬 Nigeria · usevouchify.com
Vouchify is B2B infrastructure that lets local merchants — gyms, salons, maintenance providers, supermarkets — convert one-time services into subscriptions through programmable digital passes stored natively in Apple and Google Wallets. Already live across three countries with 39 premium partners including Simba Supermarket and Brioche, $300K+ processed, and 4,000+ subscriptions on-chain. Built across Base, Polygon, Celo, BSC, and Ethereum. Delaware-incorporated. Now raising a $350K pre-seed.
🎙️ Jamit — the Audible × Wattpad for AI-native audio storytelling
Founded by: Ike Orizu · 🇳🇬 Nigeria / 🇺🇸 USA · jamit.app
Creators use Jamit’s AI “Magic Producer” to turn ideas into podcasts, audio dramas, and audiobooks in minutes — then monetize globally through stablecoins, NFTs, and fan communities. 100+ creators onboarded, 200+ stories generated, 170K+ listeners reached. Multi-chain architecture across Lisk, Base, and Soneium. Backed by LAVA, Lisk DAO, and strategic angels with ~$500K raised; now raising a $1M seed. Ike previously scaled TruSpot to 8 million users — he’s done this before.
🔐 PolyPay (Quantum3Labs) — privacy-preserving payroll, mathematically guaranteed
Founded by: Gian Alarcon · 🇵🇪 Peru · operating from 🇻🇳 Vietnam · polypay.pro
Every block explorer is a privacy leak. PolyPay solves this with zero-knowledge proofs (UltraPlonk circuits compiled from Noir, verified via zkVerify) that hide multisig signer identities while preserving auditability — unlocking crypto payroll for DAOs and crypto-native teams across emerging markets where onchain salary exposure is a dealbreaker. Live on Horizen and Base. 1,100 multisig wallets, 1,200 unique users, 20K+ transactions. The Horizen Foundation is an active pilot partner. Where competitors bolt privacy on, Gian built it into the core architecture.
🌊 Tide — continuous prediction markets, built for the Hyperliquid era
Founded by: Jo Lim (CEO), Eason Chai (CTO) · 🇲🇾 Malaysia · tide.markets
Prediction markets today are binary: yes or no. Tide is building the first primitive for continuous outcome markets — where traders can price every possible outcome on a single unified liquidity curve and express views like “BTC ends the month between $80k and $85k.” Already a top-5 Hyperliquid hackathon winner with 160+ beta testers and 30+ markets. Closing a $3M seed round with a tier-1 lead in DD. SEA is their primary market from launch.
💸 Gaian Network — the orchestration layer between stablecoins and local fiat
Founded by: Fay Nguyen (Head of Strategy), Kelvin Truong (Head of Product), Nguyen Bui (Head of Growth) · 🇻🇳 Vietnam · gaian.network
Gaian is the intelligent routing layer between global stablecoin liquidity and local banking rails (VietQR, InstaPay, PromptPay, UPI, PIX). One API lets wallets, neobanks, and Web3 payment platforms deploy stablecoin liquidity into real-world payments — instantly, invisibly, across borders. 5 wallets live with 10,000 users. $500M TPV committed from 5 institutional clients. 20+ clients in pipeline. Backed by operators from Phantom and Superteam. Raising $1.25M pre-seed. Live on Solana, Base, BNB Chain, and Ethereum.
🔑 Fystack — custody infrastructure built for emerging-market fintechs
Founded by: Thi Nguyen · 🇻🇳 Vietnam · fystack.io
Fireblocks and BitGo price out 90% of Southeast Asia. Fystack doesn’t. Thi is building developer-friendly custody infrastructure with an open-source MPC wallet engine (140+ GitHub stars) at the bottom of the funnel and paid enterprise deployments converting at the top. ~400 signups, 5 fintech customers, ~$5M in processed volume, 7 active pilots. Serving clients across US, Europe, Africa, Vietnam, and India. Raising a $500K seed via SAFE — half already committed.
📱 KOKI’O — privacy-first eSIM for the sovereign traveler
Founded by: Arpit Kumar, Manul Singh Parihar, Tanmay Goel · 🇮🇳 India · kokio.app
Buy eSIM coverage in 200+ countries with no KYC, no account creation, no data collection. Pay in crypto or fiat. Authenticate with biometrics. Connect instantly. Currently in alpha with 70+ users; the team is launching their beta live during the residency, with Da Nang itself as a real-world target market. Built on EVM + Base Sepolia. Incorporated in Singapore. Raising a $500K seed this quarter.
What happens during the three weeks
This isn’t a content-lecture program. It’s a builder-led residency. Here’s what the cohort walks into:
Deep-work sprints with structured milestones — fundraising readiness, product launches, GTM validation, partnership closures
Direct investor access via dedicated pitch slots at DAVAS and the Web3 Builders’ Summit showcase, plus warm intros through the Lisk and sqrDAO networks
Peer-led workshops where founders teach what they know best — ZK integration (PolyPay), Mobile Money rails (TicketDaddy), open-source GTM (Fystack), privacy UX (KOKI’O), DeFi product design (Tide), B2B sales for Web3 infra (Gaian Network), creator platform growth (Jamit), stablecoin merchant infrastructure (Vouchify)
SEA market entry support — for the African and Indian founders planning to test Southeast Asia as their next expansion region
The city itself — Da Nang is the regional hub we chose deliberately. It’s 90 minutes from Singapore, HCMC, Bangkok, and Manila. Affordable enough for founders to focus on work instead of runway. And culturally generous in the way that matters when you’re trying to compress months of progress into three weeks.
How to engage
If you’re an investor or ecosystem partner looking to meet the cohort — whether for follow-on checks, ecosystem integrations, SEA market access, or partnership conversations — reach out to the sqrDAO team.
If you’re a founder interested in future cohorts, follow sqrDAO and keep an eye on web3foundersresidency.com.
If you’re in Da Nang between May 11–29, come say hi. Residents will be at the Web3 Builders’ Summit and around the city. The best way to meet them is in person.
To the eight teams landing in Da Nang in May: welcome. We built EMpower for founders like you. Let’s go build something worth talking about.
LFBUIDL 🛠️
sqrDAO × Lisk Ventures team