Techstars closed. a16z closed. YC closed.... But if you're an early-stage founder who still hasn't applied anywhere, here's what's open: - @join_ef Bangalore closes Jun 22, London closes June 21 - @betaworks Camp rolling, open now (up to $500k, AI-native, NYC, 12 weeks) - @hf0 rolling - $1M uncapped SAFE for 5% (technical/repeat founders only, SF) - @AlchemistAcc rolling - 6 months (B2B enterprise only) - @southpkcommons Fall apps open this summer ($400k for 7% $600k guaranteed next round) - @AIGrant rolling - $250k SAFE $350k Azure credits (AI researchers builders) - @allen_ai rolling - up to $600k $1M compute credits (AI-first, technical founders) - @ConvictionVC Embed rolling - $150 - 250k $1M credits (B2B SaaS and infra) - @joinstationf rolling - backed by OpenAI Anthropic Google - @Soma_Capital Fellowship rolling - up to $1M uncapped SAFE, zero equity - @NVIDIA Inception rolling - zero equity, GPU credits $100k AWS (stack this) - @msft4startups Founders Hub rolling - zero equity, up to $150k Azure credits - @100X_VC bi-annual - India-based founders only (₹1.25cr via iSAFE) - @EWOR_official rolling - €150k, Europe-first (extremely selective) Follow @arorabhavyam for weekly content around founders, startups and AI! 🫡

The biggest mistake I made as a founder was listening to other founders. Like most founders, I was super obsessed with getting funded by the big names. YC. Techstars. 500 Global. The accelerators everyone posts about. I thought getting into one of them was the only path forward. So I spent months applying. And getting rejected. Over. And over. And over again. What nobody tells founders is that thousands of startups are fighting for the exact same opportunities. The best startup opportunities are often the ones nobody is talking about. The moment I stopped chasing the "famous" programs and started looking at niche accelerators, university programs, founder fellowships, government grants, and corporate innovation programs, everything changed. The rejections started turning into interviews. The interviews started turning into acceptances. The acceptances turned into funding. Looking back, the problem wasn't my startup. The problem was that I was standing in the longest line. There are thousands of founder opportunities globally. Most founders only know about 10 of them. That's exactly why I am releasing Global Founder Access to the public. Take your assessment now: globalfounderaccess.com/ A platform to help founders discover startup grants, accelerators, incubators, fellowships, competitions, and funding opportunities from around the world. Because sometimes the difference between a rejection and a yes isn't your company. It's where you're applying. Follow for the launch.

What makes a company defensible in the age of AI? Techstars Founder and CEO David Cohen joined Zendesk VP of AI Revenue Sarah Al-Hassaini at Zendesk Relate 2026 to answer exactly that. Software is no longer the moat. The companies that win will be the ones with proprietary data, systems that get smarter with every interaction, and leaders who can actually show their organizations where AI is taking them. His message is clear: the window to move is now, and what you're building on matters more than ever. Read more on the Techstars blog: tsta.rs/gGYV50Zbc7L

📣 Del 26 al 28 junio 🚀Techstars #StartupWeekendSevilla 💡Una idea 🤝Un equipo ⏱️54 horas para hacerla realidad 📍@FundacionVMMP 👥 Con la participación de @javiergonzalEsp, director general Fomento del Emprendimiento @UniversidadAnd 🔗 ¡Conoce más! sw.sevillaup.com

📅 10–12 July 2026 📍Launchpad, Hillary House, Douglas 👉form.typeform.com/to/GXbWIOI… 🌐 startupweekenddouglas.im #StartupWeekend #Techstars #IsleOfMan #Entrepreneurship #Douglas #startup #SWDouglas

Got my 3rd rejection, but I am not gonna stop 🤞 Will try again when I have traction @Techstars!

For years, I helped founders. Now I’m becoming one again. Former @Techstars. Currently building in stealth. Sharing lessons on startups, venture, manufacturing, and the beautiful chaos of building a company while raising a young family. Glad you’re here

Some free and some paid. But there are lots of quality free ones like the Techstars Startup Week FCT we just concluded. The idea is to put yourself out there as much as possible and network with fellow participants. Discussion can be one-on-one as well

Agreed. To me, all of these moats ultimately come down to finding your cost leverage. As foundation models turn intelligence into a utility, the winners will be those who can consistently deliver more intelligence to a specific domain at a lower cost.

Two years ago, Chevening rejected me. Last month, I stood on stage at the Chevening Global Conference 2026 at Loughborough University London and delivered a speech to the very institution that once said no. The title: "Leading True Stories: How Organizations, Leaders and Nations Can Leverage Storytelling as Economic Infrastructure to Drive Growth." Let me tell you why this matters. When I got that rejection in early 2024, I had about 900 followers on TikTok and a few thousands on Instagram. No real community, no leverage. So I did what I knew how to do best. I told my story. Publicly. Every single day. For 90 days. It became the project of my life. I called it ‘Watching A Man Change.’ It’s still up on my YT. I decided I was done playing around with my potential and I got to work 900 followers became 100,000. Then 700,000 . 70 million views. 2,000 students across multiple programmes. Clients queuing up including NLNG. And of course, the very scholarship that rejected me came back and said yes. But here's the part most people miss. That growth wasn't because I was motivational. It wasn't because I "went viral." It was because I proved a thesis. The exact thesis I delivered at Chevening last month: Storytelling is not a marketing tactic. It is vital growth infrastructure. When a nation wants to attract foreign direct investment, what does it lead with? A story. When a founder walks into a room full of investors, what determines whether they walk out funded? Not just the numbers. The narrative around the numbers. When an organization wants to retain its best people, what keeps them? A shared story about where they're going and why it matters. Every economic outcome we care about. Investment. Growth. Talent. Loyalty. All of it runs on narrative. And yet most leaders, most organizations, most entire nations treat storytelling as an afterthought. Something for the comms team. Something soft. That is a strategic failure. That's exactly the problem I built Jali Group to solve. Most creators, founders, and leaders are sitting on stories worth millions and treating them like social media content. Jali exists to change that. We're building the infrastructure that turns storytelling into the most valuable growth asset in your business. I stood on that stage as a Chevening Scholar, a Techstars mentor, someone who earned a perfect score at one of the world’s best Rhetoric programs. But none of those credentials are what gave the speech weight. What gave it weight was the proof. MY proof. Hard work isn't enough anymore. The leaders, the organizations, and the nations that will define the next decade are the ones that learn to lead with true stories. Not polished stories. True ones. And now I'm going to prove it again. Tomorrow I'm launching a new series documenting what we’re building to define a new era in the creator economy. Every single day for the next month, I'm documenting exactly how I'm building Jali Group in real time. The decisions. The strategy. The numbers. The story behind all you see. No theory here. Just a founder using his own story as distribution, in public, while building the company as he documents it. If you're a creator trying to build a real business. If you're a founder who knows you should be visible but doesn't know how. If you're somewhere in between, this series is for you. Day 1 starts tomorrow. See you at work.

We got another correct call, this time on gold and silver. I have now shared correct calls on gold silver crude oil and SPX with you x.com/PrateekGsharma/status/… Even our bitcoin projections have been correct till now.

VC Concept Simplified: Valuation Cap Founders sign SAFEs quickly. They understand them later. SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) lets an investor put money in now and receive shares later, usually when the startup raises a priced round. A valuation cap is the highest valuation at which a SAFE or convertible note can convert into shares. If an investor puts in $100K on a SAFE with a $10M cap, and the next priced round happens at $25M, that investor does not convert at the $25M price. They convert as if the company were valued at $10M That gap is the reward for taking the earlier risk. The founder gets $100K today. The investor gets better economics later if the company grows into a much higher-priced round. That is why a cap is not just “paperwork.” It is future ownership math. YC’s standard deal shows how common this structure has become. YC invests $500K total: $125K for 7%, plus $375K on an uncapped MFN SAFE. Techstars now uses a similar shape: $20K for 5%, plus $200K through an uncapped MFN SAFE. Uncapped does not mean free. It means the price is being pushed into the future. That can be fine when the next round is clean. It gets messy when a founder stacks multiple SAFEs with different caps, discounts, and MFN terms before anyone models the conversion. The cap table can look clean right up until the SAFEs convert. Early money always comes with a later ownership equation.

Applied to @Techstars on the second-to-last day before the deadline! Wish me luck please 🥹

Techstars closes in 3 days ($220k, remote-friendly). ⏱️ If you're an early-stage founder and haven't applied anywhere yet, here's everything still open: - @techstars Jun 10 deadline ($220k, 3 months, remote-friendly, all sectors) - @join_ef London Jun 21, Bangalore Jun 22 (pre-idea ok, no team needed) - @betaworks Camp open now for Aug session (up to $500k, AI-native, NYC) - @AlchemistAcc rolling - 6 months (B2B enterprise only) - @hf0 rolling - $1M uncapped SAFE for 5% (technical/repeat founders only) - @AIGrant rolling - $250k SAFE $350k Azure credits (AI researchers and builders) - @allen_ai rolling - up to $600k $1M compute credits (AI-first, technical founders) - @ConvictionVC Embed rolling - $150 - 250k $1M credits (B2B SaaS and infra) - @joinstationf rolling - backed by OpenAI Anthropic Google - @NVIDIA Inception rolling - zero equity, free GPU credits $100k AWS credits (stack this) - @msft4startups Founders Hub rolling - zero equity, up to $150k Azure credits (stack this too) - @100X_VC bi-annual - India-based founders only (₹1.25cr via iSAFE) - @EWOR_official rolling - €150k, Europe-first (0.1% acceptance, very selective) Stop overthinking. Just APPLY. 💀 Follow @arorabhavyam for weekly content around founders, startups and AI! 🫡

exactly. AI can ship code but it can't tell you which problem is worth solving or convince a skeptical enterprise buyer

Sadly the ‘all talk, no action’ is common feature in human co-founders too.

Couldn’t agree more. While in an ideal world I’d like a co-founder, finding someone you can ‘quasi marry’ for the long term and tough times is hard. So for now, I’m happy to have Claude, Gemini, Kimi, and DeepSeek as my co-founders 😊

true but the flip is interesting. you don't need a technical co-founder to ship v1 anymore. you still need one when things break at scale