Founder Programs

Celo’s mission is to create conditions of prosperity for all. It’s truly excellent founders that paint enable the actualization of Celo’s mission. Celo’s Founder Programs operates with the purpose of creating a container for incredible founders to build robust, sustainable startups on Celo.

Celo’s startups have over millions of dollars raised in the capital, over 500 successful projects that are touching the lives of people. We believe that the way to scale this impact is through enabling our community to run these programs and create containers where founders thrive.

Celo Camp is a virtual accelerator run by Upright as part of the Celo Community. It brings in over 600 applications for startups aspiring to build on the Celo platform. Applications for the year 2022 are open here.

Celo Foundation runs a series of hackathons that might be global, in-person, and regional with a partner from the community. Our first global hackathon that happened with the goal of bringing in more developers that build onto Celo was a grant success. With participation from over 100 countries. Follow-on hackathons saw tremendous growth in interest from VCs with funding commitments of millions of dollars.

The Founder in Residence program gives self-starting entrepreneurs a stipend and a secure place to build on Celo without taking equity. First-time and seasoned applicants joined In 2021 for the first cohort in 2021. From a competitive application field, the Celo Foundation accepted entrepreneurs building web3 building blocks, lowering barriers to access and new use cases on Celo. 2/3rds of Founders in Residence raised supplemental funding within 4 months. Cohort 2 is open for applications!