EWOR

The caffeine usually stops working around 03:00. That is when the code gets honest. We’re landing in London with the START Hack Tour for a 36-hour AI sprint running from February 27 to March 1. Expect long nights and the familiar tension between wanting things to be perfect and needing them to work. A 2-day trial of what a startup feels like in IRL. The setup is simple: 001 Logistics handled. Food and accommodation are covered so you can focus on the build. 002 High density talent. 129 curated hackers – your future co-founders or your future rivals. 003 Binary outcome. There is cash on the table, but the real test is shipping before you run out of time. Bring a laptop and a sleeping bag. If you need certainty, stay home. If you want to build, we will see you there.

We hired a fortune teller to predict which EWOR Fellows would build unicorns… and that wasn’t even the strangest part of last year’s EWOR Connect in Morocco. The agenda ran in reverse. We opened with a closing and ended by welcoming 60 founders and investors. No presenting success stories, no posturing. Just honest conversations about failure, constraints, and the beliefs that hold founders back. We designed it to be the opposite of performance theatre: less spotlight, more truth-telling and human connections. The next EWOR Connect will be in Maui this May. Invite only. IYKYK. #EWOR #entrepreneurship #startups #founders #fellowship

Few people would bet on two 23-year-olds from a small village in France outperforming Google DeepMind on its own benchmark. But they did. EWOR Fellow Nicolas is exactly the kind of outlier founder we exist to back. When building a consumer travel app alongside his studies at Imperial College London, Nico kept running into the same frustration: shipping features on mobile apps takes too long. The root problem? Most AI coding tools speed up processes for web and backend development, but lack access to mobile apps, making receiving visual and functional feedback virtually impossible. There had to be a better way. 2 weeks of working day and night with his co-founder Luc changed everything. Their solution to enable AI mobile access was not only promising. It beat the best research labs in the world. A fast $4.1M seed round followed. Product cycles that normally take 4-6 weeks are now collapsing into days with minitap’s AI mobile engineer. Nico’s past experiences working at  leading RL and LLM research labs certainly helped his journey, but his mindset is the real advantage. As a prizefighter and boxer, he puts it simply: company building is about how many slaps you can take in the face without stopping. Watch Nico tell his story best below. #EWOR #entrepreneurship #startups #innovation #AI

Unicorn founders don’t appear by luck. They need the right conditions, sustained over time. To everyone in our community who helps create those conditions: thank you. And to our fellows, and every founder out there: Go be with the people who knew you before you became a founder. They probably miss you. Happy Holidays from EWOR. #EWOR #entrepreneurship #startups #founders #fellowship

𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗲. Being in the right environment accelerates 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. This year proved that when you strip away the fluff and surround exceptional founders with people who’ve actually built, things move very quickly. This year in a nutshell at EWOR: 𝟬𝟬𝟭 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘂𝗽. 𝗦𝗼 𝗱𝗶𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝗿.  €90k per founder wasn’t enough to support outlier founders. We pushed it to €500k. A team with under 10% of our full-time employees having built a €100M+ company wasn’t good enough. Today, it’s 40%. Ø $900k raises after Grand Pitch reflected the limits of our old setup. This year, they reached $4M. 2025 started with no unicorns; now we have one (and another on the way). As Sequoia Capital likes to put it: Slope >> intercept. 𝟬𝟬𝟮 𝗪𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁. We launched the first-ever EWOR Operators Day to help 600 of the most incredible talents get hired by startups with $10B+ potential. Today’s massive VSOP packages will hopefully create tons of angel investors down the road. We recognised the Top 100 Founder Mentors who actually move the needle for exceptional founders. Most startup advice is generic. We specifically chose to award mentors who’ve navigated the hell of 0→1, whose advice transforms founders’ trajectories. Our first EWOR San Francisco residency placed EWOR Fellows directly in front of 80+ unicorn founders and fund GPs. We’ll be back with 2 SF Residencies next year. 𝟬𝟬𝟯 𝗘𝗪𝗢𝗥 𝗙𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘀: Elias raised $6.6M to build Epiminds. Nicolas raised $4.1M to build minitap. Minitap also outperformed Google DeepMind on its own mobile agent benchmark. Jorgen built a significantly cheaper energy storage solution using underwater flywheel technology with Thaleron. Tim raised $9.6M to build Aeon. Lukas built a new way of interacting with spatial information at SE3 Labs. Sundar raised $7.1M to build Mozart AI. The fellows we back think in decades and build in days. Every year, we move the bar higher. 2026: same ethos, sharper execution. #EWOR #startups #entrepreneurship #founders #fellowship

Building infrastructure before the industry exists. Insane move, unless you're an outlier. EWOR Fellows Georgii and Andrey just raised an additional $1.7M for Gracia AI, the first production-ready infrastructure for 4D Gaussian Splatting, a breakthrough AI technology that transforms real-world captures into photorealistic volumetric video. It all started with a viral tweet. Andrey posted a technical demo. Instead of chasing views, he called his best friend Georgii. Two years later: ex-Prisma engineers building infrastructure for immersive media that looks indistinguishable from real life. Over 50 million VR and XR headsets have shipped worldwide, but creators and studios have zero industrial-grade tools to produce the immersive, photorealistic content these devices demand. This is about to change with Gracia AI. Georgii and Andrey built the full stack. Cloud-accelerated 4DGS training. Studio editing tools. Unity and Unreal integrations. Real-time playback across Quest 3, PCVR, Mac, and Web. Already deployed with Hollywood VFX teams, Big Tech partners, Karl Kani's world-first 4DGS runway show, PortAventura and more. 2 best friends building infrastructure for an industry that didn't exist 2 years ago. Congrats to the Gracia AI team. Let’s go all in 4D now! Link in comments.   #EWOR #startups #entrepreneurship #AI #VR

5am ice baths. Inbox Zero by 8pm. Devices off after dinner. 13 EWOR fellows just spent a week in the Austrian Alps testing what happens when you strip away every excuse and optimize for one thing: shipping. The results: "I had five days of work planned for the week. I was done on Thursday." Another fellow: "I'm shipping twice as much code per day." The setup made it inevitable: No calls before 1pm. Laptops put away at 8pm. HIIT and cardio sessions with Petter and Daniel that left everyone sore. Lean protein and veg, carbs stripped at night, 8+ hours sleep tracked via Oura. The dopamine rush from the ice-cold lake? Lasted 6-7 hours. The ability to focus? Massive. What felt crazy on day one became routine by day three. The real shift: rebuilding their relationship with discomfort, discipline, and what's possible when their environment stops fighting their goals. This level of intensity isn't for everyone. That's exactly why it works. #EWOR #entrepreneurship #startups #fellowship #founders

𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝗪𝗢𝗥'𝘀 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗼𝗽 𝟭𝟬𝟬 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀. 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘦𝘥𝘐𝘯 𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴. 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘬𝘦𝘺𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘳𝘴. Mentors with scars, exits, and receipts. Mentors who challenge founders, not validate them. Advice that transforms trajectories. These 100 mentors actually move the needle for exceptional founders through lived experience, contrarian wisdom, and real outcomes. They've built companies worth billions, scaled teams across continents, and navigated the specific hell of 0→1. Full list in comments. #EWOR #Top100FounderMentors #startups #startupmentors #entrepreneurship

Earlier this year, Nicolas was building one app. Now he's building infrastructure that changes how all apps get built. Nico and Luc just raised $4.1M for minitap. The pivot took months, not years. Most founders iterate on features. Nico and Luc iterated on the entire problem they were solving, moving from app development to agentic phone control. They combined AI research expertise with high-speed product shipping. Rare combination. The result: the globally most performant framework for "phone use" outranking Google DeepMind, Bytedance, and others in official benchmarks. Minitap connects to virtual phones in the cloud, compares screens to Figma designs, reports failures and tests interactions. Apps that took weeks now ship in days. This infrastructure layer that Nico and Luc built will become the foundation for how the next generation of apps gets built globally. Congrats to Moxxie Ventures and Mercuri for leading the round, and Tekton Ventures, Amigos Venture Capital and six unicorn founders who backed this exceptional team. One app to global infrastructure. This is top 0.1% execution. #EWOR #entrepreneurship #founders #startups