Bitcoin-powered, not Bitcoin-first

Solve a real problem.
Let Bitcoin supercharge it.

I back founders in India and Africa building sustainable businesses.

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9 teamsIndia's first Bitcoin accelerator

400 daysCairo to Cape Town, ten countries

3 booksBeginners, Businesses, and Africa

5 keynotesSolo stages across four continents

The gap

The talent isn't the problem.

I watched ten teams pitch with great ideas and solid engineering. Then a judge asked how they'd make money, and the room went quiet.

What's missing isn't talent, it's a path to a business that pays for itself.

The Bitshala BOSS Summit accelerator community in Goa

The Student of Bitcoin accelerator cohort

What I do

Twelve weeks to kill or commit.

Twelve weeks of hard questions, then a kill-or-commit answer.

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How it began

I started with a whiteboard.

I was curious what Bitcoin looked like to someone who'd never heard of it, so I started standing on the street in Calgary holding a whiteboard: "Bitcoin, ask me anything."

Santosh holding a Bitcoin, ask me anything sign outside Bankers Hall

Illustration of two silhouettes walking toward a continent-shaped moon, for the book Cairo to Cape Town

Cairo to Cape Town · the bookOut this year

The lesson

Some things you can only learn in person.

Getting out of your comfort zone is the biggest lesson in life, and that's what my wife and I did. We sold our home and spent four hundred days crossing Africa, mostly overland, to understand how this technology was actually being used.

What we found was everyone chasing grants, not building something that could pay for itself, and it left me wondering where the capital was.

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Get in touch

Talk to me.

If you're building something real and wondering where bitcoin fits, or you back founders doing the same, I'd like to hear from you.