AppWorks Accelerator
Turbocharging Top Founders since 2010
AppWorks Accelerator
Why Join?
Every 6 months, we invite the most driven, strategic-minded, and fastest-moving founders working on web3, AI / IoT, and Southeast Asia to join AppWorks Accelerator.
Upon joining AppWorks, you are immediately immersed in a diverse community of equally ambitious founders. The AppWorks Team, our 80 mentors, and our alumni founders are all there to help you fine-tune your product and maximize your founder growth under the curve. When Demo Day rolls around, you get to tell your story in front of hundreds of specially selected investors and potential business partners from across Greater Southeast Asia. There is no better way to get connected and win partnerships. Best of all, it’s completely free to join since we don’t take equity / token or charge any service fees.
Achieve Better Product-Market Fit, Win Key Business Partners, and Become a Better Founder
A small team working out of a garage is no longer the most efficient way to build a startup. It’s difficult for a blockchain startup to keep up with everything going on in the crypto world; for an AI startup to stay up-to-date on the latest algorithm breakthroughs; for an IoT startup to source manufacturing partners; or for an emerging SEA company to establish operations spanning multiple markets. You simply can’t do it alone. Building a startup in an accelerator, together with a group of equally smart and driven founders coming from different countries within the region and solving a diverse set of problems is a much more effective way to maximize your chance to make a big impact today.
Designed by founders for founders, AppWorks Accelerator enables you to connect with the right people in our network no matter where you are.
With Taiwan’s travel restrictions easing up, we encourage global founders from abroad to join us physically, where you can connect with inspirational mentors and like-minded entrepreneurs worldwide, who were all pioneers in their respective fields, participate in the bonding activities, experience the world of startups like never before.
Why web3, AI / IoT and SEA?
Web3 (NFT / Infrastructure / web3 applications by protocols, companies, and DAOs)
Having high conviction on the impact that web3 protocols, companies, and DAOs will bring to society, AppWorks has focused on helping blockchain founders since 2017. From finance to commerce to entertainment, power structures and organizational dynamics as we know them will be disrupted as blockchain-based smart contracts become more pervasive in creating trust among strangers without centralized bodies. We hope that as web3 goes mainstream in the next 10 years, all the most convicted, fastest learning and hardest working founders can come together at AppWorks, learn from each other, and make a much bigger impact.
AI / IoT
The proliferation and growing ubiquity of AI / IoT devices in today’s business world has become self-evident. The proficiency of data collection by IoT devices integrated with intelligent data processing by AI technology has benefited various industries ranging from small households to tech giants. We believe there is a special window in the next few years for founders to launch AI startups with their custom-designed hardware–think digital signage, cleaning robots, autonomous mobile robots, and all similar endeavors—and we are here to help you seize these opportunities.
Southeast Asia
Over the last few years, Southeast Asia has evolved into an incredibly fast-growing and vibrant digital economy bursting with opportunities for founders. Home to nearly 700 million people, the region is just now coming to terms with growing affluence, increasing consumer sophistication, and accelerating digital adoption, collectively underpinned by a strong rising middle class consistently driving brisk macroeconomic growth. There are now roughly 50 unicorns in Southeast Asia and several publicly listed companies including Sea Group, Grab, GoTo, and Bukalapak, with many more already in the making as digital technologies penetrate deeper into traditional industries.
What happens during the Accelerator?
The connections you will build
- 60+ like-minded founders, with many working on the latest applications in web3, AI / IoT, and Southeast Asia as your batchmates, and an opportunity to forge life-long relationships.
- An alumni network of 1,448 talented founders in various verticals, at various stages, and coming from different walks of life—all of whom are willing to lend a hand or an ear just because you’re a part of AppWorks.
- Mentors that have decades of startup and successful scaling / exit experiences who would commit to a long-term mentor-mentee relationship and guide you along the way.
- Connect with world-class investors interested in the latest technologies, while honing your ability to identify complementary and supportive shareholders.
- Subject-matter experts from team AppWorks that specialize in functional domains spanning PR, legal, accounting, and UI/UX.
- Access to qualified AppWorks School alumni who may be the perfect developers you have been looking for.
The events you will join
- Demo Day: where you will pitch to hundreds of investors, potential partners, and media from across the region for potential investment, partnerships, and PR exposure.
- 1-on-1 office hours for tailored support and mentorship.
- Batch retreats and alumni meetups for tight-knit bonding and networking among your founder peers.
- Curated web3 events for founders to exchange knowledge and experience with other founders and alumni.
More utilities for you…..
- Token credits for experiments, free cloud and SaaS credits offered by our partners, including Flow, Alchemy, AWS, GCP, Stripe, Twilio, and Zendesk.
- Free use of the AppWorks Accelerator coworking, meeting, and event spaces.
The two most valuable assets we got from AppWorks are pitch crafting and network expansion. We’ve got a lot of great advice from AppWorks that proved useful when facing global VCs. Besides the local Taiwanese startup founders network, AppWorks has connected us to incredible investors and partners around the world.
Lee Hsuan, co-founder & CEO of Blocto (AW#19)
AppWorks Community
State of The
AppWorks Community
Who is in our alumni network?
A Community to Help Solve Problems, Cross-Promote, and Connect with Investors & Business Partners
Once you join AppWorks, you are immediately connected to our extraordinary alumni network of over a thousand founders. Within the AppWorks Ecosystem, you’ll have the opportunity to meet talented alumni founders including
Together, you’ll find the community extremely powerful when:
- You run into problems and need advice from those who have done similar things.
- You want to engage with web3, AI / IoT, and regional communities to find support.
- You need an intro to someone.
- You are looking for cross-promotion or collaboration.
- You want to check references on an investor or a potential business partner.
In terms of scale, AppWorks is one of the largest communities of its kind in Asia. But more importantly, our culture of “paying-it-forward” and helping each other out is the real reason why it’s so valuable.
AppWorks is a startup for startups. Young, energetic, flexible, efficient and "customer" centric, prioritizing startups' needs before anything else. One thing unlike a startup, however, is the resourcefulness of AppWorks. Strong alumni, full team of masters in various aspects, space and hardware, referral network, support on paperwork and even free lunch. Service level is so high, sometimes it feels surreal.
Kin Ko, founder of AW#18 LikeCoin
Who is in our mentors network?
Connect with the Right Coach, Acquire the Right Mindset, Become the Best Founder You Can Be
Our mentor network spans more than 80 successful startup founders that you can connect and build lifelong coaching relationships with including Steven Ho of 91APP, who had an outstanding IPO in addition to successfully exiting previous startups to Yahoo! and eBay; Ming Chen of KKday, who successfully completed 2 IPOs and 1 M&A exit; Jerry Kuo of Kuo Brothers who sold his company to Groupon and later built 2 companies from the ground up to IPO; together with Mike Jiang of GameSofa, Joseph Phua of 17LIVE, Siu Rui Quek of Carousell, Son Tran of Tiki Corporation, and Leontinus Alpha Edison of Tokopedia. We also have a growing list of web3 mentors such as Mik Naayem and Roham Gharegozlou of Dapper Labs / Flow and Yat Siu of Animoca Brands.
AppWorks provides incredibly supportive mentorship to startup founders. All their partners and staff maintain tight-knit relations with founders that went through the accelerator program and can provide advice and guidance specific to the problems (e.g. finance, HR, PR, fundraising) faced by startups.
Kevin Chan, co-founder of AW#11 TaxiGo
(acquired by LINE and is now known as LINE TAXI)
How will it help my fundraising?
Raising Your Next Fundraising Round, Advised by a Leading Venture Capital Firm
Venture capital is a sophisticated and complex ecosystem filled with firms specializing in different segments for various startup stages. It is also brimming with a slew of complicated terms and game rules. First-time founders often find the learning curve difficult to overcome and getting to the right investors a daunting task. That is why AppWorks is also a VC firm ourselves so we can better help you on the fundraising end, including equity / SAFE / token and SAFT fundraising. Founders who enter our accelerator are encouraged to talk to us about their capital needs at any time, either during or after their accelerator experience. We’re always open for a chat. After all, who knows our startups better than us? On top of that, we can often act as the bridge between our startups and the venture capital community by leading financing rounds and putting together a syndicate tailored to your needs. Most importantly, we can connect you with alumni who have successful fundraising experience and invite them to share their valuable stories with you.
Joining the AppWorks Accelerator was a pivotal decision for Docosan. Through the program we connected with other founders of companies further along than us who gave great advice and guidance. We received technical help in improving our marketing. And of course, the mutual understanding of how both Docosan and AppWorks operate gained during the accelerator led to them leading our Seed Round. AppWorks are value-add investors who are actual partners in problem solving and use their accelerator and network to truly help rising founders.
Beth Ann Lopez, founder & CEO of Docosan (AW#21)
What are the facilities & activities?
Facilities
Activities
In collaboration with
Ready to Apply?
Application submissions for AppWorks Accelerator #26 are now closed.
