AppWorks Accelerator
Turbocharging Top Founders since 2010
AppWorks Accelerator
What happens during the Accelerator?
AppWorks Community
- Who is in our alumni network?
- Who is in our mentors network?
- How will it help my fundraising?
- What are the facilities & activities?
Ready to Apply?
AppWorks Accelerator
Why Join?
Every six months, we invite the most driven, strategic-minded, and fastest-moving founders working on AI, web3, and Southeast Asia to join AppWorks Accelerator.
Upon joining AppWorks, you are immediately immersed in a diverse community of equally ambitious founders. Your 60 batchmates, our 80 mentors, and 1,500 strong alumni founders, the AppWorks Team and our Masters are all here to help you fine-tune your startup and maximize your founder growth.
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 earn partnerships.
Best of all, it’s completely free to join – we don’t take equity, tokens, 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 an AI startup to stay up-to-date on the latest algorithm breakthroughs; for a blockchain startup to keep up with everything going on in the crypto world; 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 brilliant and driven founders coming from different backgrounds and solving a diverse set of problems is a much more effective way to maximize your chance to make a big impact today.
Why AI, web3 and SEA?
AI
The proliferation and growing ubiquity of AI, especially Generative AI, in today’s business world has become self-evident. The growing sophistication of AI algorithms and the increasing availability of data combined with open-source AI tools have created unprecedented opportunities for startups to apply Generative AI across a wide range of industries, from healthcare to retail to entertainment. We believe there is a unique window in the next few years for founders to launch AI startups that will disrupt traditional business models. AppWorks is committed to helping founders capture these opportunities and revolutionize existing industries, pushing the limits of what is possible with this rapidly evolving technology.
Web3 (web3 applications / Infrastructure by protocols, companies, and DAOs)
Having high conviction on the positive 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 entities. As web3 goes mainstream in the next 10 years, we invite conviction-driven, fastest learning and hardest working founders to build together at AppWorks, learn from each other, and make a much bigger impact.
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 age 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.
The two most valuable assets we received from AppWorks are pitch crafting and network expansion. We 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)
What happens during the Accelerator?
Plug Into Our Network
- Forge life-long relationships with 60 like-minded founders in your batch.
- An alumni network of 1,522 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 because you’re a part of AppWorks.
- Mentors that have decades of startup and successful scaling exit experience who commit to a long-term mentor-mentee relationship and guide you along the way.
- Connect with world-class investors interested in the innovations, while honing your ability to identify complementary and supportive shareholders.
- Subject-matter experts from the AppWorks team that specialize in functional domains spanning PR, legal, finance, accounting, recruiting, product, and UI/UX.
- Access to qualified AppWorks School alumni who may be the perfect developer you’ve been looking for.
The connections you will build
AppWorks is a giver-first VC: they are a group of warm-hearted professionals whose only job is to help founders succeed in both Taiwan and abroad, by making all its resources available with no strings attached. They are well connected in Taiwan and SEA -- I can easily get an intro to anyone very responsively. They understand the mindsets of startups and are always available to give and serve. I've never seen a VC doing so much for companies regardless whether they are a portfolio or not. AppWorks is collecting good karma!
Xuchen Yao, co-founder & CEO of AW#25, Seasalt.ai
AppWorks Community
State of The
AppWorks Community
AI Alumni
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 network, 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 with and build lifelong coaching relationships, 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 two IPOs and one M&A exit; Jerry Kuo of Kuo Brothers who sold his company to Groupon and later built two 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 relationships with founders that went through the accelerator program and can provide advice and guidance specific to the challenges (e.g. finance, HR, PR, fundraising) that startups face.
Kevin Chan, co-founder & CEO 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
Terms, Structures, and Syndicate, Tailored to Your Needs
The venture capital ecosystem is sophisticated and complex, filled with firms specializing in different segments for various startup stages. It is also brimming with a slew of complicated terms and 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 AppWorks' Accelerator was transformative for Omnichat. Their mentorship, and the robust alumni network, fueled our business expansion in Taiwan and SEA. Their expert advice refined our marketing while their lead investment in our seed round funding demonstrated their belief in our potential. AppWorks isn't just an investor, they're genuine partners, committed to nurturing emerging founders through valuable resources and steadfast support.
Alan Chen, co-founder & CEO of AW#16, Omnichat
What are the facilities & activities?
Facilities
Activities
In collaboration with
Ready to Apply?
AppWorks Accelerator #27 is now open for applications.
AW#27 Accelerator Timeline
