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Funding the Next Billion Builders with Fund Director Tabitha Rotich of H.E.R. DAO Kenya, Rene Pinnell of Artizen Fund + Ayodeji Awosika of Web3Bridge
Recorded: Jan. 30, 2026 Duration: 0:56:45Space Recording
Short Summary
The recent discussion highlighted the launch of the Hurlough Fund and the Herdow Fund, both aimed at supporting African innovators in the Web3 space. Key insights included the importance of community-driven funding, the challenges of securing capital, and the growing interest in Web3 development across Africa.
Full Transcription
Hi Tabby can you hear me?
Okay
Tubby can you hear me?
Yes Right I'm going to bring you in Tabby, can you hear me? Yes.
Right.
Yes, I can hear you.
Right.
I'm going to bring you in.
I'm going to bring you in quite quickly.
So you can let me try going into my bits and pieces.
You can still hear me, right?
Because I'm.
Yeah.
Because I'm not on the screen.
Because it's like I've got the. I'm going to get the agenda up on my.
On my actual thing.
So I don't have to come off the space.
So you'll have to do a lot of the, I don't know, you know, just keep an eye on the chat.
I actually said it to people who follow us can speak just for ease of admin.
So we don't have to go around setting up stuff.
And is there anyone else going to co-host?
Tabby, are you there? Is anybody else can, Tabby are you there? Am I speaking to myself again?
Oh my god.
I'm here. Right, Why do you keep
cutting out?
Can you hear me or can you not hear me?
I can hear you now
My mic had wanted to
start problems but now it's
so it's fine
Is your mic dodgy anyway?
Is it a bit dodgy?
Your phone?
No, it's not.
Okay.
It's fine.
All righty.
So let me just send a message to...
message to
okay i just sent the message to say we're starting now
alrighty
we'll just
shall I put some music on then
whilst people come in
we'll be starting in a few minutes
we'll just wait until at least
one guest gets here
so I will put some music on
vibes So I will put some music on.
Vibes.
Alrighty.
Oh, I'm not even sure if I can start this music actually. So we won't have any music then technically
but that's all right unless you want to put something on on your side Okay, we're just waiting for a few people to come in.
And we'll tap.
Can you just give Renee a little message if you haven't already.
Okay, at least I got the... Jess sent me my message.
All right.
Excellent.
Hey, Renee, how are you?
We're coming. We're coming to try this thing again, but at least...
Yeah, happy to be here.
At least it's a better start than last time. We're all speaking, everyone can hear. We're
just going to leave it like one more minute, but then we're going to jump in.
So that's the agenda.
Oh, sounds good.
I can see Bianca and I can see lots of people. Oh, Web3 Bridge are here.
Let me give you some.
Oh, you're a speaker, so that's great.
All righty. Bridge are here. Let me give you some, oh, you're a speaker, so that's great. Alrighty.
We're literally going to start in one minute.
Good to see people joining. Hi, Victoria.
So this is super exciting. Anyway, and this is actually all thanks to all thanks to Tammy I I didn't even know I didn't even know that she'd applied um and uh and so it was really really
lovely actually to get the news that the fund had been approved and the fund was live but
Tammy's going to speak about that in a second. So I think we're just going to
jump straight in to be honest you know because we could wait forever for people to join. So we're
just gonna we're just gonna start now. Okay so welcome everybody to our new X-Base, Funding the Next Billion Builders.
So this X-Base is going to be about, obviously, our new Hurlough Fund, our new Fund for Emergent Builders.
We've targeted Africa this time, but we're hoping to do more of these funds and to target our global network of diverse developers.
But we wanted to frame that in a wider conversation of unlocking capital for builders and creators.
And obviously, as I said, we're focusing today on African innovators.
So welcome to the space, everybody.
And so this is, you you know really about finding real
funding paths you know we're going to talk about what's broken what works and what builders should
actually do next um tabby will be obviously going through our new fund and we'll be really excited
to talk about how people can boost the fund, which is really great,
and why the Next Billion Builders and why that matters. So I'm going to get started with introducing our guests.
We have Ayo from Web3 Bridge and Rene from Artisan Fund.
We also have Tabitha, who, as I stated, was instrumental in establishing the fund.
So first of all, I'm going to let the two guests just quickly just introduce themselves
and tell people about all the fabulous things that you're doing. So Ayo, do you want to
go first and then Rene?
All right. Thank you very much. much good evening everyone uh my name is
iodhi jowshika i'm the founder of web3 bridge our three bridge is a program started over six years
ago dedicated solely to dedicated to training our blockchain developers out of africa i'm happy to
mention we've run we've presently running 13th 14th courts course for developer training. Our developers span from a different African country.
We have from Nigeria, from Kenya, from Togo, from Uganda,
from Zambia, from Zimbabwe,
like a number of African countries now.
Then we started remotely as a remote-only program
in the last four years.
We started the physical space where developers come from all parts of Nigeria.
Fortunately, we've had developers from all parts of Africa who had come to the physical space directly.
Some of them are also members of ADAO, coincidentally, who had come physically to Lagos to learn.
We started with one rented space in Lagos that could take 30 people.
Today we have six facilities.
We have four, I think, four, six, seven offices, office buildings.
We have the present Ethereum hub in Lagos is within Web3 Bridge.
We have hostels that could sleep 200 developers.
We have recently just added another building for founder residency program, 40 residents.
We are currently renovating an all that could take a thousand persons for events and other arrangements like that.
Our goal is to continue to improve Web3 Bridge, so that we make it like a mini city for web 3 within the
continent thank you very much amazing amazing i must come to lagos i mean it feels like i'm
missing out here but it just sounds amazing well done well done thank you very much yeah
yeah and now let's hear a bit from renee and like I'm going to talk about your background soon, Rene, but if you just give us the sort of like, you know, short version, we're going to dive into that later.
Rene, you can intro yourself.
I can see the mic going on and off
You might be having some
Issues
Maybe
Maybe leave and
Join again perhaps
So whilst you're fiddling
With the microphone
We're going to go straight to Tabby.
So Tabby, as I said before, you were instrumental in getting this fund together.
And so I want you to kind of just spend a few minutes just telling people a bit about Artism Fund, what it is what what you're trying to do what made you set this fund
up and you know how much now the price the price total is and how people can boost
hear me now oh yes we can so do you want to go reneeene? Just a quick intro? Happy to. Sorry about that. Not sure what happened. I'm glad you can hear me now.
So yeah, founder of Artisan. Artisan is a fundraising platform for art, science, and technology.
The thing that makes Artisan special is unlike other fundraising platforms, you're not going
it alone. When you raise money for a project on Artisan,
you're going to unlock match funding for every dollar you raise from a fan or a supporter.
And that match funding comes from community funds like the HerDao Fund that we launched.
Very excited about that. And it also comes from our endowment. So when you walk away from a season of artisan,
you'll walk away with money from your own supporters,
plus match funding, plus prize money.
And so it's a way to get more bang for your buck
for the energy that you commit to raising money for your project
than you would on a platform like Kickstarter or Patreon
or any of the other crowdfunding or even equity crowdfunding platforms
like AngelList or Republic.
So that's one lens to think of artisan through.
Awesome. Awesome, awesome.
I'm going to come back to you and ask you more of your origin story. But right now, Tabby, I'm going to ask you to introduce the Herdow Fund and you know how best to participate so just spend a few minutes doing that.
Okay, I hope you can hear me.
Yeah, I applied first as a project from another fund.
I was introducing it and it's almost related to Jitcoin, something of the sort.
So I applied last year, but I didn't take it seriously.
But then sometime back last year, December, I saw an email from Madison that they want to launch funds.
I got a bit hesitant, but I applied now this year.
Yeah, I thought it's going to be tough interview and stuff.
It's going to be hard like other funds,
getting, launching a fund.
So I decided to try.
Then upon trying, I was a bit surprised because
um i got i was able to launch a fund for her dow and renee has been amazing
he accepted accepted the proposal easily since he's ready to help projects.
Sorry about that.
He seems he's ready to help projects.
And I also, I saw this is going to be a good opportunity for my community.
Yeah.
And I encourage everyone to apply.
Awesome.
Awesome. Yeah. We'll go into a bit more about what we're looking for later on.
But now, two things. So people listening, you are going to be builders.
And we want to know a bit more about what stage you're at.
Like if you're if you're seeking what, what you're seeking capital for. So formulate that in your minds. We're going to come to you later on and have a little bit of
a builder question time. Okay. So, but right now I'm going to go to Renee first and then AO and we,
we really want to know, Renee, what made you build Artism Fund?
You know, what were the drivers?
What problems were you trying to solve?
Sure.
Can you hear me okay?
Can, yes.
All right, good.
Well, I come from a family of artists going back five generations.
Painters, dancers, acrobats, filmmakers.
dancers, acrobats, filmmakers. So I grew up seeing the beauty and joy that creativity can
bring into your life and bring into the world. But I also saw how insanely difficult it is to
be a creator, how hard it is to sustain yourself financially. And so I have spent the last 20 years helping creators raise money.
I started in the film industry, primarily doing it through film producing.
Then I got into the technology world and realized that technology is such a powerful lever
that if I wanted to have the largest impact I possibly could supporting creators, I needed to use
technology as a lever. And so that's when I first got the idea to build Artisan, to reinvent
how the world funds creativity. And the lens got bigger over the years. It started with just
wanting to reinvent how the world funds film, because that was my passion. But the more I thought about it,
and the more creative people I met, I realized that it's not just filmmaking, and it's not just
art, but it's also science, and it's also technology itself. All of it is part of the same tribe,
people building new things that didn't exist, and they all struggle with similar problems.
And they all struggle with similar problems.
Fundraising is very difficult for anything new.
And it also seemed to me that there was no platform created that was flexible enough
to work for fundraising a strange art project,
just as well as fundraising something that looked like a startup,
and just as well as funding something that looked like deep scientific research.
And so those are the motivations behind Artisan,
and it's been a long journey of experimentation,
figuring out what games can we get people to play
that will maximally raise capital for the best ideas,
and for the ideas that have the most support, both broad support and
deep support. So yeah, those are the ideas and the motivations for myself that drive the platform as a whole.
Awesome, awesome. And Ayo, tell us why you started Web3Bridge, what gap did you see,
So tell us why you started Web3 Bridge.
What gap did you see, particularly in the African builder education ecosystem
and your thoughts on the funding readiness of the ecosystem and the builders?
Just tell us a bit about what pushed you into starting building this ecosystem.
Great. Thank you very much.
So I came into the ecosystem,3 ecosystem in 2017 and uh while i while i came i worked for
a few programs and uh i'd always been very loud on education understanding that so at the time
we're trying to like push for adoption and all and in my head i kept talking about the fact that education can actually help us can be a tool
for onboarding now uh then everybody was talking about okay we need to build x we need to build y
and they were not they were like let's do one developer available at the time to actually build
this thing so uh in 2019 i saw joseph lubin's tweet that ethereum is looking for a million developer and uh seeing
that tweet i i actually just went on that tweet i made a comment about how africa has the number
and the intellects to make this happen understanding that i've been talking about
education for the longest time and i believe that if we train african developers because
we have the numbers these numbers can actually like increase the number of developers in the ecosystem also increase the number of builders from africa who are building
for the world and who are also building african-based solutions so uh fortunately i got
feedback from that and so while the first program launched i saw that there was a lot a number of
people who were interested in actually becoming developers and all to become developers so then we actually started putting a structure to it then uh it got better after the
after the fifth course where i the fifth course was a fiscal first physical boot camp because when
we decided to go physical a number of persons were like no it's not possible like it's not
going to scale it's not going to it's not going to work because oh how do you fund this and all but the first physical program now shifted my uh opinion from just doing onboarding
to actually the impact that comes with training developers because now you are meeting people
who have real problems like you're meeting people who actually have needs like people who could not
afford to take care of themselves and you are there for 16 weeks taking care of them then you
see how the transitions go from someone who's struggling as a developer
someone who's now living a good life who's living a good life and impacting themselves and their
families and society so uh that's saying that's in action i try now to make it easy or make make
it make it like it drives to consume to like build uh i think you asked something around funding so funding
as in wasn't or hasn't been so easy however uh it gets it gets better as as time goes on however
the same the need for developers in your ecosystem and also the impact of
training developers,
trading developers exactly what has kept with third bridge going
exactly what has kept
with Therode Bridge Green.
Okay, Najee.
Thank you, Ayo.
Tabu, do you want to move your mic?
So, René, I want to move on
to funding success stories.
I popped into your live stream yesterday.
I think it was a live stream.
And you were talking to one
of the projects of the, I think was the winner of the last season Javin or something and um yeah I just
wanted to hear a bit more about funding success stories you know what they did and why it worked
I mean they raised an outrageous amount of money and, you know, boosted their programs, their like projects.
And so, yeah, tell us a bit more about those success stories.
Yeah. So creators.
Oh, you've cut out a little bit. You've cut out a little bit.
You've cut out a little bit.
Okay, we can't hear you right now, Renee.
So we'll wait for you to come back.
I'm going to go back to you, Ayo,
and I'm going to ask you some quick fire questions.
When people are building projects, right,
what do you feel is the best to
sort of concentrate on first yeah building the mvp or building a community or they both go together
okay so i think it depends on exactly on what you are building some products if some products
are best built first like be the m MVP out, like get it out.
I think genuinely it's best to build the two together because it's safer.
The community actually can be as a test tool,
your first set of users,
and also that mouse that moves around.
However, I feel, okay, I've seen products
who have built straight MVP and who are doing well.
Like I apparently got introduced to a product by one of the alumni from Web3Bridge called Use Resolver.
And they spent the whole last quarter of 2025 building this product.
And they walked into my office last week and I've used this app.
Like for the last one week, I've used this app, like, every day since they introduced it to me.
Now, they build the product first, understand that they already have an existing community.
So, I believe both goes on the end.
So, Rene, let's try again.
Can we hear about some success stories with the artisan?
You tell me. Can you hear me?
I can, yes.
Am I coming through? All right.
It's so strange. Every time I mute myself for a minute,
when I unmute myself, it seems like you can't hear me.
I know.
So I have to restart. Apologies.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, so creators have raised close to $5 million on Artisan
over the past six seasons.
But it's accelerating.
Season five was the season we closed last week, and creators raised $1.2 million in that season.
But already in the first week of season six,
creators have raised over $600,000.
So it's accelerating at a crazy pace.
What is driving that?
One is the platform.
I think we finally figured out the right balance of game mechanics
and understanding how the game is played
is really important to succeeding on the platform.
So I could talk generally about how to raise money.
I think you could boil all of the general fundraising advice down to you need to have
a fire in your belly for what you're raising. You need to look someone in the eye and say,
this is the most important thing to me, and I need you to support
it. That's a very scary thing to do. It's a very hard thing to do, and it's something that you can't
fake. So it's also a really good measure if you're working on the right project. If you don't have
that fire in your belly, if you can't go to someone who you know and in good faith tell them
this is something you should put your money into because I believe in it so very much.
If you can't do that, then it's not the right project.
But if you do have that fire in your belly, then nothing can stop you.
So I think there's lots of tactical advice about fundraising, but if you don't have the fire, it's not going to work.
So then on specific advice for how to use Artisan, there's a couple of things.
One is you want to make sure you have a good project profile.
Now, what makes a good project profile?
A short, memorable title.
That helps.
Your artifact is the key media asset that you have for your project.
It represents your project.
It's a square image, GIF, or short video, and it's meant to
capture the big idea, the aesthetics, the vibe behind your project. And we have a couple of
basic guidelines. One is it can't have text or graphic overlays, and two, it needs to be square.
And that's basically it.
As long as you do those things,
and it's something that you feel
would resonate with your community,
then it makes a really good artifact.
The other bit that helps a lot is if you have a pitch deck.
Many different ways that you can put a pitch deck together,
but it's basically a PDF file that goes into
as much detail as you think you need to.
We could spend many, many, many, many hours talking about pitch decks.
It's a whole art form all by itself, but having one is good.
The next thing, once you have a good project profile,
is you want to make sure you submit your project to community funds,
like the HerDao Fund.
And the goal there is to get approved for as many funds as you can.
And so on the Artisan website, you can navigate to the Funds tab
where you can see all the funds that are live.
And you want to read through all of them.
And most importantly, you want to read their eligibility requirements.
These are typically three to five bullet points that spell out what type of projects this fund is intended to support.
And if that sounds like your project, or if you think it might sound like your project, then you should apply.
And you should do that for as many funds as possible.
And when applying, it's a very fast process once you have your fund.
You don't really have to do anything.
You just click a couple buttons.
Besides, fill out a short paragraph, which asks the simple question of,
how do you qualify for this fund?
And this is an opportunity to reference those very specific eligibility
requirements for that specific fund and say how you meet those requirements.
If you do that, you will probably get approved.
And once you are approved for at least one or more fund,
then every dollar you raise for your project
is matched by those funds, dollar for dollar.
And as you can see, if you get approved for two funds,
then you raise a dollar from a fan or a supporter,
and you get $2 in matching.
If you get approved for five funds, then you get $5 in matching.
And that's the magic of it.
So those are the basics.
When you do those things,
you're going to be pretty successful.
Awesome, awesome.
So Ayo, I want to talk to you about,
you know, thinking of expanding beyond
the VC sort of community the VC question and what non-VC
funding routes are underused in Africa so more more like non-dilutive funding so we know there's
grants and fellowships and there's community rounds and all of these things that people are
doing. So apart from VC funding, where you basically sell some of your IP, your business,
etc. What non VC funding routes are, are underused in Africarica what what do you think people could be doing
more to access these types of non-vc funding ao okay thank you very much uh i'm not i'm not sure
there are so much so much funding opportunities in africa that apart from apart from grants so
a number of persons end up maximizing grants uh For a three-week, for example, we've built on grants the whole six years.
And so I think that there are a number of grants.
However, a number of persons also have abused grants
because many people forget that grants
are actually tied to like specific KPIs
and seeing those KPIs actually make grants
giving organizations also happy to do more.
One thing I think we have
not actually maxed out well uh so when you're raising when you're raising money in the traditional
system there's a family and friend route for raising funds where all your friends are the
first person that raise and all and i i believe there's always there's also supposed to be this
community approach to actually raising funds so uh a while ago i i mean i mean i mean i mean
the statements within our team and i think i also pinned the same tweet so for example web
telebridge has quite a number of alumni now i think we're almost entering about 500 alumni
from web telebridge now and in my opinion if as a community all of us are doing well like everyone
is doing well and we are each alumni is able to in one year uh raise 500
usd to 1000 usd for web3 bridge that's almost about 250 to 500 000 dollars in funding in a year
now if you keep this fund going for four years that'll be about almost about a million to four
million dollars in four years now having that's in web3 bridge sports web3 bridge can run
successfully web3 bridge can fund initiatives can fund projects can fund it and i'm bleep i'm sure
we have more other communities around that cannot also do this however it requires a number of
work intentional supporting intentionally supporting the community to grow the members
of the communities to grow
seeing that everyone succeed seeing that like so there's a lot of work that has to be done to get
to that point however i believe if everyone have his mindset of giving back to the community where
they belong to is easy to achieve this i'm sure this can also be done for a doubt the different
part of a dow in different part of the world because if everyone is growing giving back will not be a problem that option i'm sure we have really not x we have really
not uh we have really not like touch that funding option because we don't believe it's possible and
i believe it's possible uh we've seen a little experiments from each web3 bridge but it's not
done more yet uh other non-vc funding would be uh i'm not sure we have so many angel
investments especially in web3 in africa like i'm not sure we have so many angel investment then
also i think uh we also need to also like review the quality and the numbers of projects that are
at this point fund worthy uh i think there's a lot there's a lot of liquidity that we need to
also put into africa from africans because af Africa, funding in Africa is not like Silicon Valley where you have a lot of fast-paced move.
I think Africa requires a lot of patient capital, which most VCs do not have.
And most angels also do not have that level of liquidity yet.
Thanks, Ayo.
And so now, what I'm really interested in doing is hearing from a lot of the audience.
You're all builders, essentially, from as far as I can see.
And I really want to know a bit more about what you're building, what the biggest blockers are for you right now.
We always know funding is always a blocker.
But, like, are you having any more issues with products, with traction?
Let us know.
McKenna, do you, is McKenna still here?
Oh, you were a speaker.
So if somebody wants to speak, please raise your hand, give me a sign.
speak, please raise your hand, give me a sign. And we'd love to hear from you. If no one wants to
share, then we'll go on to sort of a funding playbook. So what I want to ask renee and ao um is like what's like the one mistake
like renee you can go first what's the one mistake that you see too often like what's the
one mistake that you you would you know hope that people builders don't do in terms of can you hear
me first of all yes let's see if it works okay um i mean i think the
biggest mistake well outside of the fact that like on artisan we often will get people that will
make a project profile and their artifact which is that hero image um that they are actually
selling to their fans that's the thing that fans are receiving when they put money into a project
the biggest mistake there is just that they'll put text or graphics overlays on it. It's not supposed to be a poster. It's not supposed to
be an advertisement. It's supposed to be a little work of art. So that's something that people get
wrong on our platform. In terms of fundraising, I think the biggest miss that's like such an obvious
easy win is if you're raising money for any kind of project, you need to have some way of tracking
all of the potential leads. So you need to have something that looks like a CRM, a customer
relationship management system. You can use Google Sheets. You can use Trello. You can use
Airtable. You can use a fucking, you know, notepad, like a physical one with pencils.
But you need to have some way to stay very, very organized about all the people that you think might possibly put money into your project.
And you need to track each of those relationships.
Have you reached out to them?
Did they say no?
Did they say maybe?
Did they say nothing?
You need some system.
And there's a bunch of things out on the Internet that you could go learn about how to get a CRM set up. I use Airtable. I made a custom CRM myself with Airtable. It works for me. It
doesn't really matter what tool you use. The big thing is that you just have one and that you're
very disciplined about using it every single day and you see what relationships do you need to
follow up with in any given moment. Yeah, this is amazing amazing advice i was literally just looking at somebody
who had made their own tool in notion because the problem isn't meeting people we all meet tons of
people in web3 the problem is that we don't a lot of us aren't very good at following up so we might
go to a conference and like you know meet meet meet 100 people. And out of those 100 people,
it's scattered around Telegram. We don't know what they look like. We've forgotten the conversation.
And so that thing about being organized and disciplined, like every time you meet someone,
you can put it in your table, the status of the conversation, what you need to follow up on.
of the conversation, what you need to follow up on.
This is really, really important, and it's a skill.
Ayo, what do you think?
What's the one mistake that you see too often?
What's the one thing you would hope builders do not do?
Okay, so one of the things I've seen that the challenge is that many people don't know. When many people start from doing so many freebies,
that becomes hard to monetize their products or projects.
So one advice I'm going to say is,
as immediately you start getting your products,
even when you decide to do freebies and whatever, figure out your funding line.
Figure out at what point this product becomes profitable.
Because if you don't figure out profit, and if you don't figure out how to raise money early, the program project is likely going to die.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Great.
Great advice. in terms of like how people view Africa on the sort of global stage there's always a conversation
about you know people aren't investing in Africa or Africa is is is underfunded but hey I just want
to ask you do you think it's underfunding or do you just think like people understand or the investors misunderstand the market or there's like so many um obstacles
in in africa that people may be cautious like what do you think it is okay so i think i'll start
from the fact that most investors don't really understand the african markets and uh i'm not
sure it's easy for people to throw money in markets they don't understand.
And so for most times, interaction with African investors are done mostly in the West. Like you have to travel from Africa to go to Silicon Valley, to this country, to that, that, that, that, that.
I think that alone makes it hard.
Then also, understanding that a number of...
So investors don't understand
how African is.
I think,
for likely,
we are very, very underfunded.
And when I mean underfunded,
like very underfunded
because so,
feel like,
oh, okay,
I'm going to put money
where I can see.
Like,
you put it where you can see.
So if you're in the US,
for example,
you put money within that,
within LATAM,
it's easy for you to just
move from US to Argentina to see what's happening with the money, get feedback and all. However, coming to this side of the world is not so easy. Then also, there needs to be a balance in trust.
naturally there's a level of pr around oh africans are not maximizing the grant they're
getting the fund they're getting at all however if you look deeply and you put on the table the
cost the amount that's expended in the ways that they've gone missing or they've gone mismanaged
a number of times that are raised that have closed down compared to africa it's quite the difference
that they're there then also there's this part of saying oh african don't need so much money to like skill and all but you understand africa is not one country africa is 54 countries 54 different
people where each country has i think nigeria has almost about 200 tribes in nigeria where
what works for tribe a minor for tribe b and the same for kenya for uganda and a few other
countries like that so there's there's number there's there's
there's disparity in knowledge of the african market by people that funds and also if you
if you look at it then also i think one one one one thing about you i also like to notice is that
for okay so majority of applications you see from africa are actually like grants for maybe events
So you see from Africa actually like grants for maybe events and programs that actually do not raise funds after they raise the funds.
Like they don't like put all that like.
So most funds that come into Africa look more like an impact fund.
Then I think there's also this analogy that it's easier for you to raise money for NGO in Africa africa than raise money for startup because so this is
our this is our not patient people they have they also have lps and they need to like turn back
their money in six in seven years in ten years however in africa is actually more more of more of uh holding companies uh
holding companies than actually something that works within 78 years so it takes a lot of time
to understand this market and this is funders do not really have
this patient to wait so what i think what i think should work what i think will work is actually
having a dedicated team to look into funding in africa and and scale from that point understand
what the market looks like understand what's in the market and growing with that mindset and we
can all meet at the same time and grow together thank you i think that's an excellent excellent bit of of uh insight there that like often when people think
about africa they think it's like a homogenous market and it's it's it's a lot of countries
a lot of cultures and what will work in Nigeria may not work in Kenya, for example.
And it's great that we have so many builders here today.
I'd love to hear from a builder because, you know, you're the people that we're trying to help.
So we'd actually love to hear what you have to say.
But Tabby, I think we should maybe go into exactly when it comes to the herd
out emerging builders fund what what we're looking for maybe even in a few sentences because
it's it's not only just developers you can you can be a creator uh so just go through a little bit, if you can, what our criteria is and the eligibility.
I don't know if Tabby can either hear me or...
No, probably not.
Okay.
No worries.
We shall move on.
So we're coming into the last five minutes or so of our space.
As I said, if anybody wants to speak, you are quite welcome.
And so we're going to play a little game, a game that I quite like.
So I'm going to say a few words, like VC funding and Ayo and Rene,
you're going to have to tell me whether it's underrated or overrated, right?
So I'm going to say bootstrapping.
Is it underrated or overrated?
René first.
Way underrated.
Way underrated.
No, bootstrapping is great.
Right, right.
Ayo, bootstrapping, is it underrated?
Bootstrapping is underrated, actually.
I agree with René.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Bootstrapping is the way forward, peeps.
If you can do it, for sure. For sure. Bootstrapping is the way forward, peeps. If you can do it, do it. How about accelerators and incubators? There's always a very interesting conversation about this, about whether they provide a lot of value or not. So I'd love to hear what you guys think. Rene, do you think accelerators or incubators are underrated or overrated?
Underrated. I love accelerators.
I've been through five and I would like to go through more.
Awesome.
Ayo.
Yeah, I agree with Rene.
I believe that actually for African builders specifically,
I think accelerators are good because apart from the funding,
it's actually like helps like learn a number of things.
Then I think what this opportunity like put it out a number of,
so most African builders don't really have access
to business schools and a number of this education.
So I believe aspirators are underrated
and we need to do more of them.
Cool. How about traveling to conferences?
René, is it underrated or overrated?
It all depends on the conference.
For me, I live in Portland, Oregon, and I live a very,
very simple life. I'm at home with my family, or I bike to a little office. I go to the grocery
store. I go for a white walk. I go to a sauna, and that's pretty much it. It's very small. And so for me, travel is a way to
make my life much bigger and to expand the connections and the new ideas and the people
that I can collide with. So I think, I mean, I don't like conferences per se, but I think
gatherings of people is incredibly important. And for me, my favorite kind is super intimate, where it's maybe like 20 people
to sort of middle size, like 200 to 300. Anything bigger than that. And it doesn't really work so
well for me. So it has to be very curated. I have to have a high degree of confidence that everyone
that I'm going to, you you know randomly bump into is doing interesting
work and if there's a space like that i am always down to jump on a plane and go experience that
okay so conferences but just but curated in premium so ayo what do you think i agree so
conferences are conferences depends genuinely a number of conference okay so let me let me let
me come from an african perspective right a number of africans go to conferences because they are
looking for opportunities because they feel like oh we need to i need to be in the same room with
this person i need to like try and get job with this person and like make network and connect with
this person and that process actually is hectic because you have to go through hectic visa
processes expensive flights you have to save up money you have to you have to go through hectic visa processes expensive flights
you have to save up money you have to you have to look for people who are going to raise the funds
for you and all of those and that that that loan is actually hectic in itself so uh so i i think i
think if conference is overrated and underrated depends on the quality of conference depends on
the actual conferences i think one two three conference in the region in a year is actually good however also also good because
conferences are also a point for activation for local activation for people locally to actually
come together and be together and have access to international audiences too okay one last one. Hackathons, underrated or overrated? René, go.
I like them. Again, it all depends on which one, but I've done a bunch of hackathons.
When I was a filmmaker, they had something that was similar, like 48-hour film festivals,
and I think it's a great way to meet people, and it's fun to be in a pressure cooker and have to
produce something in a couple of days. I don't really do them anymore just because I value my sleep.
And a hackathon, you typically don't sleep for a couple of days.
So I think my hackathon days are behind me.
But if you don't need sleep or if you're young, I think a hackathon is a great thing.
Yeah.
Ayo, what do you think about hackathons?
Okay, so for first-time learners and and first time builders and people who are still like
on the intermediate side of like growth i believe akathons are very very good uh for for seniors
seniors uh who are already like having jobs i think akathons are like just open for them once
in a while to just just like exercise their muscles stress their selves once in a while
and just like go out of their comfort zone so So it depends on where you are looking at it from.
However, because we train new developers,
I believe academics are very underrated.
We need to do more academics actually.
Okay, cool.
Alrighty.
I love underrated, overrated.
Thank you guys.
I'm going to jump over to Tabby.
Tabby, if you are available,
can we go over the description of the fund and the eligibility?
If not, I've got it pulled up. I can do it.
I'm not sure if your mic is working.
Okay, I'll do it.
So the Hurdle Fund, the Hurdle Fund for Emerging African Builders.
So we support early stage creators in Africa who are building
tech on Web3 projects. So it's rooted in Herdhous mission to make technology more inclusive. So this
fund is to champion young developers, designers, and digital creators. So we're going to prioritize
projects that show real progress, creative ambition and the potential to make meaningful economic or community impact.
So it's to help Africa's next generation of builders.
So as we said, we're supporting early stage, more youth led projects.
more youth-led projects. There's a slight age limit, but at least the lead person has to be
a young person. And so we're especially interested in creators who have begun building but need
funding and visibility and community support. So projects should be tech-driven, impact-oriented,
projects should be tech-driven, impact-oriented, and grounded in real work already underway. So to
qualify for the fund, projects must meet the following eligibility requirements. The project
must be led by a creator from Africa or the African diaspora. So your team can be global, but it must be led by an African builder.
And the lead creator must be between 18 and 35.
We may blur those lines for exceptional projects, but, you know, rules are rules.
The project must be early stage.
So idea to MVP or prototype level, but not fully mature or scaled projects. So the project must be tech
based. So including web three software, digital platforms, or on chain creative work.
And the creator must provide proof of work or progress. So we want to see prototypes, demos, code repositories,
design work, pilots, community traction, like anything, but you know, proof of work is super
important. And projects must demonstrate creative intent. So there must be some sort of technical
effort or potential for growth and impact. And the project must align with artisans' broader values
of originality, feasibility, and positive impact.
So if anyone needs any more help, advice,
we're going to be doing spaces, live streams,
you know, all the way through.
Please hit us up in Telegram or dm us on twitter um the
the fund director is tabby as i said so please reach out to her or any one of us and you can be
funneled through the prize fund so like the fund is now at five thousand dollars and there's an extra prize pool of 300 we hope to
boost this massively over the next few months by uh running campaigns to like sell artifacts and
any artifacts that we sell will be available um will contribute to the match funding so like we
can boost this guys we can boost this um finally i just want to go back to our illustrious guests
and just say thank you so much to Renee and AO.
I just want to give you two the opportunity.
Let me, there's a speaking request.
I don't even Rene are you even
are you even I don't know if your mic is on but I've tried to give you some speaking permissions
back Rene it says it says that you're like a listener but like AO just give us a last part in call to action.
Anything that you want people to sign up to get involved in over at Web3Bridge.
All right. Thank you very much. Web3Bridge is growing.
This 2026, our work is to be more intentional.
Our court is currently on and we are going to be soon opened
for the next court.
So I open for people,
builders, learners and all.
We are still putting together
our funder residency program.
We are not fully sure
of which direction we want to go.
We are still looking for potential
funding opportunities for that.
It's actually pre- and post-fund opportunity
for builders who are going to be in that
program. So just
watch out for it. Follow us on our social
media handles. You can be
active and
alive when updates
are coming up. Thank you very much.
Excellent. Thank you so much.
We've lost Renee, but
check out Artisan Fund. They do amazing, amazing work. As Renee said, they have helped raise millions of dollars. Check our Emerging Builders Fund out. I don't even know if your mic is still working, but if you do, please come forward and say a few things.
If nobody else wants to say anything, then we are going to wrap up.
My name is Tracy, otherwise known as Anna Lee, and it's been my pleasure to host this X-Base with you all.
As I said, reach out to us, make sure you apply for the fund, we can help you.
You know, this is so exciting to just have money to give to builders. We, you know, it's very seldom
that there's just this money that we can just give to builders building amazing things. And so it's
really nice to be in the driver's seat uh thank you so much to tabby for
getting this whole initiative going um lovely to see all of you bianca lovely to see you um and i
feel and ij lovely to see you and thank you and all of you lovely people and um i feel that's what
we're gonna close the x space now. So ciao, ciao, everybody.
Thank you, Ayo, again.
Thanks, Mene, if you listen back to this.
I know you had to go.
And, yeah, bless you all.
Ciao, ciao.
All right, bye, everyone.
Enjoy your weekend.
Thank you. you
