Announcing the Variant Founder Fellowship

A new three-month cohort-based program for web3 founders at the earliest stages

Today, we’re excited to announce the inaugural Variant Founder Fellowship: a new three-month cohort-based program for web3 founders at the earliest stages of their journey. 

The Variant team has backed dozens of the top projects which now comprise our Variant Network, a professional community of founders and leaders in our portfolio who build and learn together. We’ve found that a network-based, peer learning model is the most effective way to elucidate playbooks and best practices for building in web3. That’s because in an industry as nascent and fast-evolving as crypto, the domain experts are the builders who are on the front lines of innovation. So far, the Variant Network has catalyzed learnings across our portfolio on topics like product design, token strategy, regulatory issues, and much more. 

Now, the Variant Founder Fellowship builds upon this network learning model and aims to foster more innovation in crypto by inviting a cohort of emerging founders to build and learn alongside Variant’s portfolio founders. While there are many startup accelerator programs, few are tailored to the distinct needs of founders in crypto, which have very different strategies for success. In web3, topics like go-to-market, community building, business models, defensibility, and token distribution require specialized knowledge that don’t follow web2 precedents. These types of resources and cutting-edge playbooks are what we’ll provide with the Variant Founder Fellowship.

Fellows will get access to Variant’s peer network of founders, builders, and experts operating at the bleeding edge of crypto, and learn from functional experts in web3 and build alongside teams in the Variant portfolio that are further along in their journeys. As part of the inaugural cohort, fellows will become part of a tight-knit group of peers and, in the future, a vibrant alumni network and community. Throughout the program, founders will receive hands-on mentorship and support from the Variant team.

Applications are now open until April 17th, 2023; to learn more and apply, click below!