Join a network of
250+ founders
in
50+ countries
Pioneers receive $20,000, join a 3-month accelerator program, spend a month together in Silicon Valley, and much more.
Kickstart your company
Pioneer is designed to help founders on day 0 build their network, move faster, and
find product-market fit.

3-month remote accelerator
Regularly meet with an advisor and a small group of Pioneers

Trip to Silicon Valley
Build alongside other Pioneers for 1 month or longer

Amazon Web Services
$25,000 in AWS credits

Github
$1,000/mo in GitHub Enterprise credits for 2 years

Segment
$50,000 in Segment credits

Mixpanel
$50,000 in Mixpanel credits for 1 year

Plaid
Up to $3,500/mo in Plaid credits for 6 months

Mixmax
Free Mixmax Small Business for 1 year

Intercom
Free Intercom for 1 year, 20% off forever

Airtable
$2,000 in Airtable credits

Vercel
$1,200 in Vercel credits, 10% off forever
Pioneer Offer
If selected as a Pioneer, you'll be offered all of the Pioneer benefits below in exchange for 1% of your company, structured
as a SAFE that converts to common stock.
You'll also be given an investment option: $20k at your last valuation or $2M, whichever is higher.
If you decline the investment option, we'll also cover your round-trip flight to Silicon Valley.
We typically require you & any co-founders to be full-time on your company or plan to be full-time soon, although we do occasionally make exceptions to this.
You are not obligated to accept our offer if you're selected as a Pioneer Tournament winner.
All Pioneers who accept the offer receive:- Access to a network of elite founders.
- A 3-month remote startup accelerator program.
- Free company formation via Stripe Atlas or AngelList Stack.
- Mentorship from some of the world’s most successful individuals.
- Participation in the Pioneer Demo Livestream, which may help you fundraise.
- An invitation to a 1-month trip to Silicon Valley with other Pioneers.
- $25,000 in AWS credits.
- $1,000/month in GitHub Enterprise credits for 2 years
And a growing set of perks including Segment, Mixmax, Airtable and more:
- $50,000 in Segment credits.
- $50,000 in Mixpanel credits for 1 year.
- Up to $3,500/mo in Plaid credits for 6 months.
- Free Cloudflare Enterprise for 1 year.
- Free Mixmax Small Business for 1 year.
- $2,000 in Airtable credits.
- $1,200 in Retool credits for 1 year.
- 90% off HubSpot for 1 year.
- $1,000 in Miro credits.
- $1,000 in Notion credits.
- $1,200 in Vercel credits for 6 months, 10% off forever.
- $5,000 in Render credits.
- 20% off Middesk Agent for the first year.
- 20% off Carta for the first year.
- 20% off Apollo.io plans.
- Free Taskade for 2 years.
- Free CopyAI for 1 year.
- Free Clerk for 1 year.
- Free Intercom for 1 year. 50% off 2nd year & 20% off forever.
- $500 in Mux credits.
- $150 off Cleer tax filing packages.
- Free 1Password for 6 months.
- Free Tuple for 1 year.
- $1,000 in DigitalOcean credits for 1 year.
- $1,000 in Zeet credits.
- Free Typeform for 6 months.
- 10% off Typedream for 1 year.
- 20% off Cal.
- 90% off DocSend for 1 year.
- 90% off Freshworks for 1 year.
- 50% off Hellosign for 1 year.
- 40% off Dropbox annual business plans.
- Free Crisp for 3 months + 30% off.
- 20% off annual contracts of Front for 1 year.
- 500 free email lookup credits with VoilaNorbert.
- 30,000 points after spending $1000 on a Brex card.
- Free Deel for 3 months + 30% off for 1 year for contractors.
- A 1-year subscription to Wolfram|One.
- Free Tandem for 1 year.
1% to become a Pioneer
1% of your company, structured as common stock, for the benefits above
+
An optional $20,000 investment
At your last round's valuation, or $2M—whichever is higher
Join the network
Meet the Pioneers
Pioneers have gone on to collectively raise nearly $200M from Sequoia, a16z, General Catalyst, Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and many more.






“I've been dying for a community like this forever. This company is taking off and I attribute it 100% to Pioneer.”

Sacha Schermerhorn
“Pioneer is excellent. You’ll find the real builders there. The tournament and accelerator were my chance as a relative outsider to break in and build the highest leverage relationships I have ever had in my career.”

Erik Dunteman
“I’m actually shocked how good Pioneer is. When we think about random people on the Internet giving feedback to other people, normally you think of something very toxic, but Pioneer is very nice. Everybody gives very useful feedback on a week to week basis, it’s really amazing. And it’s definitely shaped a lot of the decisions we have made. And made me think about product much better.”

Rahul Tarak
“I got into YC! I wouldn’t have applied if not for validation from the Pioneer Tournament, so thanks again for making it!”

Tshepo Mohlala
“This journey has been nothing less than amazing. Even though the past couple of weeks were rough, this group was essential for my survival (mentally and otherwise). Thank you for that!”

Sherif Ali
“Pioneer has been a great productivity hack for us. As an early stage startup founder it’s hard to get a benchmark for how you’re doing relative to your peers. Matching up head-to-head weekly is a great way to assess your progress. I like to describe it as “the hunger games crossed with a todo list.””

Brad Dwyer
“I did Pioneer with Clearcall and it was the best decision I made in 2019. Highly recommended.”

Justin Glibert
“You don't know how awesome the Pioneer community is before joining their Slack!”

Sam Abrika
“Pioneer is one of the most high-leverage things I’ve done in my life. And my favorite community.”

Julia Wu
“Pioneer has changed the trajectory of my startup and my life. Through incremental and subtly powerful means it forces you to develop precisely the primary quality of a good founder — relentless resourcefulness for executing on the things that matter. Highly recommend.”

Alex Gunnarson
“It's basically my favorite thing on the internet.”

Everett Berry
“Pioneer is definitely in the top 3 things to ever happen to my life so I’m a huge fan!”

Arsalan Bashir
“It all started with Pioneer. They were the first ones who believed in Peek. It opened up so many doors with future users, investors & partners and what's more - I've made life long friends with incredible people.”

Deborah Igunma
“Pioneer has been great for me. You will absolutely find yourself working harder. You will find yourself working on a Sunday evening because you haven't yet completed the tasks that you said you would in last week's progress report. Accountability + gamification + incentives is a powerful way to boost productivity.”

Dave Jeffery
“Pioneer has given us the best peer group we've ever had.”

Esteban Vargas
“Coming from where I come from, this really is a life changing opportunity (a lot bigger than you can imagine!). It’s also helped inspire other people from my neighbourhood to actually apply (most count themselves out because they don’t think people like us can get this stuff)!”

Adaobi Adibe
“I literally started by myself in my living room in April and the only reason we are here is because of Pioneer. Jason saw the pitch and he invited us to LAUNCH [accelerator] because of it, so thank you.”

Karen Serfaty
“I can’t emphasize enough how crucial Pioneer was in our early days, even before we were a startup. We’d have probably died early on without Pioneer’s support, the amazing founder community, and the accountability of the tournament.”

David Nandwa
“The journey so far wasn't easy... but Pioneer has been instrumental in all our progress so far - both before and after becoming a Pioneer. A heartfelt thanks to the entire team and the community for making it happen.”

Shred Vepencheri
“It’s been insanely helpful, and I really dig the vision of finding people who aren’t on the standard trajectory.”

Jake Cooper
“If you are plagued with the disease of needing to start a company, there is no better hospital than Pioneer. The community of mature builders is top notch and the most intentionally diverse collective you can find today.”

Leonard Bogdonoff
“Pioneer was one of the first supporters of what I was doing early on. Pioneer helped me go from a hacker to a company.”

Luke Barwikowski
“Pioneer is an amazing thing. It indeed takes the idea of an accelerator online, and makes it available for people all around the world. I love the regular feedback, love to see what other fellow Pioneers do, and learn from them. Highly recommend it for any early-stage startup!”

Andriy Bas
“Joining Pioneer was the best thing we've done as a company.”

Matthew Johnson
See more »
See less »
3-month accelerator
Build faster than ever,
alongside other founders
You’ll regularly meet with an advisor and a small group of Pioneers
where you’ll cover topics like fundraising, product-market fit, and more.
Julia
USA
Pavle
Serbia
Lucas
Spain
Tom
Ireland
Mishka
Pakistan
Akshay
Canada
Mentorship
Get practical advice
You’ll have support from our network of advisors & the Pioneer team.
Check out these clips from past sessions:

Jeff Weinstein (Stripe)
Articulating your problem

Daniel Gross (Pioneer)
Product feedback

Calvin French-Owen (Segment)
Focusing on distribution vs. product
Summit
Spend a month with other Pioneers IRL
Pioneers travel to Silicon Valley for 1 month together.
We plan a light schedule—dinners, talks with successful founders, etc.—designed to help you make real progress.







Fundraise
Raise from top investors when you’re ready
Pioneers have applied with as little as an idea and a handful of GitHub commits, and
just months later presented at a virtual demo day where they’re interviewed by top Silicon Valley investors.
We also occasionally invest much more following our initial $20k.
Join the Pioneer Tournament to apply
Submit weekly progress updates, reach the Global Top 50, and get selected to become a Pioneer.
Pioneer Tournament
Get weekly feedback from other founders
Help wherever you need it most: user acquisition, product design, fundraising, and everything in between.
Feedback
Sender
This is a great idea, but why would people use this over all of the existing alternatives?
Reply
Julia W.
Congrats on the launch! I think you can set a more ambitious goal, like 100 DAUs by next month.
Reply
Tshepo M.
Thank you for the feedback! I've been wondering about that metric. Do you think DAUs are the right thing to track?
Reply
You
It's not the most accurate metric, but probably the right balance of accuracy and having a quick feedback loop.
Reply
Tshepo M.
It's not clear what the product actually is from your landing page. Can you add a demo?
Reply
Michael J.
Username | Age | Country | Category | Score | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1
|
40 | Malaysia | SaaS |
73472
|
||
2
|
39 | Poland | Security |
73463
|
||
3
|
24 | Netherlands | SaaS |
73462
|
||
4
|
Moocable
|
25 | India | Education |
73436
|
|
5
|
38 | Germany | Psychology/Sociology |
73424
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||
6
|
36 | Italy | Education |
73391
|
||
7
|
37 | Singapore | Education |
73384
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||
Username | Age | Country | Category | Score | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1
|
34 | Kenya | SaaS |
73341
|
||
2
|
charliecharlie111
|
18 | Nigeria | SaaS |
73309
|
|
3
|
21 | South Africa | SaaS |
73212
|
||
4
|
36 | Kenya | SaaS |
73202
|
||
5
|
Shoppa
|
28 | Cameroon | Consumer |
73191
|
|
6
|
19 | Nigeria | SaaS |
73190
|
||
7
|
39 | Kenya | Fintech |
73146
|
||
Username | Age | Country | Category | Score | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1
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40 | Malaysia | SaaS |
73472
|
||
2
|
Moocable
|
25 | India | Education |
73436
|
|
3
|
37 | Singapore | Education |
73384
|
||
4
|
30 | Japan | B2B |
73349
|
||
5
|
24 | India | SaaS |
73313
|
||
6
|
25 | Georgia | Psychology/Sociology |
73309
|
||
7
|
33 | Thailand | SaaS |
73303
|
||
Username | Age | Country | Category | Score | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1
|
39 | Poland | Security |
73463
|
||
2
|
24 | Netherlands | SaaS |
73462
|
||
3
|
38 | Germany | Psychology/Sociology |
73424
|
||
4
|
36 | Italy | Education |
73391
|
||
5
|
20 | Spain | Cryptocurrency / Blockchain |
73341
|
||
5
|
29 | Romania | AR/VR |
73341
|
||
7
|
47 | Germany | Entertainment |
73329
|
||
Username | Age | Country | Category | Score | ||
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1
|
NikolasNGEC
|
38 | Canada | Education |
73267
|
|
2
|
38 | Jamaica | Fintech |
73230
|
||
3
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19 | Mexico | Cryptocurrency / Blockchain |
73200
|
||
4
|
28 | Brazil | Healthcare |
73193
|
||
5
|
Quietware_Dishes
|
35 | Canada | Healthcare |
73088
|
|
6
|
USLS
|
35 | Brazil | Healthcare |
73065
|
|
7
|
26 | Canada | Marketplace |
73062
|
||
Username | Age | State | Category | Score | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1
|
34 | Florida | Artificial Intelligence |
73343
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||
2
|
28 | Texas | Artificial Intelligence |
73324
|
||
3
|
29 | Georgia | Entertainment |
73321
|
||
4
|
han-solo-889669
|
42 | Texas | AR/VR |
73278
|
|
5
|
33 | Pennsylvania | Marketplace |
73261
|
||
6
|
dumbledore-562265
|
42 | Texas | Education |
73245
|
|
7
|
43 | Texas | Consumer |
73240
|
||
Username | Age | State | Category | Score | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1
|
54 | Nevada | Consumer |
73338
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||
2
|
41 | California | Healthcare |
73173
|
||
3
|
32 | Colorado | Marketplace |
73153
|
||
4
|
Asclepius-3-6-9
|
31 | California | SaaS |
73146
|
|
5
|
GlobalGrange
|
54 | Oregon | SaaS |
73114
|
|
6
|
40 | California | Cryptocurrency / Blockchain |
73107
|
||
7
|
han-solo-985017
|
40 | Washington | Education |
73043
|
|
Become a Pioneer
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