Stanford FoundersSPRING 2026 RECAP
Three weeks.
Three teams.
One angel check.
The inaugural Founders Bridge cohort ran from April 21 to May 7, 2026 — pitching live on the Stanford Founders Demo Day stage and closing the program's first investment outcome shortly after.
3 Weeks
April 21 – May 7, 2026
3 Teams
Tenda · Chimeboard · RIFFAI
8 Guests
Operators, VCs, attorneys
1 Angel Check
Closed post-Demo Day
Cohort
Three teams. Three cross-border bets.
Founders Bridge was built for the founders most accelerators ignore: international students and first-time founders building between their home market and the US.
Tenda
Biak Tha Hlawn (Myanmar / Stanford) · Wayne (Zimbabwe / Botswana)
AI-native, mobile-first work OS for SMBs. Turns unstructured WhatsApp and voice traffic into structured proof-of-work for emerging-market businesses scaling into the US.
Emerging markets first · US expansion via Stanford
Closed an angel check post-Demo Day.
Chimeboard
Avivi (Shenzhen) · Adaeze (DC)
AI platform that predicts influencer-campaign ROI before brands spend — audience-behavior simulation, not retrospective analytics. Profitable today in Asia, scaling US BD.
China-to-US cross-border DTC · profitable
Refined seed positioning, hockey-stick deck rebuild, full US lawyer pipeline.
RIFFAI
Petch Ounjaroen (Stanford CCUS) · Kolatat "Kato" Katousano
Hyper-multispectral satellite imagery and AI for geo-energy intelligence: site discovery, land risk, and asset monitoring for energy developers and CCUS operators.
Thailand / Singapore base · US energy market entry
Repositioned as US Delaware C-Corp, sharpened "why us" for satellite capex.
How it ran
A 3-week sprint into Demo Day.
Founder Identity & Cross-Market Vision
April 21 (in-person) · April 23 (virtual)
Kickoff fireside at Stanford Venture Studio with Ryan Wang (Solaris Venture) and Miyu Moriuchi. Cross-border storytelling and bottom-up TAM with Monisha Perkash (Mojo Ventures, ex-Lumo).
Legal, Operations & Go-to-Market
April 28 (virtual) · April 30 (virtual)
Fundraising and enterprise GTM with Clement Pang (Sutter Hill, Wavefront → VMware exit) and Alexa Binns (CAA-partnered fund). Visa, IP, and entity strategy with Charles Pelletier-Gagne (Deel) and Leandro (Stanford Bechtel).
Pitch Refinement & Demo Day Prep
May 5 (in-person)
Mock pitch panel with Alan Louie (Imagine K-12, YC). Rapid-fire 3-minute pitch + 4-minute feedback. Steve-Jobs-style deck design and non-native-speaker delivery coaching.
May 7 — Oak Lounge, Tressider
1,500+ attendees · 300+ investors
All three Founders Bridge teams pitched live on the Stanford Founders Demo Day stage. Post-event cohort dinner closed out the program on May 13.
Moments
From kickoff to closing dinner.
Outcomes
What came out of three weeks.
First investment outcome
Tenda closed an angel check post-Demo Day.
Validating both the cross-border thesis and the Demo Day → angel pathway the curriculum was built around. Week 2 specifically pointed teams at the angel-syndicate venues that fit a sub-$1M raise — Tenda followed that path and closed.
Cohort-wide deliverables
- All three teams pitched live on the Demo Day stage
- 3-deck strategy adopted across the cohort (pitch · in-person · email)
- Hockey-stick growth slide added to every Demo Day deck
- Live financial-model template shared cohort-wide
- Warm-intro pipeline to Cooley and Perkins Coie startup attorneys
- Charles's open-source pitch-deck framework opened to every team
- Visa, IP, and entity guidance tailored to each team's posture
Why it worked
A short program with a sharp edge.
Built for the founders the standard playbook misses
International and first-time founders face visa, cultural-GTM, and cross-border-ops problems that generic accelerators do not address. The curriculum was designed around those gaps from the start.
Operators teaching, not lecturers
Every guest had shipped — Wavefront/VMware exit, Lumo acquisition, Imagine K-12, active VC checks. Cohort got tactical answers, not framework slides.
Demo Day as the forcing function
A guaranteed pitch slot in front of 300+ investors three weeks out compresses pitch iteration in a way longer programs cannot.
Tight cohort, deep coverage
Three teams and weekly 1:1 mentor matching meant no team got lost. Every session had real Q&A bandwidth per team.
Looking for more about Stanford Founders Club?
Visit the Stanford Founders site