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The Bit Foundation

Accelerator · Summer 2026

Twelve weeks. Sixteen companies. One partner who knows your numbers.

Most accelerators scale by adding companies. We scale by refusing to. Sixteen is the number where a partner can hold every detail of every business in their head, and that is the entire design.

Investment
$500K
Target ownership
7%
Cohort size
16
Weeks
12
A small team working through ideas on sticky notes at a whiteboard
A cohort working session. Sixteen companies, one room, no audience.

The idea

An empty meeting room with glass walls and daylight from a wide window

A twelve-week program cannot teach you to build a company. What it can do is compress the feedback loop. Most early teams are slow not because they lack effort, but because the signal reaches them late and filtered.

So we sit close. A partner joins your sales calls, reads your churn, and argues with your roadmap. You get the same person for all twelve weeks and for the years after, which is the part that actually matters.

We invest $500K on a post-money SAFE, 7% target, on the same documents every company signs. There is no negotiation and no favourites within a cohort.

The twelve weeks

What the time is spent on

Plans change every cohort. This is the shape they tend to take.

Weeks 1 to 3 · Narrow the problem
Most teams arrive doing three things adequately. We spend the first stretch cutting until one thing is undeniable.
Weeks 4 to 7 · Sell it yourself
Founders run their own sales calls, with a partner listening. You cannot delegate learning what your buyer actually cares about.
Weeks 8 to 10 · Build the machine
Pricing, onboarding, the first repeatable motion. This is where a demo turns into a business with a shape.
Weeks 11 to 12 · Raise on your terms
A working room of investors we know well, not a stage show. Founders leave with meetings booked, not applause.

What it is not

Four things we deliberately left out

Accelerators accumulate rituals. We removed the ones nobody could defend.

  • No curriculum

    There is no syllabus, because your bottleneck is not the same as the company next to you. Each week is planned around what is actually blocking you.

  • No guest speakers

    A successful founder telling their story for an hour is entertainment. We would rather put that hour into your pricing.

  • No demo day theatre

    The final week is a working room with investors we know well. No stage, no countdown clock, no rehearsed three-minute pitch.

  • No office requirement

    Come to San Francisco for four of the twelve weeks. We cover travel. The rest is wherever your team already works.

Who gets in

We admit around 1.5% of applicants.

That number is a consequence of cohort size, not a filter we are proud of. Reapplying after a pass is common and welcome.

A team that is already building
At least two people, working on it full time, with something a user can touch. Pre-revenue is fine. Pre-product is usually too early for the program, though not for our direct investments.
A problem you understand from the inside
The strongest applications contain a detail about the industry that we could not have found ourselves.
No warm introduction required
Cold applications are read by a partner. Around a third of every cohort arrives that way.
Any geography
Companies from forty-one countries have been through the firm. We handle visa logistics for the in-person weeks and cover the travel.
They told us to kill two of our three products in the first month. It was the correct call and nobody else was willing to say it out loud.
Elena VasquezCo-founder and CEO, Nimbus AI
Our lead investor for the Series A came from a single introduction, but the more useful thing was the two months of honest feedback before we went out.
James ParkFounder, Ledgerly
I called on a Sunday about a co-founder situation. Somebody picked up, and then stayed on the phone for an hour.
Aisha MohammedCEO, Helix Bio

Applications for Summer 2026 close March 15, 2026

Thirty minutes to apply. A partner reads every one, and you will hear back either way.