Hey 👋 I'm Dylan, founder of Pond. The idea came from a simple observation: AI has made building startups 10x faster, while the pace of startup commercialization—fundraising, go-to-market, and execution—has barely changed. So we built Pond: a platform where founders can raise their first round from anywhere in the world, and a community of 10,000+ people ready to help solve startup challenges through a bounty-based network. The moment that validated everything: a startup on Pond raised $150K in just 3 minutes, and we now have 100+ startups on the waitlist. Not because of a great pitch deck. Because their MRR and user growth spoke for themselves. Notable investors have started using Pond to discover startups and source deals personally, including a former Accel investor. (Accel has backed companies such as Facebook, Anthropic, Spotify, and many others.) Pond helps startups around the world launch their first fundraising round in as little as 5 minutes and get backed by investors globally. Founders can raise multiple rounds on Pond or go on to raise from traditional VCs in the future. Think of Pond as an online accelerator for your business—built to help founders turn traction into capital. Pond supports founders throughout the fundraising process and helps them scale afterward. We’re backed by multiple Tier 1 investors, including Archetype, Coinbase Ventures, and 30+ angel investors. Our backers include founders of unicorn companies, the co-founder of one of the world’s leading digital asset infrastructure providers, a co-author of the foundational GPT paper, and other leading founders, operators, and investors. Happy to answer anything about how Pond works, what we’ve learned from supporting 400+ startups and investors on the platform, or why we believe the startup economy is the next major platform wave after Amazon and TikTok. AMA 🙏

Hey 👋 I'm Dylan, founder of Pond. The idea came from a simple observation: AI has made building startups 10x faster, while the pace of startup commercialization—fundraising, go-to-market, and execution—has barely changed. So we built Pond: a platform where founders can raise their first round from anywhere in the world, and a community of 10,000+ people ready to help solve startup challenges through a bounty-based network. The moment that validated everything: a startup on Pond raised $150K in just 3 minutes, and we now have 100+ startups on the waitlist. Not because of a great pitch deck. Because their MRR and user growth spoke for themselves. Notable investors have started using Pond to discover startups and source deals personally, including a former Accel investor. (Accel has backed companies such as Facebook, Anthropic, Spotify, and many others.) Pond helps startups around the world launch their first fundraising round in as little as 5 minutes and get backed by investors globally. Founders can raise multiple rounds on Pond or go on to raise from traditional VCs in the future. Think of Pond as an online accelerator for your business—built to help founders turn traction into capital. Pond supports founders throughout the fundraising process and helps them scale afterward. We’re backed by multiple Tier 1 investors, including Archetype, Coinbase Ventures, and 30+ angel investors. Our backers include founders of unicorn companies, the co-founder of one of the world’s leading digital asset infrastructure providers, a co-author of the foundational GPT paper, and other leading founders, operators, and investors. Happy to answer anything about how Pond works, what we’ve learned from supporting 400+ startups and investors on the platform, or why we believe the startup economy is the next major platform wave after Amazon and TikTok. AMA 🙏