Y Combinator For Solana, Glow Wallet Goes Rouge & More

Welcome back!

This is J264G and this week it's all about perspective.

Humbling — if only there was a way forward 🤔

Cool, so what is Solana doing to seamlessly onboard more users?

Well, all of this was shipped in the last couple of days:

• e-Commerce: The Shopify integration of Solana Pay goes live.

• EUROe: Membrane Finance rolls out first Euro stablecoin on Solana.

• Floodgate: MoonGate might ignite a Solana influx of Ethereum users.

Not too crabby … sorry, shabby for a week’s work.

Let’s get going!

Click on any underlined heading / hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Y Combinator For Solana

A startup accelerator is designed to help early-stage startups rapidly develop by providing a combination of resources, mentorship, funding, education, and networking opportunities.

As such, the goal is to accelerate the growth of these young companies, helping them reach key milestones and become viable, sustainable businesses more quickly than they might be able to on their own.

In this context, a startup accelerator typically involves the following:

(1) Validation & Iteration: Mainly, accelerators provide startups with a platform to validate their business ideas and iterate on their products and services based on real-time feedback from mentors, peers, and potential customers.

(2) Structured Programme: Initially, this platform is provided in the shape of a structured programme that spans a fixed period of time and entails networking and mentorship, education and workshops, and seed funding.

• Networking & Mentorship: Accelerators often provide startups with valuable networking opportunities. This includes introductions to potential customers, partners, investors, and other founders within the accelerator's network. Also, accelerators can help connect startups with experienced mentors such as successful entrepreneurs, industry experts, and professionals. All these stakeholders are able to offer insights, advice, and guidance to help startups navigate challenges and make informed decisions.

• Education & Workshops: Workshops, seminars, and educational sessions mostly focus on various aspects of running a startup. Topics may include business strategy, marketing, sales, fundraising, product development, legal matters, and more.

• Seed Funding: Lastly, accelerators typically provide startups with an initial investment to help cover early-stage costs. In return for the investment, an accelerator often takes an unusually small equity stake in the startup.

Having said that, Y Combinator is the most successful startup accelerator to date.

According to PitchBook, an estimated 4.5% of the startups that have gone through Y Combinator since 2010 have become billion-dollar companies. More striking, the unicorn creation rate for cohorts between 2010 and 2015 was even higher, at approximately 5.4% of all startups.

Moreover, Y Combinator has also outpaced other top accelerators in cumulative capital raised, with approximately $80.9 billion in total from its 2010 to 2022 cohort companies. Additionally, two-thirds of the accelerator's total value has come from its unicorns — again, a much higher rate than its competitors.

The value of startup accelerators such as Y Combinator is clear as can be.

So why don't we have a Y Combinator for Solana?

As far as I can tell, teams building on Solana would significantly benefit from such an accelerator as many require best practices on how to run a business, structure GTM strategies, and grow their user base sustainably.

The sooner we get a Y Combinator for Solana off the ground, the sooner we’re able to champion antifragile businesses that stand a chance of growing out of the web3/crypto niche into the mainstream economy.

Enough talking — let's build!

Chart Of The Week

News Bites

e-Commerce: The Shopify integration of Solana Pay will not come as news to you. However, if you need a cheat sheet as to why this is so significant, here you go ⬇️

Euro Stablecoin: Membrane Finance rolled out the first euro stablecoin on Solana (EUROe), enabling Euro payments, foreign exchange, and store of value — all while being highly compliant with the MiCA regulatory framework. Consumers can also use Wirex to on- and off-ramp to and from Solana using EUROe, or pay at more than 40 million merchant locations with EUROe.

Floodgate: MoonGate, a OPOS hackathon project, is an SDK that allows Solana protocols to integrate connections for Ethereum wallets such as MetaMask. The SDK also enables an instant token bridge feature powered by Wormhole. If this takes flight, more and more Ethereum-native users can interact with the Solana ecosystem from the comfort of their trusted Ethereum wallet — which might just bring in an influx of new users and unlock siloed liquidity.

Rouge Glow: I can't shake the feeling that the Glow team has gone rouge. For months now, my Glow wallet has been extremely buggy. On top of that, I couldn't transfer my NFTs to another wallet, and for days until end I couldn’t access my assets as I only saw a sliver of the browser extension. On all these occasions, I've tried to reach the founders on Twitter/X and sent multiple messages to the support email address. Crickets. I thought you'd might want to know this in case you heavily rely on Glow for your daily activities 🫡

ZK-Swaps: Elusiv launched private token swaps, which will help traders e.g. circumvent a significant amount of counterparty risk.

Solana & ChatGPT: The plugin store of OpenAI now includes the Solana Labs plugin for ChatGPT, making interactions with the Solana network seamless and even more enjoyable.

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

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Talk soon!

J264G

_{DISCLAIMER
None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research. Lastly, please be advised that we discuss products and services from our partners from which our team members may hold tokens / equity.}