EWOR, a founder fellowship harder to get into than Y Combinator, has named a senior leadership team in San Francisco after a record year of US applications, up 237% in twelve months.
The team comprises Charles Ferguson, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who sold FrontPage to Microsoft and invested early in Etched, Perplexity, CopilotKit, and Paradigm, alongside former Emhance CEO and Adjust CPO Katie Madding and 3x founder (Batelle, PreSeed Fertility, Upstream) Gigi Brett.
EWOR’s premise is that talent is spread evenly across the world but opportunity is not, so fellows receive up to $600K in capital and 1:1 weekly mentorship from unicorn builders (Adjust, ProGlove, SumUp) wherever they are, rather than being asked to relocate.
Founders who joined EWOR this year raised $10M on average. 25% of recent joiners have raised at nine-figure valuations in the past 6 months. In addition, fellows hire early team members and secure first customers through EWOR’s unique world-leading talent and customer network.
The fact that a rising share of its applicants are US-based, people who already sit inside the world’s densest startup market, is the clearest sign that the model offers something US founders can’t easily get at home: well above-average funding rounds and a full-time team of unicorn founders who have already built companies worth between $100M and $12B working beside them, every week, from as early as the idea stage.
From FrontPage to the frontier of AI
Charles Ferguson sold FrontPage to Microsoft in 1996, holds a PhD in political science from MIT, published five books, and won an Academy Award for his documentary Inside Job, an account of the 2008 financial crisis. Today he’s one of the most sought-after early investors in AI, having already invested in Etched, Perplexity, CopilotKit and Paradigm. His career runs across the Atlantic, including a Brookings fellowship, a board seat at the French-American Foundation and a life membership of the Council on Foreign Relations.
From leading startups to standing beside the founders who build them
Katie Madding was Chief Product Officer and the third US hire at Adjust, which Palo Alto-based AppLovin bought for $1B in 2021. She then led Emhance as CEO, Google’s official partner for game playtesting, taking it from an idea to recurring revenue with customers including Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard King.
From optimising the conditions for life to those for billion-dollar companies
Gigi Brett joins EWOR as Chief Investment Officer, relocating from Cape Town to San Francisco. A three-time founder in health and education, she built Batelle with a unicorn founder and a team of 60, then launched Upstream, the first preconception product designed for men, which ran a pilot with US Navy SEALs. Her most recent company, PreSeed Fertility, has built a database of exceptional sperm donors that now covers around 10% of all registered donors in the US.
A snapshot of this year’s accepted founders
A handful of founders have been accepted into the EWOR Fellowship recently, among them:
- Martin Varsavsky, a 5x unicorn founder now building Certuma, the first AI doctor seeking FDA approval.
- Lars Hinrichs, Xing founder now building Simsalasim, the first truly global, AI-native mobile carrier, offering unlimited data across 100 countries via eSIM.
- Maya Polackal, a Harvard Medical School and Boston University researcher now building EOMIND, a frontier AI lab.
- Carter Laren, a serial founder ($300M in previous exits) and angel investor now building Sprite, AI agents directed by their own thoughts rather than a human’s.
- Thiri Shwesin Aung, a Harvard-trained environmental scientist turned founder now building Nyxium, an AI platform for deployable energy and industrial infrastructure decisions.
Previous fellows include
- Ricky Knox, an ex-unicorn founder with two 9-figure exits with Azimo and Tandem Bank
- Alfons Huber, a physicist who raised $23.6M on a $322M post-money valuation to turn roads into power plants with REPS GmbH
- Jörgen Tveit, founder of energy storage startup Thaleron, which raised Europe’s largest ever pre-seed ($15M) by a first-time founder at the time
- Leonard T. Dorlöchter, who achieved a $3.5B valuation for peaq within 2 years of joining EWOR
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This entry was posted on September 22, 2026 at 8:07 am and is filed under Commentary with tags EWOR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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EWOR announces SF Leadership Team as US applications surge 237% after Fellows raise $10M on average
EWOR, a founder fellowship harder to get into than Y Combinator, has named a senior leadership team in San Francisco after a record year of US applications, up 237% in twelve months.
The team comprises Charles Ferguson, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who sold FrontPage to Microsoft and invested early in Etched, Perplexity, CopilotKit, and Paradigm, alongside former Emhance CEO and Adjust CPO Katie Madding and 3x founder (Batelle, PreSeed Fertility, Upstream) Gigi Brett.
EWOR’s premise is that talent is spread evenly across the world but opportunity is not, so fellows receive up to $600K in capital and 1:1 weekly mentorship from unicorn builders (Adjust, ProGlove, SumUp) wherever they are, rather than being asked to relocate.
Founders who joined EWOR this year raised $10M on average. 25% of recent joiners have raised at nine-figure valuations in the past 6 months. In addition, fellows hire early team members and secure first customers through EWOR’s unique world-leading talent and customer network.
The fact that a rising share of its applicants are US-based, people who already sit inside the world’s densest startup market, is the clearest sign that the model offers something US founders can’t easily get at home: well above-average funding rounds and a full-time team of unicorn founders who have already built companies worth between $100M and $12B working beside them, every week, from as early as the idea stage.
From FrontPage to the frontier of AI
Charles Ferguson sold FrontPage to Microsoft in 1996, holds a PhD in political science from MIT, published five books, and won an Academy Award for his documentary Inside Job, an account of the 2008 financial crisis. Today he’s one of the most sought-after early investors in AI, having already invested in Etched, Perplexity, CopilotKit and Paradigm. His career runs across the Atlantic, including a Brookings fellowship, a board seat at the French-American Foundation and a life membership of the Council on Foreign Relations.
From leading startups to standing beside the founders who build them
Katie Madding was Chief Product Officer and the third US hire at Adjust, which Palo Alto-based AppLovin bought for $1B in 2021. She then led Emhance as CEO, Google’s official partner for game playtesting, taking it from an idea to recurring revenue with customers including Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard King.
From optimising the conditions for life to those for billion-dollar companies
Gigi Brett joins EWOR as Chief Investment Officer, relocating from Cape Town to San Francisco. A three-time founder in health and education, she built Batelle with a unicorn founder and a team of 60, then launched Upstream, the first preconception product designed for men, which ran a pilot with US Navy SEALs. Her most recent company, PreSeed Fertility, has built a database of exceptional sperm donors that now covers around 10% of all registered donors in the US.
A snapshot of this year’s accepted founders
A handful of founders have been accepted into the EWOR Fellowship recently, among them:
Previous fellows include
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This entry was posted on September 22, 2026 at 8:07 am and is filed under Commentary with tags EWOR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.