Alliance Labs

Alliance (alliance.xyz) is an accelerator and founder community focused on helping crypto and fintech startups reach product-market fit. It runs a 10-week program structured as a two-week in-person onboarding in New York City, a seven-week remote phase of mentorship, lectures and weekly check-ins, and a final week back in New York City for Demo Day, where teams present to VCs, angels and other experts. The program is run three times a year, each with an "Early Admission" and a "Regular" application deadline; the company states it makes interview decisions within one week of receiving an application and reviews applications year-round, including funding startups before they are accelerated when timelines do not align with the next cohort.

Participation in the program itself is free. Alliance instead invests $400k in each admitted startup at a $4M post-money valuation via a SAFE with a 1:1 token side letter, and offers a further $400k follow-on at the seed stage, for up to $800k total. Founders who present at Demo Day graduate into Alliance DAO, described by the company as a community of more than 700 crypto and fintech founders. Alliance also provides a founder-only community platform, over 90 partner perks and credit deals (including with Anthropic, AWS, Google Cloud, Gemini and Notion), and support with immigration and visa matters such as O-1 petitions, working with outside immigration attorneys.

The company says it backs technical founders across stages and verticals — crypto, AI, fintech, stablecoins and related software — including pre-product and pre-revenue teams, and explicitly welcomes non-crypto-native or "Web2.5" startups such as fintechs, payment APIs and SaaS serving crypto companies.

Business model

Alliance provides capital and a structured accelerator program at no cash cost to founders, taking equity exposure instead: $400k per admitted company on a SAFE at a $4M post-money valuation with a 1:1 token side letter, plus a $400k follow-on at seed. Returns therefore depend on the appreciation of portfolio equity and token allocations.

Not disclosed in the sources beyond the investment structure; the program itself is described as free to participating founders.

Traction

The company states its community exceeds 700 crypto and fintech founders and that the median Alliance startup raises $3.5M at a $25M post-money valuation after the program, often from investors including Paradigm, Multicoin and Dragonfly. Portfolio raises highlighted on its site include Seismic ($10M led by a16z crypto, reported by Fortune), Tensor ($3M for a Solana NFT trading platform, TechCrunch), Azura ($6.9M from Initialized, Fortune), Rain ($6M led by Lightspeed, The Block) and Bleap ($6M seed, The Block). Named community members and mentors include Balaji Srinivasan, Kain Warwick (Synthetix), Kevin Lin (Twitch), Lenny Rachitsky, Prasanna Sankar (Rippling) and Siqi Chen (Runway). Alumni cited in testimonials include Zerion, Primodium and Caldera.

Latest developments

The site lists an application deadline of September 23 and states that the next cohort, ALL19, starts on January 11, 2027. Funding terms shown are $400k on admission at a $4M post-money SAFE with a 1:1 token side letter, plus $400k of follow-on at seed.