Bigger

Last week, we wrapped up the 4th edition of Kickstart Week, our accelerator program in partnership with Stellar Development Foundation. 🚀 With over 40 blockchain startups participating, the innovation was off the charts, and the top projects secured funding to build their visions. 🌟 Check out the highlights and testimonials from this incredible week!

We were thrilled to collaborate on the CricConect project🚀 Thank you for trusting us; it's inspiring to witness startups thrive and achieve their full potential.

So far, building Greep Pay at the Stellar Development Foundation x Bigger Kickstartweek Camp has been an exciting journey! 🚀 Today, I want to take a moment to celebrate the incredible Wonder Women on our team. These brilliant minds inspire me every day with their dedication, talent, and relentless drive. 🌟 Divine Gosioha 🎓 First Class Honors in BSc Criminal Law and MSc International Law 💡 Divine has a way of turning ideas into brilliance. During this camp, she has been our technical writer, crafting compelling content that keeps us moving forward. On Day 4, even when she wasn’t feeling well, she made sure her tasks were completed. Now it’s almost 6 AM, and guess what? She’s still working. Her dedication is unmatched! 🙌 Praise Afolabi-Adesina ⚡ The Flash Young, energetic, and highly driven, Praise is a force to be reckoned with! Despite being in her final year of school, you’d never guess she’s juggling academics and work. A high honors student, Praise ensures Greep Pay is visible across every social media platform. She’s the voice behind our content writing, tirelessly sharing our journey with the world. 🌍 Miracle Gosioha 🎥 Queen of CapCut Miracle is gifted, fearless, and one of the most persistent women I know. She’s the mastermind behind all our video edits, turning raw footage into engaging stories. With First Class Honors in both her BSc and MSc, Miracle has a knack for making the impossible possible (turning water into wine, if you know what I mean! 😉). These women are the heart and soul of Greep Pay, and I’m incredibly proud to have them on our team. 💪 Together, we’re building something extraordinary. Soon, I’ll share a more detailed post about the entire team because every single person here is amazing. But for now, here’s to the Wonder Women of Greep Pay—thank you for everything you do! 🌟 And to our Mentors Pablo Seoane Anuhya C. Facundo Gabriel Bardi Fabricio Leonardo Sodano Pascazi Kevin Hercog Thank you so much for your guidance and Knowledge! #TeamSpotlight #WomenInTech #GreepPayJourney #scfkickstartweek

We’re super excited to kick off the 4th edition of Stellar Kickstart Week🚀 This partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation is all about helping blockchain Startups shine. With +200 participants rocking it in past editions, we can’t wait to see the amazing things this new cohort will create together! Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eRUiAS2d

🚀Big News🚀 We are delighted to announce that Greep Pay has been selected to participate in the Stellar Kickstart Week Bootcamp, a program designed to accelerate product development and empower innovative blockchain projects. This transformative camp is developed by Bigger and Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), leveraging a streamlined design sprint process that condenses extensive planning and discussions into an action-packed, focused week. Through this initiative, we’ll refine our strategies, advance our solutions, and accelerate Greep Pay’s mission to redefine financial accessibility and efficiency. A big thank you to Bigger and Stellar Development Foundation for their support and commitment to driving innovation. We’re excited about the opportunities ahead and look forward to sharing our journey with you! #GreepPay #Innovation #StellarKickstartWeek #DevelopedByBigger #BlockchainSolutions #blockchain

🚀 Excited to Announce: Greep Pay x Bigger x Stellar Development Foundation 🌍 Building Greep Pay has been an incredible journey, and I’m thrilled about the transformative solution we’re offering to the African-dominated marketplace! With the support of Bigger and Stellar Development Foundation, we’re empowering businesses to embrace real-time, secure, and cost-effective payments through a stablecoin point-of-sale system. Greep Pay simplifies transactions for merchants and their international customers, leveraging Stellar’s blockchain technology for seamless cross-border payments. Our mission is clear: ✅ Enable businesses to accept stablecoins like USDC, EURC, and NGNC. ✅ Expand access to global payment solutions. ✅ Drive innovation in African marketplaces and beyond. This is just the beginning, and we’re excited to make a real impact. If you're a merchant or store owner, join us as we redefine payments for businesses. 👉 Learn more about Greep Pay: pay.greep.io 👉 Join our waitlist today: https://lnkd.in/dTzKZTFZ Let’s revolutionize the way we do business! 🚀 #GreepPay #SCF #StellarCommunity #CryptoPayments #Innovation #bigger

I've recently been super interested in how to use no-code tools to help very early-stage non-tech founders. In a nutshell, I built an AI-integrated proof of concept with Softr.io and Make.com in a couple of hours for one of Bigger's Tech Accelerator participants. But here's the truth: No-code doesn't mean no tech knowledge. You still require some fundamental tech knowledge to get it to work. The product (without going into much detail): Upload a PDF, analyse it, extract the relevant information in separate PDFs and make those available for the user to download. Remember, this is a proof of concept. It's meant to test the idea's technical feasibility and determine whether there's any demand for it. It will not scale. 💻 Softr.io – Turn spreadsheets into UIs with built-in Sign In/Sign Up, sorting, and filtering. Softr seems focused on surfacing data, unlike platforms that try to do too much, forcing non-tech founders to hire platform specialists. ⚙️ Make.com – A visual (no code) backend for automations, integrated with Softr. When a form is submitted in Softr, Make.com triggers the PDF analysis, processes the files, and stores results in Google Drive and Google Sheets. 📊 Google Sheets + Google Drive – Database and storage for a quick POC. 🤖 OpenAI – The AI assistant analyses uploaded PDFs, splits them, and generates new PDFs with relevant info. This required the creation of a custom assistant in OpenAI and an understanding of how APIs work. Where I think most non-tech founders would have gotten stuck and would have benefitted from guidance: I had to create an assistant in OpenAI; the non-tech version of this is making your own "GPT", but that is not accessible programmatically (e.g. via an API); if you want to leverage an assistant outside of the ChatGPT interface, you need to create one it using the OpenAI playground (or the APIs). Using the assistant to upload and download files requires understanding OpenAI's API. I had to interpret the assistant's response, which has a property called "attachments", which I then had to iterate so that for each one of those, I would retrieve the file content, store it in Google Drive, and then add a row in Google Sheets. For instance, here's how you retrieve the content of a file: https://lnkd.in/gEBRXQDF), and then you need to do a bespoke API call (no code). If you're interested in joining our 6-week Tech Accelerator to launch your POC with the guidance of our engineering team, drop me a comment or DM. And if you know a better no-code stack, share it in the comments!👇

Greep Pay: A Shift in the Right Direction In life, we often encounter moments where everything aligns for something extraordinary to happen. For me, this is one of those moments. A few months ago, if you had told me I’d be helping solve a major financial issue for Africans abroad, I wouldn’t have believed you. I’m not your typical techie! But I’ve learned something invaluable on this journey: It’s not about what you know; it’s about your willingness to learn. Here’s the issue we’re tackling: Many Africans abroad, including in North Cyprus where I’ve lived for six years, struggle to pay with their local currencies. The conversion process is costly, risky, and inconvenient. Merchants, in turn, lose clients due to these inefficiencies. This is a global challenge for African diasporas and the businesses that serve them. That’s where Greep Pay comes in—a game-changing solution powered by Stellar. Greep Pay enables merchants to accept payments directly in African currencies. For example, someone in North Cyprus can now pay using Naira bank transfer, and the merchant receives it as stablecoins, which can be withdrawn in their preferred currency. This eliminates high exchange rates, delays, and risks while empowering both consumers and merchants. I’m thrilled to share that Greep Pay has been accepted into the Stellar Development Foundation Community Fund Startup Camp (December cohort)! This five-day camp will provide us with the expertise and mentorship needed to refine our solution and bring it to life. This journey is special to me, not just because of the groundbreaking technology but because of its potential to transform lives and financial systems globally. As a legal scholar, I’m also excited to explore the legal dimensions of this innovation—stay tuned for updates on that front! Tomorrow, we kick off the camp, and I couldn’t be more excited. A big thank you to Stellar Stellar Development Foundation development foundation and Bigger Bigger for creating a platform that champions financial inclusion and innovation. The future is bright, and it is amazing to be part of shaping that brightness. #greeppay #stellar #SCFstartupcamp #technicalwriter #bigger #stellardevelopmentfoundation #excitingtimes

“Before this, I had no wireframes, no technical docs. Now I have tangible resources I can use moving forward.” Says Andres Lombana, the founder of CitiTrails, after participating in the Fishburners + Bigger Startup Sprint. How did he do it? 👀 Visualise Early: Putting ideas on paper (or a digital board) makes refining them easier. ✍🏻 Get Rapid Feedback: Short customer interviews (just 10–15 minutes each) quickly validate if there’s a market need. Five interviews in a single day can offer incredible insights. 👫🏻 Embrace the Community: At Fishburners, feedback is immediate and constructive. Show a fellow founder your design, ask for improvement tips, and adjust on the fly. 🎯 Focus on What Matters: Narrow your daily goals to three core tasks. Ignore the rest until tomorrow. Watch our interview with Fishie and Sprint Program fellow Andres Lombana to see how the Startup Sprint Program approach can accelerate your journey from concept to MVP, giving you the momentum you need to keep moving forward 🚀 Pablo Seoane Marie Dowling Doğuş (Dosh) Domanic

I've recently been super interested in how to use no-code tools to help very early-stage non-tech founders. In a nutshell, I built an AI-integrated proof of concept with Softr.io and Make.com in a couple of hours for one of Bigger's Tech Accelerator participants. But here's the truth: No-code doesn't mean no tech knowledge. You still require some fundamental tech knowledge to get it to work. The product (without going into much detail): Upload a PDF, analyse it, extract the relevant information in separate PDFs and make those available for the user to download. Remember, this is a proof of concept. It's meant to test the idea's technical feasibility and determine whether there's any demand for it. It will not scale. 💻 Softr.io – Turn spreadsheets into UIs with built-in Sign In/Sign Up, sorting, and filtering. Softr seems focused on surfacing data, unlike platforms that try to do too much, forcing non-tech founders to hire platform specialists. ⚙️ Make.com – A visual (no code) backend for automations, integrated with Softr. When a form is submitted in Softr, Make.com triggers the PDF analysis, processes the files, and stores results in Google Drive and Google Sheets. 📊 Google Sheets + Google Drive – Database and storage for a quick POC. 🤖 OpenAI – The AI assistant analyses uploaded PDFs, splits them, and generates new PDFs with relevant info. This required the creation of a custom assistant in OpenAI and an understanding of how APIs work. Where I think most non-tech founders would have gotten stuck and would have benefitted from guidance: I had to create an assistant in OpenAI; the non-tech version of this is making your own "GPT", but that is not accessible programmatically (e.g. via an API); if you want to leverage an assistant outside of the ChatGPT interface, you need to create one it using the OpenAI playground (or the APIs). Using the assistant to upload and download files requires understanding OpenAI's API. I had to interpret the assistant's response, which has a property called "attachments", which I then had to iterate so that for each one of those, I would retrieve the file content, store it in Google Drive, and then add a row in Google Sheets. For instance, here's how you retrieve the content of a file: https://lnkd.in/gEBRXQDF), and then you need to do a bespoke API call (no code). If you're interested in joining our 6-week Tech Accelerator to launch your POC with the guidance of our engineering team, drop me a comment or DM. And if you know a better no-code stack, share it in the comments!👇