Ewor expands San Francisco team after US demand surges

EWOR has appointed a new leadership team in San Francisco after US applications to its founder fellowship rose 237%.

The team includes Charles Ferguson, Katie Madding and Gigi Brett. The San Francisco expansion reflects stronger demand from US-based founders for the programme.

EWOR uses a fellowship model rather than a standard accelerator batch. Founders accepted into the programme can receive up to USD $600,000 in funding and weekly one-to-one mentoring from entrepreneurs behind companies including Adjust, ProGlove and SumUp.

The organisation said founders who joined this year raised an average of USD $10 million after Demo Day. It added that 25% of recent joiners raised money at nine-figure valuations in the past six months.

Those figures suggest growing interest from founders already based in the world's biggest startup market. EWOR argues that some US founders want larger early funding rounds and closer contact with experienced company builders than they can easily find at home.

Daniel Dippold, founder and Chief Executive Officer of EWOR, outlined the rationale for building a stronger presence in San Francisco.

“Talent is spread evenly across the world. Opportunity is not,” said Daniel Dippold, founder and Chief Executive Officer of EWOR. “Our job is to close that gap for the world's best founders wherever they are. For a growing number of them, that now means San Francisco, so that's where we are.”

New team

Ferguson is the highest-profile appointment. He sold FrontPage to Microsoft in 1996, holds a PhD in Political Science from MIT, has written five books and won an Academy Award for the documentary Inside Job, which examined the 2008 financial crisis.

More recently, he has become known as an early investor in artificial intelligence startups. His investments include Etched, Perplexity, CopilotKit and Paradigm, according to EWOR.

He described the San Francisco network as central to what founders need.

“Great founders need the same things: support from best-in-class mentors, access to the San Francisco startup ecosystem, and a superb global network,” said Ferguson. “EWOR is already the world's most selective founder fellowship, now expanding with US applications up 237% this year, and with EWOR Fellows raising an average of $10M after Demo Day. So I'm honored to help lead EWOR's US growth and its integration within San Francisco's world-leading ecosystem.”

Madding brings operating experience from startup and product leadership roles. She was Chief Product Officer and the third US hire at Adjust, which AppLovin acquired for USD $1 billion, and later served as Chief Executive Officer of Emhance, a gameplay testing business that worked with Activision Blizzard King.

Her comments focused on the isolation many first-time company leaders face in the earliest stages of building a business.

“What led me to EWOR were my lonely nights as a pre-seed CEO, when I sat alone with decisions, turning to AI for answers when what I really needed was a founder who'd been where I was,” said Madding. “That's what we're building: the world's best product for founders, so they can pour their energy into the work only they can do - basically the support I had dreamt of when I was CEO.”

Brett joins as Chief Investment Officer and is relocating from Cape Town to San Francisco. She previously founded or helped build businesses in health and education, including Batelle, Upstream and PreSeed Fertility, EWOR said.

According to the organisation, Batelle was built with a unicorn founder and a team of 60. Upstream ran a pilot with US Navy SEALs, while PreSeed Fertility built a database covering about 10% of registered sperm donors in the US.

“My whole career has been about beginnings, from conception to early childhood health, and the lesson never changes: the further upstream you go, the higher the impact,” said Brett. “Joining EWOR, I get to work at the most upstream point there is, supporting founders from as early as the idea stage, when the right help changes everything that follows.”

Fellowship model

EWOR said its acceptance rate is 0.1%, placing it among the most selective programmes for startup founders. The group operates remotely first and backs founders without requiring them to relocate, which it presents as a contrast with more conventional accelerator structures.

The current cohort and recent fellows show the breadth of founders the organisation is targeting. Recent admissions include Martin Varsavsky, who is building Certuma; Lars Hinrichs, who is building Simsalasim; Maya Polackal, who is building EOMIND; Carter Laren, who is building Sprite; and Thiri Shwesin Aung, who is building Nyxium.

EWOR also pointed to previous fellows including Ricky Knox, Alfons Huber, Jörgen Tveit and Leonard T. Dorlöchter. It said those companies have achieved outcomes ranging from large pre-seed financings to multi-billion-dollar valuations.

The San Francisco appointments suggest EWOR wants to turn rising US demand into a deeper operating presence in the city that remains the centre of startup investing. As Ferguson put it, founders need “support from best-in-class mentors, access to the San Francisco startup ecosystem, and a superb global network”.