Philosophy
The best companies rarely look obvious at the beginning. They look small, strange, or unreasonably ambitious — and they are almost always short of the two things that would help most: infrastructure and access.
Both are solved problems for a company at scale and nearly unreachable for a company at week one. That gap is arbitrary, it decides who gets to keep building, and closing it is the entire reason Stackpass exists.
Mission
To be the first and most useful partner to a generation of technical founders — from the first line of code to the day the company stands on its own — without ever asking for a share of what they build.
The model
Partners fund the program because reaching great startups early is genuinely valuable to them. Founders get the credits, tools, mentors, and introductions for free. We take no equity, charge no fees, and answer to the founders rather than to a fund clock.
Infrastructure is abundant. Access to it, at the exact moment a founder cannot yet pay for it, is not.
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Open the door early
We support teams before the market will, at the stage where help actually changes the outcome.
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Never take equity
Free means free. No stake, no fees, no conversion clause buried in the terms.
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Grow with the company
The pass expands as you scale rather than expiring at the end of a cohort.
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Say it plainly
A fast no is more valuable than a slow maybe. Three business days, either way.
- $4.2B
- Credits & perks unlocked
- 12,000+
- Startups in the network
- 500+
- Partner tools & vendors
- 90
- Countries represented
01History
Eleven years, four chapters.
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2014
The first pass
Two people, one office, and a single negotiated cloud-credits deal we passed straight through to forty startups who could not have afforded it otherwise.
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2017
The marketplace
Fifty partners, one dashboard, and the first version of instant activation. Mentorship begins as a favour and quickly becomes a program.
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2021
Going global
London opens and the network passes 5,000 startups across 60 countries. Capital introductions become a formal track rather than an occasional email.
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2024
Foundry and beyond
Singapore opens, the Foundry cohort launches, and the network crosses 12,000 startups and $4.2B in credits and perks unlocked. Still no equity taken.
02Global network
Local teams, global network.
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San Francisco
Headquarters
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New York
Fintech & enterprise
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London
Europe & Israel
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Singapore
Asia-Pacific
03Ecosystem partners
Who funds the pass.
More than 500 companies underwrite the program because reaching great startups early is worth more to them than the revenue they forgo. That is why membership is free, why we take no equity, and why we can say no to a partner whose offer is not genuinely good for founders.
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01
Cloud & infrastructure
Every major cloud, plus the compute, data, and AI platforms underneath modern products.
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02
Software & tooling
Developer tools, design, analytics, security, payments, and the rest of the daily stack.
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03
Capital & services
Angels, funds, banks, legal, accounting, and the professional services every company needs.
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04
Founders of the network
Alumni who came through the program and now mentor, hire, and invest inside it.
04Careers
Work here.
We hire rarely and slowly. The team is deliberately small for the size of the network, because every hire changes how it feels to be a founder inside the program — and because software should do the parts that software is good at.
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Apply
Partnerships Lead, Cloud & AI
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Apply
Program Manager, Founder Success
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Apply
Community Lead, EMEA
Nothing listed that fits? Write to hello@stackpass.io anyway. We have created roles for the right person more than once.