Draper University Launches In-Person Accelerator with $70K Seed Capital
Draper University has launched a new residency program in partnership with the Cardano Foundation and Orion Fund. The Apex Growth Accelerator is a 10-week, fully in-person program in Silicon Valley that offers up to $70,000 in seed capital for a target 3.5% equity stake.
The program focuses on high-growth financial verticals, specifically real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and institutional decentralized finance (DeFi). The goal is to build foundational rails for institutional and mainstream financial adoption at the intersection of TradFi and DeFi.
Founders will complete the core 10-week residency on-site, with an optional four-week extension available afterwards. Program officials emphasize that in-person proximity is critical for distributed decentralized teams, allowing founders to make decisions faster and accelerate investor relationships.