EWOR has appointed a new leadership team in San Francisco after applications from US founders increased 237% over the past 12 months, the company announced on Sept. 22. The team includes technology entrepreneur and investor Charles Ferguson, former Emhance CEO Katie Madding and three-time founder Gigi Brett.

The expansion gives EWOR a permanent leadership presence in one of the world’s most concentrated startup markets. The company operates a selective founder fellowship built around individual mentoring and funding rather than the fixed cohorts and standardized programs commonly used by startup accelerators.

EWOR said its fellows can receive up to $600,000 in capital and weekly one-to-one mentoring from founders associated with companies including Adjust, ProGlove and SumUp. The program is primarily virtual, allowing participants to remain in their existing markets instead of relocating.

“Talent is spread evenly across the world. Opportunity is not,” said Daniel Dippold, founder and CEO 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.”

The company reports an acceptance rate of 0.1%. It also said founders who joined the fellowship this year raised an average of $10 million, while 25% of recent participants secured funding at nine-figure valuations during the past six months. These figures were provided by EWOR and have not been independently verified.

Technology, product and investment experience

Ferguson brings experience spanning software entrepreneurship, public policy, filmmaking and early-stage technology investment. He sold web-authoring software company FrontPage to Microsoft in 1996, holds a doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has written five books.

He won an Academy Award for Inside Job, his documentary examining the 2008 global financial crisis. His early-stage AI investments include Etched, Perplexity, CopilotKit and Paradigm. Ferguson has also served as a Brookings Institution fellow, a board member of the French-American Foundation and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Great founders need the same things: support from best-in-class mentors, access to the San Francisco startup ecosystem, and a superb global network,” Ferguson said. He added that EWOR’s US growth would allow the fellowship to connect its global network more closely with San Francisco’s startup ecosystem.

Madding joins the leadership team with a background in product development and early-stage company building. She was Adjust’s chief product officer and its third US employee before Palo Alto-based AppLovin acquired the mobile analytics company for $1 billion in 2021.

She later became CEO of Emhance, Google’s official partner for game playtesting. Madding developed the company from an initial concept into a recurring-revenue business serving customers including Activision Blizzard King, which is owned by Microsoft.

“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,” Madding said. She said the fellowship aims to give early-stage founders the practical support she had needed while running a company.

Brett has been appointed chief investment officer and will relocate from Cape Town to San Francisco. She has founded three businesses in health and education, including Batelle, Upstream and PreSeed Fertility.

Batelle was built with a unicorn founder and a team of 60. Upstream developed a preconception health product for men and conducted a pilot involving US Navy SEALs. PreSeed Fertility has assembled a database that EWOR says covers about 10% of registered sperm donors in the United States.

“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,” Brett said. She described early founder support as a point at which focused guidance can influence the subsequent direction of a company.

Fellowship targets founders at the earliest stage

EWOR’s recently accepted founders include Martin Varsavsky, who is developing AI healthcare company Certuma, and Xing founder Lars Hinrichs, who is building AI-native mobile carrier Simsalasim. Harvard Medical School and Boston University researcher Maya Polackal is developing frontier AI laboratory EOMIND.

The latest intake also includes Carter Laren, a serial entrepreneur and angel investor building AI-agent company Sprite, and Harvard-trained environmental scientist Thiri Shwesin Aung, founder of industrial and energy infrastructure platform Nyxium.

Previous fellows include Ricky Knox, a former unicorn founder associated with Azimo and Tandem Bank, and Alfons Huber, whose company REPS GmbH raised $23.6 million at a reported post-money valuation of $322 million. EWOR also cited Thaleron founder Jörgen Tveit, who raised a $15 million pre-seed round, and peaq founder Leonard T. Dorlöchter, whose company reached a reported valuation of $3.5 billion within two years of joining the fellowship.

EWOR plans to hold its first San Francisco Demo Day on Oct. 9. Ten founders are scheduled to present their businesses to an audience of investors as the fellowship expands its activities in the US market.