TechTown · For Syrian founders

Build your idea,
launch your company.

We take you from an idea in your head to a registered company with a bank account, taking payments from customers anywhere in the world. Free to enter, and open to founders inside Syria and across the diaspora.

Explore the programmes How the journey works
The Seed
4 days
Cost to you
Free to enter
Language
Arabic
Open to
Syria and the diaspora

Why now

The wall came down. Nobody has built the bridge.

Syria has just reopened to the world economy. A generation of engineers, designers and operators who spent fourteen years locked out of ordinary commerce can suddenly, in principle, sell to anyone.

In practice, almost none of them know how. There is no visible first step, no local example to copy, and no institution whose job it is to walk a founder from a half-formed idea to a live business with money coming in.

That is the entire job TechTown exists to do. Not another training program that ends in a certificate — a path that ends in a company, a bank account, and a first paying customer.

Founder voices

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A quote from a founder who went through the programme goes here.

Founder name
Founder & CEO, Company name

No group has graduated yet, so there are no real testimonials. This section gets filled in after the first intake.

The programme

Four days, and four questions that have to be answered.

Not a syllabus. What a founder actually needs in order to start: a team, a company that works on the inside, a business model that can be funded, and a product you can put in front of someone.

Day one

Building the team

Who you need beside you, how to find them, and how to split roles and equity before the split becomes a problem.

Day two

The company's functions

What has to work inside the company: finance, marketing, legal, and the documentation and records each of those needs.

Day three

Business model and fundraising

How the company makes its money, how to build a business model that convinces, and how to raise funding and from whom.

Day four

Proof of concept to MVP

How to build a proof of concept that shows the idea works, then a first usable version you can put in a customer's hands.

The four days are a beginning, not an end. After them we carry on with founders on setting up the US parent company and switching on payments, and those who get real traction are invited into the Fruits.

Targets, not results

What we are aiming for in year one

60
Founders through three intakes
30
Companies actually registered
20
Businesses taking their first payment

These are the numbers we are working towards in our first year, not results we have achieved. TechTown is at the beginning, and we would rather say so plainly than show figures that have not happened yet.

Programmes

Discover our programmes

Two tracks, because founders arrive at very different stages. One is wide and teaches. One is narrow and builds alongside you.

Applications open Entrepreneurship

The Seed

Four intensive days covering what a founder needs in order to start: how to build a team, how the company's functions work across finance, marketing, legal and documentation, how to build a business model and raise funding, and how to get from a proof of concept to a first usable version. We teach and coach; you build. You own your company and every decision in it.

Application deadlineTo be announced
Start dateTo be announced
Duration4 days
DeliveryHybrid — online with meetups
PacingInstructor-paced
LanguageArabic
Cost to founderFree to enter
Apply now See the journey
Invitation only Acceleration

The Fruits

Our team works alongside you every day — writing code, setting up the company, designing the product, opening doors to the first customers. We are, in practice, a co-founder. Nobody enters the Fruits cold; companies are invited in after they have proven something real, usually through the Seed.

Application deadlineNot applicable
How you get inBy invitation, usually from the Seed
DurationOpen-ended — 9 to 18 months
DeliveryDaily work with the team
Places2 to 4 companies
LanguageArabic
Cost to founderNo cash cost
Get in touch

What you get

What you walk away with.

Not a certificate and a group photo. This is the list of what is actually in your hands when it ends.

A US parent company

A legal entity abroad sitting above the Syrian one, so you can sell to a customer anywhere in the world without anyone asking where you are from.

Payments that work

Cards from customers anywhere, and money that actually arrives, in US dollars — the exact bottleneck that stops most founders here.

A technical foundation, ready

Hosting, database, login and analytics set up for you instead of weeks of configuration, on free tiers that carry your whole first year.

The company's paperwork

The templates and records each function needs: financial books, the legal documents, marketing basics — ready, rather than from scratch.

A business model and funding materials

A business model that has been built and tested against questioning, plus what you actually need to sit in front of an investor.

Mentors and a peer group

Founders who went before you and give their time, and a group of peers that stays with you after the four days end.

None of it costs you cash. What you give up is equity in your company, and it differs between the two tracks — the full detail is in the questions below. We win when you win, not before.

Events

Meetups, workshops and a demo day.

Sessions with founders and operators, hands-on workshops, and at the end of every intake a demo day where founders stand up in front of partners and investors.

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No events are scheduled yet. These cards get replaced with real ones as they are announced.

Resources

The playbook, open to everyone.

Our aim is to write, test and publish a playbook for how a Syrian founder gets from an idea to a paying customer — so the sixty-first founder does not have to work it out alone.

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Guide

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Nothing has been published yet. The cards above only show the shape of the section.

Partners and providers

Credits and discounts you get.

Startup tooling is expensive, and more so for a founder starting from nothing. These are the programmes we help you qualify for and apply to properly.

Stripe
Incorporation and payments
$2,500 in credits

Stripe credits for your first year after incorporating through Atlas, alongside more than $50,000 in discounts on other tools such as Mercury, Xero and AWS.

Supabase
Database, accounts and storage
6 months free

Six months on the Team plan through the Startup Program, worth roughly $3,600, with no equity given up. The free tier alone covers most projects at the start.

Cloudflare
Hosting, network and security
$5,000 to $250,000

Credits across four tiers, starting at $5,000 for self-funded companies and rising as the company grows. Core security and networking features are free at every tier.

Gemini
AI, from Google
$2,000 to $350,000

Google Cloud credits spendable on the Gemini API: from $2,000 at the MVP stage up to $350,000 for AI-first companies.

More than $13,000

The credits and discounts available to you at the earliest tiers alone, before the company has grown at all. As it grows, the ceilings at Cloudflare and Google Cloud run into the hundreds of thousands.

Needs confirming

TechTown is not yet a formal partner of any of these companies. The figures above are their own published startup programmes, they vary by company stage, and the decision to grant them rests with the provider alone. Every figure and condition needs confirming with each provider before this site launches.

How we select

Three steps, and a clear answer.

No committees, no long wait, no twenty-slide pitch deck. You apply, we talk for ten minutes, then you find out.

1

Application

A short form: who you are, what your idea is, and how far you have taken it. We do not ask for a business plan or documents.

2

A ten-minute call

A short call or meeting. We want to hear the idea from you, and to understand whether you are serious about carrying it forward.

3

Acceptance or rejection

A clear answer either way. If it is a rejection, we tell you why, and what would make a future application stronger.

Questions

Equity, ownership, and what we take.

The question every founder asks first, answered here in full and without hedging.

How much equity does TechTown take?

In the Seed: 3–5% of your company's equity, for four days of teaching and setup, plus the support that follows.

In the Fruits: 15–30% of your company's equity, for a team working beside you daily as a co-founder, for nine to eighteen months.

Nothing beyond that. No entry fee, no subscription, and no cut of your revenue.

Why is the gap between the two so large?

Because the work is completely different. In the Seed we teach and coach and you build — four intensive days, then ongoing support. In the Fruits we write code with you, incorporate the company, design the product and open doors to your first customers, every day, for nine to eighteen months.

The Fruits stake is priced as a co-founder, because that is the work. The Seed stake is priced as a programme, because that is what it is.

What decides where I land inside the range?

How much support you actually draw on. A founder arriving with only an idea who needs everything sits at the top of the range; a founder with a working product and a team who needs incorporation and payments sits at the bottom. The number is agreed before you sign, not after.

Do I pay anything in cash?

No. Entry is free on both tracks — no fee, no subscription. The equity is the only consideration, and it does not come out of your pocket but out of your company's future value, which means we earn nothing if you do not succeed.

You still carry external costs every founder in the world pays, such as company registration fees. We help you reduce those through the provider programmes.

Who owns the company and makes the decisions?

You do. The overwhelming majority of the equity stays in your hands on both tracks, and every operating decision stays yours. We are a minority shareholder and an adviser; we hold no veto over what you build or who you hire.

Will this stake put off a future investor?

The Seed stake (3–5%) is within the range accelerators take worldwide, and an investor does not usually stop at it.

The Fruits stake is large, and it is only fair to say so plainly: a later investor may ask about it. That is why we only invite companies into the Fruits where we genuinely work as co-founders, and why we discuss the effect on future rounds before signing rather than after.

When does the equity transfer?

At incorporation, inside the founding paperwork itself, under a written agreement you read and can take to a lawyer before signing. No verbal understandings and no terms that surface later.

What if I walk away, or the company fails?

You keep your company and everything you built. We keep our stake in an entity worth nothing — which is the point: our risk is tied to yours. We do not claim any sum from you if you stop.

Do I have to be inside Syria?

No. Applications are open to Syrian founders inside Syria and across the diaspora. The programme runs in Arabic, mostly remotely, with in-person meetups wherever we can hold them.

Apply

Apply to the next Seed intake.

Applications are open to founders inside Syria and across the diaspora. You do not need an existing company or a full team — you need an idea and some seriousness about it.

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Full name
Email address
City
Project or profile link
Describe your idea in three lines

A real application form needs a server to receive submissions, and none is wired up yet. The application channel will be announced alongside the date of the first intake.