Pond is the market infrastructure for the new startup economy. Verified founders raise capital, acquire customers, and access 20,000+ contributors in one place. · Markets: Stripe-verified metrics + Vault-protected funding. One startup raised $150K in 3 minutes. · Bounties: 10,000+ submissions, $36K+ distributed. Ethereum Foundation, GPTZero, PhotoBase. · AI Growth Agent: CRM, pipeline, and GTM on autopilot. 400+ startups · 154 countries · Archetype & Coinbase Ventures.
Hey 👋 I'm Dylan, founder of Pond.
The idea came from a simple observation:
AI has made building startups 10x faster, while the pace of startup commercialization—fundraising, go-to-market, and execution—has barely changed.
So we built Pond: a platform where founders can raise their first round from anywhere in the world, and a community of 10,000+ people ready to help solve startup challenges through a bounty-based network.
The moment that validated everything: a startup on Pond raised $150K in just 3 minutes, and we now have 100+ startups on the waitlist.
Not because of a great pitch deck.
Because their MRR and user growth spoke for themselves.
Notable investors have started using Pond to discover startups and source deals personally, including a former Accel investor. (Accel has backed companies such as Facebook, Anthropic, Spotify, and many others.)
Pond helps startups around the world launch their first fundraising round in as little as 5 minutes and get backed by investors globally. Founders can raise multiple rounds on Pond or go on to raise from traditional VCs in the future.
Think of Pond as an online accelerator for your business—built to help founders turn traction into capital. Pond supports founders throughout the fundraising process and helps them scale afterward.
We’re backed by multiple Tier 1 investors, including Archetype, Coinbase Ventures, and 30+ angel investors. Our backers include founders of unicorn companies, the co-founder of one of the world’s leading digital asset infrastructure providers, a co-author of the foundational GPT paper, and other leading founders, operators, and investors.
Happy to answer anything about how Pond works, what we’ve learned from supporting 400+ startups and investors on the platform, or why we believe the startup economy is the next major platform wave after Amazon and TikTok.
AMA 🙏
How does the verification work for founders, I want to know what gets checked and how often is it refreshed?
The hardest part is usually getting those first customers. How the GTM side performs compared to the fundraising side?
The description is a bit confusing) Am I understanding correctly that your platform can provide users for testing?
I have a travel AI, and right now we're trying to run a blind comparison test of our responses against other models. We can prepare the response dataset ourselves, but finding test participants across different countries is still an unsolved problem. Is that something you can help with?
Great combo Dylan! Got it the fundraising side, but what about GTM? Do you help to get first early adopters??
Nice concept. Do the bounties help close enterprise deals or are they more about early traction?
Love the global angle. Opening access to founders regardless of geography could unlock a lot of talent that traditional venture networks often miss.
Congrats on the launch! Bringing fundraising, customer acquisition, and contributor networks together in one platform solves a surprisingly fragmented problem for founders.
About Pond on Product Hunt
“Fundraising, GTM, and bounties for startups”
Pond launched on Product Hunt on June 12th, 2026 and earned 190 upvotes and 26 comments, earning #3 Product of the Day. Pond is the market infrastructure for the new startup economy. Verified founders raise capital, acquire customers, and access 20,000+ contributors in one place. · Markets: Stripe-verified metrics + Vault-protected funding. One startup raised $150K in 3 minutes. · Bounties: 10,000+ submissions, $36K+ distributed. Ethereum Foundation, GPTZero, PhotoBase. · AI Growth Agent: CRM, pipeline, and GTM on autopilot. 400+ startups · 154 countries · Archetype & Coinbase Ventures.
Pond was featured in Marketing (464.7k followers), Artificial Intelligence (470.8k followers) and Fundraising (1.4k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 173.8k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Pond?
Pond was hunted by Dylan Zhang. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how Pond stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Dylan Zhang