FI Japan/ Korea/ Taiwan Joint Global 2025 Fall Cohort Graduation

Join us as we celebrate the graduation of founders from the Founder Institute Japan, Korea, and Taiwan Joint Global Fall 2025 Cohort, a group of ambitious entrepreneurs building across borders, industries, and ecosystems.

This graduation marks the culmination of months of rigorous validation, iteration, and founder-first execution. You’ll hear from graduating founders as they share their journeys, insights, and next steps, alongside perspectives from experienced ecosystem leaders and investors shaping the future of startups in Asia and beyond.

- Welcome messages

- Intro about Founder Institute

- Opening speech from the keynote speaker

- Pitch of Graduate Founder 5 mins

- Founder Thoughts about joining the FI program

- Closing remarks, final messages from the local leaders

- Networking session on Airmeet

Jeffrey Paine – Founding Partner, Golden Gate Ventures

- Erdinc Ekinci - Founder, Investment Lead of Co-capital.vc, Co-Founder, CEO of Openfor.co, Managing Director of Founder Institute Japan/Korea/Taiwan

- Yu Li Shein, Co-Director, Founder Institute Korea/Japan & /Taiwan Co-founder, COO, Openfor.co, inc

- Founders & Aspiring Entrepreneurs looking for real-world startup lessons

- Investors & Mentors seeking early-stage, globally minded teams

- Startup Ecosystem Builders & Enthusiasts curious about cross-border innovation in Asia

Whether you’re an aspiring founder, an investor scouting early-stage talent, or simply curious about what’s being built across Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, this event offers real stories, practical insights, and meaningful connections.

- Founder Institute: Founder Institute, which originated in Silicon Valley, is a founder and idea stage accelerator, and with its Founder Capital, backs the best performing FI alumni as early as the angel stage. FI has over 8K+ startup portfolio (Including leading e-learning platform Udemy, IPO in Nasdaq $3,8B) across 200 cities in 100 countries around the world.) We are also the largest mentor network in the world, with over 35,000 mentors, and our alumni have already raised over $2 billion in US dollars and have recently exceeded the 10K mark of investors network as the FI-Venture-Network.

- FI’s sister program, called VC Lab, helps launch aspiring investors into launching VC firms. As an accelerator that allows both sides of the table, 70% of the activities we do are advocacy of entrepreneurship and ecosystem creation, which means we do way more activity than the accelerator to promote entrepreneurship to solve real-world problems with entrepreneurship in an economically feasible way, build a company that grows into a venture-scale.

- Openfor.co: A “Global Partnership Accelerator” originated in Silicon Valley that combined with an online platform and marketplace for learning, building, launching, monetizing, and growing partner ecosystems and a collaborative community around you for achieving effective marketing, sales, community building, GTM, fundraising, and many more.

- Co-Capital: Pre-seed & Seed stage new firm that focuses on hands-on GTM, sales, and partnership support, focusing on English-speaking Asian founders who have global ambitions from day ONE. Domiciled in the USA, with regional appearances in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Utilizes partnerships with the GTM expert network and the venture partner network across 20 major hubs and a network of 35 other VC networks who are willing to co-back our founders!