01 / Days 1–2
Select
Problem selection, customer discovery, founder and team formation.
Residency
Overture
Seven intensive days at the beginning of a company.
Build with AI. Get feedback from customers, founders and investors. Leave with evidence — or a clean stop.
- Length
- 7 working days
- Entry
- No idea required
- Work
- Four problem streams
- Now
- Applications open
- Where
- South Africa
The residency
What the seven days are.
Select a problem. Build. Put it in front of people. Decide. That is the week.
02 / Days 3–4
Build
Build, deploy and test the core assumptions.
03 / Days 5–6
Sell
Sell, onboard users and iterate against evidence.
04 / Day 7
Decide
Continue, pivot, recombine or stop.
Founder journey
Watch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)In practice
What the week produces.
You leave with
- A working product in front of real people
- Evidence: conversations, users, or a no
- A decision: continue, pivot, or stop
You do not leave with
- A certificate
- A demo day
- A promise of funding
Logistics
- Seven working days. Show up for the week.
Four streams
What you work on.
Work, connectivity, local markets, and inference and compute. You do not need a finished idea.
01 / Work
Getting work, and changing it
Create work people will take, and move people into it.
02 / Connectivity
Access to the internet
Make scarce bandwidth useful — products that assume the real network.
03 / Local markets
How small businesses scale
A Stripe Atlas for local markets — make a real company possible.
04 / Inference & compute
How to serve models and data
Answers that do not have to go to a foreign region and back.
In writing
This is what the week looks like.
Every founder posts the same three things, on a 48-hour clock: what moved, what is next, and the constraint. The board is for people in the cycle.
Who we want
Founder-ready. Not pitch-ready.
You might have no idea yet, an early thesis, a prototype, or the first signs of traction. What matters is how you operate.
We look for people who are
High agency
You make things happen without waiting for permission.
Fast-moving
You prefer building, testing and learning over extended planning.
Open-minded
You can change your mind when the evidence changes.
Founder-ready
You are prepared to commit serious time and energy if you find something worth pursuing.
Current partners
Used in Overture
- Cursor
- OpenAI
- Vercel
After the residency
Residency. Then Grow. Then Scale.
The week decides if a company should exist. Grow and Scale are for the ones that do.
RESIDENCY / Founder formation
Residency
7 intensive days
The week. Test a problem, build with AI, get real-world feedback. Decide whether the company should continue.
Outcome. Evidence that the company should continue.
GROW / Traction and revenue
Grow
Intensive, bounded
For companies with early signal. Work intensively on product, customers, distribution, revenue and the path to seed.
Outcome. Customers, revenue, repeatability and seed readiness.
SCALE / Growth and capital
Scale
Ongoing
For companies with repeatable traction. Access growth operators, customers, talent, strategic partners and later-stage capital.
Outcome. A company capable of compounding.
Frontier leverage
Build with frontier leverage.
A core part of Overture is using modern AI and developer infrastructure to compress the time between problem and production.
Technology companies participate because Overture introduces tools at the moment new startups choose their stack. Relationship labels stay accurate: used in Overture, ecosystem support, or technology partner.
Cursor
Development and creation environment.
OpenAI Codex
Agentic execution for software building, testing and technical work.
Vercel
Deployment and production infrastructure.
How they take part
Credits and licensesTechnical expertsStartup benefitsEngineering supportDistributionLater: cash partnershipCapital / Overture Signal
See the company before the fundraise.
Investors can follow strong Overture companies without attending every early founder session. Early-stage investors become relevant during Grow. Growth investors stay close until Scale — when revenue, repeatable traction and later-stage capital matter.
Signal without another meeting.
Update fields
- Company
- What they are building
- Product status
- Customers
- Revenue
- Growth
- Key change since last update
- Current constraint
- Next milestone
Institutional partners
Participate where companies are being formed.
Banks, telecommunications companies, major enterprises, development institutions and other ecosystem funders can support Overture financially and strategically.
Founding Partner
Supports the initial creation of Overture and participates across the first residency.
Growth Partner
Supports companies with scaling, international expansion and later-stage capital.
Anchor Partner
Participates across Overture throughout the year with capital, problems and access.
Thesis Partner
Supports exploration around a commercially important area.
AI for work / unemployment and transitionAI for connectivity / internet accessAI for local market productivityInference and compute — serve models and data at low latency in high-demand, low-resource environments
How they take part
- Capital
- Domain expertise
- Customers and important problems
- Distribution and strategic access
They receive
- Access to exceptional emerging founders
- Company formation and new ventures
- Ecosystem intelligence
- Relationships with investors and technology companies
Operating company
Overture compounds through companies.
Three economic layers. Partners fund the work. Embedded execution aligns Overture with the companies it helps form. Portfolio ownership is the long position.
01
Partnership revenue
Institutional and technology partners fund the operating company, the residency and programming.
02
Embedded execution
When Overture materially co-builds selected Grow companies, Overture can receive equity or aligned economic participation.
03
Portfolio upside
Ownership in successful Overture companies creates long-term asymmetric value.
System roles
Who does what.
The ecosystem is specific. Each participant has a job. Network is not the product.
| Participant | Role |
|---|---|
| Founder | Builds the company |
| Overture | Selects, forms and co-builds |
| Institutional Partner | Cash, problems, customers, domain access |
| Technology Partner | Tools, infrastructure, technical leverage and eventually cash |
| Capital Partner | Investment, judgment and downstream funding |
| Growth Partner | Scaling, international expansion and later-stage capital |
Overture Residency
From first move to company.
Seven days. Then Grow, only if the signal holds.