We're thrilled to be able to present the first ever recipients of the Nailwal Fellowship, a cohort of founders representing web3's brightest stars.
Meet our Fellows
The selection process resulted in a less than 1.5% acceptance rate, with candidates being selected after a months-long, multi-round interview process. Now, we're excited to introduce the following eight individuals chosen for the program:
Adam Achebe, a Stanford Computer Science (CS) undergraduate dropping out to tackle the liquidity challenges in the commodities industry
Ananya Kandelwal, a top 0.1% Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) Indian student creating new payments rails for global commerce
Evgenii Danilenko, an Ethereum Foundation core developer now working on advanced cross-chain infrastructure
Joe Frazier, a former CTO of an NFT aggregator now focused on building new data indexing infrastructure
J Paul Meyer, an ex-Goldman, Harvard graduate creating on-chain financial products
Remi Gai, a repeat founder utilizing fully homomorphic encryption for a new L1 solution
Shashank Yadav, an IIT Masters student and ML Engineer at Goldman creating a marketplace for reliable AI data
Tomas Taylor, an HBS graduate and former Dapper Labs employee creating an open, accessible platform for AI agents
Each Nailwal Fellow will receive a $50,000 grant, funded personally from Sandeep Nailwal, and comprehensive support from the team at Symbolic Capital, including technical resources, mentorship from industry veterans, and access to a network of investors and partners.
Two Open Spots for Female Candidates
For those who have followed the Fellowship announcements, you might recall that we said there would be 10 Fellows, but only selected 8. We're intentionally reserving the two remaining spots for qualified female applicants. To be very clear, web3 has historically been dominated by men and we want to change that with our Fellows.
Our goal with the Fellowship was to create a cohort that was reflective of all the types of builders we want to see in this space. Unfortunately, we simply did not do a good enough job recruiting female applicants in this cohort and, with a revamped outreach process, we are committed to addressing this head on.
Over the coming months, we'll maintain a rolling application process for female applicants (apply HERE) while making concerted efforts to engage with and recruit from women-focused DAOs and developer communities. We've begun by working with SheFi and H.E.R. DAO to interview more women builders and are working on further partnerships to increase our reach.
We're excited about what the future holds for these Fellows and the program as a whole. If you'd like to learn more about the Nailwal Fellowship, more info can be found here: https://www.nailwalfellowship.org/.