When we got the email from Techstars, we knew this wasn’t just about joining a program, it was about being seen. Being seen as African founders building something important for the world.
Meet Jennifer and Ajoke, the founders of Bloccpay, a borderless payroll platform redefining how the world works and gets paid.
Bloccpay makes it easy for global businesses to pay teams anywhere, instantly, in stablecoins, while empowering freelancers to get paid without borders and truly enjoy the value of their money, wherever they live.
But Bloccpay didn’t start as a grand idea; it began with frustration; the pain of experiencing talented people struggle to get paid for honest work, just because of where they live.
That’s why this milestone with Techstars feels so special. The Techstars Founder Catalyst is a ten-week virtual program for early-stage founders building chain-agnostic solutions or integrating with the Cardano blockchain; helping founders like us create solutions that promote interoperability, speed, efficiency, and better user experiences across Web3.
The Problem That Sparked Bloccpay
In 2021, Jennifer was working remotely with international clients, and every payday was a battle. Her earnings would bounce between wallets, exchanges, and banks, and somehow, she’d always end up losing money along the way.
“If I wanted to send money to my Nigerian account, I’d lose nearly half of it to conversion rates,” Jennifer recalls. “I’d have to send my salary to a friend abroad with a USD account, who would then convert it to stablecoins and send it to my exchange wallet. It was stressful and inefficient.”
That experience changed everything.
“At that moment, I knew stablecoins would be a game changer,” she says. “I just wanted to invoice, get paid, and actually keep what I earned without jumping through hoops.”
From that realization, the first spark of Bloccpay was born, not entirely from ambition, but from a necessity.
Birthing The Vision
That year, Jennifer shared her frustrations with Ajoke. Both had been navigating the global work ecosystem, and both knew firsthand how broken cross-border payments were.
Ajoke recalls that evening vividly. “What if we built something to fix this?”
They started small, talking to friends, other freelancers, and business owners. And what they discovered confirmed what they already suspected: everyone was struggling with the same thing.
Businesses were tired of manually managing payments to global teams in multiple currencies. Freelancers were tired of losing 10%+ of their income to fees and bad exchange rates.
There was a clear gap and they were determined to fill it and in 2022, we revisited the conversation and began ideation even though we were two countries apart.
Validating the Idea
Instead of rushing to build, they started listening.
Jennifer spoke to founders, HR leaders, and finance heads of companies already experimenting with crypto payroll, like Nestcoin and Helicarrier. “Eighty to ninety percent of the people we spoke to said payroll was still a major pain, especially when teams were paid in different currencies or on different crypto networks,” Jennifer explains.
Those conversations helped shape what would become Bloccpay’s foundation; a simple, automated crypto payroll platform powered by stablecoins that helped businesses pay and manage global teams without friction.
It wasn’t just a product idea anymore; it was a clear, validated solution to a problem affecting thousands of businesses and talents across emerging markets.
Like most startups, Bloccpay’s journey hasn’t been a straight line.
There were moments of doubt, exhaustion, and heartbreak including losing a significant amount of money in 2023 to a scam, which nearly wiped out their savings but they kept building.
They bootstrapped, ran private beta tests, refined the product, and grew their customer base organically. Every milestone from the first successful transaction to their first testimonial was proof that they were solving something real.
The Techstars Moment
In August 2025, they got an email from the Techstars team about a new Founder Catalyst Program, in partnership with Cardano, focused specifically on Web3 and blockchain startups.
They applied and were shortlisted among the top 30 out of hundreds of global startups. After pitching to the Techstars and Cardano team, they received the news that would change everything.
“It was September 25th, around 6:51 p.m.,” Ajoke recalls. “I was sitting in my car after work, completely exhausted. Then I opened the email ‘Congratulations.’ I screamed. It felt like validation, like someone finally saw us.”
For Jennifer, the feeling was mutual:
“It wasn’t just validation. It felt like structure, like we were about to level up.”
The Techstars Experience & What This Means
Joining Techstars became a turning point for both the founders and the company.
“We’ve had mentors who’ve built and exited multiple startups, product experts who’ve helped us simplify the user experience, and even had the privilege of having a fireside chat with SEC Commissioner and leader of the SEC's Crypto Task Force, Hester M. Peirce,” Jennifer shares.
From refining their go-to-market strategy to developing pricing models and improving product architecture, the Bloccpay team immersed themselves in every lesson.
But more than that, Techstars brought humanity into the process.
“It’s not just work,” Ajoke adds. “It’s also emotional support. One week, I couldn’t go through with a pitch because I was grieving. The team paused everything to check in on me. They reminded me that behind every startup are humans first and that kind of empathy means the world.”
Through mentorship, structure, and a global network, Techstars gave Bloccpay not just validation but direction, clarity, and confidence.
For Jennifer and Ajoke, this milestone is deeply personal.
“It feels like we finally have a foot in the door and a seat at the table,” Ajoke says.
The validation from Techstars has opened new opportunities: investor interest, partnerships, and global visibility. But beyond that, it’s reinforced their belief in why they started Bloccpay in the first place, to make borderless work fairer and simpler for everyone.
“We’re not building another fintech product,” Jennifer reflects. “We’re building the infrastructure for the future of work"
“We’re proud to be African founders building something for the world,” Ajoke says. “Because the future of work is global, and it’s only fair that payments catch up.” Checkout what we're building at Bloccpay