Alliance

Alliance is a New York based accelerator for crypto and fintech founders, and this launch marks the kickoff of ALL18, its 18th three-month cohort. Twenty teams have been selected to go through the program , following the firm's usual pattern of highly selective batches. Alliance describes itself as a boutique startup accelerator that runs three times per year, selecting fewer than 1 in 200 teams and providing capital, domain-specific mentorship, and introductions . The program matters for anyone tracking early stage crypto because Alliance has become one of the more established filters in the space. It was founded in 2020 by Imran Khan, Jacob Franek, and Qiao Wang under the original name DeFi Alliance, and has since accelerated more than 200 startups across a dozen prior cohorts . Cohorts combine in-person and remote programming, with lectures, one-to-one mentorship, weekly check-ins, and a final demo day , all oriented toward getting teams to product-market fit rather than just to a token launch. For founders, ALL18 is the signal that applications for future batches remain competitive and that the Alliance network is actively placing another twenty companies into the market over the next quarter. For investors and operators, it is a preview of the crypto and fintech teams likely to surface at demo day and in the fundraising cycle that follows.