Zora Labs Founders Demo Day - Cohort 1
9 early-stage founders. 12 weeks of execution. One afternoon to show what they built and learnt.
Zora Labs is the flagship execution lab of Wicked Innovation Labs (WIL), operating under the Innovate Africa Fund. It works with early-stage founders who are building in real markets, with real constraints.
Cohort 1 ran for 12 weeks. Early-stage African founders, working across health, technology, climate, education, civic innovation, and agribusiness, were put through a structured process of bottleneck diagnosis, targeted experimentation, and evidence-based decision making. They weren't coached to pitch better. They were pushed to get clearer.
On the 7th of April, these founders will pitch. This event is delivered in collaboration with She Leads Africa, TechQuest, Bridge for Billions, and Spurt.
What to Expect
Each founder has five minutes to present and three minutes to respond to questions from two judges. The session runs entirely online.
Who Should Attend
Investors, fund managers, accelerator teams, and ecosystem actors interested in early-stage signal.
Fellow founders and practitioners who want to see what execution-first product building looks like in practice.
Anyone who has ever wondered what founders look like when they have actually been put under pressure.
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, 7 April 2026
Time: 12 PM WAT | 11 AM GMT | 2 PM EAT
Platform: Google Meet (link shared upon registration)
Format: 9 pitches × (5 mins + 3 mins Q&A)
About Wicked Innovation Labs
WIL is an execution and learning lab built for the earliest stage of venture building. Operating under the Innovate Africa Fund, WIL works upstream of accelerators and programmes to surface execution quality before capital is deployed. Zora Labs is its flagship lab, spanning Zora Enterprise Labs and Zora Health Labs.
Learn more: innovateafricafund.com/wickedlabs