Last week, I saw a headline that made me pause:
Tampa Bay Wave was ranked the #3 accelerator in the United States by TIME.
As a Tampa Bay Wave alum, I was incredibly proud to see the organization receive that recognition. But more than anything, it made me reflect on how much the Wave has meant to me personally and to the journey of DUKAPAQ.
In 2022, DUKAPAQ was still very early.
We were working through an idea, testing assumptions, figuring out our market, and trying to determine whether what we were building could become a real company. We didn’t have the benefit of hindsight. We didn’t know exactly where the company would take us. We certainly didn’t have the clarity that comes from years of operating a business.
What we did have was conviction.
And then we got accepted into Tampa Bay Wave’s inaugural FinTech|X Accelerator.
That experience became an important inflection point for us.
An accelerator that actually believes in founders
There are many excellent accelerators in the United States. Programs like Y Combinator and Techstars have helped create some of the world’s most important technology companies.
But Tampa Bay Wave occupies a somewhat different and, in my view, incredibly important position.
It is a nonprofit organization built around supporting entrepreneurs. And perhaps most importantly for an early-stage founder, its accelerator programs are zero-equity.
That distinction matters.
When you’re building a company at the earliest stages, every percentage point of ownership represents something. You’re still trying to figure out product-market fit, you’re still proving your business model, and you’re often operating with very limited resources.
Having access to experienced mentors, industry experts, investors, customers, business coaches, and an entrepreneurial community without having to give up ownership is an extraordinarily valuable proposition.
It creates a different kind of relationship between the accelerator and the founder.
The goal isn’t to own part of your company.
The goal is to help you build a company worth owning.
That philosophy resonated deeply with me.
DUKAPAQ’s journey started long before the company was incorporated
One of the things I appreciate most about looking back is realizing that DUKAPAQ wasn’t really born in 2022.
The company was the result of years of experimentation.
Before DUKAPAQ existed as a formal company, we were conducting market research and trying to understand the problems facing merchants in emerging markets. In 2021, our team conducted market discovery across hundreds of retailers in Kenya.
We were trying to answer a relatively simple question:
What would it take to build technology that actually works for the businesses that traditional technology companies often overlook?
That question eventually became the foundation for DUKAPAQ.
We incorporated the company in 2022, and not long afterward found ourselves in Tampa Bay Wave’s FinTech|X program.
At the time, I couldn’t have fully appreciated how important that experience would become.
From an idea to a company
The Wave gave us something that every early-stage founder needs: a forcing function.
It forced us to articulate what we were building.
It forced us to think more rigorously about our market.
It forced us to explain our business model to people who had no reason to believe in us.
And perhaps most importantly, it put us in a room with other founders who were going through the exact same uncertainty.
That community is difficult to quantify.
People talk about accelerators in terms of capital, investor introductions, mentors, Demo Days, and logos on a pitch deck.
Those things matter.
But there is another form of value that is harder to measure:
Knowing you’re not building alone.
That mattered enormously to me.
Four years later, the picture looks very different
Today, DUKAPAQ is a very different company than the one that entered Tampa Bay Wave in 2022.
We’ve spent years building, testing, learning, failing, iterating, and starting over.
We’ve expanded our technology from its early roots in Kenya toward a much broader global platform. We’ve continued developing our merchant operating system and payments infrastructure. We’ve built technology around the realities of independent businesses rather than simply trying to replicate what already exists.
And now, in 2026, DUKAPAQ is officially entering the U.S. market, beginning in Houston.
We’re building an AI-powered POS and merchant infrastructure platform designed to give independent businesses more control over their technology, payments, and data.
The company that is now preparing to compete in the U.S. market is almost unrecognizable compared with the company that entered Tampa Bay Wave four years ago.
But there is a direct line between the two.
That line is made up of people, experiences, lessons, and relationships.
The Wave is part of that history.
Why the TIME ranking matters
TIME’s recognition isn’t important simply because Tampa Bay Wave beat out hundreds of other programs.
It’s important because it validates a philosophy.
The startup ecosystem doesn’t have to be built exclusively around venture capital.
Not every founder needs to surrender equity at the earliest stages in order to access high quality support.
And world-class startup infrastructure doesn’t have to exist only in Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, or other traditional technology hubs.
Tampa Bay Wave has demonstrated that you can build an internationally relevant startup ecosystem from Tampa Bay.
And they’ve done it while remaining focused on the founders.
TIME’s recognition is therefore more than a ranking.
For those of us who have gone through the program, it feels like recognition of something we’ve experienced firsthand.
I’m proud to be a Wave alum
As founders, we’re often encouraged to focus exclusively on what’s next.
The next customer.
The next hire.
The next product release.
The next fundraise.
The next market.
That’s the nature of entrepreneurship.
But occasionally, it’s worth looking back.
Four years ago, DUKAPAQ was one of 16 companies selected for Tampa Bay Wave’s inaugural FinTech|X cohort.
Today, we’re building a company with ambitions that extend far beyond where we started.
There have been countless people and organizations that have contributed to that journey.
Tampa Bay Wave is one of them.
I am incredibly grateful to have been part of that first FinTech|X cohort, and I’m even more grateful to still be able to call myself a Tampa Bay Wave alum.
Congratulations to Linda Olson, the Tampa Bay Wave team, the mentors, partners, investors, and most importantly the founders who have helped build this community over the years.
TIME may have ranked Tampa Bay Wave #3 in America.
But for those of us who have experienced it from the inside, the real accomplishment is something much bigger:
They built a place where founders can come in with an idea, receive the support to turn that idea into a company, and leave with the opportunity to build something that can change the world.
I’m proud that DUKAPAQ’s story is part of that legacy.
And I’m excited about what comes next.