Blockdojo Reviews

Very shady startup accelerator with questionable portfolio

The website looks tempting but be warned that this is veering into scammer territory should be avoided by any self-respecting startup that wants to incorporate blockhain into their business model is looking for an accelerator or incubation program that helps them do that The team are incompetent wildly manipulative or both as we discovered This was very shocking to us because we have applied to countless other accelerators incubation programs in different countries none of them have been as horrendously bad as this UK-based accelerator Acceptances rejections Q A with them have always been straightforward concise which is the industry norm for these things We applied once got invited to a first interview only to be emailed at the last minute that spaces in the upcoming cohort were full we were welcome to apply for the next cohort with the tagline that we were waitlisted from a previous cohort As we discovered this wasn t a mistake or a one-off because it would happen multiple times to us other founders we knew that applied to this program It was the first sign of unprofessionalism we encountered because it s dishonest to use bait switch tactics overbook interviews with applicants only to turn them away like overbooked airline seating We applied a second time got a strange gaslighting email response from a staff member that we were not qualified enough because we were too advanced in our startup journey untrue because we are were in the pre-seed stage with a TRL 3 among other alleged disqualification criteria The strangest thing is that these qualification requirements are not mentioned anywhere on the website or on the application form or anywhere else which we pointed out to them Puzzlingly we were not advanced enough the first time around which was sufficient to warrant us an interview but suddenly became too advanced with the same unchanged parameters in our second application In the same email we were told that if we did meet the criteria which we did we could inform them they would get in touch We replied to them with factual information stating how we fulfilled all their sudden desired criteria only to be ghosted stay tuned this continues later After a few months we applied again for the next cohort third application The same process repeated again with the same claim that we were too advanced with other disqualification criteria we were told that if we did meet the criteria which we did we could inform them they would get in touch We repeated the same process replied to them with factual information stating how we fulfilled all their sudden desired criteria only to be ghosted for the second time by this certain staff member who mysteriously suddenly resigned left his job when we emailed another staff member later about these issues Spurred by other newbie founders who d experienced the same from this shady firm we emailed our complaints in detail were invited to an interview with the staff member then with the dealflow team We attended both interviews later were hit with a new kind of bait switch the team was impressed with us but we were on a waitlist once again until other upcoming applicant interviews AFTER us even though this is first come first served like generally everywhere else similar were finished We were then informed with the usual there are no more places in the cohort We decided to do a deepdive into the website discovered deadlinks many shadow shady companies in the portfolio that do not exist do nothing useful fluff activities considering that the firm says they want to invest in impactful ventures that has not been already done by bigger fish in the pond We spoke with founders startup coaches from one of Europe s top leading business schools they warned us newbie founders that there are some incubators accelerators in the UK or elsewhere that are duds or very questionable shady this clearly happened to be one of them with the usual nice fancy physical location to cover up all the shadiness New startup founders beware do your due diligence