How to get funding from Buko?

Founder should submit a written summary of your business idea with details about why this is a good opportunity, details about how your approach will add value for your future customers, and details about yourself and your team. (400-600 words).

No pitch deck needed.

If you are unsure whether to apply, go for it!

email us at [email protected]!

Some FAQs

Are there any particular requirements for a founder to be accepted?

We don't have any specific requirements for the profile of a founder or founders. We are open to all backgrounds as long as you are passionate about the business opportunity and, more importantly, willing to work extremely hard to make the business a success.

The biggest thing is we want to see that you are super dedicated to relentlessly pursue the business. We see lots of founders in Manila that approach a start-up like a lifestyle business. This is not what we are looking for - we want founders that are so passionate about the idea that they will obsess about it and work relentlessly to accomplish their goals.

Do you need to have "experience"?

Of course experience is always helpful but we think of experience in broad terms. For instance, if you want to build a simple accounting system for sari-sari stores, maybe you have family members that own a store or maybe you grew up next to the market or maybe you have solid coding skills and your co-founder spent the last 3 months talking with sari sari owners. All of these count as valuable experience if you are smart and dedicated to pursuing the business. We are open to fresh grad founders.

Do you need to be technical?

This depends on the business idea. In general we love investing in technical engineers who can build their own product. If you are a technical engineer with a business idea please talk to us!

But we are also open to non-technical founders especially if the business idea is not technical - for instance a lot of e-commerce businesses can be launched on Shopify without any code, and we are very interested to invest non-traditional and non-technical ventures that focus more on content creation or monetizing a specific skill or niche interest.

Do I need to live in Manila?