Gideon Gitonga had a vision: to solve the home ownership problem across Africa through his venture, Nomachain, a blockchain-based fintech startup. But like many early-stage founders, he was stuck at one of the most common crossroads: he needed money. He was searching for funding and resources to bring Nomachain to life, but he hadn’t yet built the foundation that would make investors take notice. He joined the ALX Founder Academy not fully aware that what he needed wasn’t just capital, it was investor readiness.
The Founder Academy became Gideon’s training ground. Before anything else, the programme pushed him to do something many entrepreneurs skip: validate the problem. He went out and spoke directly to people renting homes, testing whether the desire for home ownership was real and widespread enough to build a business around. From there, he worked through his business model, unit economics, and pitch strategy, fundamentals that sharpened his thinking before he even touched a slide deck. When he graduated from ALX Ventures, everything became more practical and more personal. He was now applying those lessons to Nomachain’s actual numbers, pitching to live investors, and working with real-world mentors, including a specialist in blockchain and tokenomics who understood the niche space Nomachain was operating in. The post-programme support added another layer: ALX placed five paid interns in his business for three months, directly addressing one of the most painful realities of startup life: cash flow. He also found something less tangible but equally valuable: a community of fellow founders building complementary solutions, investor introductions, and access to office spaces across Africa.
Today, Gideon has rolled out Nomachain’s product across three African markets and is attracting global capital to fund home ownership on the continent. What started as a local dream has become a globally trusted product, one that international investors are backing and that audiences beyond Africa are engaging with. Gideon describes this as his proudest moment as an entrepreneur, an outcome he genuinely did not anticipate when he first walked into the programme looking for money. The ALX journey transformed him from a founder with an idea into one with the tools, network, and investor-readiness to build a company with continental scale and global ambition.
Founder, Nomachain - https://nomachain.io/
