Y Combinator

Seedstars is a Switzerland-based investment and acceleration platform founded in 2012 in Geneva by Pierre-Alain Masson, Michael Weber, and Adrien, three Swiss entrepreneurs, with Alisée de Tonnac joining shortly after as co-CEO and co-founder. It began as a global startup-competition circuit ("Seedstars World") run in dozens of emerging and frontier markets and has since grown into a broader investment platform, running seed and early-stage funds (including Seedstars International Ventures and, more recently, a dedicated Seedstars Africa Ventures fund that reported a US$42 million first close in late 2024) alongside its acceleration programs. The Philippines has a real, if modest, connection to Seedstars: "Seedstars Manila" is a recurring local leg of the global Seedstars World competition, which surfaces and pitches early-stage Philippine startups as part of the worldwide circuit. This is a competition/community touchpoint rather than confirmed direct fund investment into a named Philippine company — no specific Philippine investee was independently confirmed for this profile beyond the Manila competition itself.

xchange is a genuinely Philippine, Manila-based philanthropic, impact-first incubator founded in 2011 by Rico Gonzalez (now Managing Director) and Nono Coliangco. It is a real capital-deploying organization, not purely an advisory shop — its LinkedIn profile describes it as providing seed capital alongside tailored mentorship to early-stage Philippine social enterprises — but its own site frames its work across three pillars ("Build Ventures," "Finance Ventures," "Advise Ventures"), making it more accurately described as a hybrid incubator/impact-investor than a conventional check-writing VC fund. Its current leadership team also includes Finance Director Rizza Mariano and Directors Erika Tatad and Love Gregorie Moral-Perez. xchange focuses on social enterprises addressing structural Philippine problems across four thematic areas it calls "Futures": the Future of Work (business/finance innovation, workforce transformation), the Future of the Planet (disaster resilience, food systems, regenerative solutions), the Future of Well-being, Health & Nutrition, and the Future of Education. No specific named investee/portfolio company could be confirmed from the pages accessible this session — its portfolio page returned a 404, so this entry cannot list concrete example ventures, which is a real gap rather than an intentional omission.

IMPORTANT HONESTY NOTE, per the task's own instruction to verify rather than oversell this entry: Impact Hub Manila is NOT a capital-deploying investor in the way every other entry in this directory is. Its own website states this explicitly and unambiguously: "We back your venture — we don't run it. You keep your equity, your IP, your direction" — and no direct equity-investment or check-writing model is described anywhere on its site. It is, first and foremost, a coworking space, founder community, and program host — part of the global Impact Hub network (80+ locations across five regions, 25,000+ founders worldwide). Impact Hub Manila was founded in 2015 by Ces Rondario and is based at the 25th Floor, Picadilly Star, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. Beyond its physical coworking space, it runs structured, largely non-equity support programs — INCUBATE, AI for Good, a Climate Adaptation Track, and periodic hackathons — which it says delivered roughly ₱42 million in "incubation value" (mentorship, training, grant-supported resources, and network access, not straightforward cash investment) across its 2026 cohort. It should be listed in this directory as a genuine, real, and long-running part of the Philippine startup support ecosystem — but as a community/incubation host, not as a source of venture capital.