SPONSORS · SPEAKERS · VOLUNTEERS
Bangladesh has no shortage of builders. It has a shortage of closers. Sellathon is the first competition in the country scored on one thing: verified revenue. Help us run it.
Every month in Bangladesh, thousands of people ship something. Apps, SaaS tools, agencies, physical products, freelance services. Universities run hackathons. Incubators run demo days. Founders spend six months building and win a trophy for the pitch.
Then almost none of it gets sold. Not because the products are bad, but because nobody ever taught them the other half of the job: finding a buyer, getting a reply, running a discovery call, handling "send me a proposal," asking for the money, and collecting it. Selling is treated as something that happens to you after the product is good enough. It isn't. It's a skill, and in Bangladesh it's the scarcest one.
The result is a country full of capable teams with zero customers, and a generation of founders who think the answer is to build more.
One hundred companies. Five weeks. One scoreboard. Nobody wins for a demo.
Application-only. Teams with something real to sell put down a refundable deposit, then run a daily outreach motion for four weeks after a week of prep.
Every team's milestones, conversations booked, and verified revenue, visible to the whole country for five weeks. Accountability, drama, and shareable content in one URL.
Bank, bKash, or Stripe records, or signed contracts our team confirms directly with the customer. Then a live finale in Dhaka with investors in the room.
The format is city-agnostic. Nothing about it depends on Dhaka except the finale venue. The curriculum, the milestone gates, the leaderboard, and the verification protocol run the same in San Francisco, Lagos, or Jakarta. Bangladesh is Cohort 01 because it's where the gap is widest and the talent is most underpriced. San Francisco is already on the waitlist.
Every cohort also produces something no accelerator has: a month of observed selling behaviour on a hundred companies. Who does the work, who converts, who closes. That's deal flow for investors, a talent pipeline for employers, and merchant acquisition for anyone who serves small businesses.
Sellathon is run by Mangosteen Studio, a US-based AI product studio with a team in Dhaka, and it is built to run on sponsors. Participants pay nothing but a refundable deposit. We make nothing from them. The economics work when the people who benefit from a country that can sell help pay for teaching it to.
Your customers, if you serve Bangladesh's next generation of companies, are in one place for five weeks and on one stage for a night. Everything below is paid locally, to the event's Bangladeshi operating partner or directly to vendors.
Name the finale. Brand the leaderboard. Seat a judge. Open the show. One partner.
Co-anchor the champion's investment. First look at every finalist before anyone else meets them.
"First Close presented by you." "Biggest Deal presented by you." Your name on the moment that matters to sellers.
Power deposit collection and on-stage refunds. Your brand on every transaction, and a hundred new merchants onboarded.
Your sales leaders hold office hours with the cohort. The best recruiting you'll do this year.
Venue, production, F&B, software credits, media. Every taka of in-kind pushes cash cost toward zero.
This only works with people who sell for a living and people who show up. Both are welcome, in Bangladesh or anywhere else.
Account executives and sales leaders from big tech, startups, and Bangladesh's own market. Teach one 90-minute session on the motion you actually run, or take a week of office hours.
Adopt a section of 25 teams. One hour a week in the group chat, one office hour, honest feedback on their pipeline.
Grade milestone submissions against a rubric. Moderate the community. Call customers for revenue verification. Crew the finale in Dhaka. We need hands, and we'll train them.
Tell us who you are and how you want in. We reply personally within a few days.