Hackathons. Pivots. Builder’s Journey. @stablecoinjesus, co-founder and creative director of @ReflectMoney: The platform that makes building with stablecoins easy. @solana @SuperteamPOL @superteam - Polish Startup Icons: The NextGen Founders Challenge From Kraków to the Stablecoin Frontier: The Story of Stablecoin Jesus Before Reflect Money became a serious name in stablecoin infrastructure, its story began with Jacob, known online as Stablecoin Jesus, and a simple decision: build something useful instead of waiting for permission. At just 18, Jacob was a computer science student in Kraków when he joined the 2024 Solana Radar Hackathon. Reflect began as a hackathon project, but the team quickly showed that a student idea could compete with experienced teams. The challenge was not only writing code. Stablecoins sit at the meeting point of technology, finance, security and trust. Reflect had to turn a difficult financial concept into a product that developers and users could understand. The team’s answer was Reflect Money: infrastructure for decentralised, yield-bearing stablecoins. Its system allows users to choose an on-chain strategy, mint a stablecoin and earn interest while keeping access to their assets. The idea is direct. Stablecoin balances should not remain idle when they could be used in carefully designed DeFi strategies. Reflect aims to make that process easier to access, integrate and manage. The product is built for more than individual users. Reflect presents itself as a stablecoin API that lets applications launch yield-bearing dollars or add savings features with only a few lines of code. That approach gives developers a new way to create financial products without building every part of the system from the ground up. It also shows the kind of practical thinking that often separates a promising prototype from a company. Reflect’s first major milestone came at the Radar Hackathon. The project won the Grand Prize against more than 1,300 submissions, giving the young team proof that its direction deserved serious attention. The next challenge was turning that recognition into progress. A hackathon win can open a door, but it cannot replace product work, research, testing or difficult conversations with the financial sector. Jacob’s own words capture that transition. He wrote that, only months earlier, he would not have believed the team would soon be discussing stablecoins with Poland’s largest financial institutions. He also made it clear that the work was not finished. That attitude is one of the most valuable parts of the story. The team did not treat early recognition as the final destination. It used each milestone as a reason to raise the standard for the next one. Reflect later joined the @a16zcrypto accelerator and raised $3.75 million in seed funding from investors including a16z crypto, @SolanaVentures, Equilibrium, BigBrain Holdings and @colosseum. The funding marked a major shift. Reflect was no longer only a student-built hackathon project. It had become a company with the resources to develop “software as a stablecoin” infrastructure for a wider market. Its ambitions also reach beyond one token. Reflect is working toward modular stablecoin systems in which different applications can select strategies that match their needs and risk profiles. That vision matters because the future of digital finance will not be built by one company or one famous founder. It will be built by people who understand local problems, learn quickly and create products that can work beyond their first community. Jacob’s journey is inspiring because it began close to home. A young builder in Kraków saw an opportunity, entered a hackathon, faced a complex problem and kept moving after the first breakthrough. It is also full of potential because Reflect connects technical ambition with a clear user problem: how to make stablecoin capital more useful without adding unnecessary complexity. For builders in Poland, this story sends a powerful message. World-class technology companies do not always begin in Silicon Valley. They can begin in a university, a local developer community or a room where a few people decide to build. That is why the upcoming NextGen Founders meetup matters. Superteam Poland is not only a place to hear stories about successful founders. It is where the next generation of local tech leaders is being born right now. Upcoming events: - NextGen Founders Meetup Warsaw | 20.08 | 6PM - NextGen Founders Meetup Krakow | 27.08 | 6PM - NextGen Founders Meetup Wrocław | 03.09 | 6PM - NextGen Founders Meetup Gdańsk | 10.09 | 6PM The next Jacob may already be working on a protocol, an AI product, a fintech tool or a new consumer platform. The idea may still be rough, but the ambition is present. The meetup is an invitation to meet those builders early, exchange knowledge and find the people who can turn a local experiment into a product with global reach. Reflect Money shows what can happen when talent meets an open ecosystem and the courage to keep building. Superteam Poland is where the next chapter of that story can begin.

Meet our newest STPL member, @Sn13zka 👋 Aleksander has been shipping DeFi since 2023, working across DEXes, liquidity infrastructure, and onchain protocols. These days, he’s building @moocon_ - a no-loss prize savings protocol on @solana built on top of Jupiter Lend. The concept? Users keep their full principal, while the generated yield is pooled and raffled as prizes. Welcome Aleksander!

POLISH TALENT DENSITY IS UNDENIABLE. Our Demo Day showcased pure innovation across the ecosystem - from AI agents to @Solana DeFi. Everyone crushed it but only a select few walked away as champions 👇