Four startup programs in one week: LiveKit approved Sponkly for $17,000 in credits

Quick build-in-public update from Sponkly (real-time voice translation for chat, calls and meetings in 32 languages).

This week, as a solo bootstrapped founder:

• NVIDIA Inception: accepted

• AssemblyAI Startup Program: accepted

• AWS Activate: $10,000 in credits

• LiveKit Startup Program: approved today, $17,000 in credits + a year of the Scale plan

What I will use it for: Sponkly's calls and meetings are peer to peer today (WebRTC mesh). Great for 1:1, heavy beyond 5–6 people. Moving meetings to LiveKit rooms means one upload per person, so translated meetings can grow, and the live interpreter can join as a LiveKit agent that hears each speaker directly and translates once per language instead of once per listener. 1:1 calls stay peer to peer (cheapest, end-to-end).

Tip: LiveKit's application form failed twice with a server error on my side. I emailed their startups team, resubmitted a few days later, and got the answer two days after that. If a form breaks, write to them.

sponkly.com

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