HopStart cohort #3: the next startups building on bunny.net
Marek Nalikowski
July 23, 2026
HopStart is our startup program with a straightforward goal: let early-stage founders get on with building, without infrastructure eating into their time and budget. Two rounds in, we're back with a third cohort.
As always, each cohort has three winners. Each team receives up to $50,000 USD in credits to spend on bunny.net, plus hands-on time with our team and an early look at features before we release them. Choosing only three is never easy. What ultimately tips the scale for us is whether a team is solving a real problem for its users, and whether bunny.net is a genuine fit for how they build.
Here are the three startups joining HopStart cohort #3.
1st place: Screenity
Founder: Alyssa X
Year founded: 2025
URL: https://www.screenity.io/
Credits received: $50,000 for one year
In the founder's words: "Screenity is the European alternative to Loom that goes well beyond recording a clip and sending a link. It's a screen recorder and video editor all in one, working almost like a deck. It's privacy-friendly all the way down, and is hosted entirely in Europe (unheard of in this space!), all built independently by one person."
2nd place: Ciphera
Founder: Usman Baig
Year founded: 2024
Credits received: $25,000 for one year
In the founder's words: "Ciphera is a privacy-first analytics and identity platform built for website owners who refuse to compromise between actionable data and user privacy. Our flagship product, Pulse, is a cookie-free web analytics tool that gives site owners the metrics they need — pageviews, referrers, geolocation, and device breakdowns — without collecting personal data or requiring consent banners. The impact is straightforward: we're making it economically viable for small and mid-sized websites to stop feeding the ad-tech surveillance pipeline."
3rd place: orkestr
Founder: Stefan Iancu
Year founded: 2026
URL: https://orkestr.eu/
Credits received: $10,000 for one year
In the founder's words: "orkestr is a platform-as-a-service that removes DevOps overhead for developers, freelancers, and small teams. Push to Git, and we handle builds, deploys, databases, SSL, and scaling. No Kubernetes, no infrastructure engineer required. Teams that need real data sovereignty are forced to choose between developer experience and compliance, and usually end up self-hosting, which means hiring DevOps talent they cannot afford. We close that gap: orkestr runs entirely on EU infrastructure with a fully EU sub-processor chain, so customers get Heroku-grade simplicity without legal exposure to non-EU jurisdiction."
Applying for cohort #4
Applications for the next cohort are open. If you're building something you're proud of and can see bunny.net fitting into it, submit your application using the short form before August 31.
If you applied before and didn't make it, it's worth trying again. Every application round is different, and yours may be a stronger fit this time.
We'll announce cohort #4 in October.
Looking forward to seeing what you’re building!