Donkey
New accelerator entry · 2026-07-17 · the record
In their words
Donkey is the modern trading company. We buy straight from Chinese factories and sell delivered to US importers: one USD price to their dock, duty paid, our own inspectors on the factory floor before the factory gets paid. Most importers buy through trading companies that mark up every container 15 to 30 percent and never reveal the factory. US customs records are public. Almost nobody reads them, so we arrive already knowing their supply lane. They send one photo of a part they reorder. We name the factory that actually makes it and beat their landed cost in 72 hours, or they keep their supplier. We take title, run the inspection, move the money, and offer credit-insured net-45 terms to qualified buyers. The old trading giants ran this coordination with tens of thousands of people. Our machine runs it with a handful, and every settled order compounds the pricing and reliability data the next one runs on. Team in SF and China, English and Mandarin. Know a US importer buying from China? Send them our way: one photo of a part, and we will name their factory. donkey.trade
What the record says
Prev founded Prelude OS: 31 paying Chinese factory customers cold-acquired in 39 days on the ground in Guangzhou; cash-flow positive. Advised heavy-equipment giants Sany and Sinoboom on overseas expansion. Featured on Mango TV, China's largest media station: factory-floor interview segments and a named 13-minute personal profile. Ran a Toronto marketing company: $4M closed for construction clients in 6 months. Fluent Mandarin. Finance at Rotman Commerce, UofT; dropped a credit short.
Co-founder & CTO. Donkey buys factory-direct in China and sells delivered to US importers. Customs records are public. We read them, flag the trading company markup, and quote the same parts straight from the factory that makes them. QC on the floor before the factory gets paid. I build the data side: parsing raw customs filings, separating real factories from shells and forwarders, and the software the whole trade runs on. donkey.trade
Founders, titles and bios as the company published them. Photographs are our own copies of the ones on that record, so they do not break when the original link expires.
Against the 209 companies on file from Summer 2026. Median team 2, largest 30.
The nearest companies on file from the same batch, side by side with this one.
| Company | Batch | Sectors | Listed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Computing | Summer 2026 | Artificial Intelligence, Hard Tech, Hardware | 2026-08-31 |
| Ethos Space Resources | Summer 2026 | Hard Tech, Exascale Computing, Energy | 2026-08-23 |
| Spectre Intelligence | Summer 2026 | Biotech, Investing, Trading | 2026-08-22 |
| Edgerun | Summer 2026 | Robotics, Defense | 2026-08-21 |
| Allia Health | Summer 2026 | Artificial Intelligence, Healthcare, Mental Health | 2026-08-19 |
| Donkey (this page) | Summer 2026 | Logistics, Manufacturing, Supply Chain | 2026-07-17 |
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