Fabien Martin

Co-founder & CTO of Trinket: physically authenticated collectibles with real provenance, and its consumer app fan.dance. Previously: co-founder of Founders Lair and Gradients.tech, and venture capital at Catcha Group in Kuala Lumpur. I write here about products, AI, events, innovation, and financing; the messier tinkering lives at ragondin.dev.

Writing

• Aug 2026 Why I believe in local AI on phones local AI

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Building

• Trinket. The layer underneath: physically authenticated collectibles with NFC chips, AI-verified ownership transfers, and an immutable provenance record. $850k+ raised
• fan.dance. Trinket’s consumer app: two-minute video calls between creators and their fans.

Built

• Trinket, first app. Limited collectible drops with artists, recorded on-chain. 20k+ downloads · 500+ drops · 24k+ blockchain transactions
• Zero Food Waste 八点以后. WeChat mini-program connecting people with discounted restaurant inventory after 8PM. 200k+ users · 40k+ meals sold
• Founders Lair. Cross-border innovation platform where investors, governments, and startups run innovation programs. 300+ projects · 25k applications
• …and more.

Tinkered

• Heart Homes. Every registered property sale in Dubai, turned into pricing and trend views an advisor can use.
• Kovata. Team training you can prove: courses from video, PDFs and SOPs, with attention verification. iOS
• Ragondin Assistant. A private AI assistant that runs entirely on your phone: no cloud, no data collection. iOS
• Recall. The private recorder for in-person conversations: on-device transcription, named speakers, summaries. iOS
• Educational robot. A twelve-servo companion robot for a creativity school, with a bilingual AI stack running entirely on-device.
• …and more.

Organized

• Founders Lair, Dubai: a new event series, starting now. 2026
• Startup Grind Chengdu & Startup Grind Paris: 50+ events as chapter organizer, including a Christmas party that won the Best Party Award at the Global Conference in Silicon Valley. 2018–2020
• …and more.

Spoke

• ZGC Forum, Beijing: keynote on Chinese science fiction going global, at the China Science Fiction Convention’s VR forum. April 2024
• Founders Lair, Beijing: “The VC model is dead, long live the VC model”, six minutes on a bus, for the third-anniversary city ride. October 2022
• Startup Grind, Seoul: “Why China?”, on China’s startup ecosystem, for Korean founders. May 2022
• Tsinghua University & University of Sydney, online: round table on innovation and entrepreneurship in Asia-Pacific. March 2021
• …and more.

Lived

France · UK · Germany · Poland · China · Malaysia · Singapore · South Korea · UAE · Australia

Studied

• CEMS, Master’s in International Management
• Tsinghua University China
• Warsaw School of Economics Poland
• University of Sydney Australia
• Lancaster University UK
• NEOMA Business School France