Mérida, Yucatan — October 22, 2025 — PlebLab, a founder-run Bitcoin accelerator based in Austin, Texas, partnered with Yopaki to hold its 6th Startup Day program in Merida from October 9th to 10th.
The program attracted national attention, including a Televisa segment featuring Francisco Chavarria, co-founder and CEO of Yopaki, and live coverage from Reporte Índigo, which kicked off Thursday’s session.
Startup Day Yucatán brought together founders, developers, engineers, investors, and public sector leaders for two days of talks, live demos, and local seller deployments across Centro.
The Director of Economy and Industry of Yucatan State participated along with local leaders. Programming will be centered around the White Paper House, a new community space that will host ongoing builder activities in Mérida.
“Startup Day is a sprint of work. We want builders to ship, dealers to try new products, and communities to continue moving value locally.” said Kerr, co-founder and CEO of PlebLab. “Merida has arrived, and the White Paper House will solidify this new momentum.”
“Yopaki is focused on making Bitcoin payments fast and easy in Mexico and throughout Latin America.” Francisco Chavarria, co-founder and CEO of Yopaki, said:
“With the launch of Terminal, we have been working to find ways to use Bitcoin as money and offer it to millions of customers, improving the quality of our entire stack product.”
Program highlights
White Paper House launch and enrichment session
The venue hosted an Orange Ribbon Kickoff, Builder Talks, and Discussions, which attracted a large local audience and attracted national and regional media attention.
How to use Yopaki Mérida in practice
Yopaki this week introduced new terminal products to local businesses in Merida and announced new partner initiatives. Products were tested throughout the event and immediate feedback from the community was obtained.
Bitcoin startup announcement
Shockwallet introduced CLINK, the Nostr native standard for secure, self-stored Lightning interactions without a web server.
CASCDR announced its CASCADE 1 architecture initiative, a self-managed evolution of the platform. RUNSTR has announced a new app with zap challenges and peer-to-peer functionality. Feed Filter previewed its upcoming mobile app, which will be released during the holiday season.
Time2Build Kickoff
PlebLab is co-launching the global Breez Builder Challenge from Yucatan, with follow-up planned during the November merge period and beyond Austin.
Summary of featured lectures
The stage, “Building in Real-time with AI and Bitcoin,” showed how inference, embedding, and agent workflows work with Lightning for usage-based pricing.
In “Unpacking the Lightning Builder Playbook,” we translated the abstraction into a reference flow that discusses tools like the Breez SDK that focus on uptime and real-world UX.
“Anatomy of a Bitcoin Hub” distills the elements of durable ecosystems from Tokyo to Tampa Bay, highlighting the rhythms, rituals of their builders, and loops to growth.
“Mexico and Latin America Bitcoin Strategy” had a week built on city-level wins as measured by activated merchants and recurring payments.
Additional sessions included framing the legal landscape with IBEX’s Carlos Peniche and Juan Lemus, connecting classroom learning to merchant flows with Mi Primer Bitcoin’s Quentin, exploring tourism and real estate use cases with CIGNO’s Raul, and comparing the global hub pattern with Tokyo Bitcoinbase and Fulgar Ventures’ Lisa.
We delve into the resilient grassroots community with Jimi, Daniel and Mercedes before explaining what’s next for White Paper House.
why is it important
This week we created a practical strategy for Merida. That meant shipping publicly, testing with distributors, measuring reliability, and scaling from a consistent hub.
Based at the White Paper House, this model accelerates learning cycles, strengthens community capacity, and sets in motion traction that local teams and businesses can execute over and over again.
contact
pre brabo
hello@pleblab.com
About Prebrabo
PlebLab is a community accelerator and hackerspace based in Austin, Texas. Since 2021, we’ve been supporting early-stage Bitcoin founders through hands-on mentorship, programs like Startup School and Top Builder, and a global network of builders, operators, investors, and open source contributors.
About Yopaki
Yopaki is a Mexico-based Bitcoin company focused on financial sovereignty in Latin America. The team is building the latest tools for storing and transacting in Bitcoin while supporting education and communities across the region.