Our story
It started with a dream…
DreamStart Labs began far from boardrooms and tech campuses — in a small Bible study group in California, where two Silicon Valley veterans, Wes Wasson and Henrik Esbensen, found a shared calling.
Both had spent years building technology that reached millions. Wes was a marketing executive of several large and successful tech companies and was named “Top Executive Leader in Silicon Valley” in 2010. Henrik was an engineer leading teams building state-of-the-art software products in artificial intelligence, machine learning acceleration, and compilers. But as their careers grew, so did a quiet question: what if innovation could reach the people Silicon Valley overlooked?
That question became a conviction. And so, they packed their bags and left the comfort of California for Tanzania, a place where ambition was everywhere, but opportunity was not. For over a year and a half, they lived and learned alongside local communities, studying how people saved, shared, and supported each other with little more than trust and hope.
From that experience, DreamStart Labs was born not as a company, but as a promise. A promise to build digital tools that listen before they lead. To design technology that meets people where they are, and to prove that innovation can thrive in the very places the world too often turns away from.
The problem
More than 1.4 billion adults worldwide still lack access to formal financial services, most of them women living in rural communities. Across Africa and Asia, millions rely on savings groups—small, trusted circles where people pool money, lend to each other, and build security from the ground up.
Yet these groups face the same challenges: limited transparency, poor record-keeping, and little access to digital tools or credit visibility. Transactions are tracked in notebooks, data is easily lost, and years of financial discipline go unrecognized by the systems that could help them grow.
It’s not a lack of ambition holding them back, it’s a lack of access.
Here’s how we’re solving it
We build financial technology that strengthens the systems communities already trust. By digitizing savings groups, we turn handwritten records into secure data and everyday discipline into visible financial history. Our products give groups digital footprint and continuity, while equipping partners and institutions with the insights needed to support growth at scale.
Impact
Impact, for us, is quiet and compounding. It’s the moment a paper ledger becomes a shared truth. The meeting that ends on time because records are clear. The confidence that grows when every shilling is seen, counted, and protected.
When groups digitize, trust deepens. Disputes drop. Savings travel further. Leaders—most of them women—gain the visibility to plan, the dignity to decide, and the leverage to access services once out of reach.
Behind the dashboards is a simple promise: we design with people, not for them. Data is safeguarded, insight is earned, and progress is measured in choices restored—at village scale, at human pace.
Our principles
Our Vision, Mission and five core Values are the fundamental principles that guide our internal conduct.
Vision
We dream of a world where technology empowers human talent to create opportunity for all.
Mission
Our values
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We believe in dignity, not dependency.
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We take trust and humanity seriously.
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We build with excellence — because our communities deserve nothing less.
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If it’s not both bold and good, it probably won’t matter.
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We stay close to the people we serve.
Our Global Commitments
Impact doesn’t end with numbers. It expands into purpose into the quiet alignment between what we do every day and what the world needs most. At DreamStart Labs, our work is guided by five core commitments: financial inclusion, women’s empowerment, poverty alleviation, data privacy, and consumer protection. Together, they form the foundation of how we build, measure, and stay accountable to global progress.
No Poverty (SDG 1) 
Gender Equality (SDG 5) 
Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG 8) 
Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG 9) 
Reduced Inequalities (SDG 10)