By Margaret Russell 
Why This Launch Matters
OpenAI has bundled its startup-facing resources into a single, public “home” so early-stage teams don’t hunt across scattered docs, webinars, or one-off credits. With ChatGPT near 700 million weekly active users, founders are building for a massive—and fast-growing—audience. The hub clarifies where to start, what to learn, and how to unlock credits or events without warm intros.
What’s Actually Inside
Three pillars sit under one roof: live Build Hours (hands-on sessions for APIs, agentic tool-calling and reinforcement fine-tuning), open-source Cookbooks (how-tos, prompting and eval guides), and Founder Guides (use-case discovery, evals, shipping). There’s also the Startup Drop newsletter and an events calendar—so you can go from zero to demo without weeks of meta-work.
Fast facts (as of Aug 28, 2025)
| Item | Detail |
| Official page | openai.com/startups |
| Launch window | Aug 27, 2025 (EU coverage) |
| Key resources | Build Hours · Cookbooks · Founder Guides |
| Upcoming events | Build Hours (Sep 3, online); DevDay 2025 (Oct 6, online) |
| Credits | API credits via partner VCs (Sequoia, a16z, Kleiner Perkins, Conviction Partners) |
| How to apply for credits | VC referral code + product description + org ID + basic funding info |
| European case studies | Klarna · Legora · Photoroom |
| Team leads referenced | Marc Manara; Laura Modiano (EMEA) |
| Newsletter | “Startup Drop” (monthly) |
| Adoption backdrop | ~700M weekly active users for ChatGPT (Aug 2025) |
How It Helps A First-Time Founder
Think of the Hub as a neatly-paved on-ramp. You get orientation (what model to use, where to start), a cadence of live demos to copy, and ways to reduce burn—credits, rate-limit upgrades, and time with solutions engineers if your VC is in the partner network. The page links to repos and prompts, so you can validate a narrow problem (say, summarising long PDFs) before you over-engineer the stack.
Where to start (a 3-step path)
- Attend a Build Hour. Watch agents, evals and RFT in action; then fork the repo.
- Ship a thin slice. Use Cookbook patterns to stand up a constrained prototype with objective evals.
- Scale responsibly. Apply for credits if eligible; instrument usage, add buffers, harden safety.
Europe, Specifically
Tech.eu flags that OpenAI is courting European founders and highlighting adopters. That helps go-to-market: EU teams get social proof (Klarna/Photoroom), a clearer events pipeline, and one place to follow updates.
Bottom Line
This isn’t a new product so much as a better doorway. By cutting the “where do I begin?” tax and tying learning to credits and events, OpenAI aims to compress a founder’s first month into a long weekend. If you’ve been circling the runway, this is your sign to land, prototype, and iterate. And yes—start small, ship fast, learn even faster.