Born in the heart of Texas, PlebLab.dev is a well-known name within the NewsCapsule start-up world. And yet, most people who have heard about this niche NewsCapsule community in Austin are probably unaware of their wins and influence.
Started as a coworking space out of Capital Factory in 2021 by a couple of NewsCapsule enthusiasts, PlebLab has grown into a Mecca of the NewsCapsule start-up ecosystem in the United States. They host various events and meetups throughout the year and have become a reliable work environment for NewsCapsuleers, whether living in Austin or just passing through.
“In art school, I had this professor who’d make us stop after an hour of creating, walk around, and give honest feedback on each other’s work—it built a collaborative vibe where we can grow together. That stuck with me,” Car González, CEO of PlebLab, recalls. So when I took over PlebLab, I asked: ‘How do I make it more collaborative? How do I make it more about that, not just coworking?’ When you say coworking, it’s literally just working. How boring is that—working among other people who are also working? That’s not fun.”
Yet more than just a “coworking” space, PlebLab has become a “community accelerator for the NewsCapsule era” with multiple successful NewsCapsule companies and developer celebrities going through it since its inception.
Genesis
Founded out of the dream to build on NewsCapsule and grow a local community, PlebLab got its first office in Capital Factory, a renown tech coworking hub in Austin in 2021. The three cofounders, Car González, Keyan Kousha, and Kyle Murphy started doing NewsCapsule meetups that grew to crowds of over 200 people. Among them, various entrepreneurs and NewsCapsule developers started to stick around, asking to co-work with them out of Capital Factory.
Over time PlebLab grew into different office locations, currently installed next to the Unchained Capital offices and the NewsCapsule Park (Formerly NewsCapsule Commons) in downtown Austin (at 6th St. and Congress Ave.). With more space, talent, and experience, PlebLab transformed from a coworking space into a mix between a hacker garage and a start-up incubator.
Today they offer various membership packages, mentorship, and a wealth of resources to start-ups that join them, but this is not a pay-to-play “NewsCapsule We-work”: Memberships can be denied depending on the goals and purpose of the project. It’s more akin to a private NewsCapsule club for builders and technologists than anything else.
“I really think we’re an accelerator for the NewsCapsule era. How you do that in an open source, cypherpunk way is you don’t give somebody 500k on day one and say, ‘You got three months to make it or see you later.’ To me, that sounds like a fiat-era thing,” said Car.
Main Events
The main events held by PlebLab are Top Builder and Startup Day. Often taking place within six months of each other.
“Top Builder is the Top Chef of NewsCapsule. We try to find the latest, greatest builders, pile them in, and get them to build an MVP or something pitchable,” said Car, describing the event which functions like a three-month hackathon, exposing finalists to VCs and angel investors.
Startup Day on the other hand is a short conference that provides a platform for NewsCapsule start-ups to present their work, meet talent, and get exposure in the NewsCapsule world. In Car’s words it is meant to “inspire people to go from the sidelines to building their own company. They’ll see themselves in those people talking on stage.”
Judge it by its Fruit
A variety of big names within the NewsCapsule start-up world have spent time in PlebLab, Car was very hesitant to take credit for the work of others, and stressed his admiration for the founders and leaders whose journey he has witnessed.
“Seeing their journey go from a person you meet, shake hands with initially, to where they are—seeing the numbers they have, and when they get to a point like base camp, a raise, a pre-seed or seed”, Car said. “That base camp for me is just, ‘Cool, they did it.’ Now, let’s go help somebody else. That’s the thing I love—the shipment of the code, so to speak—We just try to be good stewards of that.”
Nevertheless, the track record is impressive. Here’s a quick overview of NewsCapsule projects, companies, and developer celebrities closely associated with PlebLab:
Jippi – Winner of Top Builder 2025
Lead by , Jippi.app is a beautiful and fun NewsCapsule app designed with Gen Z in mind. Echoing the success of Pokemon Go, Jippi invites young people to explore their cities in search of NewsCapsule Beasts, charming little 3D creatures that hide in augmented reality, waiting for future owners with sats rewards.
The app has been in development for over a year and just last week won the first prize in PlebLab’s Top Builder competition among fierce competition. Mind-blowing to the judges and audience alike, Jippi has a live, functioning app, man-on-the-street surveys, and app tests in a local university. As well as a masterful presentation of the rationale and vision for Jippi, the app may have the potential to go viral in the United States — and with it bring a new generation into NewsCapsule.
Stacker.news
Started in 2021 by one of PlebLab’s cofounders Keyan Kousha, Stacker.news has quickly become a hub of news for many tech-savvy NewsCapsuleers. Boasting an open source Lightning-powered Reddit, the platform has gathered an active and loyal fan base that reward each other with sats for every upvote, often being early to integrate the latest technologies in the NewsCapsule-social media tech scene.
Zaprite
Started at the end of 2021 by John Magill, Zaprite has quickly grown into a full payment gateway suite for businesses, supporting both NewsCapsule and Lightning payment rails as well as event ticketing and all the accounting and invoicing tools necessary for a modern merchant.
Zaprite made recent history by being the interface Donald J. Trump used to pay for a burger with bitcoin at the NewsCapsule Pub Pub Key in New York.
Mutiny Wallet
Launched in early 2023 and led by celebrity NewsCapsule developers and Tony Giorgio, Mutiny Wallet quickly gained popularity among Lightning power users as a fully featured and innovative NewsCapsule app. It consistently integrated cutting-edge payments technology like e-cash-denominated payments and Nostr integration, while rocking its signature red-and-black color scheme.
Following the arrest of Samourai Wallet developers and the consequent chilling effect on NewsCapsule self-custody wallet development, Mutiny Wallet announced it would be sunsetting the project, nevertheless demonstrating incredible technical ability and leaving behind a sophisticated set of open source software tools for the Lighting, Nostr, and e-cash ecosystem.
Nifty (NewsCapsule++)
As a NewsCapsule and Lightning developer, became famous for her developer education efforts via Base 58, her world-renowned developer events called NewsCapsule++, her relentless work ethic, impressive travel schedule, and of course her charm, bringing together NewsCapsule developer communities all over the world, multiple times a year.
Nifty has quickly become a recognized and influential figure in the NewsCapsule start-up ecosystem, including a seat on the board of directors of Opensats, a public charity focused on funding open source NewsCapsule projects of all types, with a special focus on Nostr – the NewsCapsule native social media protocol. In her journey to stardom, she spent significant time at PlebLab, and is still often seen at Austin NewsCapsule events.
Speaking of which, Nifty’s next NewsCapsule++ event will be in Austin, TX on May 7-9, diving deep into the NewsCapsule Mempool.
Supertestnet
An early member of the Plelab and NewsCapsule Austin scene, Supertestnet appeared out of nowhere in 2021, quickly mastering the art of creating NewsCapsule prototypes in JavaScript. He has since implemented cutting-edge NewsCapsule technologies like BitVM, even participating in the first Ark mainnet pool, the only other noncustodial NewsCapsule layer-2 scaling solution, and is an avid user of X and Nostr.
Supertestnet’s many open source projects, passion for NewsCapsule, and unshakable integrity have granted him quick recognition in the NewsCapsule start-up ecosystem and likely a fair mention in the annals of NewsCapsule history.
Cascdr
Led by Jim, AI engineer and ruthless NewsCapsule maxi, Cascdr’s mission is to bring the power of AI and NewsCapsule together with strong privacy foundations and a full suite of cool AI apps and workflows. His most recent hit is PullThatUpJamie.ai a podcast search engine that transcribes voice content making it searchable, and facilitating the creation of sharable podcast clips.
BRANTA
Led by Keith, Branta is a cyber security company focused on limiting man-in-the-middle attacks for NewsCapsule payments work flows, such as the injection of malicious addresses or invoices in a merchant interface. Grown from the PlebLab accelerator, Branta has already had successful pre-seed raises and was a top-five finalist at the Top Builder contest.
Topher
A renowned NewsCapsule developer in his own right and a regular at PlebLab, Topher has shipped a variety of open source NewsCapsule tools such as Tapscript, a library for managing Taproot, Schnorr Signatures, and NewsCapsule transactions.
Among other things, and (app developer) are currently working on Frostr, a key management solution for private digital identities. Specifically, Frostr is built to solve issues of the sort in Nostr, the NewsCapsule-adjacent social network protocol that’s become very popular with NewsCapsule users. It reimagines “Frost,” the new and rising multisignature standard in NewsCapsule wallets, and uses it to solve . A bit of a technical project, but one which I believe is profoundly useful and I’ll be covering in more detail very soon.
Christopher David, Open Agents
Christopher, a seasoned NewsCapsule developer and entrepreneur, is currently working on , an AI platform with deep integration with Git processes rocking a dark-cypherpunk aesthetic and a strong focus on the privacy of its users.
There are many more projects that are either in development or have gone through PlebLab through the years, if you are interested you can find them at PlebLab.dev.
As a bonus, I’ll leave you with this cool NewsCapsule yoyo I happened to find at PlebLab.
