Community Rules

1. Purpose

Builderswave runs weekly launch competitions to surface the best African tech products. These rules exist to keep the competition fair and meaningful for builders and the community alike.

2. Voting

• Account verification. To keep the competition fair, new accounts must verify their identity before voting. You can verify instantly by linking Google, LinkedIn, GitHub, or X. Unverified accounts may vote once your account is established.
• One vote per product. Each account may upvote a given product once. You may withdraw your vote at any time during the launch week.
• No self-voting. Founders may not upvote their own products. This includes co-founders, employees, and immediate collaborators on the submitted product.
• Active week only. Voting is open only while the launch week is live.
• Rate limit. A maximum of 10 upvote actions per hour applies per account to discourage automated activity.

3. Founder Conduct

• Community mobilization. Founders are encouraged to share their launch page and rally their genuine communities — on social media, in newsletters, with their users. That is a legitimate and expected part of competing.
• No vote incentives. Offering rewards, discounts, early access, or any incentive in exchange for votes is not permitted, regardless of how it is framed.
• No vote exchanges. Coordinating with other founders to trade votes — "I'll vote for yours if you vote for mine" — is not allowed.
• No artificial amplification. Soliciting votes from audiences with no genuine interest in the product, or coordinating inauthentic mass voting through private groups or channels, violates the spirit of the competition.

4. Comments

• Be constructive. Feedback that helps builders improve is welcome.
• No spam, self-promotion unrelated to the product, or off-topic content.
• No hate speech, harassment, or personal attacks.
• Account verification. The same verification requirement that applies to voting also applies to posting comments.
• Comments that violate these rules may be removed and the account suspended.

5. Product Submissions

• Products must be built by African founders, teams based on the continent, or diaspora founders building specifically for African markets.
• Products must be real and functional — no vaporware or placeholder pages.
• The same product may not be submitted more than once per launch week.

6. Enforcement

Builderswave reserves the right to remove votes, comments, or product listings that violate these rules, and to suspend accounts engaged in coordinated manipulation. Decisions are at the sole discretion of the moderation team.

Founders who believe a decision was made in error may contact us at [email protected] within 48 hours.