Apply to the Ground Floor Residency here. If you’d rather just join us at Edge City India, you can apply here.
Know someone who’d be perfect for this cohort? Please send them this post. We’d love to see them in Goa.
This post was written by the Ground Floor Team.
Charles Darwin boarded the Beagle. Jane Goodall lived at Gombe. When Google wanted to understand the world’s streets, it sent cars covered in cameras down every road because satellites couldn’t see the ground.
Every frontier has required a new way of learning.
This one does too.
Technology is reshaping local economies faster than institutions can learn from them. New tools arrive every week. Industries reorganize. Governments write policy. Small businesses decide what to adopt, what to ignore, and how to preserve what makes them valuable in the first place.
The most important lessons are unfolding inside family businesses, city halls, coffee shops, startups, schools, and neighborhoods.
Some forms of knowledge can only be gathered in the field.
That institution should exist.
We’re building it.
Goa is one of the most interesting places in the world to study technological transformation.
More than 800 startups already call the state home. Roughly one-third are women-led. Nearly a third of the workforce is employed in tourism, much of it through independent family businesses that have shaped the region for generations.
At the same time, Goa has set an ambitious public vision for its future.
Its AI policy is released in September.
Ground Floor arrives in October, when policy begins meeting everyday reality.
That is where the most important learning happens: inside businesses, communities and the relationships that determine whether new technologies become useful, trusted, and locally valuable.
Ground Floor takes place within Edge City Goa, the first India chapter of the pop-up village that has previously convened in Austin, Patagonia, Cape Town, and Healdsburg.
Over three weeks, we’ll bring together 10 residents from entrepreneurship, research, economics, public policy, engineering, design, and the arts.
Residents will embed alongside Goan businesses, local governments, researchers, and community organizations, documenting what technological transformation looks like while it’s still unfolding.
Alongside the residency, we’ll convene 100 Goan business owners through a series of field labs hosted with local governments, chambers of commerce, and community partners.
The businesses bring lived experience.
The residents bring research, technical expertise, and fresh perspectives.
Ground Floor exists to create the conditions where those forms of knowledge meet.
Much of today’s AI tooling struggles to serve the languages many Goans use every day. What would it take to close that gap for Konkani? Who should own the data? Who benefits when the infrastructure is built?
Many more questions will emerge once we’re on the ground. Every technological transition creates new value.
The enduring question is who captures it, who contributes to it, and how communities remain authors of their own future as change accelerates around them.
In June, we embedded frontier builders in a small California town for a month.
Together with the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce, we hosted free AI field labs for local businesses. Residents worked alongside entrepreneurs, explored practical applications, and spent less time talking about the future than building inside it.
We expected enthusiasm.
What we found was discernment.
The business owners who benefited most weren’t the ones who adopted the most tools. They were the ones who became clear about what deserved their attention and what didn’t. Knowing what to ignore turned out to be just as valuable as knowing what to embrace.
Healdsburg gave us our first signal.
Goa is the next chapter.
October 11 – November 8, 2026
Ground Floor is accepting applications for its residency in Goa.
We’re looking for builders, researchers, entrepreneurs, economists, designers, engineers, policymakers, creatives, and operators who want to spend a month learning alongside one of the world’s fastest-changing local economies.
Complete the application on our website and tell us about your work, your curiosity, and why you’d like to join the first cohort.
Ground Floor takes place within Edge City Goa, and all residents will need an Edge City ticket to access the village throughout the month. Access includes community events, programming across frontier technology, science, and culture, and group wellness activities. Come surround yourself with hundreds of the most curious, ambitious, and high-agency people across disciplines, and accelerate what you are building.
If you’re already planning to attend Edge City, we recommend purchasing your ticket early. Ticket prices increase as October approaches, and your Ground Floor application is reviewed separately from your Edge City registration.
Every community experiences technological change differently.
Every Ground Floor will be different because it is built alongside the people who already call that place home.
Goa is the first chapter.
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