Fabien Martin

Self-described current role

Co-founder and CTO of Trinket^[1]

Independent record

Speaker at Startup Grind Seoul, 25 May 2022; described as co-founder of Founders Lair^[3]

Studio

Founder of Ragondin Dev, a product and engineering studio^[2]

Previous startups (self-described)

Founders Lair; Gradients.tech^[1][5]

Previous employer (self-described)

Catcha Group, Kuala Lumpur, in venture capital^[1]

Apps published under Trinket Inc.

Astera (collectible cards); fan dance (two-minute video calls with creators)^[4][8][11]

State of incorporation

Trinket Inc., Delaware, USA^[12]

Trinket

Trinket, formally Trinket Inc., is a Delaware company with its site at trinket.ai and the named seller of two apps: Astera, a collectible-card app, and fan dance, which sells short video calls with creators.^{[9][10][4][11][12]} Its Google Play developer listing gives an address in Dover, Delaware,^[8] and the fan dance terms and conditions name Trinket Inc. as the operator and state that the service is governed by the laws of the State of Delaware.^[12]

On the App Store, Astera's seller is Trinket Inc., under the developer name Trinket,^[4] and fan dance names the same seller.^[11] Martin's own site describes fan.dance as his consumer app selling two-minute video calls between creators and their fans,^[1] and its App Store description says users book live, one-to-one, two-minute video sessions with individual creators, each watermarked and verifiable.^[11]

0:50 Fabien Martin on Fan Dance Martin asks George a question during a live, two-minute fan dance session, in the Freedom! channel's video introducing fan dance (Sep 13, 2026); George's Heartbeat moment h.ki/moy3vy0fi.

According to its App Store listing, Astera turns moments from artists into limited, numbered collectible cards won on the gacha, each verified with a unique QR code and Astera ID.^[4] Google Play records the app as updated on 12 July 2026.^[8]

Trinket's positioning is described only on Martin's own website, so the explanation is his rather than an outside source's: he presents Trinket as a base level below physically authenticated collectibles that use NFC chips, AI-confirmed ownership transfers and a tamper-proof chain-of-custody log.^[1]

Ragondin Dev

Ragondin Dev describes itself on its own site as a small senior product and engineering studio run by Fabien Martin.^[2] The site lists fan dance, a consumer app for verified two-minute video calls with artists that come with numbered collectible cards from the call, and Ragondin Code, which the studio calls an AI-assisted kanban for developers with a local daemon harness.^[2]

Ragondin Dev's site carries a technical post by Martin, "Shipping an on-device LLM in a consumer iPhone app", dated 29 August 2026,^[6] and his own site lists a post titled "Why I believe in local AI on phones" from August 2026.^[1]

Earlier work

Startup Grind's listing for a 25 May 2022 event in Seoul, titled "Why China?", names Martin as a speaker and describes him as co-founder of Founders Lair.^[3] The listing says he previously worked in artificial intelligence and in venture capital in Southeast Asia, that he has worked in countries including Malaysia, Singapore, Germany, Nepal and France, and that he was co-director of Startup Grind Chengdu for over two years, organizing more than 20 China-related events.^[3] Martin's own site says he organized 50 or more events as a Startup Grind chapter organizer in Chengdu and Paris between 2018 and 2020, including a Christmas party that won the Best Party Award at the Global Conference in Silicon Valley.^[1]

His Startup Grind member profile lists Martin as co-founder of Gradients.tech, based in Chengdu,^[5] and his own site says he co-founded Gradients.tech and previously co-founded Founders Lair.^[1] Startup Grind's 2022 listing calls Founders Lair a Singapore/Beijing headquartered platform,^[3] while Martin's site describes it as a cross-border innovation platform where investors, governments and startups run innovation programs.^[1]

The rest of Martin's career history comes from his own site. It says he previously worked in venture capital at Catcha Group in Kuala Lumpur.^[1] It lists an online round table on innovation and entrepreneurship in Asia-Pacific with Tsinghua University and the University of Sydney in March 2021; a talk at Founders Lair Beijing in October 2022 titled "The VC model is dead, long live the VC model"; and a keynote in April 2024 at the ZGC Forum in Beijing, at the China Science Fiction Convention's VR forum, on Chinese science fiction going global.^[1] The site also says he is starting a Founders Lair Dubai event series in 2026.^[1]

His site lists further projects: Heart Homes, a data product that turns every registered property sale in Dubai into pricing and trend information for advisors; Kovata, a team-training platform with attention checks, built around courses sourced from video, PDFs and SOPs; Ragondin Assistant, a personal AI assistant that runs fully on-device with no cloud use or data harvesting; Recall, a private meeting recorder for face-to-face conversations that transcribes locally, labels speakers and produces summaries; an educational robot, a twelve-servo companion designed for a creativity school and powered by an on-device bilingual AI system; and the Zero Food Waste WeChat mini-program, which linked users with reduced-price restaurant food left after 8PM.^[1] The site says Martin writes on products, AI, events, innovation and financing.^[1]

Timeline

1. 2018-2020 Self-described Startup Grind chapter organizer in Chengdu and Paris, with 50+ events reported on his own site.^[1]
2. 2019-03-08 Startup Grind member profile created under the handle m2fxqq, listing him as co-founder of Gradients.tech in Chengdu.^[5]
3. 2021-03 Self-reported participation in an online round table on innovation and entrepreneurship in Asia-Pacific with Tsinghua University and the University of Sydney.^[1]
4. 2022-05-25 Speaker at Startup Grind Seoul, "Why China?", described as co-founder of Founders Lair.^[3]
5. 2022-10 Self-reported talk at Founders Lair Beijing, "The VC model is dead, long live the VC model".^[1]
6. 2024-04 Self-reported keynote at the ZGC Forum in Beijing on Chinese science fiction going global, at the China Science Fiction Convention's VR forum.^[1]
7. 2026 Self-reported start of a Founders Lair Dubai event series.^[1]
8. 2026-07-12 Google Play listing for Astera records an update on this date.^[8]
9. 2026-08 Self-published post "Why I believe in local AI on phones" on his own site.^[1]
10. 2026-08-29 Self-published technical post "Shipping an on-device LLM in a consumer iPhone app" on the Ragondin Dev site.^[6]