Supporting and investing in startups creating value for Africa
Optimise Fund Scale
Problem Statement: Globally startups receive $300billion+ per year in funding with Africa getting less that 1% of the total funding.
Africa is the next growth story leveraging our demographic dividend. Check our Funding Tracker 'Hall of Fame' for startup deals shaping our ecosystem.
1. Optimise
We optimise startups through advisory boards and love money
2. Fund
We provide early-stage startup funding from $10 000 to $100 000
3. Scale
We help our startups scale across regional and global marketplaces
Love Money | Pre-Seed
We invest in early-stage tech related startups with a working prototype
Our journey with startups
Prototype
Build a working prototype ‘Minimum Viable Product - MVP’ with your friend(s) and test it with paying customers within your network.
Optimise your MVP through our advisory boards and approximately $10 000 in love money. Additionally raise between $10 000 and $100 000 in pre-seed funding from our Africa Angel Investors Network
Raise $100 000+ from global investors to scale within your country, regional markets and beyond, leveraging our angel investors spread across the world.
Creating Value:
Africa's growing population needs travelling, eating, sleeping, communicating, collaborating, entertainment, love, clothing, education, healthcare among many other needs/wants and we need angel investing community to fund ambitious startups to provide solutions to a growing population. It’s time to build our local ecosystem to get lion share of funding available for startups, globally.
What we look for in outliers
You must be a tech startup modelled for regional or global success before you submit your Pitch Deck, below are some of the key aspects we review in your startup. Early-stage advisory and funding from our angel investors will help you perfect some of the key issues to stand out from the crowd for the global stage! Click on each icon to flip and view more details. To get insights on our thought process when we review your pitch deck, simply download our commentary on the seed stage Airbnb Pitch Deck (click to download)
‘I have missed more than 9 000 shots in my life, lost over 300 games. I have failed over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed’ Michael Jordan
Background
Vision
Problem
Solution
Product
Why Now
Market Size
Competitiion
GoTo Market
Business Model
Traction
Funds & Pricing
RoadMap
Team
Appendix
A startup is an early-stage business that is designed to bring efficiency to your market and grow exponentially leveraging technology to be at the forefront of market changes, right on time but ahead of the current competition in your market. If your business doesn’t fit out startup definition, you can apply for high growth SME funding through the Kupfuma platform. In simple terms startups create value whilst SMEs extract value.
Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not! Love Money
For startups the first source of funding is 'love money' from family, friends and fools based on trust and relationship built over time. In developed markets this isn't much of an issue as average GDP per capita is more than $50 000 hence most families and friends can easily scrape together their savings to give founders their first funding 'love money’ at generous terms. However, this is a different story in emerging markets mainly in Africa were average GDP per capita is a paltry $2 000 hence most families and friends are not able to fund talented founders within our ecosystem and this is gap we are trying to fill as AfricaAIN by providing advisory and love money to talented founders who are creating value for Africa's growing population needs and wants. We will support you during the period when you undertake book building from our angel investors network for pre-seed funding of between $10 000 to $100 000 to commercialise your MVP within your SOM. We are the wise fool to support you first, through our advisory boards and love money. Our Love Money will cover some of the following, as advised by the board.
1. Monthly Budget for Marketing and Subscriptions
You need early financial support for tactical GTM and necessary subscriptions to build early capacity i.e hosting, emails etc.
2. Working Tools
You will need performance tools i.e developer laptop, power kits, comfortable desk setup.
3. Global Capital Markets
To attract further funding beyond pre-seed stage you need to tap into global markets such as USA/UK and we will support you on this journey.
We are AfricaAIN
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Our Investment Thesis
In 2050 Africa’s population will be over 2.5billion accounting for at least 25% of world’s population meaning more complex problems which need to be solved by talented individuals in Africa, however most of the talent in Africa come from humble backgrounds to access funding to solve the complex problems at scale, hence we are building this platform to be the extended family to support these founders by providing them with advice and love money at an early stage. Some of the solutions to Africa’s problems have gone to the global stage for example Logan Green and a couple of friends during their college break in 2006, visited Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe which was facing a transportation crisis due to fuel shortages hence passengers were waving down cars with spare space on the side of the road. When Logan went back to the USA, he reflected on the observation he had made in Zimbabwe as Santa Barbara the town which he lived had mad traffic jams and more cars than Victoria Falls, he started working on his startup 'Zimride.' At the same time John Zimmer was working on a similar idea and they combined forces to execute on their startup idea. Over time Zimride evolved into Lyft which is current valued more than $5billion, this also gave inspiration to various ride sharing startups across the globe including Uber which is now valued at $150billion+. There are many talented individuals in Africa trying to solve our everyday challenges however struggle to raise patient capital to see through their breakthrough ideas unlike in developed markets where founders can easily access angel investors to support their ideas early on.
On the other hand, most of our angel investors are Africans in Diaspora. The reality being that most Africans in Diaspora are excluded from wealth creating opportunities both in Diaspora and back home due to various factors such as being secondary citiziens in Diaspora, not being on the ground back home, lack of network, and limited early stage investing knowledge hence most end up investing in the usual traditional businesses such as corner shops, small farming projects through relatives and friends with limited management experience resulting in perennial loss making entities and strained relationships. In most cases some passively invest in building mansions for funds preservation than wealth creation, these also end up deteriorating before retiring back home and constantly needing cash injection to spruce them up. Mostly their network is only limited to family members who are not on value creating tables back home hence will remain excluded from wealth creation despite having access to funding in Diaspora due to high margin propensity to save and access to cheap global funding options which are usually tapped by foreign investors who then learn new culture, new environment to invest in Africa when possibly Africans in Diaspora are better positioned to bring foreign investors as co-investors leveraging their local knowledge back home.
Our platform help you get networked to wealth creating opportunities back home by co-investing at pre-seed stage in startups which we have supported through our advisory and/or love money.
We are building the bridge between capital in Diaspora and wealth creating opportunities in startups back home. Welcome to the right table at the right time for wealth creation. We see problems back home as opportunities to create wealth by simply helping fix the problems leveraging tech and we are democratising access to tech investment opportunities in Africa.
Beyond convectional VC
Impact
We give feedback
- Our constructive feedback loop help startups reflect and improve over time.
Power Law
We want every startup to be a winner
- We evaluate each startup as a winner, we are not chasing unicorns but minicorns.
Unique
We don’t do competitions
- We take time to evaluate each startup on a case-by-case and give tailor made feedback.
Support
We go beyond financial support
- We provide support at board level in addition to financial support.
Family
We are your family
- We want to build strong relationships and treat our startups as family or friends.
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Do Great by Doing Good
A major setback for our startup ecosystem is the supply of quality startups with traction, the bottleneck being lack of talent which in turn reflects the lack of resources to produce great talent or simply availability of tools ‘devices such as laptops’ for the talent to shine. Recent statistics indicate that less than 10% households ‘not individuals’ in Africa have a laptop, with close to 50% of the laptops not efficiently functioning. In some instances, talented students from humble backgrounds fail to pursue a University/College program of choice i.e software development due to lack of necessary tools such as a laptop.
If you have a spare laptop or mobile device you no longer use, you can Do Good by donating it through our Do Great by Doing Good initiative, this will help nourish the next great software developer from humble background anywhere in Africa, if not you can also Do Good by donating money which will help us ship the devices to talented individuals across Africa who lack the necessary resources.
If you are an emerging software developer who really need a laptop, you can request for the device and we will assist on a first come first serve basis depending on available resources from the Do Great by Doing Good initiative. Ensure you provide enough details on 'Why You' to stand out.
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Voices from our ecosystem
‘Brainstorming and being accountable through advisory boards with the team has been a key differentiator, hopefully I will be able to scale my startup ’
Anopa - Founder
Harare, Zimbabwe
‘Venture capital has been non-existent in Africa and certainly this will compliment our local ecosystem as more angel investors participate in this'
David - Accountant
London, UK
Cape Town | Lagos | Nairobi | Accra | Harare | Kigali | Port Louis + more
Local, with a global mindset
London | New York | Sydney | Dubai | Paris | Hong Kong + more
ceo@africaain.com
I am AfricaAIN