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 need 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 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.
‘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
Purpose
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. USA/UK company registration
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
We focus on home grown tech solutions to the problems we are currently facing, the solutions should be scalable into regional and global markets. Think of it this way, 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 for cars ‘with spare space’ on the side of the road ‘now called mushikashika.’ 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 at $5billion, this also gave inspiration to various ride sharing startups including Uber which is now valued at $150billion+. To give perspective Uber's two angel investor who invested the least amount of $5 000 each, at IPO their investment was valued at $24.8million each, certainly one of the best case scenarios of angel investing.
There are a number of solutions to some of Africa’s problems which can be scaled into both regional and global markets. As AfricaAIN, we are looking for startups within Africa tackling such problems to provide them with advisory, love money and pre-seed funding to prove their business model with a mindset to scale into both regional and global marketplaces. If you are a start-up working in this space, you can simply submit your Pitch Deck and if you are an angel investor you can simply join as a member.
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