Working with Ingressive Capital, we have been fortunate to meet and interact with world class investors, and incredible founders. When we are not physically meeting up with them, we are listening to or reading of them across different platforms.
From these interaction, we have complied a list of valuable gems from African investors that would help founders in their journey.
1. Stay Resilient, it’s a game of numbers; Last year, Maya Famodu, founder of Ingressive Capital was interviewed for Forbes, it was a very insightful read, and one of her key point was “stay resilient, it’s a game of numbers”.
She spoke about pitching to 375 investors when looking to fund her company. From her experience, Maya noted that founders can achieve if they stay resilient.
2. Technology Companies need to exist to make society more resilient; At an online chat where Iyinoluwa Ayodeji, founder Future Africa was a guest.
According to him, if investors didn’t invest in the 54gene or Paystack, or Flutterwave, how would people have survived during the lockdown? He explained the importance of technological companies to the society, invariably imploring more founders to use technology to change the world positively.
3. Be observant, there will be new opportunities, new trends, and new startups; we had an opportunity to interview Idris Ayodeji Bello, an African investor with over 10 years’ experience and over 37 portfolio companies under his belt.
Speaking to founders and other investors, he said “ the best startups in Africa were founded during a crisis, some of such startups included Andela during Ebola and Flutterwave during a recession”.
Thus imploring founders to make bold moves and listen to what the market is saying.
4. Venture investing at the early stage, especially pre-Series A, is 80% of the gut and feel of the entrepreneurs and the team versus your actual numbers; while listening to a startup focused podcast, Zachariah George, angel investor, Chief Investment Officer of Startup bootcamp Africa said this and it stuck.
Founders need to be able build relationships with investors beyond just showing numbers especially in the early stage.
These are a few of my favorite quotes from African founders, we will share more as we find.
