Raising money for your business is not an easy thing to do. There are many parts of the puzzle that need to be put into place before you can even start a conversation with possible investors. When you are gearing up to raise capital, this is one area where VC4Africa can help.
Current status:
I am pleased to report that we have now processed nearly 1000 venture applications in the first year and 400 venture profiles are currently published to the VC4Africa.biz website. In the last two months we have welcomed entrepreneurs from Algeria, Botswana, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zimbabwe. We have seen at least 11 deals close and entrepreneurs have raised more than a million euro this year alone. Most importantly, the quality of the ventures and network has never been better.
What kind of ventures:
The ventures on VC4Africa are early stage and require investments between USD $10K and USD $1 million. The primary sectors include mobile, web, energy and health care, amongst others. Each venture is disruptive in their use of technology or in their application of a disruptive business model. Thirty percent of the registered ventures have some form of social mission and could be qualified as a social enterprise.
Fundraising criteria:
Since we launched our new fundraising tool more than 60 ventures have been screened of which 8 have been approved for fundraising. Most if not all are in serious conversations with investors. In order to open a round of funding on VC4Africa we require the entrepreneur to publish a venture profile, complete the VC4Africa Quick Scan, upload a copy of their Certificate of Incorporation, and forward their business plan and financials to the VC4Africa team for review. 90% of the ventures fundraising have experienced teams and a working product in place. Entrepreneurs upload their documents to their venture profiles for investors to review and the VC4Africa team works to make personal introductions as needed.
Feel free to contact ben@vc4a.com for support or register your own intention to open a round of funding directly from your venture profile. [gview file=”http://vc4a.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/The-VC4A-Quick-Scan1.pdf”]