The startup scene in Uganda on its journey to maturity, pegged mostly on lessons learned over the past few years. Most stakeholders are adapting and positioning themselves as more doors are being opened for future opportunities. That is why we are organising ‘Startup Battlefield‘ on August 19-20: A showcase and fundraising event for startups, many of them are launching their products for the first time.
Entrepreneurs and founders active in the Ugandan startup space are now fully aware of the kind of value they are proposing to their to be customers or users, after all the best source of capital is a satisfied, and returning customer. These are things that the earlier entrants didn’t have in mind, now instead of wasting a lot time on engineering, startups are now customer centric.
We are getting away from the stage of meaningless hackathons setup by clueless companies who were eager to get a piece of the action. We are now drifting towards teams with solid ideas who are figuring out their product market fit, and how they can best get revenue from these customer segments and how to finally engage investors as they continue to build and roll-out their services.
The hub model
A list of hubs and co-working spaces have come up and they have helped grow the ecosystem. Many startups can now become residents of these spaces with lots of benefits, including mentorship, free internet and a physical address where customers can find them.
These hubs host events that aim to solve problems faced by these startups, in a quest to help them ‘hack’ through their growth. This also helps them get critical insights on things they rarely look at and once they are aware of these kind of things that they can patch up to ready themselves for being investable.
Challenges and competitions
We have realized a tremendous increase in the number of competitions, including global ones like Seedstars World, 1776 Challenge and Garage 48, are coming up for a couple of reasons. The biggest one is the growth of the ecosystem. Big corporations have organised competitions, like the MTN App Challenge, that puts together techies with viable startup ideas in one place for 48 hours to come up with groundbreaking and game changing innovations. A list of startups have come out of competitions like these. Accelerators like Growth Africa are already on board getting together viable startups and readying them for investment.
Startup Battlefield
Startup Battlefield is a debuting, showcase and venture capital ground for startups, many of which are launching their products for the first time. These companies will gain visibility from users, Venture Capitalists, and companies that provide solutions to them. They will have a ground to showcase their innovations to users and VC’s, we will have a hackathon to give birth to the ‘next big thing’, and the sweetest part of it all is the main pitch deck where carefully selected startups will pitch is in front of investors.
We debut remarkable startups, introducing disruptive innovations out of the Ugandan tech space, and discussing what’s top of mind for the tech industry’s key innovators. Battlefield gathers top and smartest tech entrepreneurs, investors, hackers, and tech fans for on-stage interviews. The Startup corridor is the heartbeat of the event where startups will exhibit their technologies to hundreds of attendees.
Any attendee will have free Uber rides to and from the event through the two days!