Live The African Dream by Ajim Capital

The healthcare system in South Africa faces a number of challenges, including limited access to discrete treatments and services. This is especially prevalent for individuals who require specialised care for conditions such as STDs. In response to this problem, Alex Schmid founded Contro with the goal of providing discrete access to stigmatised healthcare in South Africa. Contro aims to bridge the gap between those needing care and the resources available, by offering confidential and personalised services. In this episode of Live The African Dream, Blessing Iyamadiken, Head of Platform at Ajim Capital speaks to Alex Schmid about the challenges of building a discrete tele-healthcare startup in South Africa and his journey so far. He said, "We found that 60% of patients that were going to telehealth platforms were being referred back to physical care, and so we streamlined the process of getting healthcare, especially for things like birth control and STIs. We said to ourselves, we can make telehealth cheaper, better, but the biggest thing is, we can make it discrete." Stigma plays a major role in preventing individuals from seeking the necessary healthcare they need. This can be due to fear of discrimination, judgement or even violence. As a result, many people living with stigmatised conditions may avoid seeking treatment altogether. By offering discrete access to healthcare, Contro is helping to break down the barriers created by stigma.

Mark Kleyner is the Co-Founder of Dream VC, an investor accelerator for Africa. To date, Dream VC has helped people from over 30 African countries, get a career kick in the African Venture Capital space, thus enabling them to build the future they desire.

For a long time, Nigeria’s retail investors had little or no access to the global investment scene. All that changed with the launch of Bamboo, a platform that not only made it possible for retail investors to buy and sell stocks, but also educated the Nigerian market on stock investing.

Today, Bamboo is present in Nigeria and Ghana and is also looking to expand to other African countries.

In this episode, Richmond Bassey, the CEO and Co-Founder of Bamboo shares his story about how he is using technology to help African investors tap into global markets with just the click of a button.

From advice on fundraising to learnings from his path to launching a startup, this episode will give you an inside look into Richmond’s vision for Bamboo, and his next plans for the company.

Yemi Olulana’s walk to being the CEO of Flex Finance is a journey that has seen him go from working as a software engineer at reputable companies to launching his own startup. After cutting his teeth as a startup founder of Giddiphones, Yemi started Flex Finance, a spend management and corporate card platform for African businesses.   

Flex Finance empowers businesses to take control of their expenses via the web, mobile and corporate cards; they also help companies manage hundreds of millions of dollars in spending.  

From the onset, Yemi’s focus has been on creating a lasting legacy that positively impacts lives while building sustainable businesses. He is achieving this by leveraging technology and data to give African businesses the tools they need to make intelligent financial decisions, gain visibility into their spending, reduce costs and increase profits.  

“African businesses spend over $1.6 Trillion dollars in 2022 and it is expected to rise to over $4 Trillion in just seven years and so the market is growing really rapidly. In order for businesses in Africa to be globally competitive, they need world-class tools that can help them take control of their spending because poor spending is the largest cause of business failure”  

So far, his experience has made him uniquely placed to bring Flex Finance’s vision to fruition. In early 2022, they crossed their first billion naira transaction, and in less than 2 weeks crossed their next billion naira transaction. Today, they have done hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions.  

From all indications, this is a company that is poised for success.

In this episode, Dr Ola Brown breaks down the economic opportunities in the African markets, and her passion to see Africa lift its citizens out of poverty.

"China lifted a billion people out of poverty, and they did it primarily through investments. GDP is about being able to export and it is about the government's ability to spend and investment is a really big part of that," says Dr Ola Brown.

It's amazing how much effect, investments can have on African markets, and Dr Ola is passionate about shining light on why people should invest in Africa, and what the potential returns could be.

How many times do businesses in Africa have to lose a sale because they can’t accept the way a customer wants to pay? This is the problem Abraham Ojes the Co-founder and CEO of Collect Africa set out to solve when he founded the company.

Collect Africa enables businesses to add local payment methods to their websites or apps through a single API.

“At Collect Africa, we started out using payments as a wedge, trying to help businesses accept payment both online and offline. Online using payment links and customers can easily see different payment methods which they can pay you with, both bank transfer, cards, or wallets that they can easily pay you with; or offline using POS terminals”

Interestingly, it doesn’t end there, as Abraham has been able to leverage on the data provided by merchants who use Collect Africa to build even more products for them.

“We see payments as a wedge towards building other tools for businesses. For instance, we were able to see how merchants were using our platform to do a lot of expense or spend, and we decided to build a spend management tool.”

Today’s episode features Foluso Ojo, the Co-Founder and Chief of Operations of truQ. truQ is an African tech startup providing seamless logistics for businesses helping them move items across Nigeria. truQ is also one of our portfolio companies.

According to Foluso, the solution for truQ came when she needed to move a piece of furniture and she had to search for up to 4 days before she could find a vehicle that could transport it for her.

In the first couple of months of running the business, she and her Co-Founder, Fatayo Williams bootstrapped and ran the business using a google sheet before going on to build a product as demand increased and the need to scale and introduce new product offerings became imminent.

truQ’s customers are startups, SMEs and large enterprises that have found they just can’t get their logistics right. truQ offers a better solution to this problem of poorly executed logistics operations in Nigeria, and so far, it has recorded great success.

Today, truQ is fast becoming the Uber for Logistics as more businesses leverage on their fast, reliable and affordable service. The company is also scaling up to a whole new level with plans of expanding into other African countries in the near future.

Victor Alade is the founder of Raenest, an African payroll tech startup providing borderless payments for African startups. Raenest is also one of Ajim Capital’s portfolio companies.

In this episode, I spoke to Victor Alade about his journey as an entrepreneur and his experience as a startup founder solving one of the most critical issues on the continent.

“One of the core export of Africa is talent. The population of youth and the rate at which they are adopting technology is growing rapidly. Gone are the days when people only hire software developers from Africa. Today, people hire product managers, designers, and customer support.”

This explosion of talent growth in Africa has led to a high demand for African tech talent worldwide, which has led to the need to solve the problem of cross-border payments. Before becoming a VC, I was a founder. I also experienced this same issue of facilitating payment to my African tech hires, primarily because traditional payroll systems could take up to 10 business days.

Hence, when Raenest pitched its tech solution to Ajim Capital, we immediately saw its potential to transform how African tech talent gets paid globally.

And so far, investing in Raenest has proven to be a great decision.

Over the last couple of years, investors, founders, and executives in tech startups in Africa have complained about one thing in one voice - The shortage of quality technical talents.

Ingressive for Good solves that! In just two years, they have built a strong and thriving community of over 200,000 and trained over 100,000 Africans with tech skills.

In this episode, I spoke to Blessing Abeng, the Co-Founder & Director of communication at Ingressive for Good.

One thing I appreciate about them is how they present their organization. As I mentioned in this short, I’m fed up with many non-profits always showing how poor the African continent is and how they are saving children. I’m a capitalist and believe that the best way to change an economy is by supporting entrepreneurs, young professionals, and the leaders of tomorrow.

If you’re building or planning to launch a non-profit in Africa, I recommend you check out the full episode.

If you want to donate to an organization making waves in African tech, check out Ingressive for Good.

New podcast episodes every week! ;)

She said,

“As an investor, you must determine what success means. There are so many ways to exit. A limited number of IPOs will happen, but even then, if someone gets the chance to be acquired, that is a win, and then you can get a chance to be a part of something bigger.”

In her work at Ingressive for Good, she said,

“We know there is a talent problem, many people are trying to find solutions. We are not working in silos, we are collaborating and figuring it out. And in 5 - 10 years, the difference will be clear.”

Growing up in Cameroon, Eunice didn’t imagine she would end up as an entrepreneur or a founder of a VC firm. But as a young teenager in Central Africa, she had an innate entrepreneurship drive, a skill set that would become vital to surviving in corporate America and her career.

Ajim, who migrated to the U.S as an International student in 2011, is not a stranger to the struggles of starting and running a tech startup and navigating the complexities of a competitive and dynamic tech scene. 

After graduating in 2016, she settled in Texas, where she landed her first role as a data analyst at Apple Inc. “I was doing analytics for them, and during that time, Data Science and Machine Learning were booming,” 

Despite working at one of the biggest tech companies in the world, Eunice wanted more. “I knew there was no way I would live my American or African dream of being an employee, so I wanted to get into the tech startup scene.”

“I hated it, I hated corporate America. So, I said to myself, I need to go out and build a company and solve a problem, and I would be rewarded because that excites me”.

She eventually quit her job at Apple and founded her first startup, DataGig, in 2017, an online marketplace that connects data scientists to SMBs. Within months, she grew the company’s revenue to a substantial amount per month and started fundraising.

While fundraising, she faced a lot of rejections. Some people said the idea wouldn’t work, the market wasn’t large enough, and other such remarks.

But she eventually partnered with another startup with a similar model to DataGig but for a different market. On that note, she closed DataGig and started OpenTeams, an online marketplace connecting service providers with open-source software users. 

In its first year, OpenTeams raised $680,000 in pre-seed funding. By the second year, the company had hired some full-time employees and posted millions in revenue. In the third year, OpenTeams raised about $3 million in another funding round and almost doubled its revenue.

As a founder with a vision to always give back to Africa, she hired resource and technical personnel from the continent, mainly from Nigeria and Rwanda. 

“My vision has always been what can I do to help the continent. As an entrepreneur in the US, I have always sought opportunities to help Africans.”

As an Angel Investor, she noticed a massive gap in early-stage financing on the continent. In September 2021, she left OpenTeams to launch a venture capital firm focused on early-stage startups in Africa. 

As an investor, she understands the challenges involved in starting a tech company, building and maintaining a company, and handling rejections from investors.  With that, she can liaise with founders to proffer the best plans to succeed. 

Ajim Capital considers startups that would create meaningful products for Africans. Startups that provide opportunities through their products and services to Africans. Startups with a strong team are highly knowledgeable in their niches in tech. 

In this Live the African Dream Podcast episode, I spoke to Emmanuel (Tunji) Oke and Diana Teoh at GetFundedAfrica. GetFundedAfrica is a tech-enabled marketplace that matches startups, investors (VCs & Angels), corporates & government.

We discussed what inspired GetFundedAfrica, how their model works, the impact on the African startup ecosystem, and their recent partnership with Microsoft to make funding even more accessible for founders.

Listen to the full episode to learn more about Tunji, Diana, and the GetFundedAfrica journey.

In this Live the African Dream Podcast episode, I spoke to Agnes Aistleitner Kisuule, Managing Partner of First Circle Capital. First Circle Capital is a Pre-Seed / Seed fund investing in experienced African founders building fintech (and healthtech) startups.

Agnes moved to Uganda from Austria in January 2020 to work with a tech company, and from there on, she transitioned into VC. In this episode, she talks about what spurred her move to Africa, how she transitioned from working in tech to being a VC and investing in Africa’s top fintech founders.

“We live with many inefficiencies and crazy gaps. Every time I pay mobile money fees, I wonder how much we pay on transactions. But on the other hand, these things are market opportunities. We see entrepreneurs trying to figure out how to close these gaps with technology. So, Africa is a stimulating environment because you learn about the models that work or won’t. I find it extremely rewarding in that regard.”

Listen to the full episode to learn more about Agnes’s journey.

New episodes are every Wednesday!

In this Live the African Dream Podcast episode, I spoke to Olu Oyinsan, Managing Partner of Oui Capital. Oui Capital recently announced 1st close of its $30 Million second fund.

Olu talked about his experience raising his first fund and going on to raise a second one with much higher stakes involved.

Raising a VC fund is binary because to institutionalize as a fund, you need to get an AUM that makes the business sustainable. It is either you cross that hurdle, or you don’t. And the space between both ends is crowded with many VCs in the same industry. It’s a bucket of impostor syndrome, fear, anxiety, and self-doubt. But at the end of the day, you have to decide that you have no choice but to raise your fund.

Listen to the full episode to learn more about Olu’s journey as a VC and his advice to founders and emerging fund managers.

New episodes are every Wednesday!

I recently spoke to Steven Freidmutter, CEO at SF Ventures. Steven is an early investor/advisor in many VC funds investing exclusively in female founders and Africa.

I've had the pleasure of meeting Steven in person, learning more about his humble journey and his passion for empowering women and underrepresented founders and funders.

Steven announced two conferences he was supposed to attend in Africa in the podcast. He ended up missing his flight because of visa issues. He recently had a Life-threatening experience, and missing his flights was a blessing. I'll encourage you to check out his profile and give him a follow.

Steven shared his experience investing in Africa regarding how African founders are solving previously not digitized problems and eventually scaling out to solve them in multiple countries, thereby doing a great business.

He said, "In Africa, fundamental problems need to be solved. It is just a common sense thing; I cannot believe that this is not digitized. People spend up to 3 hours online waiting for this and that, and this company will take out the cost and the time, making it easier and more efficient. So first, it is just the idea that I feel that as a human being, there are so many things in Africa that need to be done. And founders try to choose something that means something to them and that they think they have an impact on. And from a business side, something that will affect many people."

Listen to the full episode to learn more about Steven's experience advising and investing in African founders and funders.

A new episode of Live the African Dream Podcast is live.

In this episode, we spoke to Joe Kinvi, Managing Partner at Hoaq, a community of angels backing entrepreneurs in building scalable businesses for Africa and its Diaspora.

Joe dropped some great insights throughout the Podcast, but one that particularly stood out was his recommendations on starting an angel community like Hoaq; he recommended three things:

1) Find your tribe and find people interested in the same things as you.

2) Build trust. It took them a while for people to trust what we were doing.

3) Don’t forget why people come to you. You need to have access to excellent deal flow.

Listen to the full episode to learn more about Joe’s thoughts on starting and growing an angel community investing in Africa.

Also, subscribe to the Live the African Dream Podcast on your favorite podcast platform to get notified when new episodes drop. The Podcast is available on all major podcast platforms like Apple, Spotify, and Google.

New episodes every Wednesday!

A new episode of Live the African Dream Podcast is live.

In this episode, we spoke to Axel Peyriere, Founding Partner at Emerging Classified Ventures. Axel is bullish on Africa and prefers to take risks on innovations in emerging markets than in established markets.

He said,

Many African entrepreneurs are full of ambitions and want to tackle other markets than just their market. But I think the potential is enormous if you already address these markets well. Chipper cash grew from a $10M valuation three years ago to over $2B. So I would instead tell entrepreneurs to focus on their market first. If you're an African startup, think about Africa because there's so much to address there. 

The Asian population, especially in China, will decrease by the end of the century. India will plateau, and Europe will decrease a bit. Africa will grow tremendously. Africa will be the only place on Earth where there will be megacities, like 100 million people cities. Nigeria will probably be 800 million by the end of the century. Congo will probably be 400. So there's enough opportunity to focus on the African market.

Listen to the full episode to learn more about Axel's thoughts on investing in Africa.

Also, subscribe to the Live the African Dream Podcast on your favorite podcast platform to get notified when new episodes drop. The podcast is available on all major podcast platforms like Apple, Spotify, and Google.

New episodes every Wednesday!

Today we're releasing the second episode of the Live The African Dream Podcast.

This time, with Dayo Kolewo! He dropped some words of wisdom and hopes for the average African on the continent and in the Diaspora.

Here's a quote mentioned during the podcast that resonates with me.

"We're seeing more African investors thanks to the successes of several venture-backed companies like PayStack, Flutterwave, PiggyVest, Cowrywise, and many other companies. A lot of African founders are also investing in other African founders. And it starts from there! When you look at Silicon Valley today, many billionaires and millionaires began by investing in each other. And so, over time, I believe we will have more entrepreneurs become fund managers in the next few years." - Dayo

You'll have to listen to the full episode to get more insights.

I invite you to tune in and stream, Live The African Dream on all major streaming platforms to help you decisively craft a plan for bettering the community, tomorrow, and our global atmosphere.

New episodes every Wednesday!

Today we're launching the first episode of Live The African Dream Podcast.

Live The African Dream is a podcast inspired to gather the next generation of curious investors, entrepreneurs, and tech leaders to spark conversation around the topics they are passionate about. From building a business to raising money to the challenges and triumphs of being an African or Africa enthusiast on the continent and in the diaspora in today's world.

Whether running the show or working your way up the ladder, let's build something great. Tune in for exclusive interviews with seasoned investors, entrepreneurs, and rising stars who are changing the technology industry in Africa.

This Live The African Dream Podcast episode features Maxime Bayen, co-founder of Africa: The Big Deal. 

We discussed the current market downturn and why Africa seems slightly more immune to the capital market prices faced in the US, Europe, and other regions.

The main two reasons why we are seeing this:

1. The magnitude of problems the continent's startups address is so enormous that even during a crisis, these problems are not going away because it's about giving access to people with primary needs.

2. When you look at the companies fundraising on the continent, historically, those companies have solid fundamentals to raise from VCs in Africa. You need to have strong financial traction and a lot of customers. It's challenging to raise if you don't have strong traction already.

We invite you to tune in and stream, Live The African Dream on all major streaming platforms to help you decisively craft a plan for bettering the community, tomorrow, and our global atmosphere.