WHERE’S THE FUNDING?

Tinotenda Chibebe is the author of The Black Opportunity: Conversations on Belgian Venture Capital and Afropean Entrepreneurship which explores how the inclusion of black voices in the venture capital space will shape the world for generations to come. Tino has also written articles on Medium and for Complex’s Greenlabel. He works on projects geared to advancing underdeveloped regions, regarding education and entrepreneurship in Africa.

Key interview highlights:

• The Black Opportunity is about creating access to opportunities and mass of wealth for black entrepreneurs all over the world and pulling a global conversation around venture capital.  
• Europe operates within an ecosystem where a lot of things about race are less specific, unlike the US, with specific valid data that inform policies to track activities within VC and companies at large.  Therefore, Venture capital is largely about the network ( who you know, how you know them, and your similarities). Best businesses are those who have access to such opportunities.   
• The level of inclusion and equity in the VC ecosystem in Africa is low, black founders in Africa face biases, just as it is in the UK and US. Only 6% of African startups seeking funding receive $1M or more, the rest goes to non-black founders.   
• The pattern matching practice among Venture Capital financiers creates a blueprint of what a successful founder should be, based on what has worked in the past. Black founders get left behind because they don't fit into the key signal.  
• The global opportunity cost of pattern matching among others is the inability to maximize the societies' potential to bring better solutions and better products that make the world a better place.  
• Diversification of VCs is a big step to attracting a different set of founders and diversifying the venture capitalist network.   

The Black Opportunity is out now!  Buy it on Amazon!  Thanks for joining us for another episode of the WTF podcast.  If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com.

Jantzen Young is a real estate expert with a passion for helping investors build businesses that promote time freedom and financial stability. Jantzen spent 14 years in financial services traveling the country teaching thousands of clients how to adopt technology to optimize, digitize and grow their advisory businesses. While she watched her colleagues flourish, she lacked that financial security in her own life. That’s when Jantzen discovered the power of passive income. Once she did, she grew her rental portfolio from 1 to 6 in only 60 days.

When a lack of capital halted her expansion, she turned to selling vacant land and completed 31 land deals in 14 months all while working full-time. With experience in multifamily and commercial real estate along with vacant land, Jantzen now focuses on wholesaling and owner-financing high-value land; and putting her capital to work with transactional funding, bridge loans, and joint venture partnerships.

Key interview highlights:

• Land flipping is more profitable than house flipping!   
• You don’t need bank financing to flip land!  
• Land flipping can be done remotely with Google Earth, unlike with a house, you don’t need to physically see land to buy it!  
• Call the County office where you are buying the land to get all of the due diligence about the land before purchasing it.  Visit the Fish and Wildlife Service (fws.gov) a U.S. government website for land maps all over the country. 

Things to look out for when buying land:

Ensure that no endangered animals inhabit the land or you will not be able to develop and that has endangered species on it.  If you are in the U.S. Midwest, ensure that the land you are buying has water rights to rivers or other water sources. If you are buying land in a mountainous area, make sure that the land is buildable and not on a slope. 

CONNECT WITH JANTZEN: www.FlippingWithoutRehab.com Email: FlippingWithoutRehab@gmail.com Facebook: /ThePlotSquad Linked In: /in/FlippingWithoutRehab Tick Tock: @FlippingWithoutRehab

If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com.

Franziska Reh is the CEO & Co-Founder of Uncap, a German fintech focusing on early-stage investing in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2019, Franziska Co-Founded Uncap, to revolutionize access to funding for early-stage entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa. Uncap raised an undisclosed 7-figure funding round to test its data-driven, automated, and remote investment platform and so far invested in 27 entrepreneurs in 8 different countries. Over the next 10 years, UnCap wants to invest 1 billion in 50,000 entrepreneurs. 

Key interview highlights: 

• The virality of the initial proposal leading to over 200 applicants signing up from a viral WhatsApp message was an indicator of a funding problem that needed the UnCap solution. 
• Lowering investment costs to ensure that more deals can be made to fill the financing need for African entrepreneurs. 
• You need ideas that others think are crazy to be game-changers. 
• More bias-free funding is needed to fully unlock and unleash the potential of African entrepreneurs.

If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com.

Aysha Tegally is the co-founder of Future Females Invest and co-founder of FFI Angels. Future Females Invest is changing systems by providing consultancy, training, access to investment and markets, and ecosystem support to African women entrepreneurs, investors, NGOs, and gender empowerment advocates in public and private sector organizations.

What you will learn from this episode:

• Mentorship is nice but women need access to capital to complement that in order for them to make the financial investments needed to grow their business. 
• Women themselves can act as barriers to accessing investment by not always having the confidence to ask for what they want or they feel the need to over-prepare before they make an ask compared to their male counterparts. 
• A system change is needed that includes more women in decision-making roles such as women on the boards of funds and in C-suites and senior positions where decisions are made and also as investors to improve the ecosystem for more women to access capital. 

 Get in touch with FFI Angels if you are an African female founder (or a non-Africa-based female founder with a business that serves the African market) looking for seed capital, business, and moral support to help you grow and scale your business.

If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com.

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo is an empowerment coach, career transition strategist, and CEO of Melanin & Medicine. In less than 12 months, she built Melanin & Medicine into a successful, multi-six-figure company that provides support, strategy & skills to help Black women physicians pivot into purpose-led careers & businesses & live more fulfilled & integrated lives. As a career transition strategist, she provides women with culturally informed strategies and systems to reduce burnout, achieve personal and professional fulfillment, rediscover their purpose, and ultimately, achieve their vision for life, without struggle or sacrifice. Prior to founding Melanin, & Medicine, Dr.Uwemedimo worked as a board-certified pediatrician for over 15 years and a professor for over a decade, mentoring women in medicine to live more fulfilled lives.

Key interview highlights:

• Busyness, exhaustion, and burnout are not signs of Black Excellence! 
• Weathering, the effect of premature biological aging impacts Black women at a higher rate than White women.  
• Weathering is associated with health risks and is often caused by being repeatedly exposed to social adversity and marginalization.  

Omolara is helping black women doctors overcome what is called the Human Giver Syndrome - a framework for examining the inequality in the time and effort spent on childcare and housekeeping between men and women see Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle 12-week Medicine and Melanin incubator for black women in medicine to pivot from burnout into purpose and profit. Visit Melanin and Medicine to learn more. 

Guest Contact: hello@omolaramd.com FB: @melaninmedi LinkedIn: @omolaramd Twitter: @dromolara IG: @melaninmedicineco Youtube: Website: melaninandmedicine.co

If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com.

Max is the co-founder of Africa: The Big Deal database and newsletter that tracks and publishes data on deal flow to African startups.  He is also Head of Mobile for Development (M4D) at GSMA, which is singularly positioned at the intersection of the mobile ecosystem and the development sector to drive innovation in digital technology to reduce inequalities in our world, enabled by partnerships with forward-thinking donors and a team of 130 passionate professionals. Max joined GSMAin 2012 and held positions within various programs. He initially helped mobile operators and partners design solutions to ensure women in emerging markets do not get left out of the digital economy as part of the Connected Women program. He later headed the Ecosystem Accelerator and M4D Utilities programs which have allocated a combined $22 million in grant funding to 85 ventures in 40+ countries across Africa and Asia; these ventures had since collectively raised $450+ million in additional funding and impacted more than 10 million citizens as of January 2020.

In this episode we discussed:

• What the data trends from 2021 are signaling? 
• What is required to overcome gender bias in the funding ecosystem and improve gender funding parity? 
• What to expect in 2022 for African startups.

If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact me at whereisthefunding@gmail.com.

My guest today is Ropa Murombo, dog-mom, tech entrepreneur, and co-founder and COO of Feniska, a company that builds innovative solutions for pets and pet parents that bring the Pet-Tech industry to new heights. Ropa was born in Harare - a city of hustlers. The entrepreneurial gene was embedded in her at a young age as she grew up surrounded by people who are hardworking and enterprising. Ropa was introduced to the world of tech while she was studying International Business in Berlin. Since then, she has had a passion for the creation of digital products that create unique customer experiences and simplify the lives of those who use them. Her creativity, attention to detail, and love for extensive research make her an asset to Feniska's Go-To-Market strategy. Ropa co-founded Feniska to create a new world for pet parents to be able to improve the well-being of their pets and identify health problems early.

Did you know it’s estimated the US pet industry reached $99 billion in 2020? Globally, the pet care market has grown to $261 billion in 2022; up from $245 billion in 2021, and is estimated to increase to $350 billion by 2027.

In this episode we discuss:

• How Ropa and her co-founder are disrupting the pet health space with their innovative technology
• Some hot tips for pet parents
• The type of culture they are creating at Feniska as women (of color) in tech
• The importance of leading with empathy and creating inclusive workspaces; and
• The funding strategy they are pursuing for Feniska.

To learn more about Ropa, follow her on Instagram at chancetheropa on LinkedIn as Ropafadzo Muromba. Learn more about Feniska at www.feniska.com. Follow the Feniska page on LinkedIn and the Feniska.app page on Instagram.

Brian Aoaeh is a Co-founder and General Partner of Refashiond Ventures, an emerging venture fund manager that invests in early-stage supply chain technology. He co-founded the New York Supply Chain Meetup and the Word Wide Supply Chain Federation. He is an adjunct professor of Supply Chain and Operations Management at the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University and a VC in Residence at Genius Guild, Greenhouse Fund, and a Venture Partner at Newark Venture Partners.

The past ran on supply chains. The present runs on supply chains. The future will run on supply chains. The world is a supply chain.™ This is the mantra of my guest who was recently named by Flexport among the 55 supply chain and logistics experts you should know and was nicknamed "The Elon Musk of Logistics Technology" on Twitter.

In this episode we discuss:

• His experience working in Family Offices and Venture Capital investing
• All things supply chain technology; and
• His fundraising experience as a VC raising a first fund

Learn more about Refashiond Ventures at https://www.refashiond.com and follow Brian on all social media platforms at Brian Laung Aoaeh but especially on LinkedIn and on Twitter!

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you liked it, leave a rating, a review, download, or share this episode. 

Curtis May is the host of The Practical Wealth Show Podcast and the creator and owner of Practical Wealth Advisors. For more than 35 years, Custis has been passionate about helping his clients save money and live their very best life, right now. His primary focus is to help individuals and families become financially free by following the principles of wealth creation that have endured for centuries around the world. His "Money for Life" framework helps business owners and entrepreneurs find where and how they are losing money unintentionally and how to stop it from continuing.

In this episode we discussed:

• The Money for Life Formula
• Legacy of Wealth and Wisdom
• The 4 Rules of Traditional Banks and Wall Street and Why they Work Against You
• Privatized Banking
• Cash Flow Mapping; and
• Quick Tips on Personal Finance

To learn more about Curtis, visit his website Practical Wealth Advisors, and follow him on LinkedIn. Follow the Practical Wealth Show Podcast on major podcast platforms and Practical Wealth TV on Youtube.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you liked it, leave a rating, a review, download, or share this episode.

Marketing By Monrae is the owner of Rare Necessity Brand Management LLC, a published author, and a digital marketing maven. Opening her firm in 2013 as a sophomore in college. Monrae designed Rare Necessity with the intention of creating a space where creatives will have the tools and resources to help make their businesses successful. Since the firm's inception, she has assisted thousands of entrepreneurs with creating and growing profitable and scalable businesses. 

With a passion for out-of-the-box marketing, and her unique approach to overall business development using guerrilla marketing tactics, business management, and digital marketing. Monrae has been able to collaborate with several business owners and socialites to increase their revenue to well over 300% within the first 90 days of working together. In 2020, the firm extended its reach through the Millionaire Mob University brands offering products and services that assist everyday entrepreneurs with making marketing simple by utilizing the combination of data and creativity. Since the creation of the University Monrae has helped her students earn $13m + with the strategic marketing tactics that you’re about to learn today …

What you will learn from Monrae in this episode:

• The 3 biggest marketing challenges that people who seek her services have and how she helps them overcome those challenges,
• The top 5 marketing mistakes that small business owners make and what can they do to avoid them.
• Key advice from her TEDx Talk "No One Cares About Your Talent" tips on mastering marketing.
• Her Content and Traffic membership program and how strategic marketing campaigns allow entrepreneurs to do all marketing tasks on a monthly basis; and 
• 5 simple marketing hacks that small businesses should use to help their businesses thrive?

To learn more about Monrae, visit her website at marketingbymonrae.com, and follow her on Instagram at marketingnymonrae where she has over 124,000 followers and all platforms. 

Keith Daniel and Tom Droege are intentional about funding Black entrepreneurs and bringing more equity to venture capital. They stop by WHERE'S THE FUNDING? to discuss inequalities in the VC ecosystem, whether the VC model is suitable for Black entrepreneurs, and what they are doing to create access to funding for Black founders.

Through Resilient Ventures, the co-founders, have built a reputation of action and integrity. Their early-stage venture fund exists to show that VC can be a good model for Black founders if it is done differently, and by differently they mean more equitably. Black entrepreneurs often do not have the opportunity or privilege to raise friends and family rounds and often grow slower (despite being in business for a while) because they do not have the opportunity to raise funding to scale and grow.

In this episode we discussed:

• how they are combining social justice with venture capital
• what a more equitable funding ecosystem across racial lines might look like
• what early stage Black entrepreneurs need to know about the VC funding ecosystem to successfully fundraise
• three things Black entrepreneurs should do to improve their fundraising outcomes

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you liked it, leave a rating, a review, download, or share this episode.

***NOTE: The internet connection for this episode with my guest who was based in Nigeria was not great, hence cameras were off.  Sorry! I do the best I can with what the internet gods give me for each recording depending on where my guest for that day is based.

The content of the episode is good so listen to the audio episode instead if this provides you no value.

"The power of us as women fund managers controlling the capital, controlling the decision, I think that's quite transformational." —Ada Osakwe

This investor is reducing barriers for African women entrepreneurs with her new franchising program. Ada Osakwe, the Founder & Chief Executive of Agrolay Ventures an early-stage VC fund, and Nuli, a food, and beverage company stops by WHERE'S THE FUNDING? to talk about why she invests in African women entrepreneurs, her own entrepreneurship journey, and her Nuli Amazon franchising program.

What you'll learn from Ada in this episode:

• How to fundraise with confidence.
• How her experience in the public sector influenced her to become an entrepreneur and investor
• How the current funding ecosystem and VC, in particular, excludes the majority of African women entrepreneurs.
• Why she is a champion for African women in agribusiness and why she invests in women.How she bounces back from crushing setbacks.Where she thinks she has the biggest opportunity to create change.
• A breakdown of how the Nuli Foods franchise is reducing barriers to entrepreneurship for women.

"If DEI is put as this divorced and separate thing over here, it won't last." — Aiko Bethea

DEI influencer Aiko Bethea stops by WHERE'S THE FUNDING? to discuss the need for more transformational DEI in the current funding ecosystem and what needs to happen to make it more equitable. DEI as a field has been around since the late 1960s but has become a trending term since the summer of racial reckoning in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a term used to describe policies and programs that promote the representation and participation of different groups of individuals, including people of different ages, races, ethnicities, abilities and disabilities, genders, religions, cultures, and sexual orientations. An analogy used to describe DEI is:

Diversity is where everyone is invited to the party. 

Equity means that everyone has the opportunity to dance.

Inclusion means that everyone gets to contribute to the playlist. 

The funding ecosystem and VC in particular have a DEI problem. It is plagued with inequality and a lack of (but growing in recent years)  diversity of women investors and investors of color. The lack of diversity and lack of intentionality about creating more equity perpetuates a system that continues to be fueled by implicit and explicit biases that systematically deny funding to people of color specifically Black entrepreneurs and Black women entrepreneurs in particular faring the worst.

What you'll learn from Aiko in this episode:

• Transformational vs transactional DEI, what's the difference?
• Defining what transformational change looks likeHow money can be used as a facade to avoid more meaningful DEI work; and
• What it will take to achieve racial and gender equity in the funding ecosystem

"The bootstrapping life is not cool, so yes, please take the money." —Wale Mafolasire

The secrets to bootstrapping are revealed. Wale Mafolasire (pronounced Wall-AY Mafo-LAH-shee-ray) stops by WHERE' THE FUNDING? to share his bootstrapping journey and why you shouldn't if you don't have to, and what he thinks is the hardest part of bootstrapping.

Tom Preston-Werner is quoted as saying that "bootstrapping is a way to do something about the problems you have without letting someone else give you permission to do them". Wale didn't wait for VCs to give him permission to solve a major problem for many churches, nonprofits, and causes that were looking for opportunities to fundraise.

He solved the problem by bootstrapping the growth of Givelify when he struck out with VCs. Today Givelify is the most popular online and mobile giving platform with an easy donation app and a powerful donation management system.

What you'll learn from Wale in this episode:

• How to become the type of person that people want to take a risk on.
• When you don't have a plan B, plan A has a way of making itself work. Don't give up!
• Bootstrapping is what you do when all the doors are closed and you can't find a window. Why he did it and why he thinks that you shouldn't. Hint: it's really hard!
• What he considers the hardest part of bootstrapping and how he deals with it.
• Why he thinks it's important to put good into the world and how Givelify does that.

To learn more about Givelify visit givelify.com or download the app in the App Store or on Google Play.

Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo is an empowerment coach, career transition strategist, and CEO of Melanin & Medicine. In less than 12 months, she built Melanin & Medicine into a successful, multi-six-figure company that provides support, strategy & skills to help Black women physicians pivot into purpose-led careers & businesses & live more fulfilled & integrated lives. As a career transition strategist, she provides women with culturally informed strategies and systems to reduce burnout, achieve personal and professional fulfillment, rediscover their purpose, and ultimately, achieve their vision for life, without struggle or sacrifice. Prior to founding Melanin, & Medicine, Dr.Uwemedimo worked as a board-certified pediatrician for over 15 years and professor for over a decade, mentoring women in medicine to live more fulfilled lives. 

Key interview highlights: 

PS: This audio is from a Live session on Fishbowl so pardon any audio issues. 

Dr. Loleta Robinson is a seasoned physician entrepreneur, startup advisor, venture partner with extensive healthcare technology and services expertise. She is the Founder and Principal of Fortis Industries, LLC, a firm specializing in blending data analytics, due diligence, and a strong industry network to identify and evaluate prospective healthcare investment, in-licensing, and partnership opportunities for various clients. Dr. Robinson calls on her extensive industry experience and relationships to help bring together venture capital and corporate innovation firms with appropriate healthcare startups and early-stage companies with the potential to significantly improve the quality of care. She also facilitates their collaboration via incubators, accelerators, and other entrepreneurial support organizations. 

Key interview highlights: 

• Mistakes health tech startups make when approaching VCs for funding VC start-up evaluation criteria Advice for Healthtech startups - your technology should not disrupt physician workflow 
• Other non-dilutive funding options to pursue if you are not VC ready - grants and innovation hubs and accelerators. If you are in the US, think local and think State. 
• Some states like the State of Maryland have great support and resources for entrepreneurs. 

Guest/sponsorship requests: If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com. 

Where to find us:  Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Help us grow:  Please subscribe,  stream, or download, leave a rating or review and share your favorite episodes with family, friends, and colleagues. 

Jessye Mouangué Bimono is the CEO & co-founder of Stark Ai LABS a Design & Software development company enabling small and medium-size businesses digital transformation. A tech entrepreneur turned emerging fund manager out of the challenges she alongside diverse tech founders experienced in raising capital in France and Luxembourg.

As an emerging fund manager at Audax Ventures, a $15 million upcoming fund, Jessye believes that diverse tech entrepreneurs are the most untapped and undeserved asset management classes in Europe. She primarily leads Audax Alliance, the capital enablement platform backbone of her fund that is enabling access to European VCs and normalizing investment allocation into Black & PoC led seed-stage tech ventures across Fintech, Media, and Software verticals. In that line of work. She is hosting the first capital enablement summit the Audax Alliance Virtual Summit | Diversity Venture Capital Allocation - France | Luxembourg | Global.

The Audax Alliance Summit sheds light on a diverse set of capital allocators from Europe and the US intentionally investing in diverse founders in these geographies.

Key interview highlights:

Nike Anani is a Speaker, Author, and Consultant to NextGens that seeks to lead their Family Businesses. She helps NextGens rise above operations into a non-executive board role with credibility, so that they are able to lead and formulate a plan to future-proof the business, becoming more effective change agents. Nike fuses her inside experience as a NextGen executive in her Family’s Enterprise, as a Chartered Accountant, and as a Family Business Advisor to bring practical proven solutions to the table. 

Key interview highlights:

• It can be lonely in a NextGen leader in a family business if you don’t have any peers in a similar position to share those particular struggles with in a what that they can really understand because they have also faced similar challenges Founders find it hard to let go and make room for NextGen leaders to make their mark on a business that the Founder started. 
• Having a succession plan for a business is not only about the financial security of the family itself but also the employees and the ecosystem created around that business such as customers and suppliers who would lose if that business were to go under if the Founder passed and there was no succession plan in place. 
• Succession plans take time and should be put in place as the business is being built and not at the point the Founder is ready to retire or unfortunately passes away. 
• Succession planning is not a transaction, it's a transition. 

Guest Contact: Thanks for joining us for another episode of the WTF podcast. We would love your feedback on the show and how we could improve so please complete this short survey. 

Guest/sponsorship request: If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com. 

Where to find us: Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Help us grow: Please subscribe, stream, or download, leave a rating or review and share your favorite episodes with family, friends, and colleagues. 

Kiko founded Angaza Elimu as an inspiration on his personal education journey. Having gone through the same education system he has a clear understanding of the first-hand challenges that exist for young Kenyans and he is committed to addressing the challenges by implementing innovative ways of learning and teaching

Key interview highlights:

• Ed-tech only received 4.3% of the $305 million in investor funding that went to Kenya last year mostly to fintech, e-commerce, and health-tech.
  
• COVID and the demand for online learning platforms caused an increase in demand but also an increase in cost to service the spike in demand.
  
• Grant funding ($129K) has supported the company to build an MVP and launch to present.
  
• The current deficit of $700K to meet the needs of current customers.
  
• More funding goes to ex-pat founders in Kenya from foreign investors than to local Kenyan founders.
  

Jantzen Young is a real estate expert with a passion for helping investors build businesses that promote time freedom and financial stability. Jantzen spent 14 years in financial services traveling the country teaching thousands of clients how to adopt technology to optimize, digitize and grow their advisory businesses. While she watched her colleagues flourish, she lacked that financial security in her own life. That’s when Jantzen discovered the power of passive income. Once she did, she grew her rental portfolio from 1 to 6 in only 60 days. 

When a lack of capital halted her expansion, she turned to selling vacant land and completed 31 land deals in 14 months all while working full-time. With experience in multifamily and commercial real estate along with vacant land, Jantzen now focuses on wholesaling and owner-financing high-value land; and putting her capital to work with transactional funding, bridge loans, and joint venture partnerships. 

Key interview highlights: 

• Land flipping is more profitable than house flipping!  
• You don’t need bank financing to flip land! 
• Land flipping can be done remotely with Google Earth, unlike with a house, you don’t need to physically see land to buy it! 
• Call the County office where you are buying the land to get all of the due diligence about the land before purchasing it. 
• Visit the Fish and Wildlife Service (fws.gov) a U.S. government website for land maps all over the country. 

Things to look out for when buying land:  

• Ensure that no endangered animals inhabit the land or you will not be able to develop and that has endangered species on it. 
• If you are in the U.S. Midwest, ensure that the land you are buying has water rights to rivers or other water sources.
• If you are buying land in a mountainous area, make sure that the land is buildable and not on a slope. 

CONNECT WITH JANTZEN:

• www.FlippingWithoutRehab.com
• Email: FlippingWithoutRehab@gmail.com
• Facebook: /ThePlotSquad
• Linked In: /in/FlippingWithoutRehab
• Tick Tock: @FlippingWithoutRehab

Guest/sponsorship request: If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com.  

Aysha Tegally and Torera (Tori) Abiola are the co-founders of Future Females Invest. Both Aysha and Tori came together around the lack of access to finance for African female founders. In 2019 Future Females Invest merged with Tori’s WOWe (Women of West Africa Entrepreneurs) to become truly Pan-African; financially empowering and enabling African female founders.  Future Females Invest is changing systems by providing consultancy, training, access to investment and markets, ecosystem support to African women entrepreneurs, investors, NGOs, and gender empowerment advocates in public and private sector organizations.

Key interview highlights:

• Mentorship is nice but women need access to capital to complement that in order for them to make the financial investments needed to grow their business
  
• Women themselves can act as barriers to accessing investment by not always having the confidence to ask for what they want or feel the need to over-prepare before they make an ask compared to their male counterparts.
  
• To improve the ecosystem for more women to be able to access capital systems change is needed to have more women in decision-making roles such as women on the Boards of funds and in C-suites and senior positions are banks where decisions are made also as investors.
  
• Women Angel Investors have a unique role to play by investing in more business sectors where you tend to find more women entrepreneurs such as in the beauty industry and the baby market.
  

Comfort Adjahoe-Jennings is an entrepreneur in Ghana and CEO of the fair trade social enterprise, Ele Agbe Co. that works with shea butter producers and recycled glass bead jewelry artisans to find markets for their products. Ele Agbe produces a variety of body creams, soaps, lotion bars, body oils, and lip balms from shea butter that are exported to the US, UK, Canadian and Japanese markets. Comfort is also the President of the African Women's Entrepreneurship Program, (AWEP) West Africa Region platform and the immediate past President of Africa Women's Entrepreneurship Program, Ghana Chapter. 

Key interview highlights: 

• Supporting women (especially at the grassroots) is key in every aspect because women invest to make sure that their families are supported. 
• AWEPGhana has 100 members composed of professional women and entrepreneurs who work with other women to build their capacity. AWEP is in 13 countries across the West Africa region. Marketing and packaging are major challenges to product-based entrepreneurs in Africa. Local solutions are needed to solve the quality packaging problem. 
• The certification (organic, fair trade, etc.) process for entering international markets is also a major challenge. Financing qualification criteria are often a barrier to women accessing business financing. Quality work or product speaks for itself and brings you more customers. 

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the WTF podcast. We would love your feedback on the show and how we could improve so please complete this short survey. 

Guest/sponsorship request: If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com. 

Where to find us:  Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us grow:  Please subscribe,  stream, or download, leave a rating or review and share your favorite episodes with family, friends, and colleagues. 

Jeffrey Boakye Appiagyei is a young Ghanaian agriculture and biosystems engineer,  ag-tech entrepreneur, and co-founder of SayeTech an agricultural manufacturing company in Ghana. As a student at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, he developed his design and fabrication skills that he applied to portable soybean threshers, solar evaporative cooling units for fruits and vegetables, and vibrating seed cleaners. During his youth service as an elementary teacher in a rural community in Northern Ghana, he noticed student absenteeism was high during the harvest season when parents usually remove children from class time to help with the harvest. His solution to the problem was to use his technical design skills with his co-founder to make machines that help farmers with post-harvest processing, improve post-harvest losses and help students stay in school throughout the school year. 

Key interview highlights: 

• Necessity IS the mother of invention, at least in the SAYeTECH case. The need to reduce school attrition rates for students in Northern Ghana during the harvest season led Jeffrey and his co-founder to build local mechanized solutions placed in rural areas to help reduce drudgery for smallholder farmers and their families. A byproduct of the SAYeTECH mechanized harvesting machines is reduced post-harvest loss. Mechanization allows farmers to preserve more of their production and fetch premium prices on the market. 
• Machines installed in 32 rural communities throughout Ghana create jobs and a circular economy in rural areas around the installation of the machines that helps to stem rural-urban migration You might have to change your initial business/product idea after you launch based on customer behavior and continue to innovate to ensure that you are meeting customer needs. 

Tinotenda Chibebe is the author of The Black Opportunity: Conversations on Belgian Venture Capital and Afropean Entrepreneurship that explores how the inclusion of black voices in the venture capital space will shape the world for generations to come. Tino has also written articles on Medium and for Complex’s Greenlabel. He works on projects geared to advancing underdeveloped regions, regarding education and entrepreneurship in Africa.  

Key interview highlights:  

• The Black Opportunity is about creating access to opportunities and mass of wealth to black entrepreneurs all over the world and pulling a global conversation around venture capital.  Europe operates within an ecosystem where a lot of things about race are less specific, unlike the US, with specific valid data that inform policies to track activities within VC and companies at large. 
• Therefore, Venture capital is largely about the network ( who you know, how you know them, and your similarities). Best businesses are those who have access to such opportunities.  
• The level of inclusion and equity in the VC ecosystem in Africa is low, black founders in Africa face biases, just as it is in the UK and US. Only 6% of African startups seeking funding receive $1M or more, the rest goes to non-black founders.  
• The pattern matching practice among Venture Capital financiers creates a blueprint of what a successful founder should be, based on what has worked in the past. Black founders get left behind because they don't fit into the key signal. 
• The global opportunity cost of pattern matching among others is the inability to maximize the societies' potentials to bring better solutions and better products that make the world a better place.  Diversification of VCs is a big step to attracting a different set of founders and diversifying the venture capitalist network. 
•  The Black Opportunity is out now!  Buy it on Amazon!  

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the WTF podcast.   If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com.  

Where to find us:  Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.  

Help us grow:  Please subscribe, stream, or download, leave a rating or review and share your favorite episodes with family, friends, and colleagues.  

Umulinga Karangwa is a Rwandese Fund Manager and Investment Advisor with 17 years of experience in financial services with a focus on investments in Africa.  Over the past 13 years, Umulinga has raised and managed funds investing in Africa for different asset classes and is passionate about developing African capital markets and home-grown asset managers on the continent. 

Key interview highlights: 

• All investors take risks, but in different aspects and degrees; Private equities take a calculated risk by investing in companies with a good track record, growing but stable and promising. 
• V.Cs invest in fast-growing companies with strong client attraction at an early stage. Angel investors take higher risk, as Investments are done with fair ticket sizes when founders are still quite unstable and without sizable revenue which is one of the reasons angel investors are crucial and critical for supporting start-ups. 
• It is essential for founders to have a good networking approach and to understand the rudiments of fundraising as well as ways to connect investors, Part of which is getting coached for fundraising, connecting to incubators (most of which have serious investors with specialties backing them) and other entrepreneurs. 
• The likeability of investors is higher when the business idea is scalable, can solve problems, create job opportunities, and have a strong founding team. Founders must be intentional and positive about their pitch. Confident, committed, strong, open to collaboration, and inquiring of feedback from investors. 
• Founders should be resilient enough to go back with a better module when feedback is negative. 

Hakeem Jimo is a Vegan entrepreneur who co-founded VeggieVictory together with Bola Adeyanju - Nigeria's pioneer plant-based restaurant turned food company. VeggieVictory started in 2013 as a restaurant, before introducing VegChunks, the first commercially produced meat substitute in Nigeria, which emanated from the urge to provide for vegan needs, and now available in QSR in Nigeria and many other stores nationwide. VegChunks is a food option for people prone to non-communicable diseases, those looking for more affordable protein sources, and of course lifestyle changes.

In 2013 it started as Nigeria's first plant-based restaurant and is now the country's first mover plant-based food tech company. Hakeem has a Nigerian-German background and was a communication professional before VeggieVictory.

Key interview highlights:

• Entrepreneurship is a process that may not yield exponential results until after two years or more. The early stage is a period to network, invest energy, organic funds, and time to build the business and create traction. 
• Organic funding (self-investment or investment from family or friends and then funds from business cash flow) at the start-up stage is important before pursuing external funding from investors.
• Investors often expect a founder to be 100% dedicated to their venture when seeking external funding. Investors want to feel confident that the founder is fully vested and dedicated to the success of the venture.
• Fundraising is a journey that requires getting trained to become investment-ready. Look for training or accelerators/incubators to get the skills needed to pursue angel, venture capital, or private equity funding. 
• Grants are an alternative but be mindful because you cannot build a business on grants alone. 
• Angel investors are easier to work with compared to development institutions, and venture capitalists. Angels offer small ticket sizes that give the right-size funding needed by some SMEs to evolve. 
• Angel investment can convince other investors to invest in your business faster than if you have only been funded by grants.

Social Media: @veggievictory.com @vegchuncks.africa @Africavegannigeria

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the WTF (Africa Edition) podcast. 

We would love to hear your feedback on the show and how we could improve so please complete this short survey.

If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com. 

Where to find us:  Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Help us grow:  Please subscribe,  stream or download, leave a rating or review and share your favorite episodes with family, friends, and colleagues. 

Freda Isingoma is the founder of Eye Candy Brow and Lash Bar and the founder and CEO of KIISA, LLC. Freda is an entrepreneur and ex-investment banking professional who has worked in multinational and leading investment institutions in London, New York, and Cape Town. She has experience in establishing successful business initiatives as well as managing investment funds.  This includes her role as a venture capitalist for an award-winning team at Close Brothers Group (UK) and an African Investment consultant at Nile Capital Management based in New York.

Key interview highlights:

• There are more voices for SMEs in developed countries like the UK and the USA. There is an absence of mid-cap firms in the African capital market compared to more developed markets in the US and the UK.  In most of Africa, there are either large-cap traditional family-owned businesses that have been around for generations or small-cap businesses often characterized by tiny companies and early-stage start-ups with very few mid-cap firms.
• In addition to access to funding, technical assistance in developing executive teams and roots to market support is necessary to scale up micro-firms into mid-cap firms.
• When starting a new entrepreneurship venture:
• entrepreneurship does not require 100% certainty before venturing in;
• become a scholar of your business and make sure that you believe in your idea;
• make sure that you have enough runway (cash to pay your living expenses) for several months because your business might not be profitable right away and it might even take up to 5 yrs to reach break-even of profitability even if it is cash generative;
• finding funding is not as swift as imagined, therefore build relationships and a network for support 
• prioritize your clients and suppliers to serve as brand ambassadors for your businesses--referral is vital for consistent growth of SMEs;
• a capable executive team/leadership structure is necessary to build the business and drive the mission
• Art is a valuable asset if more people understand the role that art can play in wealth-building as a viable alternative asset to cash and other forms of investments.

Guest contact info/social media: LinkedIn : @ Freda Isingoma Instagram : @Freda Isingoma 

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the WTF podcast. 

If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com. 

Where to find us:  Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Help us grow:  Please subscribe,  stream, or download, leave a rating or review and share your favorite episodes with family, friends, and colleagues. 

Franklin Olakunle Amoo is a co-founder and the Managing Partner of Baylis Emerging Markets. As an active investor in a number of operating companies across Africa, Franklin serves on the boards of several African companies. Prior to co-founding Baylis, Franklin helped lead the Strategic Credit Group the $1.8 trillion Mizuho Financial Group, where he helped establish the High Yield sales and trading, secondary loan trading, structured finance, and asset finance businesses. Franklin worked at Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. A Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, Franklin holds a BA in Economics from Columbia University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Key interview highlights: 

Raising funds takes time whether you are raising investment funds or you are an entrepreneur looking for investment. Make sure you have a long runway; having enough funds to survive and mobilize the business for the first few years cannot be overemphasized! Fundraising by fund investors can be as equally strenuous. It takes a lot of time and effort to raise funds whether you are raising funds as an investor or as a founder. Emerging Market Funds like Baylis are looking for alignment around values and understanding the companies that they include in their portfolios Africa's primary source of capital is still the Development Financial Institutions. The appetite for investing in Africa is low and unevenly targeted to a few countries, mostly the Anglophone countries with a dearth of investment opportunities for Francophone countries. Only about 10% of private-equity deals from African funds raised ever earn any carry or hit the hurdle rate of around 8% above the hurdle rate one of the reasons being poor alignment between investment funds and recipients of investment funds Guest contact info/social media: Connect with Franklin on LinkedIn 

If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com. 

Where to find us:  Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Help us grow:  Please subscribe,  stream, or download, leave a rating or review and share your favorite episodes with family, friends, and colleagues. 

Violet Nyando is an Agricultural Innovation Expert with over 15 years of experience in Agribusiness Advisory Services and Agricultural Rural Innovations Studies with a particular interest in Youth Entrepreneurship, Governance, and Leadership of Agri-Enterprises. Her experience in Kenya and Eastern Africa and engagement with International Development Practitioners across the World have earned her a deeper understanding of the African Agricultural and Community Landscape.

Key interview highlights:

• Many African business ideas fail not because they are not good but because they did not get sufficient support. Many African SMEs fail before the 3rd year because of insufficient interrogation of the business idea and the foundation that they were built on wasn’t strong enough to last
  
• Youth-led African businesses need better institutional support and business development services, in addition, to access to finance, technical assistance, skill-building, and good governance/management training
  
• Access to finance is still a major challenge to growing good ideas into profitable businesses. In Kenya there are some Youth Entrepreneurship Funding Models that include:
  
• Group lending
  
• Government program-based funding (declared funds) that target youth
  
• Cost-share funding models promoted by development partners (bundled with technical assistance) where partial funding is provided and bundled with technical assistance and mentoring
  
• The entrepreneurship process needs to be demystified in terms of the timelines for business growth and profitability and the hard work that goes into creating a successful business.
  
• The importance of prioritizing customers by creating a great customer experience. Customers are not only a form of funding but also the best advertising. Happy customers are the best advertisers and repeat customers are good for cash flow.
  

LaKisha Greenwade is an award-winning Forbes Leadership Coach, Tech Founder of Wearable Tech Ventures, and Harvard University Guest Lecturer. Affectionately known as “Coach L,” LaKisha also teaches ambitious entrepreneurs, experienced professionals, senior and mid-level managers how to push past their self-imposed limits, unleash their innovative spirit, and design the life of their dreams. Order Rejection to Reward a book of transparent and winning strategies for founders & LEADERS facing resistance in any area of their lives now! Wearable Tech is an interchangeable device and sensor that can transmit data and provide an understanding of things and are referred to as IoT, which can be in form of watches, gloves, and bands, to track health and are used in mini corporations to ensure vehicles and employee's safety. The technological devices developed by wearable tech have been a tremendous factor in the navigation of the Covid-19 pandemic, they can measure temperature as well as distance among people. 

Other wearable tech products include devices used by diabetic, kidney failure patients, and also hearing aids. Wearable Tech Ventures (WTV), is the official global ecosystem for Wearable Technology with the goal to develop and promote technological wearables and support 100staff by 2030. Basically, WTV is the main connector for expiring founders, current founders, investors, and corporations that can benefit to help the main industry. WTV features ICONPAN, an inclusive workshop, an avenue for tech and non-tech founders who come together to proffer solutions to everyday problems. Founders must have their stories together, be passionate about their businesses, recognize that they are their first investor, and build a successful track record, pitching, understanding essential principles such as executive summary, pitch tech as well as elevator pitch development before seeking external funds. 

Unfortunately, people of color, especially females, are less privileged in raising substantial funds, unlike their counterparts. Therefore, Wearable Tech is reinventing the wheel by understanding the weak start of black female founders by creating a unique new generation team of Angels. Trained, certified, and licensed to score founder's ideas and allocate worthy funds between $500-$10,000. The WTV Angel Investment concept is a platform that allows 100 potential angel investors to help the ecosystem via the under-represented founders and gain knowledge as well, with a commitment of $1000 to WTV. It is important for investors to understand the risk associated with the route of funding they choose. To women in tech; You Are Enough. Be mentally prepared to face rejection with good fate, stay committed; Amidst all, allow yourself to recover and recoup when things get crammed up. 

Connect with LaKisha Greenwade on all platforms @lakishagreenwade 

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the WTF podcast. If you would like to be a guest or sponsor the podcast, please contact us at whereisthefunding@gmail.com. 

Where to find us: Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.