How Y Combinator & Microtraction are Investing in African Startups
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
- Today's guests are Michael Seibel, the Managing Director of Y Combinator, and Kwamena Afful, a Founding Partner of Microtraction.
Michael has been an avid supporter of the African tech ecosystem. Since his first trip to Lagos in 2016, and since Paystack joined YC's winter batch earlier that year, the number of African startups that have participated in the global accelerator has grown to 89.
And for Microtraction, the early-stage fund was founded in 2017, in part in relation to the increased global interest in the African tech ecosystem, where Microtraction's early financial support and local know-how could help fill the gap.
In this episode, we hear from Michael and Kwamena about their shared perspectives on the opportunities they see and their bet on African talent.
00:00 - Intro
03:08 - Honorary Chieftan Michael Seilbel
04:28 - Supporting the African tech ecosystem
07:41 - Fintech deep dive
10:19 - Software companies crossing borders
14:49 - Solving African problems
22:24 - What about the continent's population growth?
25:47 - Investing in African talent
29:38 - Creating jobs
31:44 - Connecting African talent to the global marketplace
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Dude I am extremely impressed. I’ve never seen someone who is so naturally and fluidly nuanced. We need more people like this.
This is the best episode for me yet. Great talk. love it.
Great interview!
it is interesting when they talk about African entrepreneurs it is only around Nigerian, YC need a hub on the ground but great interview
Thanks Henri! Ended up being a pretty Nigeria-centric conversation because we were doing it with Microtraction. But if you look at YC's portfolio I do think it's becoming a bit more geographically diverse in the region - its last batch (3 companies) included one in Nairobi + one in Kinshasha.
I think the population of Nigeria seems to give the impression that it's a potentially strong market. Not sure how that reflects reality on the ground vs other smaller population countries on the motherland.
I think PPP is a better metric
the reason why Africa wont be able to follow in the entrepreneurial path of Israel, India, Brazil and Eastern Europe is because Africa is a massive fucking continent and each individual country needs to be treated like a totally different business environment. Unfortunately, Africans themselves love to do the "one Africa" thing (which is okay for military alliances) but considering how internally fractured societies in Africa are (genocides still happening), its better if each nation distances itself from its neighbor when attracting capital and technology. Otherwise, startups failing in Nigeria will take down all the rest of Africa with them.
The challenge many companies find is that sub-scale markets compel them to expand across the region. Good founders are well aware of the difference between different countries, but especially to attract capital they may need to enter into new markets in spite of the differences.
Genocide/wars happening on a bigger scale in Europe, middle east, Asia and Israel so not sure what this is about. Overall death numbers are higher in the West...be it gun violence or whatever.
Africa doesn't have integration of financial and trade systems and that's still being developed. With that said, countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, among are few are very open for business. They just aren't integrated because the existing banks and institutions never seriously bothered to make it happen. That's what fintechs and other modern startups are solving.
P r o m o s m
One African in the room discussing the investment in a continent feels disingenuous