Monday, December 12, 2011

Talking with African Start-up Investors



There seem to be an explosion in the number of organisations setting up to kick-start new business ventures or nurture business leadership. Those in London, Berlin and Silicon valley seem to get a lot of press. Having looked at various attempts in Amsterdam like Rockstart, Thnk, Founder Institute, the most interesting to date seems to be the Start-Up Bus. I am curious to see what media strategy they will develop. I see a lot of coverage of events, but most of this is simply logging what happened where and when. The aim seems to be to create a trailer for future events, rather than a report about lessons learned. I think the number of views on Vimeo and YouTube show that most people who didn't attend an event are interested in these "atmosphere" pieces, especially when it's all over.

Which is why I am currently working on a series of briefings for African entrepreneurs based on several workshops held by the VC4Africa organisation. They have been travelling to Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Egypt, organising bootcamp workshops but also listening to the needs of locals. We've now started to compile the material into a series of briefings that can be used to trigger discussions in other tech hubs around the continent as well as in business schools.

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