Announcing our 'Data for Founders' cohort 🚀
100+ start-ups are now receiving free access to our database for 2 years, along with support to build a data-driven fundraising strategy
A few weeks ago, we launched our ‘Data for Founders’ initiative, in partnership with FMO Ventures. Our objective was simple: to ensure that our data and expertise actively contributed to helping start-ups on the continent raise funding to finance their growth. And to do it at scale. We received more than 250 applications from 20+ countries, and we want to thank everyone who applied and helped communicate about this initiative.
Today, we’re happy to announce our first cohort of 100+ start-ups!
As we hoped, they are a very diverse group that reflects the range of ventures currently building in Africa. They originate from 20+ countries, with Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa coming out on top, and include representatives from each of the continent’s five sub-regions. They cover a broad range of sectors, with the two most represented being agriculture and fintech (20% each), followed by Deeptech/AI. (The most common keywords in their one-sentence descriptions of their businesses are “AI”, “platform”, and “climate”). Women founders and CEOs showed up en masse at the application stage, and are well represented in the cohort: 53% of start-ups have at least one woman co-founder, and 21% have a woman CEO. While this is still far from parity, this is higher than what we observe in the market (27% and 15% respectively, if we compare with start-ups who raised funding in 2025).
92% have already raised some funding. Two thirds have secured between $10k and $250k to date, and should be gearing up for their pre-seed or seed round shortly. In fact, 70% are now targeting a round between $100k and $1m. And they’ve all either already started fundraising for their next round (46%), or will do so in the coming weeks or months. Investors, Take note!
To give you a flavour of who is in this cohort, members include: Aetos Dairy, Afripesa, agriBORA, Agrify, AquaMnara, Bfarm-Tech, BioPartners Life Sciences, Blue Lab, Blutechnova, Bosso Africa, BraceMoni, C STAR, Cardri Finance, Career Plug AI, Dawa Mkononi, Digifarmer AI, Everlend Agritech, FarmXic, FieldWatch Technology, FigX, FinFex, Flexpay Technologies, FriendnPal, Green Voyage, Huntrecht, Hydropool, Khwezi Innovations, Konnekt Digital Networks, La Dame qui Range, LocaleNLP, Loop, Myitura, NoMa SRS, Rafode, Renewables Vault, Solar Taxi, TaxStreem, Ubuntu Alliance, Urban Greens, Vioo, Waribei, Yelen, and more!
What’s next for them? The cohort members will now:
Gain free access to our comprehensive deals database for a total of two years (worth almost $500). Updated every month, the data already includes nearly 4,500 deals worth $20b+ and captures all transactions over $100k, from equity to debt, grants, and exits.
Learn how to design and implement a data-driven fundraising strategy. Through a series of quarterly webinars, the team will guide them in leveraging the database to generate critical market insights, benchmark competitors, and prioritise investor outreach.
Gain visibility with investors, clients, and potential partners as we promote the initiative, and share testimonials of the most successful fundraisers throughout the programme.
We thank FMO Ventures once again for their partnership, and we now look forward to supporting the cohort members on their fundraising journey.
Max & Maxime, from Africa: The Big Deal
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NB - If, like FMO Ventures, your organisation is committed not only to investing in the start-up ecosystem in Africa, but to helping it grow and mature, and if you would like to explore a similar partnership, don’t hesitate to get in touch!