AMPION Venture Bus has launched a crowdfunding campaign in a move to support the most creative and innovative startups built on the 2014 African Venture Buses.
While the Indiegogo campaign , will also offer classic perks like T-Shirts for smaller donations, AMPION explores a new approach for donations of 99€ and above: supporters have the possibility to adopt one of the winning AMPION Venture Bus startups or a single African entrepreneur. Depending on the budget, donators may choose from different lengths of support.
Adopting a startup enables its transition from an innovative idea into a real business, which also contributes to African job creation and entrepreneurial ecosystem improvement. As patrons of the startups, donors will in the future also be mentioned on the website of the respective company.
Over 160 participants on this years’ Venture Buses will create 16+ startups tackling African needs and priorities. The AMPION Fellowship Program will nurture the most promising business ideas, and produce tangible results for the local economy.
By increasing the interactivity between the sponsors and the sponsored, AMPION increases the transparency of its Fellowship Program and gives supporters the possibility to keep track of the impact of their donation. This way, AMPION involves crowdfunding supporters in the whole process of capacity building provided by the Fellowship Program. Donors can witness first-hand the positive change they help to enable.
Four AMPION Venture Bus hackathons will travel through 16 countries in Africa this year to create innovative and sustainable startups for the African market and tackle local challenges while the AMPION Fellowship Program offers financing, mentorship and office space to the best startups in partnership with AfriLabs.