500 Startup‘s Dave McClure & Investor Tim Draper are set to keynote at Angel Fair Africa set to be held in Nairobi from the 10th to 11th November 2016 at the Intercontinental Hotel as earlier reported.
500 Startups is not new to Kenya’s startup ecosystem. In November 2014 it invested $100,000 into Kenya’s PayKind. Then known as CardPlanet Solutions.
Dave McClure, the founding partner 500 Startups said African startups have come to maturity, which is why, he’s investing here and excited to be speaking at the event.
“Wait until companies have an initial prototype, have shown that they have the potential to be profitable and have the ability to scale. That’s the best time to invest,” said McClure.
500 Startups, a global venture capital firm with over $250M under management has invested in over 1,500 companies across 50+ countries including Grab, Twilio, SendGrid, Udemy and MakerBot.
Previously, he was at Founders Fund where he led seed-stage investments in Twilio, Credit Karma, and Lyft and later ran the Facebook fbFund incubator. Prior to that, Dave was the Director of Marketing at PayPal.
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His counterpart, Tim Draper, Founding Partner of Draper Associates who will be keynoting the second day of the event observed that “Africa shows promise to be the economic growth jewel of the next 20 years. As people become more mobile and connected, leaders will have to compete for the businesses and capital of the world, and Africans will benefit.”
With investments and exits in firms such as Skype, SolarCity, Baidu, Tesla, Twitter, Box, Yammer, MeetUp, Draper says Africa is on the rise.
”As African countries become more free market and democratic, the people will become more entrepreneurial and the continent can take advantage of the breakthroughs in bitcoin, blockchain, drone delivery, stem cells, drug design, digital signatures, digital voting, digital identity and new efficient (virtual) forms of government that have not been available until recently. Entrepreneurship in Africa is here to stay,” said Draper.
Angel Fair Africa will also see entrepreneurs pitch their businesses to investors from around the world and across Africa.
Some of the entrepreneurs include Kenya’s Rita Kimani with Farm Drive; Mozambique’s Tito Munhequete with Izy Shop, Nigeria’s Ugwem Eneyo with Solstice, Tanzania’s Josephat Mandara with TIME Tickets and Rwanda’s Joanna Bichsel of Kasha.
According to the organizers these are just some of the 20 curated startups and scaleups from 9 African countries selected through a continent wide effort to identify high impact and potential entrepreneurs.
These entrepreneurs will pitch their businesses in a storytelling format in a way that can connect directly with the investors. On the first day the startups that will be featured are pre-revenue whilst those on the second day will be scaleups with revenue and raising their second or third round of capital.
The panel of judges will include Caitlin Dolkart of Flare, Andrew Airelobhegbe of OgaVenue, Eva Muraya of BDS Group, Erik Hersman of BRCK and Selorm Brantie of mPedigree (CNBC Africa Innovation Winner 2016).
“Africa is in urgent need of real mentoring from experienced “fathers” and “mothers” and it is time we rose up to that role,” said Dr. Chris Kirubu, who will open the event. “Many opportunities are presenting themselves across Africa and if we do not guide the young people then we will have failed as a continent. This is why I am at the forefront when it comes to mentoring and investing in the young people of Africa.”
