Push & Start Africa – From The Back Of A Napkin To A Bankroll
Martina Vuksan
15. 8. 2014.
The phenomenon of startups, rising and spreading worldwide, hasn’t bypassed Africa either. Sub-Saharan African startups now have their equity and debt-based crowdfunding platform Push and Start, which will help them penetrate and disrupt the market as well as bring some positive economic changes. Choosing entrepreneurs, startup hubs and incubators, Push and Start developed a different and new approach with adjusted, original concept. They developed an interesting avenue of interaction between startup founders, investors, professional service providers and mentors, and they also adopted a very simple agreement model for allocating equity.
The phenomenon of startups, rising and spreading worldwide, hasn’t bypassed Africa either. Sub-Saharan African startups now have their equity and debt-based crowdfunding platform Push and Start, which will help them penetrate and disrupt the market as well as bring some positive economic changes.
Helping entrepreneurs and investors
First launched this April in Nigeria and Ghana, Push and Start has plans for spreading across the whole Sub-Saharan Africa by the end of the year. Choosing entrepreneurs, startup hubs and incubators, Push and Start developed a different and new approach with adjusted, original concept. By using social media as a way of discovering common entrepreneurs’ and investors’ problems, Push and Start detected lack of funding for entrepreneurs, as well as a lack of genuine ideas for investors’ money. Those two common problems helped them shape their next steps.
A smart interaction avenue
As usual, starting your own business always includes a very little knowledge of financial issues that are mandatory in running a business. Therefore, it is always necessary to have an accountant who will run those issues for you. Push and Start developed an interesting avenue of interaction between startup founders, investors, professional service providers and mentors.
The accountant sends financial records and reports directly to the investors who are then able to check the list of startups that match their investment criteria. Also, each startup founder can protect his own intellectual property by withholding access until being absolutely certain that the investor is genuine. Communication tools, such as text and video chat are also provided by Push and Start, and professional service providers like lawyers, accountants, consultants, developers or graphic artists, offer their services to startups for a competitive fee.
Agreement model for allocating equity
Being an equity crowdfunding platform, Push and Start adopted a very simple agreement model for allocating equity, and this is what they say about it:
We believe the simplicity of Y Combinator’s SAFE will reduce legal fees and prevent drawn out processes for issuing equity. We have also developed marketPUSH which greatly simplifies the process of valuing businesses. In a nutshell, valuations remains pretty fluid until the crowdfunding round closes and the final valuation is determined by the opposing forces investor demand and founder desperation.
Push and Start founder Nwachukwu Onyeaso recently said a lack of market access is stunting many ideas, and startup founders are not grounded enough to penetrate or “disrupt” their chosen space, leading to frequent failures. With that in mind, also with mentors playing an important role in this crowdfunding platform, we strongly believe in the new rise of business Africa and many highly interesting startups coming out of Push and Start.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/76675328[/vimeo]
