I recently returned from a business trip to the US whose primary purpose was connecting with our support and investor network.
I spent the majority of my time in Silicon Valley catching up with friends from the industry to get their perspective on the impacts of the global economy on startups.
Selfies with friends :)
Not so good news
Clearly, we are in the midst of a major reset the impacts of which are already being felt across the startup landscape with significant slow down in venture investing.
We can expect shut-downs and down-rounds as startups who had raised capital with high valuations find themselves struggling to achieve the growth milestones they had signed up for in those heady days of 2021.
Startups are hard, and as you and I know building in Africa is extremely challenging.
Good news
The noise in the startup scene has reduced significantly presenting a great opportunity for those who are well positioned.
Better deals for investors with more realistic valuations and less competition for entrepreneurs specifically as pertains to talent which is now increasingly more available.
Further, despite the general cooling down in the global investor landscape, the unfortunate situation of the war in Europe is causing investors to seek alternate markets to deploy capital and Africa is increasingly attractive.
For those positioned well enough to attract those dollars these shall be boon times in the midst of an apparent winter.
Next time I will share a couple of the startups we are investing in to close the year that we are excited about.
It's always great seeing the growth in the African market.
Excited about the opportunities that lay ahead(usually disguised as problems, which is a little bit of a bummer - regardless, onwards and updwards)
Christmas snowflake of black race JPG (afro snowflake for your good mood on Christmas!) :-)
https://open.substack.com/pub/verygoodart/p/coming-soon?r=35ds0s&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true