venture capital Archives – Page 2 of 3

The License To Suck

5 years ago By cumeadi

Chris Rock, one of my favorite comedians, said something some years ago that changed my perception of equality in venture capital. I’d recommend watching the whole thing. He’s dropping gems, especially at the end. Its just a 3-4 minute video.

“TRUE EQUALITY IS THE EQUALITY TO SUCK”

While this goes against what most black people, especially in hyper-competitive white-majority spaces, have been taught, black founders seeking venture capital need this form of equality the most.

Let me explain…

Benedict Evans wrote an article in 2016 on failure and the economics of venture capital here. I’ll be cherry-picking some points so you don’t need to go and jump into reading it now. Essentially, Evans was able to get aggregate data from one of their limited partners on over 7000 investments made by the venture funds they deployed capital to from 1985 – 2014. All to say, they had a treasure trove of data to explore VC activity over a 29 year period.

Here are some major takeaways:

Around half of all investments returned less than the original investment.
6% of deals produced at least a 10x return, and those made up 60% of total returns
A fund gets better returns by having more really big hits, not by having fewer failures

The way venture works, most investments have a high probability of failure, and few companies produce significant returns. Speaking with black founders, there seems like there’s an extraordinary case needed to justify investment in their startup to early-stage investors. Most of the time, they feel like they need to have everything figured out… exceptional team, major traction, product, and massive market. There’s a return the fund hurdle that’s put on each opportunity. Where in other situations, white founders have been given what I like to call “figure it out money”. You may have one exceptional part of the puzzle going for you but go figure it out. This return the fund hurdle isn’t applied equally.

Most companies who get “figure it out money” don’t. Some do. But the opportunity to figure it out or not is at the core of equality. Entrepreneurship is a muscle, the more you flex it, the stronger you get. I agree, black founders need to return the fund, just like every other founder should try to if they accept venture capital but VC funds have to be okay with the reality that black founders will most likely return less than they invested, just like their white counterparts.

“It’s not that I want to be bad, but I want the license to be bad and come back and learn.”
– Chris Rock

A couple of extraneous thoughts I couldn’t fit into the essay

My main goal was to build on a quote from a conversation on Twitter yesterday. “The key here is that Black people need the same room for failure and repeated failure that our white peers enjoy. And can turn their failure into the narrative, in which they’ve emerged on the other side more enlightened.” (from The Myth of Blackness in Venture ) I wanted to add more color to the mechanics behind why failure is essential.
I’d often get into arguments in meetings with my white counterparts about the market opportunity, especially around black founded companies. To be honest, I’ve never really trusted market opportunity slides or rationale. If you’re investing early, the math will most likely change.
That goes to say, its 2020. There’s more than enough data for VCs to learn and understand black focused market opportunities. There’s untapped value to be created if you’re willing to explore.
I’m torn on the conversation that black founders need to find larger markets than black people. I think its a simplistic and outdated statement. Most people build for who they know and what they know. Most of the time, companies who brand themselves as going specifically after black customers most likely have adjacent markets that could add to scale. What I’m trying to say is I somewhat hear the market opportunity argument but it’s up to the investment team and the founders to really think about the bigger opportunity. Extend the same imagination about how an opportunity can work to black founders too.

The Real Opportunity to Re-Invent Healthcare

7 years ago By cumeadi

It’s been a while…. I’ve been quite busy over the last couple of months trying to build stuff….. I’ll explain in another post. In the mean time, I thought I’d share some content I had the chance to write for another reason on to my blog. I’ve realized I do a lot of writing but not a lot of posting. I hope with such a nice set up and audience, I’d switch that around for the rest of the year. So here’s an exercise I worked on a couple of weeks ago on defining an investment thesis for the healthcare sector. Thought it would be interesting to think of how the healthcare industry is changing as a whole and where the opportunities are for the entrepreneur, investor, and everyone else.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve had a well rounded set of experience and exposure to the healthcare industry. I grew up in a healthcare household. My father worked for several cutting edge biotech companies and my mother has worked as a nurse in hospitals and did home care. I had cousins who all became different types of medical doctors. For several summers, I worked and interned at hospitals and pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities in my teens. I’ve been through two near-death experiences where I had to be hospitalized for an extended period of time due to mysterious diseases (a story for another day).

The healthcare industry faces some tough challenges in the next 10 to 20 years. An evolving regulatory environment and changing business models have created declining margins for public and private healthcare in the United States. While margins have declined, demand and costs have significantly increased. We’re seeing growth in our population but also a demographic transition. Baby boomers, for example, are entering a phase in their lives where healthcare will become the primary expense but with diminished savings and labor costs on the rise, how will baby boomers afford to have the same kind of care their accustomed to while dealing with a longer life expectancy and more expensive care?

While the healthcare industry faces regulatory, demographic shifts, and margin challenges, there are some major themes that get me excited about its future. Healthcare, just like other industries, is shifting from responsive to preventative. With the proliferation of the internet, mobile, and other smart devices, healthcare is something that doesn’t just happen when you’re in a hospital. It has the potential to happen 24/7 and this has a significant implication on service delivery, business models, and product innovation. Preventative medicine flips the traditional healthcare business model on its head and allows for an endless possibility in ways we can treat people before they ever step foot into a doctors office.

The shift to preventative health is also driven by access and the creation of information in ways we haven’t seen in the healthcare space. For example, I used 23&Me to learn about my genetic makeup/lineage but also received health reports. This information wouldn’t have been available to the average consumer or even a medical professional 10 or 15 years ago. We’ve also seen an increase in the digitization of health records too. Combined, I see a future trend of personalized and holistic healthcare service delivery that isn’t beholden to location or labor costs. This presents an amazing opportunity to solve for population growth and demographic shifts. We can improve quality of care and also deliver high-quality care at scale.

Africa · startups · Technology · venture capital

Africa Startup Ecosystems Ranks: Where does Nigeria Fall on the list?

8 years ago By cumeadi

Sometimes a conversation becomes a little more. I shared this a founder who was asking me my thoughts on where Nigeria’s startup ecosystems ranks in Africa. While I didn’t have key metrics, I did mention where I would go to look and how I would evaluate. If I had to make a real essay out of it, (which I’m seriously thinking about doing), I’d probably take a more in depth look at where Nigeria’s startup ecosystems needs to course correct to be a global competitor for talent, ideas, and capital.

So a couple of things… In the life cycle of an ecosystem, Nigeria’s startup ecosystem unfortunately is still in its nascent days. There’s leakages of opportunities for investors and startups due to resource and capital constraints. I do know that we’re heading toward the globalization part of the ecosystem life-cycle. We are seeing a more foreign money, ideas, and resources flow into the Nigerian ecosystem. Comparatively, SA had all of these first and has exits under its belt so I’d still put SA up top. Nigeria still falls in the second tier of startup ecosystems in Africa for the following reason; lack of research and development $ from government, low ease of doing business scores, quality of human capital, access to seed funding (or lack thereof), etc. I will say though, Nigeria has made significant strides in “community” through the cabals, co-working spaces and other community focused pillars that re being built. This can be accelerated by an increase in the quality of education, R&D investment, and improving the ease of doing business metrics to make it easier for startups to find talent, operate, and to make money.

Africa · business · venture capital

Re-thinking Venture Capital in Emerging Markets

8 years ago By cumeadi

For the last year or so, the team at tiphub has done a lot of interesting research and testing to identify key needs to accelerate entrepreneurship in emerging markets like Nigeria. One of the most common challenges, as most would assume, is access to capital. However, speak to VCs and they say they don’t see enough invest-able companies and are constantly fighting for the best opportunities with other vcs.
There seems to be a deeper disconnect that we haven’t been able to capture. In the next couple of paragraphs, I’ll discuss the actual amount of money in the VC space in Nigeria. (Nigeria will be our case study) Identify where I believe they key gaps are, and present a viable solution that will be the catalyst for start-up funding at scale.

Based on a triangulated estimate, there’s about 300 million USD under vc management in Nigeria. This does not include foreign based funds that operate in Nigeria. To better put this in perspective, we took GDP/ VC asset ratio to give some context. Its relatively easy to see that Nigeria is lagging in vc capital as an available asset class. This isn’t the only issue. If we look at how 3oo million USD is deployed year after year, we’ll see that most vc firms look to invest in later stages in lifecycles of most start-ups. This translates into entrepreneurs who need to prove viability and scalability before investment. However, its the chicken or the egg argument. How do companies prove the validity of an idea without funding?

There’s an abundance of growth captial in Nigeria. The key issue is the lack of early stage “market validation” capital needed to get companies off the ground. In more developed markets, entrepreneurs find early capital from the three f’s (Friends, Family and Fools). There are also more opportunities for funding through banks and government grants. Family members are willing to bet on the next big idea. Ultimately, entrepreneurs in developed markets have access to a diversified stream of capital that 1. is at a smaller amount 2. Friendlier terms and capital structures for young companies.

The key gap, as I see it, is access to friends and family capital in emerging markets. At its core, it stems from lack of access to credit and disposable income in rising and emerging markets. This is the real gap. Early stage companies don’t have the capital to fund their first MVP or to validate their market. As a result, many ideas never get tested in the market.

VCs won’t dare touch risky early stage opportunities due to the demand for returns. There’s not enough disposable capital in emerging markets to make a dent in funding for start-ups. How do we create a bridge from pre-seed to growth stage?

In the ideal world, VCs would partner with foundation and governments to fund small scale experiments/ projects. These projects would either fail or succeed and would move to a scaling phase. For example, if we took Nigeria as a case study, the Nigerian government would match $100 million USD with the Elumelu Foundation’s TEEP program focused more on grants to validate….lets say… 2000 ideas. After a year, 400 (20%) of those companies would be invest able opportunities. 400 is a decent pipeline. Key issue here is sustainability. 200 million dollars a year to identify 400 invest able companies is a tall order. However, 100 million dollars a year vs the cost of unemployment in a place like Nigeria seems like a drop in the bucket.

Maybe later, we can also talk about ways to jump start merger and acquisition activity so people see the light at the end of their investment

Key points to remember:

There’s a lot of money in emerging markets.
The key to differentiation in the early stages of a company is what they’ve learned vs their competitors. Cashflow and other financial indicators don’t start to matter until the later stage.
Entrepreneurs need flexible and attainable early stage capital to validate their ideas.
Private/Public partnerships have to find a way to work together to create the bridge for early stage companies.

Random statistic to leave you with: Nigeria ranks 170 out of 189 for raising finance for a business and 129th (up 9 places since 2014) in starting a business.

Leadership · Self-Revelation · venture capital

Content Diet

8 years ago By cumeadi

Your time is extremely valuable. What you choose to read is even more valuable. On my end, I find subscribing to newsletters beneficial to my content diet. I often go for three types of content:

Content that helps you/your company operate better.
Content that helps you understand what others in your industry and sector are thinking.
Content that helps you think more existentially.

Here’s a list of the top 20 newsletters I subscribe to…Its a mix of vc, startup, and randomness. They all do a bit of all three.

CB Insights is a company which leverages data to make sense of private markets. Its like buzzfeed for venture capital/ private equity. I’ve been rocking with them since day one. They have an awesome platform and a great newsletter.
Mattermark is another data company which helps vc/private equity types capture data on the private markets. They have great newsletter content that brings unique editoral perspectives from investors, operators, and policy wonks.
Pitchbook is another data company for private markets. It’s like the Bently of data companies for private markets. They’ve improved their newsletter over time but Pitchbook has always had the most technical perspective on private markets out of the data companies I’m familar with.
First Round Capital, to me, has the best editorial team in the venture capital industry. They bring experts, operators, investors, and other stakeholders to the table and create super informative content for founders. I’ve learned so much from their long posts.
Monday Morning Macro (Y Combinator) Good round up of information on whats going on in YC land and how they are thinking. The venture capital space is like sheep leading sheep and firms Like YC are the lead sheep so its nice to see the things they are pointing out and working on.
StrictlyVC is a newsletters which has its pulse on all things funding and tech. I don’t know why this is on the list.
Tomasz Tunguz is probably one of the brightest VCs in the game. He has great posts about fundraising, growing saas businesses like they are plants waiting to be harvested, and great data insights. He’s brilliant.
Andreesen Horrowitz newsletter has a frontier perspective on industry and emerging technology. Ben and Marc also have interesting blog posts every once in a while with great podcasts. They could do a better job on being consistent but I believe they are busy raising money, closing deals, and supporting thier portfolio companies.
Bothsides of the Table is cool because Mark Suster is an investor and founder so he brings a really interesting perspective on operational experiences but then how to communicate with investors and what he looks for.
Hunter Walk’s 99% Humble, 1% Brag is a blog/newsletter focused on Hunter’s Homebrew Fund. He brings a unique perspective to a ton of things including investment, diversity, his portfolio companies. Hunter is really approachable too. Reach out to him and he’ll most likely respond back.
The Plug is the “difinitive” daily newsletter highlighting the voices of black founders and business leaders in tech news from around the web. One of the few indeed. Also a really good channel to get information out.
Iafrikan Newsletter is one of the still standing technology, investment, and entrepreneur news content in Africa. The are a little spotty with their newsletter but it seems they have great content on their website.
Results Junkies is kept by Paul Singh. We was the MD of 1776, Founder at Disruption Corporation, and was a partner at 500 Startups. He has quick and dirty knowledge nuggets in his newsletters and has a great program where he travels the United States and works on entrepreneurship ecosystems and invests. I definitely would like to do something like this in Africa. Little known fact…. Paul is African. He was born in Kenya.
Term Sheet is more for growth stage deals but is very helpful to know whats getting captial when you’re looking for it.
500 startups Distrosnack delivers a bite sized blitz scaling guide into your mailbox on a weekly basis. Super helpful
Growthhackers Weekly provides a great curation of top posts from the Growthhackers website. Imagine the thoughts and posts of top “growth hackers” in one newsletter. It’s a treasure trove of tips and resources.
Community.is Great Newsletter about building community. You won’t regret joinging this newsletter list. A lot of product, marketing and great community driven content.
Stratechery I don’t pay for much but when I do, I pay for Stratechery daily updates from Ben Thompson. Let’s just put it this way….. Ben is fully supported and well paid by his subcription model. He’s gotten some of the best minds in the world listening and looking for what he’s got to say on a daily basis.
Farnam Street I might have saved the best for second to last. I’ve gotten a majority of by book reccomendations, big picture questions, and list of people to take out to cofee. This post helps on the existential front.
tiphub newsletter ? We’re re-vamping our newsletter. If you haven’t noticed, this list lacks the African/ African diaspora investor/ operator perspective. We think we can be the smart/nerdy yet cool analysis stakeholders need to be great. Let us know what you think . Like seriously, reach out to one of the partners and let us know what you’d like to see.

You are what you read…. This is what comes to my mailbox most of the time. I’d love to hear other newsletters I should sign up for.