25+
admitted to global accelerators
$1B+
dollars raised in follow on capital
75+
number of co-investors
OVERVIEW
8 weeks. 10 founders. 75+ coinvestors, 2 founder operators. 20+ advisors. 1 goal.
After over a decade of supporting several Africa focused founding teams, we have identified five critical areas of support to focus on during the program, alongside some of the top experts in these fields.
Storytelling
craft a compelling mission, vision and story of impact
Talent
assemble, motivate, and lead a high performing team
Business Development
find your path to the first million dollars in revenue
Product Development
build a product that your customers can’t live without
Fundraising
fundraise from the world’s best investors on demo dayABOUT
About Us
We accelerate Africa’s bold and visionary founders in the earliest stages of building global businesses that solve Africa’s biggest challenges
We have hands-on operating experience in Africa to help you accelerate your business, plus the scars and stories to prove it. For over a decade, we have taken on various roles advising, coaching, and mentoring startups, including over 25+ who have been admitted to global accelerators.
Our founders Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Mia von Koschitzky-Kimani have built, funded and advised hundreds of African founding teams like Andela, Flutterwave, Moove BV, Daystar Power, DukaConnect amongst others on how to build global businesses from Africa by solving our continent’s biggest challenges. Many of those businesses have grown to become billion dollar companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues, or been acquired by global businesses like Mastercard and Shell.
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BENEFITS
Why Accelerate?
This is not your typical accelerator
It could be easy to mistake Accelerate Africa for your typical one-size fits all accelerator program, but nothing could be more different.
First - we will accept 10 founders who will receive support from 2 of the top operator VCs in Africa, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Mia von Koschitzky-Kimani who have built, advised, invested in and exited multiple successful businesses in Africa.
Second - Our program is designed to meet your needs as a founder in Africa, whether it be workshops across our 5 core areas, coaching sessions from our top advisors, or tech, legal, and finance clinics support through our clinics and office hours. Build community with other founders in our weekly Lagos / Nairobi meet ups, and for the last two weeks of the program, we will be together to prepare for the demo day taking place at the end of May, 2024.
Finally, unlike most accelerators, we don’t offer funding or take equity upon admittance. There is an opportunity that our fund Future Africa may invest alongside our other incredible investor network, to write you a pre-seed or seed stage check of $250,000 - $500,000 after the program, following our standard investment process including due diligence and an IC vote.
TEAM
Accelerate Team
Meet our team of operators and visionaries driving the accelerators success
Program Team
Founding Advisors
Finding ‘Hard to Find Founders’ is important to us:
We believe founders who can turn Africa’s biggest challenges into global businesses come in a variety of backgrounds, abilities, languages, genders, ages, ethnicities, and more. This is why 40% of founders we have worked with are women, range in age from their 20’s to their 60’s, and come from and work in over 10 African countries.
The founders we back have some consistent features
- Passionate about solving a real problem and have the track record or traction to prove it
- Deep understanding of their customers and consider it their life's work to serve them
- Lived experience of the problem, driving them to build a business that seems impossible until it’s done
We do too. If this describes you, apply now. If this describes a founder you know, nominate a startup.
TIMELINE
The Accelerate Africa Timeline
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Still have questions? We are here to help!
For more questions about Accelerate Africa, please email us at:
hello@acceler8.africa
