Welcome to the July BfE newsletter! 🎉 | |
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Dear BfE family,
I recently read an article on TechCabal about Unconventional Capital (Uncap), a fintech firm launched in 2019 that is revolutionizing how early-stage investments into African startups are conducted. In the article, Uncap Founder and CEO Franziska Reh explains how her company is planning to achieve their goal of making 50,000 (!) small-check investments (<$50,000 USD) into African startups within the next five years. If these numbers seem astronomical to you, you're not alone in thinking that: conducting due diligence on any early-stage company – whether you work for an investment firm or another organization like BfE that supports entrepreneurs – is very time intensive. It often takes investors at least one month to vet deals well enough so that they feel comfortable handing money to an early-stage entrepreneur. At BfE, it takes our Startup Recruitment teams ~5 months by comparison.
So how is Uncap able to scale its investment process so much faster than other firms? In short: over 1.5 years, they've built and tested a proprietary, data-driven algorithm that leverages questions, simulated interviews, and other factors to predict entrepreneurial potential. Their algorithm looks out for personality traits, skills and behaviors that predict success, irrespective of the entrepreneur's country, industry or background. Quite admirably, this has resulted in Uncap backing 27 entrepreneurs thus far (many of whom are considered 'social entrepreneurs'; see the portfolio graphic below) – all of whom are local founders – across less popular industries and countries on the continent. Their algorithm goes a long way towards eliminating the bias in traditional early-stage funding, which, to one example, can be illustrated by white expats in Kenya being 47,000% more likely to receive VC funding than in the U.S. This has been a hot topic for years, forcing some to call it "startup neo-colonialism" in this recent webinar on the topic. Could their approach to investment due diligence help address this persistent issue?
Reading about Uncap and their algorithm-based approach got me thinking about how it could potentially apply to BfE. While surely ambitious, creating some type of algorithm to optimize for BfE applicants that have the highest potential to a) be financially sustainable over the long-term (5+ years), and b) make an improved contribution towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals post-Incubation Programme is fascinating. Given our remote-heavy model (which inhibits our Startup Recruitment teams from conducting startup due diligence on-the-ground), I think there is a lot of innovative potential to use a tool that can eliminate bias, detect high-quality applicants, and enable us to select the best BfE startups.
I hope to explore this idea further. In the meantime, let me know what you think.
With lots of gratitude,
Jordan |
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Missed something within BfE this month? Here's what you need to know:
- Our 3-year strategic vision has now been released! Inside, you'll discover everything you'd ever want to know about BfE. Check it out here
- We selected the 9 new startups for the Autumn 2021 Cohort of our Incubation Programme! If you're interested in learning more about their businesses, please register for our welcome event on August 8 to welcome them to BfE
- The BfE Global Tech Division hosted their first monthly division meeting since January. Watch this webinar to learn more about all the progress that the division has been making to improve our internal efficiency and steer us to becoming a true tech-based non-profit
- We co-hosted another successful webinar with Stepchange Africa, one of our trusted partners, earlier this month. The 1hr event covered business expansion tips for African startups. There are definitely some takeaways that chapter incubation teams could glean (and share with their clients this upcoming semester) from rewatching the webinar
- Our communications team published a new case study on MCA Technologies, an agriculture startup in Tanzania that partners with international NGOs to improve crop productivity and soil fertility. Read more about how the Cambridge Technical Advisory team empowered MCA with a newly designed (and more sustainable) crop manure spreader
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We've continued to make steady progress on various initiatives at the global level. This month was a busy one. Here's what each division was up to:
📊 Incubation
- We onboarded Arnas as the Global Academy Manager (to oversee BfE Academy); Yuan as a Global Technical Advisor (to engage on ad-hoc supply chain and operations queries for our startups); and Daniel as a new Global Finance Advisory Manager. Welcome to the team!
- We said goodbye to Charlotte, who has duly served as Global Consulting Manager for the past year. She previously was a project lead with the Cambridge Chapter for Green Gold, a farming startup in St. Lucia
- Information about Technical Advisory (TA) offerings were sent out to all incoming startups by Albert (Global Technical Advisory Manager). TA interviews are slated for late July and August to see which engagements will proceed in Autumn
🤝 Outreach
- Communications: No new updates at the moment – but, on an exciting note, we'll soon surpass 1,500 followers on LinkedIn
- Partnerships: We made progress on creating a new framework for approaching potential partners at both the chapter and global levels. Xiao Yen (Global Partnerships Head) and others also hosted a mid-year Global Growth & Partnerships Meeting to discuss ways to improve partnership outreach. Lastly, we're in talks with Shaper Impact Capital and Satgana about prospective partnerships
🔋 Strategy & Operations
- After months of hard-work, we've completed a document outlining our 3-year global strategic vision! This outlines our aspirations for the next few years, as well as some ideas to get us there. It is highly recommended to refer to this document moving forward (it will be updated on an annual basis)
- We are hosting a 1hr public event to welcome the 9 startups selected for the Autumn 2021 Cohort on Sunday August 8. We hope to see you there! Following the Global Review Committee we held in June, the 9 startups our chapter teams will start working with include:
- Rachel (Global Mentorship Manager) has been strategizing a new approach to professional mentor engagement. We expect to have some exciting updates on this front soon!
👩💻 Impact Research
- We created a slide deck to more easily communicate the impact metrics we aspire to track for key stakeholders through our impact framework. Please take a look if you're curious how various feedback forms you fill out help provide us with rich data to analyze for future improvement
- Fareeha (Global M&E Manager) has reviewed post-engagement feedback from this most recent round of Incubation Programme engagements. We expect to share our findings with the Global Incubation Division in August to pinpoint strategies for chapter teams to improve their performance
- Esther (Global M&E Manager) has been working alongside Annie (Global Strategy Head) and Darinka (Graphic Design Intern) to design a template for our first ever BfE-wide annual impact report! Stay tuned for updates on how this will look (expected publishing date in early 2022)
⚙️ Technology
- Kevin (Global Technology Head) hosted the July Global Technology Division meeting yesterday. The session featured key updates from Brenda (Global Product Manager) about BfE Tech's product roadmap; Kathi (Global Tech Programme Manager) about the work-in-progress BfE Tech Leaders Fellowship; and Brie (Global Tech Strategies Manager) about tech partnerships and engagement. Watch the recording here if you missed it!
- BfE Technology has chosen Coda as the front-end interface of Members Portal (interactive internal platform for startups, students and mentors – now being renamed to "Admin Portal"). The division will begin development on key projects this Autumn! Look out for an open forum event that Brenda will hold in October, where you'll be able to see mockups and share your ideas for how this tech platform should be used going forward
- Chandan (Global Cyber Security Manager) has been working to create organisation-wide security training resources. Have you received spam or attempted phishing emails on your BfE account recently? Check out his advice for mitigating this
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Our chapters have been taking it slow this month, with summer break still underway. But they also have some exciting updates to share, including:
🇬🇧 Cambridge
- Our Growth & Partnerships team is seeking to finalise a partnership with TechBridge Invest, a Kenyan-based startup accelerator, which will enhance our professional mentor database and aim to set-up post-BfE referrals for promising startups in our programme
- Workshops with the founder of Tickr (first impact investing platform in Europe); Cambridge Resolution (market research firm); and Accuracy (consulting firm) are being planned and slotted into our Winter agenda
🇺🇸 New York
- We are hosting a socially distanced in-person meet up during the last week of July!
- We onboarded Senior Associates for our Finance Advisory and Consulting teams. Please join us in congratulating Russell (Senior Consulting Associate), Julia (Senior Finance Advisory Associate) and Justin (Senior Finance Advisory Associate) on their new roles that commence this Autumn!
🇸🇬 Singapore
- The Singapore Chapter has started their recruitment for new chapter members! If you're on Instagram, you can follow and "like" their marketing materials here. Their timeline is as follows:
- 19 July – 30 July: Application Period
- 24 July: Information Session
- 26 July – 6 August: Interview Period
🇳🇱 Rotterdam
- Our chapter is off during summer break, so we have nothing to share at the moment!
🇨🇦 Vancouver
- We have recruited 6 new members: 1 Consulting Director, 4 Consulting Associates and 1 Communications Associate (we’re going to try recruiting for a Comms Director closer to September). If we’re successful with that, then our chapter will be made up of 9 members, with 50% growth over last year!
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Curious what our startups have been up to? This month, we're spotlighting a few in our portfolio for their impactful work:
- Medha: Medha is an Indian non-profit that implements educational training programs for underserved youth in Uttar Pradesh, India
- Medha worked with the BfE New York Chapter (Autumn 2019) to provide guidance on their retail fundraising strategy, corporate CSR donations and more. The final Finance Advisory deliverable for Medha can be viewed at this link
- Medha published its most recent quarterly report from FY 2020-21, which can be viewed here. Through its numerous programs, the organisation successfully impacted over 11,000 students and placed over 2,800 students with internships and jobs (66% were work-from-home). They also managed to switch to a remote-first working environment – which is no small feat given India's battle with COVID-19
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Some photographs from Medha's various programs |
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- Bempu Health: Founded in 2014, Bempu Health is an award-winning Indian social enterprise that develops healthcare technology to help increase newborn survival rates
- Bempu Health worked with former BfE partner Cognoscere Consulting – a student-run consultancy based out of LSE – in Spring 2017. The team from Cognoscere delivered a set of tailored branding and sales strategies to Bempu; their final report can be read here
- The startup recently announced the launch of its new product, the ApneBoot System, which detects when babies stop breathing and auto-stimulates their foot to restart breathing well before any injury can occur. They also launched the TempWatch 10X, a reusable version of their flagship TempWatch product for early detection of hypothermia. Check out both products below, and read more about the impact of Bempu's TempWatch in this newly commissioned study from Duke University
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We're hosting a 1hr welcome event for the newly accepted startups to our Incubation Programme on 8 August! Each startup will have 2-3 min. to "pitch" their business during the event. We will also be inviting Coronet Blockchain, a BfE startup alum from Spring 2021, to speak at the event about their experiences working with the BfE New York Chapter |
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