By Constance Adaurie
As fundraising continues to be a major challenge for tech startups, fintech experts has said that investors are now interested in impact-driven traction and visibility over pitch decks.
At the fourth edition of Founders meet and chat, organised by Blackcrest with the theme: “Beyond the pitch Deck: what investors really look for?”, they advised entrepreneurs to show real user results and public proof of their business to secure funding deals.
Speaking during a panel session on fundraising from investors, Co-founder of Midddleman, Omolara Sanni said investors want to see traction. According to her, as a founder, you have to invest in yourself as a person, and get traction to secure funds.
“The best way is to just show results, show traction as much as possible, that is what investors want to see, we can’t change that, so go back to the drawing board, find customers, build products that people actually want to pay for and also find alternative sources of funding, like grants that won’t stress you as much and won’t even take your potential away. Because it’s becoming more and more difficult to raise investment in a new space,” she said.
Adding, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder, Winich Farms, Winner Attai said that fundraising goes beyond official thing, networking, paper work to a founder being able to tell a story. “A founder must have a structures. You have to ask yourself the type of investor you are looking for, if they are impact driven traction or just investors that want numbers,” he said.
“It takes time, and it’s a journey,” he added.
Also, Managing Partner, BlackCrest, Osita James explained that investors want to know how you are building out your competitive advantage that would allow you to remain resilient in the market, even if the current strategy you are using is not working.
He advised founders to spend more time to think about what can help them stay resilient. “They’re called moat strategies. It could be like building an ecosystem of products instead of building a single individual product. It could also be targeting a market that is going to continue to use your product for a long period of time, as opposed to going to just use it on a one-off basis,” he said.
James advised founders to always get a good lawyer for any business deal they want to embark on. According to him, a deal could die after the pitch deck impressed investors if you don’t have the license and a partner. “If you’re building an industry like finance that requires regulatory compliance, if you don’t have the license and you don’t have a partner, the deal is dead on arrival. Because you’re not going to be able to convince the investor that you can find a way to still do the business legally in Nigeria,” he said.
He explained that BlackCrest is a start-up focused law firm that supports founders of hostages in Africa. He said so far, the company has supported over 200 founders here in Nigeria.
“We’ve helped founders that were trying to reach new investors. We supported them as they closed a cumulative of $20 million in venture capital funding since 2021,” he said.
He said their aim is to make building technology products more accessible to young Africans.
“Because the event is free, it’s been funded by our law firm. We want people to come to network with other people. We want them to learn from other people.
And we want it to strengthen the entire tech ecosystem at the end of the day. We hope that by continuing to host this event, founders will keep on meeting each other, learning from each other and strengthening the overall tech ecosystem.
So we invite successful founders that have raised funds from investors that are doing well, that have lots of employees so that they can come and share their experience with the other founders that are still trying to get to that level,” he said.
He said that Nigeria has a growing ecosystem and amazing founders building innovative products. “Nigeria is open for investment and partners like us are always here to support startups. We have invested in the survival and thriving of startups here in Nigeria and the rest of Africa,” he said.
