449th Roundtable Recording on July 11, 2019

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Eghosa Omoigui of EchoVC Partners (Part 4)

Eghosa Omoigui: Education is a very significant issue. These markets are growing very quickly. Nigeria is adding 26,000 babies every day. Education and how you create a pathway to households is a key part of this.

We invested in a company called Kukua, which is based out of Nairobi. What they built is a platform for early age education on STEM. There’s a heroine and she loves STEM.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Eghosa Omoigui of EchoVC Partners (Part 3)

Eghosa Omoigui: We have four investment thesis that we’ve talked about internally, but this is the first time we’re sharing them outside. One of them is that there is a recognition that in many submarkets in Africa, almost all economic activities are offline. It continues to be offline.

There was a very large opportunity, in our view, where you can build a defensible moat where you could organize the offline activities and bring that online. One example of that, where we invested in at the seed stage, is a company called Printivo.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Eghosa Omoigui of EchoVC Partners (Part 2)

Eghosa Emoigui: I decided that it made sense to look at those emerging markets. I ended up picking Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, in part, because they felt very highly-correlated. You had very similar signals in these markets that suggested they would evolve.

I went out to those two markets. I had no luck, because everybody thought I was insane. Those two markets were completely uninteresting in 2011. I then decided that I was not going to quit. I picked sub-Saharan Africa and went into that.

Roundtable Recap: July 11 – Niche Expertise Can Be Turned Into Excellent Small Businesses

During this week’s roundtable, we had one entrepreneur pitch, and a lengthy discussion around a very niche business that I found very promising as a viable small business. It’s an interesting case study of how niche expertise can be turned into great small business.

Mid-Atlantic Amateur Radio

Pete Young from Thurmont, Maryland pitched the Mid-Atlantic Amateur Radio Service, a repair service for old ham radios.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable, especially if you are working on a niche idea, here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Eghosa Omoigui of EchoVC Partners (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Eghosa Omoigui was recorded in May 2019.

Eghosa Omoigui is Managing Partner at EchoVC Partners, a firm focused on the African market. This is a fascinating discussion about African startups and venture capital.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get to know each other. Tell us about EchoVC. Tell us about yourself.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vikas Choudhury of Pivot Ventures (Part 5)

Vikas Choudhury: Another investment is a cloud kitchen. It’s a company called Inner Chef run by someone I know. That company was riding on the wave of logistics and delivery, which was designed for the e-commerce ecosystem.

As you know, food delivery is becoming very large across the world. A lot of marketplaces have come up in India. Inner Chef has also diversified into local fast food. A lot of millennials today are eating 30 meals a month outside of their homes, which is a huge shift in consumer behavior across the country.

448th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Nnamdi Okike, 645 Ventures

Nnamdi Okike is Co-founder and Managing Partner at 645 Ventures. We have an excellent conversation about trends and his firm’s investment thesis.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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