Malawi may be the second poorest country in the world, but the people are happy, the country is safe, traffic is reasonable, and opportunities abound. Below are three videos from a week on the ground visiting Ziweto, Ecobuild, and some other local entrepreneurs. Ziweto Agrovet shop in Lilongwe (30 seconds) Ecobuild’s prototype brickyard A day visiting a mushroom farm, a diversified...
Why are there so many fledglings from Africa? Two main reasons:
There are fewer quality business accelerators in Africa than in other regions of the world, and thus we receive more good applicants from Africa
The opportunities in Africa are enormous. It’s the last place on Earth with 1 billion people growing from poverty to middle class.
What happens in a 4-day accelerator? More than you can imagine…
The days are full of workshops, lectures, expert, conversations, with advice not only from the various speakers but also from fellow members of the cohort, as there are a dozen entrepreneurs in the room.
Above is a quick preview of what that all looks like. And coming up soon, videos of the final stories from Demo Day.
In 2013, Samuel Rigu was looking for a new challenge. Having grown up in a rural Kenyan farming family, he knew that farms in his village depended on synthetic fertilizers. On a continent where land degradation has driven millions of people out of their villages and into cities, fertilizer is often a must for farmers. However, African farmers pay two-to-six times the average world price...
There simply are few (if any) books that walk entrepreneurs step-by-step through the complex process from having an idea to having an operational, revenue-generating company. The Next Step series of books does just that. We use this book series in Fledge as the core of our curriculum. It’s the same curriculum our founder, Luni, uses to teach MBAs. And its also the core material covered by...
The following is based on a blog post from Right Side Capital. For fist-time entrepreneurs, investor updates are thought of as a big challenge, when they don’t have to be. Too often founders put them off until there is good news to share and/or put too much effort into making them look as good as their fundraising materials. Investors meanwhile are busy, and just a few statistics and a few...
It’s a good idea to look at your website every few years, look to see if it’s starting to feel dated, if its missing the look-and-feel of the latest websites. Last week’s Fledge website had a nice front page, but it wasn’t rendering well on smartphones and the overall structure needed a refresh to handle accelerators for both startups and co-ops, as well as handling...
Co-ops are commonplace, but not commonly understood. REI, Ace Hardware, Land’o’Lakes, Ocean Spray, Blue Diamond, Bob’s Red Mill and every credit union are cooperative companies. The applicability of the co-op business model is vast. From worker-owned companies to producer and purchasing cooperatives, these distributed ownership organizations create economies of scale, and...
“We are very thrilled to anounce our strategic partnership with Lenovo which will enable us to have a Latam presence once we start selling our services “ said Geraldine Guzmán cofounder of Feelsgood. The company received seed capital from a strategic investor in Brazil and launched of its first VR health related product to the health professional community in Lima, Peru. At today’s event...
BURN designs, manufactures and distributes super fuel-efficient cooking products that save lives and forests in the developing world. BURN has revolutionized the global cookstove sector by proving the business case for selling high-quality, locally manufactured and unsubsidized cookstoves. Since 2013, BURN has sold more than 425,000 cookstoves in sub-Saharan Africa, which have helped two...