A great Tweet of recent times: “This week has been the longest year of my life.” Meanwhile, at Fledge our work continues onward. We are in the middle of Fledge16 and the first-ever Angel Accelerator. Someday we’ll finish up both of those in-person. Meanwhile, as America and the world wakes up to social injustice we take a moment to look back at the faces of the dozens of...
Over the last month we’ve been gathering data and stories from our fledglings on how the pandemic is playing out in their country/cities and within their businesses. The results are not good: The first 57 responses arrived from 25 countries. The fledglings are a very diverse portfolio of startups. The tiny numbers show where there are multiple responses from a single country or city...
East Africa Fruits closed a $2.05 million round of capital led by Goodwell Investments with participation from FINCA Ventures and elea. Fledge is especially proud of this company, as it was our very first native-African fledgling. When we first invited the company to participate, it was less than 18 month old, it had earned only $100,000 in revenues in its first year, and had big...
With a coronavirus pandemic hotspot in Seattle and global travel on hold for a whole, we’ve started Fledge16 and its matching Angel Accelerator online. 9 companies based in 6 countries: From left to right on the map above: Bricolage Recycling glass into sand. South Carolina, USA. Tilaa Honey and cashews. Talame in Northern Ghana. Agromyx Powered fruit and grains. Accra, Ghana. Build...
The Opportunity is Africa is a new podcast bringing you stories from African entrepreneurs and investors, highlighting the many business opportunities that exist across the continent. Syndicated by the Africa Business Radio podcast network, a graduate of Fledge, as are the first five interviewees. Also check out Luni’s posts on the Energy, Opportunities, and Hurdles for Africa. You’ll...
Fledge’s founder is back from a two-week tour visiting seven fledglings in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. Click below to watch video tours of each:
Plus Geoffrey from Green Charcoal Uganda founded a second company that grows turkeys…
All plastics are now recyclable, thanks to Arqlite. In their first production facility, Arqlite converts 5 tons per day of waste into artificial stones for use in an under concrete.
A quick, 1-minute tour
A quick, 5-minute tour by founder/CEO Sebastian Sajoux
Most of what we do at Fledge is invisible. You can catch glimpses of the business planning and financial modeling at Demo Day, but the only visible changes we make are in the (re)branding. We re-branded Chabana Farms as Kalahari Honey, to make their newfound focus on honey explicit. God Cares Farm is now Oreeggs. Now their focus is clear too, and their name distinct. We found a name for our...
Monday, April 29th begins the fourteenth session of Fledge. Or is it the 17th? Or 61st? You’d think counting would be easy, but the complexities of the real world get in the way. The simplest way to count sessions is to simply count how many times we’ve taught the Fledge curriculum with a cohort of entrepreneurs. But if we do that, we have to include the dozens of part-time Kick...
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...