Fledge is a global network of conscious company accelerators and investment funds, helping entrepreneurs create impactful companies and co-ops at scale through intense, short programs filled with education, guidance, and a massive amount of mentorship.
Each city runs (up to) one session per year. Each city’s program is a bit different from the others’, but all are focused on mission-driven for-profit companies, and all invest in their fledglings.
Th educational curriculum is based on The Next Step books and online classes, taught to fill in any gaps in the key skills entrepreneurs need to know to succeed: strategy, financials, marketing, sales, funding, etc.
All our cities share a global network of hundreds of mentors, who share their experiences, advice, and connections in 1-on-1 meetings with participants.
Every day, week after week, we push the participants forward, iterating business strategy, financial models, marketing and sales plans, funding options, and investor and sales pitches, plus we put a special focus on storytelling. The result is intense and creates lasting value for years after the companies return home.
We have been refining this service since 2012 and, to date, have helped hundreds of companies from dozens of countries. We’re eager for more. Our goal is to help foster a wave of companies that make a measurable impact in the world, collectively improving the lives of everyone on the planet.
We invest $15,000 (Peru), €15,000 (Europe), or $20,000 (U.S.) into each company we invite to participate, using revenue-based equity, which aligns our interests with the founders, avoids any pressure to “sell out”, and lets us invest in just about any market segment and most any country in the world. Plus, we make introductions to impact investors and make follow-on investments from our family of seed funds.
“Access to financial services is a fundamental human right“, said the founders of Ensibuuko six years ago on the Fledge Demo Day stage. The company has been helping Saving and Credit Co-ops (SACCOS) modernize their operations and helping the farmers who use those institutions for savings and loans get access to modern, mobile-enabled financial services. Thanks to FCA Investments...
The Land Accelerator Africa was the original of what is now three Land Accelerators operating around the world, all operated by World Resources Institute (a.k.a. WRI), all focused on restorative agriculture. Given the pandemic this session is different than others. Historically we’ve invited 10-15 companies to participate. For this session we’ve invited the top 100 applicants. 100 out...
As foundations and mission-aligned investors swiftly shift their investments into ESG funds and direct investments in values-aligned companies and entrepreneurs, they overlook many visionary funds and fund managers who are forging the future that we need. These funds are myth-busters and courageous innovations. More than rethinking our financial system, they are creating viable alternatives to...
Africa Eats is based in Africa, not Asia, but David Kim wanted to hear the story and share it with his global audience.
Luni’s backstory starts the episode, Why Africa at 29:00, Africa Eats at 38:30
Listen as a podcast: Apple • Google • Amazon
More details about Fledge’s first spin-off investment company at AfricaEats.com.
Everyone thinks there are entrepreneurs everywhere (and that seems true), and everyone thinks there are Angels everywhere too (and that seems not as true). The Angel Accelerator makes more Angel investors, teaching people how to invest in startups by having them invest in startups in a safe, controlled, curated program. EDUCATION The program teaches a variety of topics. Participants meet weekly...
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...
I’ve been operating startup investment funds since 2012, and for the twenty years before that, I sat on the founder’s side of the table raising capital from venture capital funds. I thus feel an expertise on the subject of startup investing, and have trouble understanding what others don’t understand about the topic. Case in point, portfolios. Specifically, the fact is that...
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...
When the world gives you a pandemic, make lemonade??? Maybe, if what your city needs most of all is lemonade. Most likely it is something else. But what? Well… unless you live in China, the good news is that some country is ahead of yours in terms of dealing with the pandemic, and thus you can look to see how they dealt with their epidemic to better guess how your customers will deal with...
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...