Greg Cooke

Wait until you see this. The ecosystem is buzzing with innovation, investment and big ideas. But to really get it, you need to speak the language. Here's a quick thread style breakdown of 10 African Startup Terms Everyone should know 1️⃣ Pre-seed Funding ~ The earliest stage of capital to get an idea off the ground. 2️⃣ Angel Investor ~ An individual who invests early, often before big VCs step in. 3️⃣ Tech Hub ~ Collaborative spaces where startups, talent and ideas thrive. 4️⃣ Runway ~ The number of months a startup can operate before funds run out. 5️⃣ Incubator ~ A program supporting startups with resources, mentorship, and networking. 6️⃣ Accelerator ~ Short, intensive programs, mentorship and resources designed to fast-track growth. 7️⃣ Bootstrapping ~ Building a startup using personal savings or revenue instead of external funding. 8️⃣ Exit ~ When founders or investors sell their stake, usually via acquisition or IPO. 9️⃣ MVP (Minimum Viable Product) ~ A simple version of your product built to test the market quickly. 🔟 Burn Rate ~ How fast a startup spends money before generating profit. 💡 At TechDom Africa, we believe knowledge is power. The more you understand the ecosystem the better you can thrive in it. Which of these terms do you think more African founders need to understand deeply? Let’s talk in the comments. 🔗 www.techdomafrica.com #TechdomAfrica #TechAdoption #AfricanTechVoices #BuildWithAfrica #TechMedia #StartupAfrica #DigitalAfrica

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✍🏾𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟮 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁’𝘀 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸 — 𝗮 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗼𝗿 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽𝘀, 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲. In this episode, we collaborate with Startup Graveyard Africa to explore the Scalability Trap — the moment when growth exposes the limits of your infrastructure. Every founder hopes for the moment when traffic surges. A campaign goes viral. An influencer shares your product. Customers start flooding your website. But if your infrastructure isn’t built to handle the spike, that moment of opportunity can quickly turn into friction; slow load times, checkout failures, and lost users. In this second article, Startup Graveyard Africa breaks down: - Why shared hosting can become a growth bottleneck - How upgrading to a VPS provides dedicated resources for scaling - Why hosting closer to your market in Africa improves speed and SEO performance Because the reality is simple: Startups rarely fail because of a lack of ambition. They struggle when their infrastructure can’t keep up with their growth. Read the full piece here: https://lnkd.in/dGDgPUjy #Whogohost #StartupGrowth #Hosting #VPS #AfricanStartups

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In November 2025, Abuja became the heartbeat of Africa’s Web3 future. I had the privilege of documenting Solana Summit Africa, an event where policymakers, ecosystem leaders, and builders came together—hosted by Superteam NG 🇳🇬. Through my lens, I captured the energy, conversations, and moments that make these gatherings more than just sessions—they’re where the future of blockchain in Africa is being built. Some of the incredible voices I documented: Maya Caddle , from the Solana Foundation, sharing the vision for Solana’s growth. Ayodele Olawande, Nigeria’s Minister for Youth Development, on youth, innovation, and technology. Dr.Hassan, representing the Nigerian SEC, bridging regulation and adoption. Meteora.ag Ambassador, spotlighting Solana liquidity provision and sustainable DeFi. Jupiter Exchange Representative, on user-first decentralized trading. Solflare Wallet Ambassador, guiding users into secure self-custody. deBridge Ambassador, on cross-chain interoperability. Documenting this event was more than capturing visuals—it was about telling the story of Africa’s Web3 ecosystem through authentic moments, human interactions, and real impact. If you’re hosting an event, building a project, or want your story documented in a way that connects with audiences, I’m always looking to bring brands and events to life through visual storytelling. 🎥 Watch the highlight video below 👇 #SolanaSummitAfrica #Web3Africa #Solana #Blockchain #EventDocumentation #VideoStorytelling #CreativeEconomy

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Building Startups in Africa🚧 It has been observed that many African founders want to raise money because they've built and somehow they've got a couple users or been able to hype their way to increasing numbers. ❌No strong traction. ❌No signals of retention. ❌No revenue or revenue potential Just a concept, a web application, a pitch deck, a couple users, and hype. But the truth is simple: 👉Capital is not a substitute for validation. 👉Funding also does not confirm desirability. 👉Investment does not equal demand. 👉And a well-designed product does not guarantee that anyone needs it. Too many startups jump into building without first understanding:🚧 💡What the customer is trying to solve 💡How urgent and/or critical the problem is 💡Whether the customer is actively seeking alternatives 💡 What would truly make them switch 💡 Whether behaviour matches the founder’s assumptions 💡 Whether the market is big enough to sustain the product Skipping this process leads to wasted resources, avoidable pivots, and products that gather downloads but no purchase or come back. Real progress is not the number of features you build or PR hype that garthers the crowd. Real progress is the clarity you have about how people behave, what they value, and what they are willing to adopt. Every successful product begins with evidence Here's the way I always like to put it. 💡Evidence of demand 💡Evidence of pain 💡Evidence of willingness to use 💡Evidence of willingness to pay Without these, you’re building on uncertainty and possible disconnect from reality. Validation is not a “nice-to-have.” It’s the foundation of sustainable innovation. At BUILD FOR AFRICA UNITED, we are inspiring founders to validate early, derisk assumptions, avoid building unwanted products, and aim directly for the bullseye, long before development and fundraising even begins. Photo Credit: JossyShots🇳🇬

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Yes, many African Fintechs are unimaginative. But the Chowdeck move is a lot more about a 'superapp' strategy than most people realize. They've met the first prerequisite of a superapp: frequency. There's a flywheel. You buy meals and utilities on the app. On the surface, it appears to be a game for transaction fees. But in reality, the WALLET is the endgame. Bypassing payment gateway fees. The float (longer term). When dealing with high-execution startups, you can't judge features at face value. You have to look for the strategic levers driving them.

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The Partnership Model: How African Startups Can Compete Globally Without Massive VC African founders waste years chasing venture capital whilst their competitors are building. Most founders believe the sequence is raise money first, then figure everything out. This fails predictably. You spend 18 months chasing investors, finally close a round, then realise the money doesn’t come with the expertise to build properly or the infrastructure to scale efficiently. So you burn cash buying what partnerships would have given you for free. The smarter play: build partnerships first, raise capital second. Cloud providers have startup programmes. Social platforms have API access. Product studios need startups to work with. Payment processors want African market entry. When you approach investors with real partnerships already in place, the conversation changes. You’re not asking them to bet on your ability to figure things out. You’re showing them you’ve already de-risked what kills most startups. Three partnerships matter: -Infrastructure partnerships give you technology you can’t afford to build. -Expertise partnerships connect you with people who have solved your problems before. -Distribution partnerships put you in front of customers you couldn’t reach alone. Get these right, and you compete globally on seed capital #Varscon

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In this episode of Diary of an African Entrepreneur, we sit down with Olufemi Olanipekun, the founder of VeendHQ (Techstars '23), a fintech startup transforming credit access across Africa. Femi shares his raw and inspiring journey, from working as a software engineer at Flutterwave and Carbon to identifying the painful challenges of loan collections in Africa, and eventually launching VeendHQ, a platform that has disbursed over $18 million in short-term credit to more than 300,000 Nigerians. The conversation explores how VeendHQ evolved from a struggling SaaS model into a fast-scaling embedded credit infrastructure that addresses Africa’s credit and collections problem at scale. Hosted by Deji Adebusoye, this episode dives into Femi’s early days building technology for banks, the cultural challenges of running SaaS in Africa, the pivotal moments that led VeendHQ to grow its revenue, and what it takes to build resilient technology for African consumers and lenders. If you are building a fintech in Africa or dreaming of launching your own startup, this is an episode you do not want to miss. #DiaryOfAnAfricanEntrepreneur #VeendHQ #AfricanFintech #TechInAfrica #StartupJourney #FemiVeendHQ #Flutterwave #BNPL #EmbeddedFinance #FinancialInclusion #NigerianTech #AfricanStartups #SaaSInAfrica #DejiAdebusoye

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Nigerian SMEs are slashing marketing budgets in 2025 due to inflation, yet 58% still struggle to get new customers. The Pain Point: #Founders/CEOs are tired of "throwing money at digital" with no results. They don't realize that "Near Me" searches (like "Plumber near me" or "Cake shop in Abuja") etc are the highest-converting leads because the person is ready to buy now. Being on the Map is the most cost-effective way to get these "ready-to-pay" customers without a massive ad budget.

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Every week I see headlines about fintech, SaaS, Logistics and now AI raising billions, and then I look at Africa’s creative economy one of the most impactful sectors we have and it’s still being treated like a side note. For me, this isn’t just about music or film. It’s about jobs, our identity, our global influence. It’s about rewriting the African and global story in our own voice. If investors don’t wake up, they’ll keep missing the sector that defines us and am talking about the world at large not just Africa. (NB it’s Lagos not Legos in the video) #CreativeEconomy #ImpactInvesting #CulturalTech #AfricanInnovation #ECHoes

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Why do Nigerian businesses need Searchcosystem? Nigerian businesses need Searchcosystem because many serious buyers now verify companies online before paying, partnering, visiting, or referring them.

If someone asked you to show where your jobtech platform supports underserved users (and where it doesn’t), could you answer confidently? In our conversations with platform teams across Africa, one theme keeps surfacing: founders want to understand how different users experience their product, but they don’t always have a simple way to check. Through our venture support work and research cycles, we’ve seen how small design decisions in onboarding, matching, safety, or communication can shape who continues to engage and who quietly drops off. Our Inclusivity Framework was built to give teams a structured way to map these moments across seven dimensions that influence real user outcomes. It creates a shared, evidence-led view of where a platform is supportive, where friction exists, and where underserved users may need something different. We’ll be walking through how to use the diagnostic and what we’re learning from early adopters, in our masterclass at the end of January. Interested in making your platform more inclusive? Join us by registering here: https://luma.com/49its93t #inclusivity

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The Average African Fintech’s ideal customer isn't Nigerian businesses, it's Visa's M&A team. That's not criticism, that's rational response to capital structure. What we're not building: - African acquirers with $500M+ war chests - Permanent capital structures (holdings companies, family offices, sovereign wealth allocating to tech) - Platform companies that consolidate sectors domestically before expanding - Secondary markets where employees can sell equity without company exit The deepest damage isn't the exits themselves, it's that our best operators learn American exit playbooks instead of Korean chaebol or Chinese BAT strategies. We study how to be bought, not how to buy.

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The billion-dollar opportunities lie in 'small' problems. That's according to the investors writing the playbook. Here's what they have to say about building venture-scale businesses in Africa's evolving market. The next wave of returns won't come from standalone fintech. According to Nima Yussuf, COO Silverbacks Holdings, the real opportunities are in fintech that embeds directly into everyday commerce operations. But not every problem is worth solving. Dr. Dotun Olowoporoku, Managing Partner Ventures Platform Fund has a clear advice: "Don't chase glamour. Chase the market." He backs founders who've experienced the pain themselves, can sell to traditional businesses, and think in systems rooted in first principles. Yet even the best-built companies face a critical bottleneck. Mobola da-Silva, Partner Capria Ventures notes that while private capital is already building infrastructure, expansion stalls when platforms encounter inconsistent tax rules, data laws, and non-harmonized customs. "Policy is the real multiplier," she says The playbook is simple: Build where money must flow. Embed where transactions happen. Prove the economics work. And advocate for the policy changes that unlock scale. What inevitabilities are you building toward? 🔗 Download the Future of Commerce report here 👉 https://lnkd.in/dZNDbsED . #tcinsights #FutureofCommerceinAfrica #FOC2026

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One thing is clear: where a large percentage of Africa’s outgoing generation of tech entrepreneurs and startup founders failed at execution, scale, or sustainability, they succeeded at something just as consequential, they bred the next generation of founders who watched them fail. That exposure matters. This next wave grew up inside broken cap tables, stalled pivots, founder fallouts, missed PMF, funding winters, and quiet shutdowns. They didn’t just read case studies, they lived them. They saw what hype without fundamentals looks like. They saw what chasing valuation over value costs. They saw what happens when governance, focus, or timing is ignored. Failure, when visible, becomes curriculum. The upcoming generation is entering the arena with sharper instincts: • more disciplined about unit economics • more intentional about capital structure • more skeptical of “growth at all costs” • more grounded in real African market realities They are less romantic about startups, but more serious about building companies. So yes, many of the first wave may not have built enduring institutions but they built context. And context compounds. The next 10–20 years of Africa’s tech landscape will not be louder. It will be wiser. And that may be the real inflection point. 📌 Pin that.

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Most founders don’t fail because they can’t build. They fail because they build something no one urgently needs. We’re running another Idea Lab at Antler Lagos next week, focused on Problem Validation in the Real Sector and Fintech two sectors where misunderstanding the problem can cost years and millions. Agriculture. Manufacturing. Logistics. Payments. Lending. Financial infrastructure. These sectors don’t reward guesswork. They reward founders who understand the problem at its root. This is not a panel. It’s a closed working session. We’ll break down: ▪️ How to identify problems that are truly worth solving ▪️ How to pressure-test assumptions before committing capital ▪️ How experienced operators validate problems in complex, regulated environments You’ll also build and present your own problem tree and get direct feedback. If you’re serious about building in these sectors, you should be in the room. 📍 Lagos 🗓️ Thursday, Feb 19 ⏰ 11:30 AM Apply here: https://luma.com/6hy1kmhc

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Having a great business idea is exciting. You can clearly see the product, the value it will create, and the lives it could impact. But for many entrepreneurs and startup founders, one major obstacle stands between the idea and reality — "funding". Many brilliant ideas never move beyond the planning stage, not because they lack potential, but because the financial resources needed to start are not easily accessible. For startups, the real challenge is often not the idea itself, but having the means to bring that idea to life. However, this challenge should not stop you from moving forward. Today, there are platforms, programs, and communities designed to help entrepreneurs learn, connect, and discover opportunities for growth and funding. Sometimes what a startup needs first is knowledge, guidance, and the right network. If you are someone with a great idea but struggling with the financial means to bring it to life, this is the moment to take action. 👉🏽 https://lnkd.in/dSaU5SYu Gain insightful knowledge, discover opportunities, and learn from experienced entrepreneurs and thought leaders like Mr. Nanje Churchill and other great minds who are passionate about helping startups grow. Your idea deserves the chance to become a reality. Start by gaining the right knowledge and connections. #StartupFunding #Entrepreneurship #StartupGrowth #Innovation #AfricanStartups #BusinessDevelopment #StartupSupport #FundingOpportunities #EntrepreneurMindset #BuildInPublic #StartupCommunity

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Subscribe at https://lnkd.in/dycv-zi4 Building a company on the African continent is not a sprint. Many founders expect visible wins in year one or two, hit friction, and quietly exit. The challenges are real, but the breakthrough rarely comes early. My journey taught me that the real shift begins around year five. The early years are about endurance: learning to build with constraints, earning trust, assembling the right people, and letting systems take shape. If you stay long enough, things start to click. By year five, you may not have everything figured out but you’ve proven commitment. And in Africa, lasting impact belongs to those who choose the long game.

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