Byld Ventures is a fund with a focus on early-stage startups in Africa that was founded in May of this year with $15 million in capital and is looking to make investments in fintech startups focused primarily on Nigeria and Egypt.
Over a dozen athletes, in addition to the government of Dubai and a few institutional investors who have not been disclosed, have contributed to the fund.
“Over the last 12 months, founders in Africa were reaching out to me for advice and I was investing personally. So, I decided to institutionalize it and put a fund together,” ,” said Youcef Oudjidane, the founding partner in a statement.
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The initial closure for Byld Ventures occurred in early June, and the $10 million second closing occurred just last month. According to Oudjidane, the company anticipates reaching its ultimate closure by the end of 2018. Four venture partners, including Oudjidane backers Ahmed Sabbah (Telda CEO), Prince Boampong (Dash CEO), Shekinah Adewumi (Apata CEO), and professional soccer player Kieran Gibbs, make up the early-stage fund, which has made four investments (Ceviant, Apata, Thepeer, and Anchor).
How The Fund Will Invest
- Oudjidane hints that the firm invests mostly in pre-seed stage startups, which fintech being the major target of the fund.
“We invest early, sometimes pre-pitch deck; we make the joke that ideally, once you’ve handed in your resignation,” said the founding partner. “We strive to be at the foundation head of company formation; we want to be there on day one. Fintech is our bread and butter. It’s just what we know and what we love.”
- One of Byld Ventures’ main themes is also investing in firms that are creating financial infrastructure (API), along with startups that are reversing Africa’s talent drain and repeat founders. For the latter, three of the firm’s investments were made in founders who had profitable exits: Touchtech Payments, founded by Shekinah Adewumi, Idris Saliu’s VANSO, and Amplify, founded by Segun Adeyemi, was bought out by Stripe, Interswitch, and Carbon, respectively.
“I doubt many investors have our knowledge of fintech in Africa,” said the founding partner. “We build deep and personal bonds with founders, perhaps a by-product of us being open and vulnerable. For example, some founders are reluctant to seek counsel from investors when the proverbial shit hits the fan; chances are, we have gone through worse. We believe in the power of intellectual honesty and independent thinking to help reach the optimal decisions.”
- And when it comes to the qualities the company seeks in founders, Oudjidane claims Byld is specific about founders who are technical, dedicated, and economical.
“I think founder-problem fit is also critical because we know how difficult it is to build a business and there’s a lot of second-order effects on the founder,” he adds.
- According to Oudjidane, the four-month-old venture capital firm doesn’t plan to invest in more than 15 to 20 portfolios in this initial fund. He claims that Byld is not a “spray and pray shop” and will make investments in startups with an average ticket size of $500,000 while keeping around 50% of the money aside for follow-on.
- Due to the partners’ prior expertise in both countries, Byld Ventures is primarily interested in companies in Egypt and Nigeria. However, it will also keep an eye on startups in Ethiopia and Algeria, albeit the latter is a favored option given Oudjidane’s origins.
Backgrounds Of Byld Partners
Youcef Oudjidane was the managing partner and head of EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) at Class 5 Global, a San Francisco-based venture fund with a keen interest in emerging markets, two years before he co-founded Sudanese fintech Bloom after failing to find startups tackling currency depreciation in Africa to invest in.
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Class 5 wasn’t, however, his first attempt at investing. The U.K.-born entrepreneur, who is of Algerian origin, worked as a senior associate at Solebury Capital, a boutique investment bank that was eventually bought by PNC Financial Services. He was involved in a number of Internet IPOs, including Snapchat. And in 2017, he joined the Dubai Future Foundation, a small group that started the first venture capital fund in the Dubai government, as head of strategy and investments.
Oudjidane oversaw investments at Class 5 in African firms including Telda, Dash, Moove, and Chari. Several professional football (soccer) players, including Mesut Ozil, who was a venture partner, were also associated with the investment. His connections with other sportsmen, including soccer players (Oudjidane played the sport in college and received scholarships), have been helpful for his next endeavour.
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On a personal level, Oudjidane is one of the rare individuals on the continent juggling founder-investor jobs concurrently; in his case, a fintech with a basis in the Sudan and a fund with a base in the U.K. He claims that this benefit comes from the somatic interactions between the two tasks. “For me, Bloom and Byld are particular. I want to spend my life “bylding” because I believe in Africa’s potential. It is up to us [this generation] to drive change, “The founding partner said.
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Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexpert