No Result
View All Result
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Citi Business News
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Agriculture
    • Economy
    • General
    • Government
    • Local Economy
    • Top Stories

    Ghana Best Cocoa Farmers Association lauds COCOBOD boss

    Consider cocoa pricing in your legislation – COCOBOD CEO to EU

    Fitch upgrades Ghana’s Long-term local-currency IDR from ‘RD’ to ‘CCC

    Producer Price Inflation drops to 50.8% in February 2023

    Growth and Sustainability Levy will stifle growth of local oil service companies – Upstream Petroleum Chamber

    Peasant farmers reiterate calls for construction of Pwalugu Multi-Purpose Dam

    ECG disconnects GRA, KFC, Ho Airport others from power grid

    GRA monitoring team retrieves over GHC85m revenue shortfall

    Finance Minister leaves for China for debt negotiations

  • Business
    • All
    • Agribusiness
    • Banking And Finance
    • Manufacturing
    • Markets
    • Mining
    • Oil And Gas
    • Real Estate
    • Tourism
    • Transport

    Industry experts convene to discuss diversification strategies for pension funds

    It’s time to give women top posts in multilateral institutions – GCBL Chairman 

    Global Chamber of business leaders enters into partnership with IEFS

    Gold for Oil policy will save Ghana $4.8bn annually – Veep

    Energy Minister scheduled to speak on Ghana’s near-term opportunities at NAEPEC 2023

    Standard Chartered appoints Ebenezer Twum Asante as Chairman of Board of Directors

    Abena Amoah named in WFE’s top 20 women leaders

    International Women’s Day: Female engineering students tour Karpowership

    BoG directs banks to submit prudential reports on sex-disaggregated basis

  • TECHNOLOGY

    Cyber Security Authority commences licensing and accreditation regime

    Twitter is reportedly planning to charge businesses $1,000 per month to keep gold verified checks

    Ghana withdraws $672m back-tax demand from MTN Group

    MTN to fight $773m tax bill from government

    Telcos to implement 1% E-Levy charge from today

    Huawei Equips 500 Traders in FinTech

    Africans urged to bolster adoption of Bitcoins

    What does 2023 hold? Predictions in payments for the year ahead for Africa

    Meta considered building a Twitter competitor to capitalize on Elon Musk’s ‘crisis’ at company

  • INTERNATIONAL
    • All
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • Middle East
    • US

    Silicon Valley Bank crisis: What led to stock crash, what lies ahead?

    Medical devices market projected to expand by $ 7.1 billion by close of year

    African Union adopts Africa Prosperity Dialogues AfCFTA action plan

    Third World Network Africa urges Africans to be strategic about AfCFTA

    5 important things to know about the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement

    $130bn and $170bn needed annually to bridge Africa’s infrastructural gap – Bawumia

    Feed Africa Summit: African Development Bank to commit $10bn to make continent breadbasket of the world

    Nigeria’s national debt hits an all time as the country struggles with repayment

    What does 2023 hold? Predictions in payments for the year ahead for Africa

  • FEATURES
  • Videos
Citi Business News
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Agriculture
    • Economy
    • General
    • Government
    • Local Economy
    • Top Stories

    Ghana Best Cocoa Farmers Association lauds COCOBOD boss

    Consider cocoa pricing in your legislation – COCOBOD CEO to EU

    Fitch upgrades Ghana’s Long-term local-currency IDR from ‘RD’ to ‘CCC

    Producer Price Inflation drops to 50.8% in February 2023

    Growth and Sustainability Levy will stifle growth of local oil service companies – Upstream Petroleum Chamber

    Peasant farmers reiterate calls for construction of Pwalugu Multi-Purpose Dam

    ECG disconnects GRA, KFC, Ho Airport others from power grid

    GRA monitoring team retrieves over GHC85m revenue shortfall

    Finance Minister leaves for China for debt negotiations

  • Business
    • All
    • Agribusiness
    • Banking And Finance
    • Manufacturing
    • Markets
    • Mining
    • Oil And Gas
    • Real Estate
    • Tourism
    • Transport

    Industry experts convene to discuss diversification strategies for pension funds

    It’s time to give women top posts in multilateral institutions – GCBL Chairman 

    Global Chamber of business leaders enters into partnership with IEFS

    Gold for Oil policy will save Ghana $4.8bn annually – Veep

    Energy Minister scheduled to speak on Ghana’s near-term opportunities at NAEPEC 2023

    Standard Chartered appoints Ebenezer Twum Asante as Chairman of Board of Directors

    Abena Amoah named in WFE’s top 20 women leaders

    International Women’s Day: Female engineering students tour Karpowership

    BoG directs banks to submit prudential reports on sex-disaggregated basis

  • TECHNOLOGY

    Cyber Security Authority commences licensing and accreditation regime

    Twitter is reportedly planning to charge businesses $1,000 per month to keep gold verified checks

    Ghana withdraws $672m back-tax demand from MTN Group

    MTN to fight $773m tax bill from government

    Telcos to implement 1% E-Levy charge from today

    Huawei Equips 500 Traders in FinTech

    Africans urged to bolster adoption of Bitcoins

    What does 2023 hold? Predictions in payments for the year ahead for Africa

    Meta considered building a Twitter competitor to capitalize on Elon Musk’s ‘crisis’ at company

  • INTERNATIONAL
    • All
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • Middle East
    • US

    Silicon Valley Bank crisis: What led to stock crash, what lies ahead?

    Medical devices market projected to expand by $ 7.1 billion by close of year

    African Union adopts Africa Prosperity Dialogues AfCFTA action plan

    Third World Network Africa urges Africans to be strategic about AfCFTA

    5 important things to know about the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement

    $130bn and $170bn needed annually to bridge Africa’s infrastructural gap – Bawumia

    Feed Africa Summit: African Development Bank to commit $10bn to make continent breadbasket of the world

    Nigeria’s national debt hits an all time as the country struggles with repayment

    What does 2023 hold? Predictions in payments for the year ahead for Africa

  • FEATURES
  • Videos
No Result
View All Result
Citi Business News
No Result
View All Result

Raising money for your startup (In the African context)

bycitibusinessnews
May 10, 2019
in FEATURES, Invest In Ghana
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Whatsapp

Quite often founders ask me, “I need to raise money for my startup. Can you connect me to any of the investors in your network”?

I always ask one question: “are you investment ready?”

Quite often that question catches them off-guard or back-pedaling. “Yeah, I have a product/software I think will be great if I get investors.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Next set of questions:

Do you have a pitch/investor deck?
Do you have a financial model document?
What stage of funding are you looking at?
Tell me more about your team? Are you alone? Do you have co-founder(s)?
At what valuation are you looking to raise this money?
Do you have traction? MVP? Any proof of conceptualizing your idea?
Are you legally registered? Where?
How much of your company are you willing to give away during the `dilution phase?
What is your valuation? What are your valuations based on?

You can see confusion setting in. “All these questions just to raise money”?

There are more actually. This is just a snapshot.

Forget Shark Tanks. Forget all those Silicon Valley series, movies or books you read. Down here in Africa it’s war raising money from external investors. Well, internal investors either do not exist or are focused in some specific sectors you’re not in. Real estate and construction probably.

Raising money in Africa is difficult. Firstly, investors don’t trust the terrain. Yes, it does present a lot of opportunities but no one is a fool to put money into any highly volatile environment. Corruption. One day a government wakes up and decides not to leave power. Archaic regulations etc. Someone will give you money based on trust and assurance, it has little to do with what you’re building. They can find the same idea in a more advanced market.

That in mind, you need to go into fundraising mode with an open mind and covering all bases; even if its $10,000 you’re looking for. A typical fundraising cycle lasts for a minimum of 6 months to a maximum of 48 months depending on the complexity of the project and stage of financing.

There’s due diligence. That commences when an investor has expressed interest to invest. They dig deep into your data room where you have all your documents from finance to legal to everything. They come with a prepared set of questions and will cross every t and dot every i.

There is no free or easy money anywhere. Then there are onsite visits, talking to your team, partners, clients etc. To understand your business more and see if there’s consistency when you were blowing your horn in an article or a publication.

Then they go back to do a preliminary report on your company to the Investment Committee. They must all buy in or the investment deal is off. If there’s a buy-in, then comes the deeper and more extensive due diligence phase. If you’re lucky to survive this phase; then you go into a more frustrating and nerve-racking phase: Term sheets and discussion valuations.

It’s not a pretty stage. It’s an art of negotiation and you this will make or unmake you if you don’t have expert legal advisors on standby.

If you cross this phase, you have about 3 more stages to go through until the money hits your account.

Remember a deal is incomplete until funds are in your bank account. An investor can back out in the 11th hour making you go back to square one.


You have an exciting product, done a good investor pitch and gained some attention from some potential investors. Good news!

Then comes the next question: “can you share your dataroom with me/us?” Sure we can do that after signing a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

The dataroom is where all the “meat”/action is. Depending on the stage of your business you can break it down it 4 key categories:
1. Legal
2. Financials
3. Business & Marketing
4. Product and Technical

Under these 4 broad categories are subfolders containing tens and hundreds of documents.

Under legal you will have:
1. Organization & Good standing
2. Employees, Employee benefits & Directors
3. Insurance coverage
4. Board, Directors & Resolution

Under Financials you will have:
1. Financial Modeling & Accounts
2. Bank Accounts
3. Investors including shareholders agreement/shares subscription agreements from previous shareholders (if any)

Under Business & Marketing you will have:
1. Analytics
2. Key Customer information.
3. General marketing info

Under Product & Technical you will have:
1. Technical Product Specifications
2. Technical Roadmap
3. Technology stack (if you’re building a tech startup)

Etc etc etc

Dataroom cannot be completed by one person alone and requires extensive collaboration among all team members, advisors, etc to set up.

Requires commitment and dedication to set up but once done, your life becomes quite easy in the fundraising process.

There’s nothing like easy/free money even if it’s a grant…

 

 

The writer is the co-founder and CEO of AgroCenta.

Source: Francis Obirikorang

Related Posts

FEATURES

Review of agricultural insurance in Ghana: Challenges and future directions [ARTICLE]

bycitibusinessnews

Africa has had extraordinary development in agricultural productivity and food security over the past few decades. These improvements have been...

Read more

Getting more women of relevance in the film, television and media industry

Understanding the time value of money in the face of economic recession [ARTICLE]

Pensions in payment projected to go up by at least 20% in 2023 – ACRR [ARTICLE]

Tomato: Ghana’s Unexplored Goldmine

Which investment is best for you in the Ghanaian Financial Markets? [ARTICLE]

Weekly Market Report

Next Post

CBG opens two new branches in Ashanti region

Video on Demand: Business Weekly

ADVERTISEMENT
Citi Business News

© 2019 Citi Business News - CitiBusinessNews.com by CNR Digital.

Navigate Site

  • Home
  • News
  • Business
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • INTERNATIONAL
  • FEATURES
  • Videos

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Business
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • INTERNATIONAL
  • FEATURES
  • Videos

© 2019 Citi Business News - CitiBusinessNews.com by CNR Digital.