🦄 Peter Steinberger

We asked Olamide Ilori, Lead Engineer at Prospa, a thought-provoking question: Would you teach a junior dev to code or to prompt? He shared his insights on prioritizing coding skills. In our conversation, he also discussed Prospa's mission to empower Africa's high-growth businesses and his role leading the engineering team. Notably, he emphasized AI's role as a companion to engineers, not a replacement. Full episode drops on Monday. #todayafrica #startupstories

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Investing in second time founders ✅ Investing in the same founder for the second time ✅ We’re proud to announce our investment in Regulon - a company simplifying business onboarding by automating compliance for fintechs across Africa and the UK. 💡 What they do: For millions of businesses, lengthy and costly customer onboarding processes are a major bottleneck, delaying sales cycles and stifling growth. Regulon eliminates these challenges by automating compliance checks through its AI-powered platform, which consolidates fragmented business verification data across Africa. This allows onboarding times to be slashed from weeks to seconds, while reducing costs by up to 90%. With global success stories like Alloy and Persona proving the value of streamlined compliance, Regulon is building essential verification infrastructure tailored to Africa’s unique needs, unlocking faster growth and smoother operations for businesses across the continent. 🚀 Why we invested: This marks our second time backing CEO Yao Baku following our investment in his previous startup Pennysmart, which was successfully acquired by Flutterwave. His experience makes him uniquely positioned to tackle the compliance challenges facing African fintechs. With fintech in Africa growing over 20% annually and mounting regulatory pressures, Regulon's API-first solution addresses a crucial need in the market. By consolidating fragmented data sources and automating verification processes, they're positioned to become the essential compliance infrastructure powering African fintech's future growth. Join us in welcoming Regulon to the Baobab Network family! 🌳

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We launched Afrishopa as a simple MVP back in October 2024. It wasn’t perfect, but it had one clear goal: Help Africans in the UK get fresh, affordable groceries—using tech, data and Ai We bootstrapped, tested (a lot), listened to our users, and kept building. And today, that MVP has grown a product many people love. Our numbers so far; ➜ Delivered fresh groceries to 700+ African families living in Uk, Wales and Scotland ➜ Over 6,000 app downloads ➜ 2,000 subscribed users ➜ £75,000+ in revenue ➜ Served 133 cities across the UK ➜ Partnered with DHL to improve delivery speed and reach And the best part? Real feedback from our community led to our new "Half Box" feature—so now families can shop in smaller, more flexible quantities. Because every home is different. And we’re building for all of them. Afrishopa is growing fast—and it’s powered by tech, data, AI, and the belief that access to good food should be easy for everyone. We’re on a mission to feed Africans in the UK. Every single day. Want to be be part of our journey? My DMs are open. Follow our story. #Afrishopa #StartupStory #FoodTech #AfricanDiaspora #TechForGood #MissionDriven #StartupLife #CROThings

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All AI businesses out there! Grant money focused on commercially viable businesses - 100K to 250K GBP. Thanks, Dr Nick Bradshaw! AFRICAN AI INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY 💷 Multiple grants of up to £250,000 🛠️ Tailored venture building support 🤝 Access to strategic partnerships with mobile operators 📸 Increased visibility and exposure through our platforms & events 📊 Support in monitoring and scaling impact, including access to learning exchanges and capacity-building bootcamp Who can apply?  ✅ For-profit small and growing enterprises of up to 250 employees  ✅ Located in #Africa, South and Southeast #Asia or the #Pacific ✅ leveraging AI and emerging technologies in conjunction with mobile technology to tackle critical socio-economic & climate challenges ✅ with a focus on commercial viability... Applications are open NOW! 🚨 For more details and to start your application, visit The link to apply is in the comments 👉👉👉 https://lnkd.in/eDCJzQ2P

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Pitch decks are up. But exits? Still missing. In 2024, only 24 venture-backed startups exited across the entire African continent. That’s not just a funding problem—it’s a liquidity crisis. Founders raise. Investors bet. But nobody gets out. No secondaries. No acquisitions. No clean paths to cash. Umbrella wants to fix that. It’s building the AngelList for Africa—with receipts. A verified marketplace for African startup funding, advisory, and—soon—liquidity. • Founders upload data rooms. • Umbrella runs due diligence. • Investors invest by milestone. • And eventually? • Secondaries for early investors. • Small exits for founders. • Infrastructure for trust and cash flow—not just vibes. Because liquidity doesn’t just reward investors. It keeps founders in the game. It frees up capital. And it proves African tech can return more than headlines. So far: • 292 users • 181 founders • 47 advisors • 22 investors • 50+ startups (with many completing final verification) • $11/month founder subscriptions—and rising engagement It’s early, but Umbrella is doing the hard work to make liquidity a feature—not a fantasy. This week on Next Capital, I explored Umbrella’s plan to become the liquidity marketplace for African startups. You can check it out here: https://lnkd.in/dgYkb9Zv?

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Fostering collaborations and partnerships amongst web3 projects to achieve product adoption, increase in investment, increase in community growth, integration and awareness isn't as easy as it seems.. i spent my whole time last year down until this very day building connections/collaborations amongst web3 projects. I have learned a few things to help while building connections, collaborations and/or partnerships and I'd share only three (3) here 👉🏻 Collaborations will grow your project organically 👉🏻 Try to maintain relationships with past projects collaborated with. 👉🏻 Always reach out to projects that have collaborated with projects you have collaborated with(faster way of getting quick and quality collaborations) #web3 #BD

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