Five Nigerian Startups Close in on Venture Funding

Five startups; Fix My Gadget, Cashenvoy, BookNowNow, SkinIT and Giga layer, are up for venture funding through the Lagos Angel Network, LAN, after they were shortlisted from a pool of applications. The Lagos Angel Network, comprising of 15 members and backed by the Lagos Innovation Advisory Council, is commencing the Innovate Lagos project and held a media chat at the weekend. An executive of LAN, Tomi Davies, said, “LAN business angels would invest seed capital in the startups to finance their business ideation, product development and market entry. The LAN creates a forum where members can effectively evaluate promising early-stage investment opportunities, get support for the required due-diligence process, and monitoring of their portfolio of investments till the next round of funding or other exit. “We select entrepreneurial teams with great business ideas who need extra resources such as human capital, access to networks, new markets, mentioning or finance to develop and grow their business to the next stage. Selected businesses are then subjected to a thorough screening round of their business operations and plan based on a proprietary framework called POEM which is an acronym for the start-ups Proposition, Organisation, Economics and Milestones. Shortlisted entrepreneurs from this round will then pitch to Angels for investment.” Demo Pitch holds today, and Pitch Day holds tomorrow, at Digital Bridge Institute, Lagos Campus, Cappa-Oshodi, between 10am — 2pm. Each startup would have 15 minutes for  presentation and 10 minutes for a Questions & Answer session, then performance would be assessed by the LAN team. Audience includes the press, local and international observers. For more details on the event and their proceedings email to: contactus [at] lagosangelnetwork.com