We need more Angel Investors in Africa, and we need them now!

All the great inventions we see today are all products of long hours of experimenting. There is no inventing without experimenting. Seed Money allows us to test, thereby enabling us to create. Any environment that does not encourage or support experimenting will have very few inventions. By Seed Money, I mean the money given to an entrepreneur at the idea stage of his business.

We know, and this is a business fact, that in every 100 businesses, only one will succeed. Ninety-nine of these businesses will fail. This fact is the scariest part of entrepreneurship for me. It means you assume you have failed, and then you work to succeed. This scenario is like swimming against a high tide in a deep blue sea or swimming upstream in a high current river. Now imagine an ecosystem with not up to 100 businesses, does this mean none will succeed? There have to be 100 or more businesses to ensure success. How do we do this? The answer is with seed money.

We need to create an environment that encourages entrepreneurs to try different ideas and keep trying until one succeeds. Meaning, we need to bet on them from the idea stage. Imagine a sizeable fertile piece of land owned by a farmer without seeds; there will be no crops, and thus no harvest. The farmer will starve, his family will die, his entire generation will perish, and they will become extinct. That is Africa for us now. If there are no seeds, there will be no ideas transformed into businesses. There will be no experimenting, there will be no failures, there will be no learning from failures, there will be no one success in every 100 business ideas, and we will die, our families will perish, and we will become extinct.

It all comes down to what we want as Africans. Do we want a very green forest or a dry deserted land? If we wish for a green forest with all kinds of opportunities, then we need to cultivate and plant seeds on our piece of land. If we want more successful businesses, we need to develop the habit of giving seed money to nurture as many ideas as possible so we can have as many successful companies as possible. If we want a deserted land, then we should not cultivate the habit of seed money. I believe we know what we want! I want a green forest with unlimited opportunities. What do you want?

I came from an extensive family with very little to go round. My father of blessed memory was a great farmer. I say so because he planted something at any given time, we had things growing everywhere around our small plank stiched home. Everywhere was green, and we reaped the benefits. There were things we could not just buy because we had them growing around the house. We had fruits of all sorts, we had vegetables, and other things which we could cook and even sell some. We only bought what will could not grow and did not have seeds for like salt or rice. He understood that if you want something to grow and to have a great harvest, you have to plant a large piece of land with a large number of seeds. This method worked all the time. We planted large hectares of soils with different grains, and our harvest was always exciting.

Seed money today is given by Angel Investors. We call them Angel because it is only an Angel that will bet on you in exchange for nothing. If this is the case, we all have to give seeds and encourage massive cultivating and planting of ideas. Seeds are critical to the farmer, so seed money is significant to the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship needs experimenting, focus, and long hours of trying different things to create a successful business, Seed Money allows the entrepreneur to do these things.

Seed Money is significant because it comes at the stage when not so many people are seeing what you are doing as becoming a business. Not so many people are even seeing what you are doing at all for you to merit funding. Seed money comes in when you have nothing but just the idea. If that seed money is not there, you are dead. You die before even given a chance to live, no experiments, no learning, no failures, just hard cold death. Many businesses die every day because of no seed money, I mean hard, bitter end, “bam, bam, bam” to the head and they are dead. I mean, there is a business dying right now because of the unavailability of $1000.

I am a serial entrepreneur, I have started many businesses, many of them have failed. Some of them failed before they even started; some of them died at the idea stage; some of them got off the ground and started running but eventually died. The more I think about it and reflect, the more I realize if there were seed money, we would have done some things differently, and we would have had a chance at success. We would have experimented more with some stuff we took out when we were not ready. We would have had money to train some engineers further in the technologies we used other than assuming they could deliver at their current knowledge level. “Bam, Bam, Bam” to the head, these businesses are dead, cause of death? Lack of Seed Money!

Because I had very few seed money even though I looked for it in many places, I have had many failed businesses. I have given you a tease of what seed money can do if we have it, what will happen if we do not create an environment where there are seeds, as many as possible and different variety, to plant. In addition to being a serial entrepreneur, I have also decided to be a “seed donor” Anyone who gives a viable seed and is planted, watered, nurtured, and becomes a forest will also benefit from the forest. One very passive benefit of course for everyone is clean air! The trees use CO2 to make their food and give out clean, fresh O2 for breathing! It is what seed money does as well. Any successful business will only better the breathing environment for other companies.

I have used the term “seed donor” because Angel Investor is too big for us in Africa, it scares us sometimes not to be able to donate seed to a farmer to plant, just one seed sometimes on the right farmer and piece of land is enough. So to build future Africa, we all have to be seed donors. Remember, seed money can come in different forms just as we have different varieties of seeds that produce different great trees and fruits, but your seed has to be viable. Always make it your priority to donate workable grains to the farmers. In this writeup, a farmer is an entrepreneur, a seed is what you bet on the venture at the idea stage or early stage, and the seed donor is the Angel Investor. I am a seed donor! Are you? You can start now, or you can ask me how to start, I have a couple of ideas. It is our Africa if we don’t build it, no one will.