The VC4A Founder Series

Palesa Moloi, founder at ParkUpp talks us through how she and her team took an idea that she was told is not scalable and pivoted to create a marketplace for parking spaces.

As she puts it “this is the thing about being an entrepreneur and not being married to your idea but more about falling in love with the problem and trying to find ways to actually solve that problem”. She learned from the informal online and offline ways customers were renting and finding their parking to create the ParkUpp platform for corporate clients and individual users. Listen in on how Palesa has built a business in an industry where she had no prior experience.

In this episode, we find out how Chefaa’s patenting-centric approach has helped them build a solution that addresses a chronic need. It was a pleasure talking to Dr. Rasha Rady who has unusual clarity about every aspect of the business. 

Dr. Rady co-founder and COO Chefaa, together with Doaa Aref, set up the company in 2017 to help chronic patients order, schedule, and refill their recurring medication prescriptions. Talk about creating a service that solves a need. From the comfort of their homes users of the app can locate their nearest pharmacy and purchase medication.

In this episode of the Founder Series podcast we speak to serial tech entrepreneur Nana Opoku Agyeman-Prempeh. Together with his co-founders and the team at GrowForMe he is making it possible so that “Now everyone can farm”. In the process the company is lifting burdens for smallholder farmers and creating wealth for all stakeholders including African diasporans looking for ways to safely invest in the continent .

Nana asked himself “How come there is so much vast land and food is so expensive”. Applying his experience in Fintech to his passion for agriculture GrowForMe is tackling an age-old challenging the African continent struggles to resolve.

Most founders struggle to find the time for much of anything outside of their startup duties. So, when our guest for this episode of Founders Series shared how she had the guts to completely step away from her company on more than one occasion, I was naturally intrigued. 

It appears Sethbe Manake, founder of Vantage Properties, prefers to look as far into the future of her industry as she possibly can for her inspiration. Her technology embracing approach, though commendable, comes with its own challenges when operating in a relatively analog economy that was showing little signs of changing. 

Every business owner wants to be ahead of their times but if you’re too far ahead, you also risk the market, and even your team, not catching up before you go out of business. 

In this episode, Sethebe shares how, after stepping down as CEO she is now back and in her first year of transforming her, over a decade old research company into a technology company capable of transforming the property industry in Botswana. It sounds complicated until you hear her explanation. You don’t want to miss this.

In the second part of our interview with CrowdForce co-founder Tomi Ayorinde, he explained why he needed to pay more attention to hiring practices once the company found strong product-market-it. He talks us through his time at Y-Combinator, shares the silver lining of the pandemic and his advice on mentorship.

With the 2020 VC4A Venture Showcase just a week away, in this episode of The Founders Series we are talking to CrowdForce co-founder Tomi Ayorinde, a 2019 venture showcase alumni. Join us as Tomi gives me a crash course in building a resilient distribution network to overcoming customer trust issues in Nigeria.

In the second part of our interview with AgroCenta Chief Technology Officer, Michael Ocansey, he talks us through some of the keys to the startup’s success, thus far. It is not often a CTO cautions against the zealous use of technology, but Michael has learned from experience what his market truly values. Join us as we find out how, together with his co-founder, he is building a company with an atypical mix of business savvy pragmatism a lot of social cultural empathy, and as little technology as they can get away with.

This is the first part of our interview with AgroCenta Chief Technology Officer, Michael Ocansey.

The VC4A Founder Series is a podcast series where African startup founders share their stories of resilience and answer questions about the challenges and opportunities encountered during their entrepreneurship journey.

In our conversation with Matthias Papet, co-founder of CoinAfrique, he shared some of the complexities of running a multi-market platform and how he manages his many stakeholders. His advice is remarkably simple.

Thanks to its mobile app, CoinAfrique is the leader in mobile classifieds in French-speaking Africa. The company is on a mission to help users (sellers& buyers) make good deals via their phones.

The VC4A Founder Series is a podcast series where African startup founders share their stories of resilience and answer questions about the challenges and opportunities encountered during their entrepreneurship journey.

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In this episode we are talking to Mohamed Abdulaziz, a go-to-market veteran. While working for a P&G distributor and other multinationals he learned and developed the fundamental models and tactics that he would later need. He widened his exposure through multi consultation assignments for several industries. Finally, he consolidated the journey in founding and leading Brimore, a parallel distribution platform in the MEA region.