Seed fund and accelerator 88mph has announced its team of founder-investors to participate in its new Cape Town programme DealWeek.
Disrupt Africa reported earlier this month 88mph announced a departure from its usual three month incubator programme; launching DealWeek – a week-long programme during which a team of entrepreneur-investors advise and work with startups prior to making any investment offer.
Startups who make it through the evaluation programme may receive offers of up to US$250,000 in funding by the end of the week.
88mph has now revealed the team of seven entrepreneur-investors participating in the new model DealWeek.
The team comprises 88mph founder Kresten Buch; Martin Diessner, co-founder of Flip Media; Knightsbridge co-founder Neil Emerick; co-founders of Twangoo – which was sold to Groupon – Wayne Gosling and Daniel Guasco; Nigeria’s L5Lab founder Chika Nwobi; and founder of Fundamo – sold to Visa – Hannes van Rensburg.
“It’s great to see the first wave of tech founders in Africa who’ve created successful businesses, take an interest in the next wave,” Buch told Disrupt Africa.
“Looking at other more mature markets, it’s this vital mechanism that gets early stage ventures funded and past that initial high-risk period, after which they are able to get interest from later stage investors, ultimately attracting and creating more talent who begin to build new startups, and so on,” Buch said.
According to 88mph, the new DealWeek structure will particularly suit later-stage startups which cannot participate in a full-time three-month incubator programme; but early-stage startups are also invited to apply.
Applications for DealWeek are open until February 8, and can be made via the 88mph website.
