Pacer Ventures recently launched a $3m fund for early-stage startups. Their aim is to solve the most critical problem on the continent.
Registered in Delaware, U.S.A, operating in Lagos, Nigeria, and Johannesburg, South Africa, Pacer VC’s focus is on verticals that are expedient to the African continent. Involving healthcare, financial inclusion, education, and agriculture.
Gbemi Akande, a General Partner at Pacer Ventures said, “We see a huge opportunity to support early-stage founders who are making meaningful contributions to their local economies and communities by leveraging the high mobile penetration on the continent.”
The firm has already commenced supporting early-stage founders by participating in seed rounds, including, VPD, Money, AI (Analytics Intelligence), Farm 365, and Learn Power.
Having a regular cheque size of six figures Pacer Ventures utilizes its Position to add substantial value to its portfolio companies.
“We won’t just write a cheque, we will enable founders to work in and on their business, by supporting them along every step of their journey, with resources and access to markets,” said Antoinia Norman, general partner at pacer ventures in charge of Southern Africa.
General partners of Pacer Ventures have 30 years of combined experience in entrepreneurship and start deal flow sourcing.
“Dealflow Sourcing consists of the two words “Dealflow” which can be investment proposals and “Sourcing” the selection and acquisition of these.
This term essentially deals with the possibility of obtaining investment opportunities and is aimed primarily at investors.
Especially young companies need financial support to establish themselves successfully in the market.
They either receive it from companies that are interested in investing in their innovations and want to cooperate with the startups or by venture capitalists.” (Aumentoo, 2020).
The key difference is the fund’s focus on sourcing high potential African startup, leveraging its strategic partnership with Founder Institute in Africa as a funnel.
According to Chukwuemeka Agbata, Regional director of Founder Institute in Africa and co-founder of techbuild.africa, “This collaboration with Founder Institute gives us an undeniable edge particularly with quality deal-flow at an early stage and we will leverage this to spread our footprint quickly”.
“We are leveraging our in-depth experience in startups and ecosystem development to take advantage of the early-stage funding gap in Africa.” Geoffrey Weli-Wosu, General Partner at Pacer Ventures and Co-Founder of VoguePay and Domineum commenting on the Pacer VC investment thesis.
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