Hi friends! Thanks for subscribing to this newsletter. This newsletter was born out of a need for me to deconstruct some of the most brilliant ideas and news shared through the week. It started as a Twitter hashtag and now, it’s this :). It promises to be brief and insightful. Topics will be from technology, finance and investing. Enjoy the ride.
Yeezy VC: Funding a startup near you
Kanye made a sudden return to Twitter after a long hiatus and well, he was more Kanye than he’s ever been. If you have not blocked him already, you would have seen the new Kanye unravel on Twitter with his new idea, which was considered to be philosophical by Twitter users, pro-right to some others and sheer trolling to a different group of people.
One aspect we may not be able to ignore is Kanye’s VC tweets.
This is huge because Kanye is out to fund startups in the food, apparel, urban living and communication/social media spaces. If you’re in that space, it may be time to shoot his team an email.We have 160 positions to fill by the end of the year. Yeezy will hit a billion dollars this year. It is the 2nd fastest growing company in history. It is a unicorn on its way to becoming a decacorn.
April 25, 2018Is Facebook trolling us? Look at these stellar results
As if selling our data was not enough, Facebook posted its first quarter revenue figures and they were off the charts. It was reported that Facebook had a 63% increase in profits and a 49% increase in revenue. The real news however is that despite the #deleteFacebook campaign, Facebook’s monthly active users rose 13% to 2.2 billion in the first quarter of 2018!
Other companies in Silicon Valley are feeling the love too. Amazon’s profits doubled, Google’s profit rose 73% and Twitter recorded it’s second profitable quarter ever (teary eye).
CNBC
African startups are coming of age
The tides are turning ladies and gentleman. Africa, our beloved continent, is starting to get some love from startup investors. The times when we cheer African startups for raising US$ 50 000 are obviously over because we are seeing more venture capital coming in. Meaning a higher valuation and a longer runway.
In an article from Partech Ventures, investment in African startups have almost doubled with US$ 440 million in 2017 vs. US$ 231 million in 2016.
In the last two months alone, TradeDepot and Africa’s Talking have raised a combined US$ 11 million. Yikes.
More good news for startups
Partech launched an Africa Fund in Dakar with a target size of US$ 120 million, TLcom a European VC raised US$ 40 million for its Tide Africa Fund last June and let’s not forget Y Combinator and 500 Startups both toured Africa in 2017.
QZ, Partech
As I wrap up the Genesis issue, here’s a fun fact about the genesis block on the bitcoin blockchain:
👶 Genesis Block: The first block of a blockchain. Fun fact: the bitcoin genesis block includes an embedded message -- the text is from the UK Times newspaper and reads: “03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” Cue ominous music. @tokendaily
April 28, 2018Yeah, if you’re not into bitcoin or blockchain, you may not understand the above. But for a quick read on the uses for blockchain click here
And that’s a wrap. If you enjoy this newsletter, I’d love it if you’d tweet or forward to the two people who you think would enjoy it most.
Until next week,
Wole