Cape Town, South Africa – 88mph, a seed investor and accelerator operating in Nairobi, Cape Town and Lagos, is hosting this year’s Cape Town Investor Day at Crossley & Webb’s vintage car showroom.
In February, seven startups received investment from 88mph and have been hard at work over the past 10 weeks.
Besides the investment, the accelerator assists startups by providing access to networks, feedback on products, business models, marketing and pushes the startups to experiment in the market with solutions they build. The startups will use Investor Day to communicate with High Net worth Individuals and Venture Capitalists what their businesses do, and are looking for investors that understand and can add value while taking their businesses to the next level.
Kresten Buch, a Danish web entrepreneur turned investor, brought the accelerator model to Sub Saharan Africa nearly 3 years ago and to date has invested over $3million in 35 startups.
‘With the increase of mobile and internet penetration in Africa, traditional industries are being disrupted. Our goal is to invest in the startups at the forefront of this trend and introduce them to other investors who are also interested in investing in the future of consumer facing and enterprise businesses,’ states Kresten Buch, Founder at 88mph.
In Cape Town this year a new Program Manager, Dan Bowyer, was chosen to drive the accelerator program. He has worked with about 300 businesses over the last 20 years, mainly in tech, therefore he was a worthy candidate to tackle this role.
“For the past three months the 88mph team and I have been helping our startups build their businesses, and it’s a constant effort that requires focus, positive energy and activity from all involved, but what a privilege it’s been. I’ve worked with many businesses over the last 20 years, but never have I worked with seven startups all in one go. Hectic is an understatement!,” states Dan Bowyer.
The chosen startups for 2014 are:
Diarize.me Booking SaaS for the wellness & beauty industry
Catch, The efficiency of online dating, used to spark a connection in the real world
Pet Heaven, Convenient pet food ordering and delivery service for pet owners
Ekaya, Renting, but better.
Graphflow, Recommendation software – enabling businesses to offer only most relevant products to their customers.
ByteMoney Taking human error out of the cash collection business
8Bit Helping premium content creators monatise their sites, and premium brands reach their desired audience.
88mph’s focus is on funding strong teams, building web-mobile products & services, which have the ability to scale across English speaking Africa.
Source: 88mph.ac