Denis Opudo
Sourcing for investment for one’s startup is not a walk in the park. This has been even harder when it comes to women entrepreneurs and people of different race. It depends on the connections one has. It leads to a chain where you need to be known to a person who then connects you to an investor. Investors tend to work on improving their profile. Therefore, they work hard to invest in startups that will do well in the market to raising their profile.
Enter Bahiyah Robinson, decided to come up with ways on how underrepresented founders can access a network of investors. Bahiyah has spent most of her career establishing herself as a trusted connector between entities working to have capital and founders supporting innovation in Africa, Brazil, and the US. She worked with Appfrica at a given period of her career life. Appfrica is among the first early-stage investment capital to offer growth funds to tech entrepreneurs in Africa. She later on relocated to the US where she founded Robinson Plus Consulting. She is always known by many in various dinners and conferences.
The firm is majorly working on giving a clear picture of African-diaspora startups run by women to investors. Robinson is also working as a link for the startups and various potential investors. Furthermore, she acts as a tool for innovations and startups that focus on women. VCs are missing on many issues when evaluating women and minority founded startups. One problem is that there is a belief that women are not good at technology and they are not good business people. But many believe that women are good in public relation, marketing, and communications. But all this still put them behind their male counterparts when it comes to building businesses.
VCs also fail to recognize the influence of women in the market and the pace at which digital landscape is evolving at. Women have many ideas on how to best serve their communities through offering best products. VCs need to take their time and understand well the problems faced by specific areas. This will make them offer more solutions that can be scalable and monetized.
According to Robinson startup founders should have technical skills. This means they should have expertise in a given industry or area. It is important for one to have developed knowledge of being an expert in the industry. Furthermore, the founders need to have the ability to withstand the hardship that comes with building a business. Running a startup comes with ups and downs in most cases. It’s not all about having huge investment support but what you give to the business is what will determine if it will grow or not. Founders need also to shut their ego and accept whenever things are not working as they expected. They should always work with an open mind and be ready to accept changes on the way.
Founders should also be open about what is driving them to build their startups. Are you building your company for acquisition? If yes then you have to be clear on whom you are targeting to acquire it. This will give you a good time to start putting up everything in order in reference to the parent company. You will be able to know what they want, their target market, what they need to grow and the part your company will play in that growth according to Robinson.
