Introducing 88mph DealWeek Cape Town 2015
January 5th, 2015
We are excited to announce that we are testing something new this year – DealWeek, which is a week-long sprint for advising and investing in startups. Some great founders turned investors have agreed to spend the week of February 16 – 22 with us to evaluate and co-invest in the best startups. We are basically taking the best of the accelerator model that we’ve been running for the past 3 years, and making it more efficient and flexible for investors and startups. Startups who apply, and are selected to participate, can stand to receive offers between $25k and $250k.
Here’s how it will go down:
88mph and the founder-investors will spend a full week with the selected group of startups, to:
Quickly find out which startups are interesting investment opportunities
Allow investors and startups to discuss focus areas and direction for startups
Streamline due diligence, term sheets, and procedures for progress updates down the line
Why are we doing this?
We have seen that startups do best when they have investors who are experienced entrepreneurs. However, these types of investors rarely have time to look at more than a couple startups a year, and the follow-up process post-investment can be daunting. Doing it this way ensures that vetting, investing, and oversight of multiple startups’ accounts and actions, can be more structured, and that the entrepreneur-investors can discuss interesting deals with other like-minded investors.
It will also allow startups more freedom and time to independently pursue an agreed direction, reaching out to investors how and when they see fit.
How different is this from the accelerator process?
Pre-DEALWEEK is pretty much the same as for the accelerator program. We will source deal flow via 88mph application platform and filter down to a shortlisted group of viable startup businesses that will be interviewed and, if successful, invited to DealWeek.
DEALWEEK is where the real difference lies, as we spend 1 week looking under the hood of selected startups, where only the most promising ones will receive investment offers.
Post-DEALWEEK we will work with the startups and investors to finalize funding deals, transfer cash, and ensure that procedures have been put in place to follow the startups progress.
The tools and goals we will use, are very similar to those employed during an accelerator program:
· Due diligence checklist (from our previous experience w startups)
· Lean canvas sessions (using online lean canvas)
· Setup management accounts
· Use SAFE docs – simple term sheets and investment contracts
· The week will be hosted at Cape Town Garage, facilitated by 88mph team
· Startups participating can stand to receive investments between $25k – $250k
Who is on the DealWeek Investor team?
So far we have Kresten Buch of 88mph, Chika Nwobi of L5Lab, Daniel Guasco & Wayne Gosling, formerly of Groupon SA, Neil Emerick of Nightsbridge, Martin Diessner of Evercape, and Hannes van Rensburg previously of Fundamo and VISA.
We hope this experiment will prove to be a great experience for both the startups and the investors, and that there will be many more DealWeeks in the future.
