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    Africa has the potential for breeding high growth companies – Potential VC

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    By on Business, Interviews

    Innovation Village had the chance to talk with Doug Scott and Dotun Olowoporoku of Potential VC, one of the VCs that came for the recent Demo Africa event in Lagos Nigeria.

    Innovation Village: Tell us about Potential VC

    Potential VC: Potential VC is an early stage fund. We invest in early stage startups that are addressing opportunities in large verticals. We provide financial investment up to £200k and support to enable those companies reach key commercial and technical milestones. We invest our own fund, but we also syndicate most of our deals via AngelList. We run the largest Angellist syndicate in Europe backed by over 150 accredited angel investors and VCs from the US and UK with £0.5M+ pledged per deal –  https://angel.co/potential-international/syndicate

    We own and operate some of the most successful internet businesses in the UK and US including carrentals.co.uk (over 1 million rentals), discountvouchers.co.uk (over 6 million subscribers), compare99.com (over 5 million visitors per month) timetobreak.com (over 5 milion page views per day). This enables us to bring unique experience and expertise into every startup we back. We help them to scale profitably as quickly as possible.

    Innovation Village: Why did you come for Demo Africa? Why have you considered to invest in Nigeria?

    Potential VC:We are here as one of the panellist at the DEMO Africa 2015 Conference. We believe Africa has the potential for breeding high growth companies that will deliver great value. Though the tech startup ecosystem is still in its infancy in this region, we have been observing incredible growths in places like Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya. There are opportunities for innovative products that will address numerous pain points and institutional gaps. We believe there is an impending exponential growth for startups that will leverage on demographic, education and growing middle class income in Africa. We want to be part of this journey.

    There are interesting companies that needs to be born, incubated and accelerated to success. We want to be on the stage when this happens rather than watching on the sideline.

    Innovation Village: What is your model for investment?

    Potential VC: Our investment strategy is very simple. We look out for early stage (less than $2M valuation), smart team with scalable product and story that our angel investors partners can understand. We then ask “Can we add significant incremental value to this company?”. We only invest in tech startups with high growth potential.
    Given the wealth of our experience in sectors like mobile, retail and media, these tend to be our sweet spots. And no matter how brilliant an idea, team or timing, we tend not to stray from these. What do we know about next-gen batteries, clean tech or fish farming? And if we don’t know, we can’t add value that’s core to our success.
    Innovation Village: Tell us about some of your successful investments
    Potential VC: We invest in early stage companies and most of them are now in their growth stage. It is hard to define success in startups without some form of exit. However, there are some of the companies in our portfolio, like Tapdaq (community driven mobile ad platform) and Moltin (eCommerce API for developers) that we invested at less than £1.5m and are now valued in excess of £35m within 18 months. Other companies in our portfolio are listed here https://angel.co/potential-uk/syndicate

     

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