Seed fund accelerator, 88mph has announced its latest offering, DealWeek. This announcement was made in Cape Town on tuesday by Sylvia Brune, 88mph’s Program manager.
DealWeek is a week-long program that aims to bring together entrepreneurs-investors and startups within South Africa. Under the DealWeek platform, 88mph will gather and sort through a list of startups and determine the ones worthy of attention. A select group of investors would then spend the entire week advising and evaluating the ventures that make the shortlist.
Chika Nwobi, Founder of L5Lab; a collaborator with 88mph, stated that “We have seen that startups do best when they have investors who are experienced entrepreneurs, and can share advice from their own experiences”.
Under this program, successful startups stand a chance of getting investment offers of up to $250,000 “by the end of the week”, says Sylvia.
A departure from 88mph’s three months accelerator program, DealWeek also expands the role of 88mph beyond being the program’s initiator as they will also help structure the funding process and the legal framework.
According to Kresten Buch, 88mph’s Founder, “we believe this model is especially well-suited to startups that already have a team of employees, paying customers, and daily operations that are difficult to put on hold for a full 3 months.” further stating that they “have seen in the past, that many of the best startups need individual approaches to advice and funding that the accelerator model doesn’t always cater to”.
Built with inspiration from Y Combinator, 88mph has invested in African web based startups since 2011. The group of entrepreneur-investors currently shortlisted for DealWeek include L5 Lab and 440.ng founder Chika Nwobi, Daniel Guasco & Wayne Gosling, formerly of Groupon SA, Neil Emerick of Nightsbridge, and Kresten Buch of 88mph.
