Yele Bademosi’s Radar AMA was held on Friday, the 25th, and it was a blast from start to finish. For an hour and thirty minutes, Yele, responding to a series of questions, shared useful insights into his market ideology, interests, and the investment philosophy of Microtraction, his new early-stage fund.
There was a lot — I mean, A LOT — to take away from the session, so we compiled a list of the nine most interesting things we learnt from our brief time with him:
- Microtraction’s objective hasn’t changed since launch — it still wants to be the the first stop for ambitious founders who are just getting started. Link
- Yele hopes to adopt Paystack’s open-book approach (sharing metrics and processes with the public) someday. Link
- Microtraction goes after technical founders because they believe it’s “costlier” to build a product and, ultimately, a company, without one. Link
- A team of non-technical founders that has hired a developer full time also counts in Microtraction’s books. Link
- There seems to be a dearth of applications from agritech startups in spite of the fact that agriculture is a big market and makes up a significant percentage of Nigeria’s GDP. Link
- Yele believes that “successful startups do not create markets but exploit existing markets early and usually address non-consumption”. Link
- Microtraction’s metric for success is its portfolio companies raising $500,000 within 18 months of investment. Link
- Yele also believes that companies with $100m revenues will be “built by African founders within 10 years.“ Link
- If Yele were to start another company, he would build a crypto-hedge fund or an energy company that operates in the battery space. Link
Bonus: Yes, you probably knew Yele is tall, but did you also know he’s 6 ft 6? Well, now you know.
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