The recent surge in successful exits fueled by the likes of Paycom, Interswitch, Paystack, and Flutterwave show the benefits of investing in startups. Currently, Nigerian startups are some of the most attractive for investors coming to Africa, this is responsible for the big-ticket deals many of them continue to attract.
It takes a lot of knowledge and resources to identify startups with the potential to succeed and startup investing is not one of the courses you learn in university, at least not at the moment. Hence, no lecturer prepares you for life as a startup investor from school. This is mainly the reason for venture capital businesses and angel networks that take investors’ money and deploy them to carefully selected startups.
But one Nigerian startup has built a mobile application that allows people who want to invest in startups to do so simply at the click of a button. The best part is the minimum you need to invest is $100.
Get Equity, founded by Jude Dike and William Okafor in May 2020, is a platform that enables entrepreneurs, investors, and other interested persons to find and invest in early-stage startups, pre-IPO companies, invest in local SMEs, as well as trade digital security assets. The objective is to democratise access to startup funding and unlocking global capital for underfunded and underserved startups in Africa.
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“We have simplified how you support early-stage companies (startups) by investing in tokenised assets that are just as valid as traditional methods securely,” GetEquity said in a post.
Tokenised equity is the digital version of real security assets. The tokenisation of these securities means they’re accessible to everyone and are easy and safer to trade.
Mobile penetration has made it possible for startups to fund their dreams by raising small amounts of capital from a large number of people, also known as crowdfunding. It usually makes use of the wide availability of networks through social media awareness and crowdfunding websites to bring entrepreneurs and investors together. While many startups have gone on to raise the amount of money they need, others are not so successful often due to credibility issues. There have been cases whereby some people have run such fraudulent campaigns that after getting funded, they go away with the money they were given.
Get Equity brings a new dimension to crowdfunding for startups in that the startups it deals with a carefully vetted before they are put on the platform for investors. This eliminates the risk of fraudulent individuals getting funded.
“I am excited about crowdfunding and small equity investing platforms like GetEquity. They give founders a chance at early funding, and everyone gets a chance to won equity in great companies,” Stone Atwine, founder and CEO of Eversend, a mobile fintech startup.
Get Equity offers a free and paid pricing system. It charges a 4 percent commission for startups looking to raise funding on its platform. The global standard rate is 5-7 percent. The company also charges to access some restricted features and it charges a minimal amount in trading fees.
Startups currently available on the Get Equity app include WeMove Technologies, Onboardly, Breeze, Nguvu Health, and Fluidcoins.
