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The article implies that this is a philanthropic venture, but one can only assume that he will be taking equity in the companies. This is a good thing either w

The article implies that this is a philanthropic venture, but one can only assume that he will be taking equity in the companies. This is a good thing either way (unless the terms are particularly predatory), but painting a knockoff of YC's model as philanthropy seems somewhat misleading to me. "The African startups....will be awarded a non-returnable investment for further development of their business idea....TEEP startups will be continuously monitored on both a portfolio and individual basis as we evaluate the startups for follow-on funding and beyond. The qualifying startups that have progressed their business plans sufficiently will each qualify for a second stage seed capital investment of $5,000 that will be provided as returnable capital." Looks like a micro-YC to me. As I said, making any capital available to startups on reasonable terms is generally a good thing, but it's not exactly philanthropic. I'm sure the thinking is that if he gets 1 hit out of the 10,000 companies he wants in the program, he gets a significant ROI.

knappador 12y ago
It's about putting money into hands of people actually doing things instead of owning or controlling things. This process itself makes money. It's taking advantage of a market imbalance. This is how you disrupt. You can be a VC and incidentally a philanthropist at the same time, solving actual, real hard problems etc. Is it philanthropy or not? Compared to consolidating your capital, businesses, power etc, a process which completely sells the rest of your society and humanity short and is ultimately mere rent-seeking, investing in entrepreneurs is at the least incidentally philanthropic and without question in a productive spirit. Should we be giving this guy a platform for making a baller move? I would bet a lot of investors if asked, "Why not Africa?" are 1) not comfortable investing in Africa for legitimate reasons such as complete unfamiliarity 2) believing that the differences in the markets and governance situation creates solely challenges instead of opportunities that other scalable products in the world are not addressing. Every billionaire should have a role model for being a baller and investing in tons of entrepreneurs and letting the forces of extreme risk-taking take over, make a few unicorns, and ultimately make money so that they won't be too scared to do anything except monopolize the phone company or some useless crap. I hope it works. This guy is the right person at the right time to try something big, and ten years is enough time to get the formula right.

knappador 12y ago

It's about putting money into hands of people actually doing things instead of owning or controlling things. This process itself makes money. It's taking advantage of a market imbalance. This is how you disrupt. You can be a VC and incidentally a philanthropist at the same time, solving actual, real hard problems etc. Is it philanthropy or not? Compared to consolidating your capital, businesses, power etc, a process which completely sells the rest of your society and humanity short and is ultimately mere rent-seeking, investing in entrepreneurs is at the least incidentally philanthropic and without question in a productive spirit. Should we be giving this guy a platform for making a baller move? I would bet a lot of investors if asked, "Why not Africa?" are 1) not comfortable investing in Africa for legitimate reasons such as complete unfamiliarity 2) believing that the differences in the markets and governance situation creates solely challenges instead of opportunities that other scalable products in the world are not addressing. Every billionaire should have a role model for being a baller and investing in tons of entrepreneurs and letting the forces of extreme risk-taking take over, make a few unicorns, and ultimately make money so that they won't be too scared to do anything except monopolize the phone company or some useless crap. I hope it works. This guy is the right person at the right time to try something big, and ten years is enough time to get the formula right.