Founded towards the end of 2019, Oui Capital is an early-stage venture capital fund that aims to be the one-stop shop where startups can come and, within a few moments, get their first yes to their investment proposal.
Currently, the Nigerian-based fund has backed over 21 African startups, such as Moniepoint, Herconomy, PharmacyMart, and Duplo, to mention a few, at pre-seed and seed stages.
These businesses went on to generate a total market value of over $1 billion since the inception of Oui Capital.
Oui Capital’s investment portfolio is focused on the following sectors; FinTech, healthcare, software-as-a-service, and digital commerce startups. However, if you have a great plan, that does not fall into the category mentioned,
Oui Capital may still give you the opportunity, as the fund is generally focused on what kind of problem your idea can solve and how well it can solve the problem.
Starting with a $10 million fund deployed to businesses within its first three years, Oui Capital succeeded in generating its second deployment funds of $30 million.
What assistance does Oui Capital provide for its portfolio companies?
According to the fund, it aims to help its portfolio companies with go-to-market support, fundraising, and talent acquisition.
According to the statistics released by Oui Capital, the fund has only invested in 2% of the total pitches it had received. A typical initial investment can go from $250,000 to $500,000, looking to own a 5% – 10% piece of the startup as the first shareholder.
One aspect Oui Capital highlights to any startup aiming to do business is that your educational background does not matter to them. Its main points of focus are the founder’s coordination strengths, domain expertise, and business model capabilities (is it scalable compared to the market?).
In addition to that, Oui Capital considers the size of the startup’s market and its growth rate, aiding in calculating the long-term profitability of the startup.
Also, does the startup have the potential to become the market leader, or could it have traction-induced growth but not have the capabilities of growing beyond the market’s threshold?
What about exits?
The average timeframe for most startups under Oui Capital is between 7 and 10 years. Meanwhile, it takes a startup approximately 10 years to reach the IPO stage. According to the fund, there are several processes for exiting. The most common path is the “handover”.
Along the line, there might be a need for Oui Capital to hand over the financial burden to other investors who are still in the early stages of their fund.
An example of this scenario would be Reddit. At the time the company was seeking its IPO, it would have been an error for an investor during the pre-seed round to still hold shares in the company.
