Shimba Mobile is listed in the Middle East and Africa section.

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Jooist beat 17 other startups from Kenya to emerge the regional Seedstars World start-up competition winner. Uhired.me emerged third while Lipisha came second, both startups incubated at GrowthHub.

Seedstars World is an initiative launched by Seedstars SA, a Swiss-based company which launches ideas, grows startups and builds companies. The finals will be held in February 2012 in Switzerland where Jooist will meet other regional winners to compete for the top prize. Though the rest did not win they can still be voted in by the public on the Seedstars website. Seedstars allows in 5 other start-ups to be chosen by online viewers to compete in the final round.

According to Pierre-alain Masson co-founder Seedstars World, “The presence of incubators and accelerators in Nairobi has helped startups perfect the art of pitching. Their products have also become better due to the mentorship they gain. I could see growth from the many startups that pitched.”

Waliaula Makokha (Founder and CEO) and Brian Obara (Co-Founder and COO).

Jooist had its product clearly developed and already on the market. Some of its achievements  include contracts with device manufacturers to supply social gaming software and content e.g. Samsung Africa, Tecno Telcom. Contracts with mobile agencies to sell targeted mobile ads via our mobile channels e.g. Thumbtribe, South Africa and TwinPine, Nigeria. Contracts with mobile game publishers to provide high quality, Jooist-enabled games to its platform e.g. Contracts with mobile game publishers to provide high quality, Jooist-enabled games to our platform e.g. Herocraft (Russia), FuguMobile (China), Indiagames  (India), SoftGames (Germany) and Booster (The Netherlands) and it has recently signed contracts with two local mobile carriers.

According to Waliaula, Jooist is a social gaming platform for feature phones to help people play anywhere anytime.

“It has long been possible for owners of smart phones to download games for free and share this experience with friends – now this is also possible with simpler mobile phones. Jooist allows you to download great games to virtually any mobile phone, and then share your high scores with friends, make challenges or participate in bigger competitions.”

Jooist is the world’s first social gaming network for feature phones and enables discovery and consumption of mobile games across mobile and web platforms. The Jooist platform has reward programs and social features for a deep and engaging experience and has an inventory of over 50 games supporting over 2000 mobile phones.

This article has previously been posted in Techmoran.com.

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Source: Music From The Slum

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You visited Nairobi recently on an investment trip. What were your main observations about the entrepreneurs you spoke to?

“I came to Nairobi with one of our investors, Bert Wiggers, who is a very experienced internet entrepreneur active in the Netherlands, Eastern Europe, Russia and the US. Our main observations were that there are many very enthusiastic and skilled entrepreneurs with interesting business ideas to be found in Nairobi. But the quality of the business plans varies strongly.

Often the business plans that are presented to us are not based on practical experience and are too theoretical. In those cases, and if the idea is strong enough and within the focus of our fund, our first step is to support the entrepreneur to make a solid business plan.”

Can you explain to us what the Africa Media Ventures Fund is focusing on?

“As the name of our fund clearly describes, we want to invest in media ventures. Given the nature of communication developments in Africa the emphasis is on mobile and online, although we would not run away from a print opportunity provided it would be part of a multi-media concept. We strive to invest in companies in the seed-stage and the early phase, investing not only capital but also knowledge and time if needed and desired by the entrepreneur.

We offer a combination of venture capital and business development support, involving knowledge, experience, access to proven business concepts/applications and network. Our capital investment range from €15,000 to €100,000. We focus on sub-Saharan Africa (except South Africa) and we focus initially on Kenya, Uganda and Ghana.”

When and why did the fund start and who is behind it?

“AMVF was founded in 2010 by Pim de Wit and myself, both of us have a lot of experience in on and offline publishing. We were already involved in not-for-profit initiatives in Africa, and saw a lot of opportunities in going ‘commercial’. We brought together a group of informal investors who as well have a long track record in media. This is what makes the fund rather special; its investors are quite keen to transfer their expertise to the young African entrepreneurs.”

What investments have you made so far? And have they been successful?

“From the beginning we decided to do four to five investments to see whether our approach, combining the investment of capital and knowledge, would work. Since then, we have invested in a web developer in Ghana and four companies in Kenya, being mobile application developer Shimba (behind Tuvitu & MedAfrica), payment processing company Paygate, a yet to be launched mobile website, and Kenya’s premier online restaurant guide and booking service EatOut. Three of these are real start-ups and it is too early to tell whether they will be successful. For the moment they are on track. The other two are young, but already established companies looking for additional investment and both are doing quite well.”

How many business plans do you receive per month and how do you select them?

“On average we receive around 4 business plans per week. They reach us through our website, but also through our Kenyan network consisting of our investees, befriended investment funds with whom we also co-invest, the iHub and intermediaries like OpenCapital. If a plan meets the criteria that are published on our website, and the managing partners of our fund are enthusiastic, we ask a second opinion from one of our fifteen experienced investors. Depending on their feedback we take a decision.”

What are the do’s and don’t for entrepreneurs who contact you?

“As mentioned before we do receive many plans and therefore it is important that a plan is well written and includes a realistic financial forecast. Unfortunately, we receive financial forecasts that are highly exaggerated and in that case we doubt the financial acumen of the entrepreneur. Another very important factor is the quality of communication. Once we have entered into a venture we insist on excellent communication if we are to be able to support the entrepreneur efficiently. If the communication skills of the entrepreneur seem limited, it will obviously not work in his or her advantage.”

What are the future plans of AMVF?

“We just expanded the current fund and now have 19 very knowledgeable investors on board. We will continue operations the way we have done up untill now, focusing on East Africa.”

This article has previously been published in Venture Capital for Africa by Bertil van Vugt.

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