I wrote this on Nov 25, 2021 here

I respect traditional Venture Capital (VC)  firms but I hate their business models. How can you find a great startup, fund it and because you are required to return money to your limited partners (“the VC’s investors”), in years, you exit even before the company begins life?

Yes, you got in when the startup was worth $200m and it went public for $2 billion. You rejoice because within a 7-10 year span, you have made say 10x returns. But wait for just 10 more years, the same startup which IPO’d at $2 billion is now worth $30 billion. But you had since gone!

What would have been bad if the VC had held its positions without any constraint of time? That way, instead of capturing value within $2 billion within a decade, it opens itself for value capture within $30 billion  in the window of decades. And you allow LPs which desire to exit to go.

That is why I did not design Tekedia Capital as a typical VC firm. I did the math and discovered that more than 90% of VCs are leaving money on the table because of artificial constraints of time they created. They become operators at the center of the smiling curve instead of at the edges. For all the backers of Facebook or Tesla, the greatest winners are the investors who got in early when they went public. The VCs who exited within the first 10 years of this company life left value on the table.

(Some funds are structured to have expiration dates, typically 7-10 years which the fund must close and return money to limited partners.)

By removing time, Tekedia Capital investors will capture not just the initial opportunities but also latter day opportunities in our companies. In a cambrian moment, restricting boundless opportunities by time does not seem right. Tekedia Capital will play at both the center and the edges of smiling curves. And we want to ring the bell in a public market, unrestricted by time.

This is my destination: in the future, and because we have no constraints of time, as our startups mature, we can stay the course and capture compounding value by taking Tekedia Capital public. That seems like a great business model even for a business that focuses on analyzing business models from startups.

Read this piece from Fortune Datasheet:

As the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, a growing number of VC firms—including Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz—are buying shares of publicly traded companies.

For Accel and Lightspeed, it’s about re-investing in their portfolio companies. From a logic standpoint, it makes sense: Accel and Lightspeed have history with public companies like UiPath and GrubHub — they invested in these companies back when they were privately-held startups, and they have valuable insight into their businesses and operations. Buying their public stock is like curling up with a childhood stuffed animal when the hurricane hits. 

Conclusion: VCs are evolving to capture more value at the edges of the smiling curve.

There are great Venture Capital firms in the world. But for many of them, their business model does not make sense (I wrote in Nov 2021). Yes, you got in when the startup was worth $200m, and it went public for $2 billion. You rejoice because within a 7-10 year span, you have made say 10x returns. But wait for just 10 more years, the same startup which IPO’d at $2 billion is now worth $30 billion. But you have since gone! What stops you holding your positions post-IPOs, while creating paths for limited partners for exit?

Today, it seems VCs have the memo: “As the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, a growing number of VC firms—including Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz—are buying shares of publicly traded companies. For Accel and Lightspeed, it’s about re-investing in their portfolio companies.”

At Tekedia Capital, we are structured in a way that we do not have to go and re-buy our publicly exited companies (when that happens) because of limited partners. We will prefer to hold the positions instead of what Accel is doing: sell today and later, go back and re-buy. The business model of VCs must evolve.

By removing time, Tekedia Capital investors will capture not just the initial opportunities but also latter day opportunities in our companies. In a cambrian moment, restricting boundless opportunities by time does not seem right. Tekedia Capital will play at both the center and the edges of smiling curves. And we want to ring the bell in a public market, unrestricted by time.

Namibia is planning to join the growing list of countries that have introduced the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), triggered by the rise of cryptocurrency.

In a thought leadership event held in the country’s capital Windhoek, the Bank of Namibia governor Johannes !Gawaxab, said the country is exploring ways to create a digital currency as part of the central bank’s strategic direction and rapid digitization of the financial system.

Techcabal reports that the event titled, “Central Banking Digital Currencies and Virtual Assets,” was graced by representatives from the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador, the South Africa Reserve Bank, Bank of Ghana and the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Nigeria is foremost amongst countries exploring digital currency to have launched CBDC called eNaira, while El Salvador had adopted bitcoin as a legal tender.

!Gawaxab said that a public consultation paper on CBDCs would be published soon to further demonstrate the Bank’s commitment to continued cooperation and dialogue with the industry, private sector innovators, the fintech community and other stakeholders in transforming the financial sector for the prosperity of all Namibians.

“If CBDCs are explored and implemented with due care and caution, they could hold immense potential benefit for a more stable, safer, more widely available, and less expensive means of payment than private forms of digital money,’’ said !Gawaxab.

But the governor warned that CBDCs are in their early stages thus there is a lot of uncertainty as central banks around the world are building up their understanding and technological capability to explore and optimally utilize new technologies to ready themselves for the future, especially the future of finance.

!Gawaxab’s announcement signifies a shift from Namibia’s previous stance on cryptocurrency. Just like many other countries that had before, opposed the use of cryptocurrency, the Southern African country is opening its door to a possible future of digital financial landscape that will have CBDC and cryptocurrency.

There is also another announcement along the digital line which has to do with Namibia’s position on Virtual Assets (VAs) and Virtual Assets Service Providers (VASPs). The central bank disclosed that while VAs in Namibia remain without legal tender status, their acceptance for the payment of goods and services is left to the discretion of any merchant and buyer.

The shift in Namibia’s stance on cryptocurrency means that the central bank needs to introduce a regulatory framework. While that is still in the pipeline, the apex bank has issued some warning.

The central bank warned that Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) pose high risks and possibilities of fraud, manipulation, and misrepresentation, adding that it does not advocate nor support the general public’s engagement in ICOs.

But in response to the exponential growth in Vas, !Gawaxab said the central bank will amend applicable laws in consultation with stakeholders to accommodate it.

“To ensure a progressive regulatory response to the exponential growth in VAs, the Bank of Namibia has brought VAs and VASPs under its FinTech Innovations Regulatory Framework in a phased approach, through its Innovation Hub,” Gawaxab said. “The Bank of Namibia will engage VASPs and consider the amendment of applicable laws and regulations in consultation with other relevant authorities such as Namibia Financial Institutions Supervisory Authority (NAMFISA).”

Precision medicine or personalized medicine is a cutting-edge innovation in healthcare delivery. It facilitates highly accurate detection, prevention, and treatment of diseases by considering each individual’s genetic makeup, lifestyle, ethnicity, family history, behavior, and environment. Currently, patients requiring blood transfusion are matched to blood samples of individuals with identical blood groups, which minimizes potential side effects and improves patient care outcomes. Imagine if this approach is extended to detect, prevent, and treat endemic ailments affecting Africans, such as malaria, tuberculosis, heart diseases, and diabetes, among others, for everyone.

Precision medicine ensures everyone gets tailored treatment based on their genetic, environmental, and lifestyle characteristics. It ensures each patient receives the right treatment at the right dose at the right time and improves patient health outcomes, minimizes one size fits all prescriptions, mitigates inaccurate diagnosis, reduces medical complications, and reduces health tourism from Africa and associated capital flight.

Africa is known to be the most genetically diverse continent, and several populations from other continents have genetic roots in Africa. However, only about 3% of global genomic data used in studies come from individuals of African heritage. Recent data shows this ratio has reduced further to about 1%, implying that Africans and their descendants may miss out on the benefits of genomic research, such as early detection of diseases and precise drug design. 

RevnaBio (https://revnabio.com/), a Tekedia Capital portfolio company, will be at the forefront of championing precision medicine in Africa through state-of-the-art biomedical research to uncover the biological constructs of diseases affecting Africans and people of African heritage. We are very proud of the promises of Revna Biosciences which will begin operations in Ghana this month to serve Africa. As soon as Ghana’s operation is stabilized, the Nigerian unit will be set up.

I thank all Tekedia Capital members who came bold to bring this promise to Africa. Here, we’re funding the foundations of the NEXT Africa and Revna will have catalytic impacts on our people, communities and continent. All members are invited to the opening ceremony in Accra.

*this post from a draft developed by a Tekedia Capital member