Good People, I am very happy to announce that one of our portfolio firms in Tekedia Capital is going to Y Combinator. The startup which is not even up to 90 days caught my attention when it was just 3 weeks old. We closed a small deal. And yesterday, it was on stage during Tekedia Capital Demo Day. And this morning, the news came: US-based Y Combinator, the world’s finest and largest accelerator & incubator, has accepted it.

YC is the gold standard and the best; it incubated some of the finest young startups in the world. The specific startup Overview has been updated in Tekedia Capital Syndicate Board; check.

Glory because we are going to the mountaintop. As I told our members, we have developed seven core metrics which we use to assess Africa-operating startups, and increasingly, our bets are outperforming.

Tekedia Capital Members: there is nothing to worry. I have told the team to keep our space in the cap table and they promised. We are not new there, we are simply expanding.

Congrats to Team – I hope to make a post in the coming weeks once we finish all paperworks. YC, thank you. I have my bell ready and cannot wait to ring in New York, London or Lagos.

Learn more about Tekedia Capital.

How would you fix a problem in your country? A president responded: “That IPOB is just like a dot in a circle. Even if they want to exit, they will have no access to anywhere.

“And the way they are spread all over the country, having businesses and properties, I don’t think IPOB knows what they are talking about.

“In any case, we say we’ll talk to them in the language that they understand. We’ll organise the police and the military to pursue them.” – Mr. Buhari, President of Nigeria in AriseTV interview

Note the phrase “a dot in a circle” and the most unfortunate, equating IPOB to the whole Igbo Nation. 

Mr. President, I am very disappointed with your view of Nigeria and Southeast Nigeria. As a General, I am very confident that you attended the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) in Kuru where they taught you about the nation. 

You fought in the Biafra war. But one of the finest moments in Nigeria was when the cholera vaccine invented during the Biafra war by Prof Njoku Obi was later used by WHO to stop the Kano cholera outbreak in 1972. Two things happened there: Nigeria was uniting and the nation was moving on! Yet, you never allow this to just go!

You keep missing moments to bring the nation together. Associating lawbreakers with a tribe is unfortunate. You had an opportunity to say the “dot people” are everywhere in Nigeria, and those causing problems do not represent them. That the “dot people” are everywhere in Nigeria is a sign they actually believe in Nigeria.

Mr. President, open your mind to be a president for ALL NIGERIANS. Live your moment. Everyone is a victim in Nigeria but you can help ALL RISE.

This is Sunday, a day of resurrection. The Day many remember for taking them out of the miry clay into the greener pastures of hope. But as mothers withdraw their kids from schools in Southeast Nigeria due to collateral damages from the Police and army who are looking for lawbreakers, Nigeria is removing ladders for the future.

As mothers prefer to keep their children due to fear of being kidnapped in the northern part of Nigeria, Nigeria is removing ladders to the future. As Southwest loads with killer herdsmen and areas like Benue fully loaded, causing fears, Nigeria removes the ladder from the base!

Today, Nigeria’s most important infrastructure is SECURITY, and if we cannot build it immediately, nothing makes sense. Join me to tell our political leaders, do not REMOVE THE LADDER because if our young people cannot be in school, we cannot predict the future. In the Southeast, for example, students are leaving hostels, preferring to abandon university education over being rounded up by the police and army.

#KeepTheLadder

MultiChoice has gone betting and it likes what it sees. The media giant is increasing its stake from 20% to 49% in BetKing in a US$281 million deal: “MultiChoice will make a formal offer of around R4 billion (USD281.5m) to increase its stake in Blue Lake Ventures Limited (BetKing) from 20% to 49%, the company has announced.” This is strategic because there are many products within MultiChoice which will capture value via sports betting. 

The board approved the formal offer to acquire more of the sports betting company on 10 June 2021.

It said that the offer is subject to the substantive conditions being met and the transaction becoming effective.

The equity investment will also result in payment of the contingent consideration of USD31m (ZAR0.5bn) relating to the acquisition of the first 20% in BetKing.

This comes after MultiChoice announced in November last year that it had acquired a 20% stake in BetKing for approximately R1.8 billion.

“Sports betting is an interesting market that is aligned to our Pay-TV business,” MultiChoice Group CEO Calvo Mawela said at the time.

“We have a lot of sport on our platform, and many people that are betting watch more games.”

BetKing started in Nigeria and Mawela said that it has shown rapid growth over the past two and a half years.

“They plan to be pan-African and will be entering South Africa at some stage too,” Mawela said.

This will reverse the lost value where MultiChoice was creating value for betting websites. Now, it wants to keep the value in-house through BetKing. Indeed, MultiChoice/DStv was not capturing any of those massive betting revenues. During the last edition of BBNaija, many betting sites built products around BBNaija, and many of them made tons of money.

For DStv, buying a part of BetKing is to keep that value in house by now using the betting platform as its official partner. Possibly, through that, it would capture value. This is a good example of a Double Play Strategy: MultiChoice is going to capture tons of monetary value through BetKing with the show serving as the One Oasis.

Sudan’s  former ruler, Omar al-Bashir, won many fights for three decades. He mastered the politics of UN. He overcame America and South Sudan. He triumphed over IMF and World Bank. He fought rebels, friends and enemies – and won. But at the end, he fell because of BREAD. Yes, bread – so simple and harmless- brought down one of the last surviving yoyo men of Africa.

As you think of that, I bring what will destroy Bitcoin despite any optimistic exuberance pushed by its adherents. Simply, the cryptocurrency is developing a reputation as the currency for criminals to receive illegal payments for ransomware. So, if you extrapolate, even if Bitcoin itself is not directly affected by hacking and ransomware, the fact that many criminals have chosen it will likely push many countries to go hard on it.

The latest is that “meat supplier JBS USA Holdings has said it paid out an $11 million ransom in Bitcoin to cybercriminals.” Just a few weeks ago, Colonial Pipeline paid out millions of dollars  via Bitcoin to criminals – and thank goodness, the FBI was able to recover some of that back. Yes, “seizure of more than half of the company’s payment cuts against crypto’s reputation as an untraceable financial medium for hackers.”

So, if the world leaders see Bitcoin as the choice for criminals, expect them to open a new playbook on this currency. And that playbook may not be palatable for hodlers.

Shine your eyes.

Meat supplier JBS USA Holdings has said it paid out an $11 million ransom in Bitcoin to cybercriminals. The company’s chief executive told The Wall Street Journal that the recent ransomware attack temporarily knocked out plants which handle about one-fifth of the meat supply for the U.S. Based in Brazil, JBS Holdings is the world’s largest meat supplier by sales. Ransomware attacks have spiked; last month, Colonial Pipeline paid a total of $4.4 million in Bitcoin to resume its pipeline — of which the Justice Department managed to retrieve roughly $2.3 million of the ransom paid to the Russian hackers.

• The FBI recovered roughly half of the ransom paid by the Colonial Pipeline by tracking a “publicly visible bitcoin ledger,” reports The Wall Street Journal, then pouncing when hackers performed a transfer to a virtual address the bureau had access to.