IPO48 is awesome. It is coming back to Kenya. Remember the incubator that enabled the M-Farm all girls app for farmers in Kenya. We mean the startup of three girls that enabled farmers to know the price of produce so that they can bargain better? The app has since been shown in BBC, CNN, CNBC, etc.
After the successful IPO48 that produced winners in all-girls M-Farm, the trio of HumanIPO, Quartz+c0, and iHub and are at it again. IPO48 is planned in Kenya as follows:
You apply to the event by filling out a personal application form on IPO48.org. This will automatically make you a user of the HumanIPO network.
Approx. 30 days before the event kicks off you will need to create a start-up on the IPO48 platform. You can invite max. two co-founders to your start-up team.
You will now be engaged by IPO48 online Rainmakers, who will challenge and help improve your start-up pitch. Depending on how you interact and the quality of your final version pitch, we will pick max. 15 teams to participate at least 8 days before the event.
If you do not want to pitch a start-up idea, you can join one. On IPO48 website you will be able to indicate different start-ups that you could see yourself joining at the event.
Important: Only the start-ups that are approved online will be allowed to pitch at the event.
Agenda
Friday, Aug 12 – event starts @iHub, Nairobi
Teams present their 90 sec pitch and find the participants they would like to join their star-up for the 48h event.Saturday, Aug 13
On-site mentors engage and help teams. Work – work – work.Sunday, Aug 14
More help from mentors and help with the preparation of the final presentations. Final demo, voting and prizes.Prize-winning categories
- Most disruptive start-up
- Best hustling team
- Best presentation
- Most likely to get funded
The Investment
Teams negotiate with the Investor group. Investment deal announcement.
The 25.000 euro investment will solely be decided by the IPO48 investment team and will not necessarily relate or depend on any of the category winners.
Post workshop by quartz+co for entrepreneurs
Apart from the mentorship during the IPO48 event, have them teamed up with quartz+co to run a workshop in the business field adapted for entrepreneurs. The subject will be:
- Build a business case
- The business model
- Sales presentation
- Negotiations
What is IPO48?
The cost of launching a web and mobile business or creating a new products is decreasing. That lowers the barrier to entry for startups, which is great for entrepreneurship. On the flip side it increases competition for entrepreneurs, so building a product and getting it live doesn’t guarantee success.
90% of startups fail and it’s not because of lack of technical capability, but there is just no costumers or market for it. The problem they were solving turned out not to be a problem or it was too insignificant for people to pay for it.
This is what the IPO48 events address – we push entrepreneurs towards market reality to validate their ideas. This is done by exposing the entrepreneurs idea online to a crowd of business professionals, mentors and consumers who challenge them before the event kicks off. During the event the entrepreneur needs to convince potential team members to join him to build a prototype, and experienced mentors will push his team to create a viable business model. It’s intensive and rewarding for the entrepreneur, and the energy at these events cannot be described – it has to be experienced!