We clocked ONE and then some…(2022 – a year in review)

Merry Christmas Everyone !!!!

It’s been a full year of ups and downs and great perseverance across the ecosystem and we cannot wait to show you what we have been building so far. 

Like you, at the start of 2022, we made plans and strategy documents hyping the year with resolutions, goals, plans and other festive traditions 

We set our minds to push forward counting down our first year into this mission of democratization.

For us 2022 has been a mantra of  “ Go big or Go home” and we don’t intend to go home …

We are still on mission.

So without further ado we review some interesting things we did this year.

Our Products

Our Product and Engineering team were hard at work this year ensuring smooth product launches, ever constant tweaks, debugs, and building across our roadmap. From an initial idea to 5 products launched and tweaking constantly, we have been thinking hard on how we can build out solid investment infrastructure products for the venture capital ecosystem. We need you the community to help us get better and stay better delivering valuable products, programmes, and policies. 

In 2021 we launched three key products – Crowdraise ( now Public Raise ) , Deal rooms (Private Raise), and Secondary Markets. 

We added our APIs, institutional investment tool AND 

Since then, we have made some key changes that are better suited to create a better experience for ALL our users.

What better way to start off the education than with our…….drum rolls…..

Investors

As investors, you can invest in startups within our portfolio with as little as $10 using very easy to use and straightforward payment processes integrated on the platform. In addition to already existing integrations, we were able to integrate:

• Flutterwave – to enable virtual accounts for international payments(USD, GBP, EURO)
• Brass – to enable virtual accounts for local payments(NGN)

Another exciting feature brought to the investor table this year was Insurance. 

A lot of factors can pose a threat to investments no matter how carefully managed. At GetEquity we recognize this and so we’ve taken steps to ensure that your investments are protected from unforeseen events. We recently partnered with Curacel to provide keyman insurance coverage for all investments on the GetEquity platform. You can learn more about this here

Founders

In our bid to make founders’ hard work much simpler, we created an all in one dashboard for founders to access 5 key products of GetEquity.

• Public Raise(formerly crowdraise)–  that allows you to raise funds from our private investor community
• Private Raise(formerly community and company dealrooms) – that allows you to invite investors to invest in your company.
• ESOPs (Employee Stock option/ Benefit) – Our most interesting feature to date is ESOPs. You can now offer employees stock options on your own terms. Choose the vesting period, cliff, and maturity from one simple and intuitive dashboard. Learn more about this here

• API Client – As a product-led company, you want the customers/clients on your platform not to miss out on investing in sweet deals in the form of high-growth startups. Hence, this product allows you to generate more revenue when they invest by making use of our API on your platform to offer them startups raising on GetEquity.
• Institutional Investing – As a founder or a company, having the INVEST feature turned-on on your dashboard gives you the opportunity to invest in other high-growth start-ups that are listed on GetEquity which are publicly fundraising companies. Thus, the institutional investing product makes your company a corporate investor.

Institutional Investors

We focused on bringing more institutional investors into our ecosystem. This led us to create the following products:

1. Institutional Investing: GetEquity provides deal-flow for syndicate groups. As a venture capital firm or angel syndicate, having the INVEST feature turned-on on your dashboard gives you the opportunity to invest in other high-growth start-ups that are listed on GetEquity which are publicly fundraising companies.
2. Private Dealrooms: This allows syndicates to create multiple deals and perform a capital call from their LP’s. We also provide an infrastructure for Limited partners (LP) management. You can learn more and get started here

Our Growth

As we build, growth they say is inevitable. At the start of the year, the growth team was very intentional about not just improving our traction but playing a vital role in the ecosystem for all parties.

From January 2022 to date, we have grown from over 4000 investors to 11,000+ Investors across board with over $1,000,000 raised using GetEquity.

Some key initiatives we ran during the year are:

• Investing Masterclass in partnership with DreamVC – We partnered with DreamVC to provide a free intensive 3hr masterclass in order to further educate both users and non-users of GetEquity to further understand what it means to be an investor.
• Ecosystem Talks – Twitter conversations with key members of the tech ecosystem centered around its growth as well as best steps for startups to take during the year.
• Pull up and Pitch – Pull up and Pitch is a monthly event created and hosted by GetEquity in its current journey to support startups within the African tech ecosystem.

The aim of the event is to promote brand awareness of startups who are building key solutions to the GetEquity community and network regardless of whether these startups are listed on GetEquity or not.

2 editions of the event were held in partnership with Workstation and Venia Hub in the month of September and October respectively. The winning startup at the first edition went on to win the Startup Pitch Competition at the GetEquity Startup Festival. The winning startup for the second edition also won free office space for 1 month and free virtual office for 1 year from the Venia Team.

• Ask A Founder Sessions – We continued our existing tradition of conversations intended to throw more light on startups listed on GetEquity. These conversations were held together with the founders of each startup in order to shed more light on the solutions they provide.

• Startup Festival(Maiden Edition) – Months ago, we set out on a journey to create a space where we can have lasting conversations on the growth of our ecosystem as well as support the awesome startups building solutions for us all. 

And the event was a huge success with over 1000 guests, 20 exhibiting companies, media partners, 27 speakers, sponsors and the general public. 

The event was graced with the likes of Agama Emomotimi, Managing Director, Nigerian Capital Market Institute; Zikora Okwor-Wewan, Partner, Springwoods LP; Oluwatimilehin Ogunyemi, Head of Business Operations & Partnerships, Nomba where they came to together to discuss topics ranging from how to Bridge the gap on payments to War for Talents in the African Startup scene and much more important conversations on the ecosystem. You can view the amazing lineup of speakers here

Some of the highlights of the event include the opening speech to kickstart the event by GetEquity’s CEO Jude, pitches from 4  startups – Regxta – A digital bank focusing the financially underserved African population, Flowmono – A digital automation platform for businesses, Riltee – Real estate democratization platform and  Strich Technologies – solution built for small business digital commerce. Regxta was announced as winner of the startup pitch at the event.

The 5 panel sessions with key speakers focusing on the startup ecosystem in Nigeria and Africa were key moments that have since received positive reviews from attendees across social media.

With the success of this event, GetEquity is looking to make the Startup Festival a continuous event and plans to host its next edition in 2023.

Outside of the above, we ran key PR and Content Marketing campaigns centered on our key products, our support for startups as well as conversion tactics to improve our traction.

Our growth won’t have been possible without the help of our partners. With regards to our dealings in relation to partnerships in December and all through 2022, we at GetEquity have aimed to employ a strategy of deep, productive and sustainable links with all our partners. 

Our partnerships have been built and nurtured to meet key areas of our business operations such as Product Development, Ventures, Portfolio Support, Customers Service, Human Resources, Business Development, Technology, Legal, Marketing and Finance. 
Some key firms with whom we have strong relationships within 2022 include the likes of local and international firms such as Wefunder, Zedi Africa, Accelera law, SHQ, Norebase, Flutterwave, Mono, Uqudo, Republic, Greenhouse labs, Microsoft, Ennovate hub, DreamVC, Fuzu, The Spark, Cadanapay, Iveoma Media, Ventor Africa, Emmviro, Microtraction, IO Fund, FHDIC, HOAQ Club, Startinev, Plug and Play, KLab, Startup UG, Freshworks, Regcompass, Campus Innovation Circles Playbook, Assurdly, UVID Partners, Blue Sapphire Hub, Sidebrief Africa, Founders’ Square etc.

Our Startups

Throughout 2022, the Ventures team at GetEquity has sought to scout, curate, vet, and list quality startups on its platform, with these startups having the important characteristics of providing value to their customer base and meeting impressive growth in terms of traction. To date, GetEquity has listed over 40+ startups on its platform, with many of them falling into key industries such as Financial Technology, Healthcare, Insurance, Digital Banking, Edutech etc. 

Some of the startups that have been listed on GetEquity include names like Spleet, Fluidcoins, Dropper, BridegCard, SendStack Wirepay, Famasi, KoboPay, Pade, Aladdin Bank, TalentQL, Regxta, Ricive, Alt School, and Collect Africa etc. Startups listed from other African countries such as Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania include the likes of Zemo Card, MyWagePay, Mipango, Ironji, and a host of other startups. GetEquity has also been able to list the likes of Sticky, which is a UK-based technology company that is building an enterprise operating system to solve problems in physical spaces and aiming to penetrate the African continent with its product offering.

Of the 40+ startups that have been listed on GetEquity in 2022 and who raised funding in excess of $340,000, about 23 of them have closed their rounds, with raise amounts ranging from $2,500 to $30,000 at a combined post-money valuation of about $77.7 mliion. Startups such as TalentQL, Famasi, Mizala, WeMove, Dropper, Pade, etc were able to raise amounts in excess of $20,000 and at valuations exceeding $20 million combined. 

Also important to note are the number of exists and delistings that have occurred on our platform. In terms of exits we are pleased to see the improved growth and development of two key startups such as WirePay and Bridgecard who combined were able to exit at multiples of about 4-6x in excess of initial investments made by investors. 

For delistings, a couple startups where delisted from GetEquity for a number of reasons with the likes of startups such as SmallChops and Scalex being examples that stood out. In the case of SmallChops, a delisting occurred due to a breach of our corporate governance structure after serious allegations were made against the founding team. For Scalex, a delisting occurred after the company decided to pursue its funding activities elsewhere. In both cases, investor funds were retrieved and given back to them. Other reasons for delisting some impressive startups like Messenger, Motisure, Filtar Africa etc where due to a slow down in momentum with regards to their abilities to raise via our platform after a considerable amount of time given.

For activities in relation to our Private Raise product offering (i.e. Dealrooms), startups have been able to raise funding using this product offering with a notable case being the over $200,000 raised by a company called Herconomy. Herconomy which is a company building Nigeria’s largest community empowering women with resources to succeed, save money, and enjoy discounts successfully followed up its initial $200,000 raise earlier in the year with a further raise sum of $400,000 for its seed round.

Being listed on GetEquity has proven to be a boon for most of our portfolio companies with some going on to make some progress in the form of being a part of accelerator programs, participating in startup competition and wining awards as elaborated in the table below:

As an organization, 2022 came with a lot of operational achievements for GetEquity. We were nominated for 3 awards/recognitions as follow:

• Most Innovative New Digital Asset Trading Platform – Nigeria 2022 (Global Business Outlook Awards) – winner
• Most Innovative New VC Platform for Startups – Nigeria 2022 (International Finance Awards) – winner
• One of the Top 10 African Tech Startups in 2022

In line with our fundraising round, we got into 3 accelerator programs; Multichoice, Newchip and Microsoft.

We are currently a team of 23 people spread across engineering, growth and operations departments. Our management team consists of the CEO, Head of Growth, Head of Operations, Customer Support & Compliance Lead, Legal Lead and East African Growth Lead.

But just like there were wins, there were losses and we continue to reflect on what was, what is and what could be.

What might 2023 bring?

More Seamless Experience using GetEquity and its suite of products. Some of the products in our 2023 roadmap include: 

1. Credit Feature for Retail Investors: GetEquity is partnering with different credit providers to power our credit features, where investors can seek credit. The Credit Feature is suitable for an investor who is illiquid at the point an investment round is ongoing but wishes to invest in a high-rise growth startup listed in GetEquity. To do this, the investor can simply use their current investment holdings as collateral pending when they repay their loan.

Also, the Credit feature helps investors with investment assets in GetEquity to seek cash credit, pay into their bank account, and use such assets as collateral, pending when they offset their debt.

2. Capitalisation Table Management: The Capitalisation Table Management product that allows startup founders to view, manage, distribute  equity ownership structure in their companies seamlessly . 

3. Automated Market Making (AMM): Automated market making is a trade model. Currently, GetEquity secondary market runs on an order-book Trade model, which means it practically fulfills trade orders by matching user’s sell or buy orders found on each token or asset on GetEquity secondary trade order-book. AMM simply means allowing liquidity providers to provide liquidity for the secondary market tokens. Combining the order-book and AMM model will simply see a rise in secondary market liquidity which will enable users trade-orders to be executed or fulfilled within a twinkle of an eye than oppose to having to wait for the order book exchange model to process or fulfill a user trade-order only when a corresponding user, makes a similar and opposite trade-order for it to be executed.

The Liquidity providers will not be left out because they will be profit sharing with them for solely providing liquidity into the system.

4. SPV– This allows individuals to set up SPVs, Funds and Family Offices. GetEquity is partnering with reputable law firms both in Nigeria and overseas to do this. This product provides organizations with the avenue to create SPV’s by just a click of a button and domiciled in any country of their choice.

Thank you for your continued support as we continue to build. For a more detailed report of our year, you can view our year end report right on the app.

Got any questions for us? Join our Community on Telegram here or send us an email at support[at]getequitydot]io

Wishing you a wonderful and prosperous 2023.

From all of us at GetEquity we say,

Thank you !!!!