Investors are like sharks, but not the way you might first think. They have to keep moving to stay alive, raising new funds every few years, and more importantly investing and re-investing in the best growth companies available. COVID poses the question: how do rounds close when travel and proximity are risky? Let’s consider how VCs, and founders, can adapt.

African start-ups are finally coming of age. Last year, nearly 100 companies raised $1m+ , and activity is up 300%+ in the 4 years to 2018, according to Partech Ventures.

Software’s transition to SaaS has ramped M&A valuations of fast-growing SaaS businesses for some years now. By now, ordinarily prices would gradually drift down as ‘new’ becomes ‘normal,’ as we’ve seen recently in analytics, AI, and areas of fintech.

The Global Startup Scene is expanding to Africa. Nigeria, in particular, has become a hub for fintech startups, where there was $360 million invested in Nigerian-focused payment ventures in November alone. Victor Basta, the Managing Partner of Magister Advisors, joined Cheddar to discuss.

Africa receives $50b of aid each year, to address humanitarian, health, and education problems across Africa. Aid does life-changing work, from HIV treatment to construction, and plugs major gaps in continental governments’ ability to serve their 1.2b population.

Scale-Up Sessions are workshops curated by Endeavor Nigeria for high-impact companies and their founders. This session was run by Victor Basta (Founder & Managing Partner, Magister Advisors).

My recent interview at Target Partners CEO day, focusing on what "exit preparation" really means, the issues CEO's face in preparing for a high value M&A exit, and what to look out for in the 12+ months ahead of this life-changing event.

Last week, German fintech N26 announced it had raised another $170m in its latest funding round, taking its total investment to date to more than $680m, according to Crunchbase, and elevating its valuation to a lofty $3.5bn. That’s for a company that says “profitability is not one of our core metrics”, and whose annual revenue is estimated to be around $17.5m (a healthy price-to-sales ratio of... 200).

In the past five years, there has been a sea change in the funding landscape for European technology. So much so that today many companies are opting to raise ever-larger growth rounds instead of preparing for a more "traditional" M&A exit. While this will enable a larger group of European companies to fund themselves to serious scale for the first time in history, it is already creating significant new challenges for CEO’s and fundamental issues for early backers in the sector.

Monzo has been awarded the ultimate Silicon Valley seal of approval: A $144 million fundraising round led by Y Combinator, the biggest name in startup accelerators. The deal values the British banking app at $2.5 billion, twice what it was worth in the private markets last year. It has been given a license to lose money like never before as it tries to conquer America, the El Dorado for fintech challengers.