Kenya Attracts more Startup Funding – IPO48 event Ksh. 1M up for grabs

One of the key indicators of the growth of a startup conducive environment is the increasing potential of the area to attract funding especially from privately led initiatives. Kenya, and particularly Nairobi seems to be living up to this as it seems that literally every week nowadays you hear of some kind of initiative or event focused at growing and funding startups.

This is a very good thing for two reasons, first is that it shows that there is something there worth investors time, money and interest, whether this is a current crop of growing innovation culture and entrepreneurship or the perception of a high degree of such potential, and secondly – the fact that this interest itself acts as a catalyst promoting would be tech entrepreneurs to dare to take a chance since at least the funding is available.

IPO48 is a boot-camp style initiative to connect the tech crowd in Kenya. The idea is to bring together 100 talented visionary entrepreneurs, programmers, designers and project managers to build new mobile and web services in just 48 hours. The event will take place over a long weekend 29-31 of October in Nairobi.The event starts on Friday evening with presenting ideas and peaking with the new product demos on Sunday evening. The best team of the event shall receive €10’000 in investment, plus mentorship from European entrepreneurs and business professionals.

Goals of IPO48:

• Demonstrate that great teams can turn ideas into working services in one weekend;
• Show that web and mobile projects can be started with lean budget and really little  investment;
• Promote entrepreneurship and startup culture in Kenya and Africa;
• Encourage networking between entrepreneurs and technical talent;
• Spend a really fun and cool weekend.

IPO48 is organized by HumanIPO in collaboration with Garage48.org. HumanIPO is a social media platform that focuses on bringing together small investors with entrepreneurs and startups by collaborating and networking via the internet.

Garage48.org is a series of events organized by Estonian Startup Leaders Club. So far there have been two Garage48 events in April and August 2010. Both events received very positive feedback from participants and huge media coverage in Estonia and Abroad (Techcrunch Europe, Arcticstartup blog, local TV-Radio and newspapers etc). Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Jaan Tallinn participated in both events and liked the idea and the positive energy it carried.

<br>

Culled from Afrinovator

Tweet

Share