8 more African startups join Y Combinator W22 batch
Eight more African startups have been confirmed as participants in the renowned Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator accelerator’s W22 batch, bringing the total to 23.
The W22 batch of the Y Combinator program is currently underway and will conclude with a demo day next week, having played a role in the early days of companies such as Airbnb, Coinbase, and Dropbox, among others.
At a demo day, participants receive seed funding as well as additional investment opportunities. The accelerator’s S21 edition had 15 African participants, the most ever, and Disrupt Africa recently reported on the first 15 confirmed African participants in the W22 batch.
With over 350 companies now confirmed to participate, a further eight African names have been added to the list, bringing the total number of African names announced to 23, far exceeding the number of African participants in S21.
Nigeria is responsible for seven of the new confirmations. Payourse is a cryptocurrency platform, Simplifyd is a data-free internet service, Sendme is an on-demand clean meat provider, Vendy is a payments startup, Convoy is an open-source cloud-native webhook service, Curacel is an insurtech startup, and Plumter is a payment API provider. Bloom, a Sudanese fintech platform, is the other chosen startup.
Continental royalty such as Flutterwave, Paystack, and Kobo360 are among the Y Combinator alumni (not to mention Cowrywise, MarketForce, Kudi, WaystoCap, WorkPay, Healthlane, Trella, 54gene, CredPal, NALA and Breadfast).
Disrupt Africa recently reported that the accelerator’s standard deal size had been raised to US$500,000. YC previously invested US$125,000 for 7% equity, but under its new standard deal, it will also invest an additional US$375,000 on an uncapped SAFE with “Most Favoured Nation” (MFN) terms.
The accelerator occupies an ambiguous position within the continent’s startup ecosystem, but entrepreneurs praise it for having a positive impact on their businesses.
