Brainchild of two of Nigeria's female tech-icons, Odunayo Eweniyi and Eloho Omame, FirstCheck is a female-focused angel fund and investor community to help women who have viable ideas for technology startups.
True to its name, the funding platform's main aim is to give African women in tech their first check by investing up to $25,000 in each woman's idea at the ideation stage and assisting her to raise a significant pre-seed round within 12 months after being confirmed.
Investors in Africa are seemingly unconscious biased towards investing in female-led startups as women are perceived to be reliable to invest in compared to men.
And that probably explains why most female-led organizations find it difficult to be taken seriously or raise funds. Almost every woman entrepreneur has her own story of seeming or outright misogyny to tell.
Co-founder, Omame says FirstCheck Africa’s fundamental goal is to “create enablers and active pathways between Africa’s growing community of early-stage funders and female founders.”
They plan to do this by being active connectors and collaborators to accelerate female-owned tech startups on the continent.
In October 2020, @OdunEweniyi and I bonded over our frustration with female under-representation in African tech.
— Eloho 🌱🇳🇬 (@ElohoGM) January 25, 2021
The system isn't working very well for women and *someone* needs to fix it. 🤔
So we’re rolling up our sleeves and putting our money where our mouth is!
Investment Procedure
FirstCheck will invest in female founders aiming to validate their ideas and build viable products for a modest equity stake in these startups as agreed by the founders and the platform.
Clarifying its investment criteria further, FirstCheck says it will invest in businesses with at least one woman co-founder where “the woman is a true partner and decision-maker, with a significant, equitable split of the founder equity.”
For the average founder, the journey will have been exponentially easier if you’d had an early believer committed to helping you get off the ground.
— Tech Bro (@OdunEweniyi) January 25, 2021
For female founders, this is doubly true.
That's why I'm proud today to announce https://t.co/BeXngkPL6t
Odunayo and Eloho will be working with a community of African women with (clear or vague) ideas for technology startups. Female-led (pre-revenue) businesses in early stages of execution will be considered as well.