Why We Started the Emerging Markets Angel Network

While San Francisco, New York or London have long been the North Stars of any aspiring entrepreneur, recent years have seen intensive growth of technology and start ups in emerging markets. However, unlike San Francisco, New York or London, the local ecosystems are woefully underdeveloped. We believe emerging markets are bursting with talent who have the potential to solve both local and global problems, however, they are slowed down by the prevailing ecosystems and lack of funding. To help founders counter some of the barriers they face, we have launched the Emerging Markets Angel Network (EMAN).

Who are we?

Our mission is simple — EMAN is a community of passionate founders, investors, operators and ecosystem enablers. We work with exceptional founders to enable them to become the next regional and global leaders. We do so through providing capital, mentorship, connecting them with highly skilled advisors and potential employees. Our team has first-hand experience in MENAT and LATAM markets giving us an on-the-ground understanding of the local problems and enabling us to identify founders who are best equipped to solve them.

Our network of early stage investors benefit from low minimum investment and the complete freedom to select the deals they wish to invest in — from the outset, our goal has been to democratise early stage tech investments. We pride ourselves on high quality deal flow and rigorous research standards only presenting to our network investment opportunities we truly believe in.

Why emerging markets?

Emerging markets are home to favourable demographics (90% of world’s under 30 population live in developing or transitioning economies) and low but rapidly growing internet, smartphone and financial services penetration. Furthermore, governments in many emerging markets countries are pushing a strong digital agenda, for example, Smart Cities in the UAE.

The potential for tech solutions to leapfrog the typical evolution of consumers and enterprise products make emerging markets more attractive than developed markets for start ups looking to capture and solve blue ocean opportunities. We simply have to look at China (Alipay and WeChat Pay) which went from mostly unbanked to nearly cashless in a matter of years. The same can be said of Kenya with the rise of M-Pesa, a mobile currency launched in 2009 that accounts for over 80% of all transactions.

What is our focus?

We are sector agnostic and instead focus on the team and the problem. Traction is great but if we believe the start up has the right team to solve a big problem, we will invest anywhere from an MVP through to proven product market fit with rapidly growing revenues.

What’s next?

We are growing our membership and currently have 2 live deals with one of them about to close. Watch this space for our first portfolio investment announcement!

We are accepting applications from early stage start ups that would like to be considered for investment. Most importantly, we are already delivering value to the founders in our network.

If you want to join us as an investor or would like us to consider your company for funding, do not hesitate to submit your application on https://eman.tech/.