I’m trying to create a database of all startups in Nigeria that have been formed in the last 7years (2010 - 2017) - including those that may have died off or been voluntarily shut down by their owners. I’d like to contact their management to collect performance data - with the ultimate objective of monitoring the pulse of the StartUp ecosystem on a Quarter by Quarter basis going forward, based on specific metrics.
One of the final outputs from this effort will be a data-driven, quarterly online report (with an offline version) where investors, tech enthusiasts and service providers can interactively rank startups (or view rankings of startups) by certain metrics like: Revenue, R&D Expenditure, Profit, Jobs Created, Marketing Spend, Government benefits enjoyed in Nigeria etc.
Are there Startup founders or advisers here that can point me to the website/contact of their Startups to be included in the database for ranking?
Also, has anyone got any other suggestion of how best to go about aggregating this type data for analysis in a very very cost effective way, as this is more of a pet project?
Any help in this direction from the Radar community will be appreciated.
I understand this is a pet project for you but please focus your energy on something more productive. Unless you are a known investor within the tech space, these are not the kind of information a sane CEO of an early stage startup would like to share for public consumption.
i agree with @manifest these are very sensitive information its going to be hard to get correct info out of any one freely. For what purpose are you tying to these startups anyway?
I’m working on a project www.boldideas.org which essentially tries to commercialize outputs from valuable research projects carried out in Nigeria’s academic institutions. This will be done by fostering collaborations between private companies, MDAs and the researchers - prior to the commencement of the research projects. The focus on commercializing research works is borne out of the belief that startups sprung out of valuable research outputs from research projects generally last longer.
The project, will engage investors, government policy makers, private companies and Intl Dev organisations. I’d like to be able to provide these stakeholders with local industry insights via a quarterly newsletter that gives them a pulse of the Startup ecosystem in Nigeria. Which startup sectors are doing well? Which sectors are likely to do well in the next 5-10years? Which sectors need government policy interventions? How well have past INGO funding programmes worked? Of the 3,600 Startups funded by the Worldbank-FG collaboration (via YouWIN) with nearly N13bn, how many are still doing well? What is their current health status - and which sectors are they in? Which sectors are likely winners for investors who want to pour in money to the ecosystem - and why?
My thinking is that such insights gleaned from the analyzed Startup Ranking data which my team will collate (disaggregated by sector), provided on a quarterly basis to investors, private companies & other stakeholders will give them a sense of what type of research projects to fund/commercialize in the short & long term. Furthermore, the Startup Ranking Data on which the newsletter will be based will be a good source of deal flow for investors; this I think is a good thing for current Startups looking to raise more investments or looking to get acquired in the not too distant future. @codegidi, @manifest do you think this purpose is enough for Startup CEOs to take a survey that captures performance data for consumption of investors & policy makers?
It depends. If this is a confidential survey that requires no specific identification, then a CEO or member of the management of a startup might be willing to participate in your research. However, if you insist on carrying out this research with specific information about a startup, then there are two possible ways to go about it.
The first, as well as the only ethical way, is to use the information provided to the public. With a good Google search, CrunchBase Data, Word of Mouth, and in-depth analysis of these startups you will get a lot of information needed. For instance, Mark gave out some insights into Hotel booking business at some point. Jumia once posted a loss, Konga is on its way to profit according to this report, dealdey sacks 60% of workforce and konga once laid off some staff. For other startups, check their revenue model and estimate the growth. Look at LinkedIn profiles for staff and maybe Jobberman for current and previous vacancies. This is pure research and the plain truth is that the data is out there, aggregate them together and make sense out of it. Once you can correctly estimate the return on a product or user, then you should be able to create models for the profitability of the business provided other variables such as standard marketing cost remains constant.
The other way is to make friends with staff and management of these startups. For instance, most startups use 3 major payment gateways in Nigeria, Get hold of account manager via LinkedIn profiles? Customer Success Rep and since your intention is to work with the govt. then a visit to the FIRS could be extremely helpful too. I can go on but this is very unethical and I wouldn’t recommend it but then again this is what some folks on Wall Street do for a living.