Eight further African startups have been confirmed as participants in the W22 batch of the renowned Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator accelerator, taking the total to 23 so far.
The W22 batch of the Y Combinator programme, which played a role in the early days of companies like Airbnb, Coinbase and Dropbox among others, is currently taking place, and concludes with a demo day next week.
Participants receive seed funding as well as further investment opportunities at a demo day. The S21 edition of the accelerator had 15 African participants, the most yet, and Disrupt Africa reported recently on the first 15 confirmed African participants in the W22 batch.
With over 350 companies now confirmed as taking part, a further eight African names have made the list, taking the total so far announced to 23, far surpassing the number of African participants in S21.
Seven of the new confirmations are from Nigeria. They are crypto platform Payourse, data-free internet service Simplifyd, on-demand clean meat provider Sendme, payments startup Vendy, open-source cloud-native webhook service Convoy, insurtech startup Curacel, and payment API provider Plumter. The other selected startup is Sudanese fintech platform Bloom.
Y Combinator’s alumni features continental royalty such as Flutterwave, Paystack and Kobo360 (not to mention Cowrywise, MarketForce, Kudi, WaystoCap, WorkPay, Healthlane, Trella, 54gene, CredPal, NALA and Breadfast).
Disrupt Africa reported recently the accelerator had increased its standard deal size to US$500,000. Until now, YC invested US$125,000 for seven per cent equity, but under its new standard deal it will now 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 is lauded by entrepreneurs for the positive impact it has on their businesses.
