Co-Founder Of Knife Capital Keet Van Zyl Shares What He Thinks Could Solve The Start-Up Funding Gap In Africa
Co-Founder Of Knife Capital Keet Van Zyl Shares What He Thinks Could Solve The Start-Up Funding Gap In Africa. South African entrepreneur and co-founder of Knife Capital Keet Van Zyl shared what he thinks could solve the start-up funding gap in Africa in an interview with AfricArena.
He said, “I think thee are two main gaps, in this ecosystem and it is quite fragmented. The Gap is not only funding its also really mentorship, you know entrepreneurship ideas are one thing but resources and how to get there, it is quite difficult, the timelines are long and there is a whole lot of Domino’s that are not stacked up. Series A and once an entrepreneur has got traction and they really deserve some more growth funding, they can generally find that.”
He continued to say, “Another gap is we almost don’t set our entrepreneurs up for success because if they do start succeeding on a global stage then we almost don’t know what to do with them, we hand it over to Silicon Valley and Europe, Africa has become a massive incubator for international VCs to invest. Which is on the one hand fantastic and on the other hand we need to support our own innovators from our own backyard.”
Van Zyl mentioned that the gap that exist in the start-up community in Africa is not only about funding but mentorship as well and he emphasised that investors should start investing in start-ups even when they have found a bit of success as this brings even more growth in the start-up.
Van Zyl believes that African investors should try by all means to assist start-ups that in South Africa as this sets up the start-ups to achieve great success not only in Africa but the rest of the world. Van Zyl also reiterated that Africa has become an incubator for Western investment and this needs to change so that the funding gap can be reduced.
