Do you know what region has seen a 6x increase in investment since 2017?

(Photo credit @kylejglenn)

Tech continues to provide endlessly fascinating news to mull over. Last month, we saw the name revealed for the Facebook whistleblower that leaked a trove of internal documents highlighting FB executives’ willful ignorance of research that shows their products can have damaging effects on mental health & democracy -- and that there are ways to fix this. I worked with Frances briefly at Google and was proud to see her leading an impressive campaign to shine the light on Facebook’s misinformation challenges. And then late last week, Facebook announced its Alphabet-like move to re-name the umbrella company to Meta to pay homage to its pivot towards the metaverse. Last week, Google announced great earnings, but Apple missed sales projections so Microsoft is now the most valuable company on the planet.  But enough about tech! I also wanted to announce my attempt to make change at the local level by running for my Town Board this November - check it out at lizarnoldny.com. Election day is tomorrow Tue Nov 2 - so I’ll keep you posted on the election results! 

#techsoundbite

This week, I thought I’d pivot to share what I’ve been learning recently about the tech scene in Africa. Earlier this summer, one of my former students (& current VC) Abdul Ly shared this great primer on the tech scene in Africa. I appreciated the attempt to distill a hugely complex continental ecosystem into digestible bites, highlighting topics like the changing demographics & the effects of the influx of foreign capital from the US & China. This BCG report highlights the expansion and maturation of the tech startup scene in Africa, and shows that the vast majority of tech startups do not progress beyond the Series B stage. The report makes additional recommendations on what types of support, investment, and interventions could help the startup ecosystem thrive into later stages of growth. 

Two current ‘success’ stories are Jumia and Andela. In April 2019, the continent of Africa had its first tech unicorn when e-commerce startup Jumia went public. It was founded in Nigeria by 2 ex-McKinsey consultants in 2012 as an e-commerce marketplace but has expanded into a collection of companies under the Jumia Group umbrella. And a few weeks ago, technical talent company Andela received a $200M investment from Softbank to push their valuation to $1.5B & help make them another unicorn. I met co-founder Jeremy Johnson when his first startup won a Princeton entrepreneurship competition I helped organize, and I have been following his startup progress ever since. I personally know some individuals who have had their lives changed by Andela’s programs and am excited to see its continued success. 

Did you know that investment in Africa has grown 6x since 2017? Recently, Google announced a $1B investment in the continent. Part of the money will go towards building a subsea internet cable to increase network capacity and reduce internet prices. This coincides with the Facebook-led 2Africa Consortium's efforts to build another subsea internet cable. The rest of Google’s funding will be earmarked to support nonprofits and to invest in startups. Netflix is also expanding into Africa in a unique way: by offering a free plan to Kenyans. The idea is that if Kenyans enjoy the breadth of programming available to them, they will upgrade to a paid service plan later on. 

A few challenges that are affecting growth in tech in Africa include the theft of IP addresses, the slow rate of internet penetration, and the uninformed choices of some VC funders. The IP address theft problem is a fascinating look at how individual greed can impact the opportunities for business growth on a continental scale. On the bright side, there continue to be some very cool startups coming onto the scene like this Nigerian fintech startup addressing chronic debt and this Ghanian facial recognition startup. And Fast Company’s 2020 List of Africa’s Most Innovative Companies includes others working on the problem of internet penetration to streamlining logistics & more. If you’d like to keep up on the African Tech scene, check out ​​Tech In Africa. 

Do you know what area of health tech just crossed the $1B VC investment mark?

(Photo credit @nci)

This has been a strange September for me. It’s the first time in over a decade that I am not participating in some type of back-to-school programming as part of my full-time job. I forgot how much fun it is to meet new students and help them get their careers into high gear. I have signed multiple new clients recently (and a few are current students) so it’s similar but not quite the same. The bittersweet aspects of change. It’s also the 20th anniversary of 9/11/01 tomorrow, which takes me back to the beginning of my career in NYC. It was a devastating day to be a New Yorker. I lost friends that day. I walked home from my midtown office, along with hordes of other NYC residents, and spent the night huddled around the TV with friends. I am surprisingly still thankful for AOL IM, which was the main method of communication that worked that day, when phone lines were overwhelmed. I still take time every year to remember the brave men & women who died that day and in the aftermath. #neverforget 

#techsoundbite

One of my current clients is looking for roles in female-founded/female-focused companies, which got me thinking about femtech as a topic for this week’s newsletter. Femtech (aka ‘female technology’) is used to describe a category of digital health companies that focus specifically on women’s health. 

The term is not without controversy as some are worried that by labeling these apps/technologies with a gendered term, it will have an adverse effect on growth, funding, and product pricing. I mean, has anyone ever used the term ‘ManTech’? It’s also not lost on many in the industry that one of the first male-focused health tech companies Hims immediately got plenty of VC funding in year one to help cure ED, whereas other female-focused companies founded years earlier got very little to help with supporting the everyday challenges of menstruation and pregnancy. (Hims also changed its name at some point to Hims & Hers to expand services to the other half of the population.) And another male-focused health company Ro acquired Modern Fertility earlier this year to do the same. 

“2021 is a landmark year for the femtech industry, with global VC investment crossing the $1 billion mark for the first time, according to PitchBook data.” Maven Clinic became the first unicorn to be focused on femtech by closing a $110million series D round last month. In the same month, my friend Paris Wallace’s company Ovia was acquired by LabCorp for an undisclosed sum. (Yes, I know that one was founded by a man.) Then earlier this week, Flo (a period tracking app) raised a $50million series B round. 

Right now, the majority of femtech funding has gone to companies that focus on fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood, despite the fact that less than 45% of the US female population is able to take advantage of these services. There are calls to step back and evaluate where the next femtech companies should focus their efforts, namely on menopausal and senior-aged women who have their own specific sets of health needs. They also tend to have even more disposable income available to them to pay for these services. 

If you’d like to explore further, as always, CB Insights has done a great job with a femtech market map to help demonstrate the variety of companies that are operating in this space. And their 2nd annual 2020 Digital 150 list includes 10 femtech companies. Also, this Forbes article has identified 52 female-led startups focused on building femtech and healthtech companies. It is inevitable that there will be an increased focus on women’s health companies in the next few years, as women spend $500billion annually on medical expenses. 

Should you care about the metaverse?

(Photo credit PluggedIn)

In the blink of an eye, summer has almost slipped by and we are nearing the month of September. I am definitely not ready for pumpkin spice anything and will continue to enjoy being outside.  Maybe I should plug myself into an alternate universe where summer lasts all year? Nah - I already lived in Arizona and my internal body clock ended up really missing how time was marked when there were four distinct seasons. 

#techsoundbite **check out the rename for this section - what do you think?**

I couldn’t resist diving into the metaverse this week as it’s not an area I am really familiar with, so this was a learning opportunity for me too. After Mark Z's big announcement that Facebook will focus on bringing the metaverse to life, the internet is all abuzz. My favorite simple definition of the metaverse is: a single, persistent virtual environment shared by everyone on the planet. The concept of a metaverse was coined in 1992 by author Neal Stephenson in his foundational sci fi novel ‘Snow Crash’ -- and it is positioned as the successor to the internet. If you’d like to fall down a giant metaverse rabbit hole, you could read VC Matthew Ball’s 9-part primer series. Or the NYTimes offers a slightly easier-to-digest topical review. 

Now if you’re like me, you’re probably asking yourself why you should care about this? I’m not a gamer, don’t have any VR headsets, and I kinda like our real world. But in these times, I can understand wanting to escape from the world for brief (or even extended) periods. Especially if I could travel... 

Reason #1 to care: who is building this world that many millions or billions of people will inhabit? And is it a good world for us to inhabit? Will it be like The Matrix where you have to jack in and out, and the VR world is all pristine because it’s been carefully curated? Or will it be more like Epic’s vision to extend Fortnite? Not surprisingly, there are many companies competing to define what this universal metaverse will look like. Microsoft envisions an enterprise metaverse, which seems to be an extension of the IoT universe, a hybrid of the digital and physical worlds. And Facebook’s grand plan is that multiple companies partner with individual creators to build a new virtual world where work, commerce, shopping and education all can happen. I’ll admit - I’m skeptical of the 3D world that Facebook will create, given the bang-up job they have done so far with the 2D world. And these are only 2 of companies that have visions for how the metaverse will be created - it would be helpful to understand who all the other players are to understand motives and goals as the internet 2.0 is being created. 

Reason #2 to care: how will this virtual world interact with our real world? What type of funding/money is at stake here? If this new virtual world is as extensive as many envision it will be, we will conduct our commerce there, take shopping trips, travel to faraway places, and meet with colleagues at virtual workplaces. Cryptocurrency companies believe their currency will be the de facto coin of the realm. Marketers and CPG brands are considering the endless possibilities to position their brands in a new 3D virtual world. 

One big challenge is that the hardware to connect seamlessly with the growing metaverse is still years away, though Oculus is aiming to be at the forefront of the VR headset revolution. Another challenge: I cannot believe that there are many (or any) workplaces yet where employees are clamouring to interact with colleagues in a fully virtual world. What social cues do you lose? I could see beginning with an AR world to try to help us imagine we’re working together in the office...but I’m not buying the VR world yet, except for maybe a few specific workplaces (like small startups). My friend Scott joined Mark Zuckerberg & others for the first public test of the new FB Horizon Workrooms last week and wrote in-depth about his experiences. It is interesting how the VR world can feel both more and less real than our current one - so I’m intrigued but not holding my breath.