In my end-of-the-year piece, State of The Flip, Year Two, I wrote a bit about creator monetization. For many creators, like myself, there is often an explicit objective to broaden the revenue streams beyond brand partnerships. In many cases, ancillary revenue streams are direct-to-consumer products - a subscription or membership or merchandise or a digital product like an online course - that are feasible because the creator has an audience to sell to.

For many tech creators, their product is a fund. (See 20 Minute VC’s Harry Stebbings, Not Boring’s Packy McCormick, and more). They say every company is a media company - VCs included - but we’ve seen a more organic path emerge in solo creators becoming solo capitalists. Their ability to not only launch a fund but to garner strong deal flow and win competitive deals is both made possible and enhanced by the content they create.

I believe the type of content The Flip creates lends itself well to doing venture capital. Producing an episode involves hours of research, interviewing founders, speaking to adjacent parties, triangulating, and crafting a narrative from first principles. I’m doing due diligence.

I already see a lot of deals by virtue of publishing a podcast and a newsletter, and I have an increasingly strong point of view that I am sharing in public on a weekly basis. But it’s one thing to have a point of view; it’s another to have skin in the game.

There's also more money in the system than ever before. The ecosystem as a whole just came off a banner year in terms of fundraising, we’ve seen several other VC firms raising new, sizeable funds, and attention and intrigue in this space is as high as it’s ever been. I believe all of this has positive implications for startups trying to reach their milestones or hire talent in a competitive marketplace.

I’m not raising a fund (yet). I plan to build out The Flip Capital incrementally, starting with angel checks and syndicated deals. I want to get more deal reps and build up my investor muscles before taking on the responsibility of investing other people’s money. I know it’s one thing to have a point of view and another to pick winners based on the intangibles like strength of the founding team.

But with that being said, what do I plan to invest in?

Investing in the future of work

Last week, I wrote about the future of work. In the context of rapid population growth in Africa, paired with high underemployment or informal employment, where are the jobs going to come from? What does the future of work look like? And how do “we” get more money in the average African’s wallet?

I want to invest in the companies thinking about and working on these questions.

To be sure, I am using “work” in a broad sense of the word and I am interested in the companies playing an enabling role in the myriad ways Africans will earn money now and in the future.

On one end of the spectrum, thousands of traders or retailers may benefit from B2B commerce platforms providing digital tools to help retailers grow their businesses and offer an increasing amount of services to their customers. In many markets, SMEs are the lifeblood of the economy and are the primary source of formal employment, as well. If these businesses are primarily offline, analog, fragmented, cash-based, what are the problems (beyond just “digitization”) that tech startups are best placed to solve?

On the other end, how many jobs will be in the metaverse, and who’s building bridges or educating and upskilling accordingly? African markets have generally been farther behind the technology adoption curve, to their detriment. But for a technology, web3, that purports to be global, decentralized, and more democratic, will this time be different?

Now, two caveats. First, there is a separate question around portfolio strategy that I’ll have to figure out as I go. How many deals outside of my investment thesis should I invest in, if the opportunity is too good to pass up? While there are specific types of companies I am most interested in, I suspect it will be disadvantageous to be too adhere too rigidly to this thesis.

Second, I understand these might sound like development objectives more than venture investing objectives, but I’m not interested in being an impact investor. Simply put, I believe that the startups that solve these big problems will create valuable businesses in the process. The impact is self-evident.

Venture investing is, I think, a perpetual tension between the market as it is today and the future potential of the technology and startups in question. TAM today versus TAM tomorrow. Nowhere is that tension more acute than in African markets, in which investors are betting on its staggering population growth amidst currently high levels of poverty and insufficient infrastructure; in which I intend to back both those solving problems for an offline economy and solving problems using web3 technology.

The founders that understand this - and that understand both technology’s potential and its limitations in this context - are the founders I want to back.

How can I help?

As I’ve planned my investing journey, I’ve also thought a lot about “why me?” I plan to start with small checks and I know that for some startups, the associated work of accepting a small check from one additional investor may not be “worth it”. We've all seen the "let me know how I can be helpful" VC trope. I won't be helpful in every way, but here's how I think I can be.

I plan to write and publish an investor memo for every check I write. At the end of the day, early-stage investing and fundraising is about storytelling. I hope to help the startups I invest in to tell better stories in the marketplace, which can help with fundraising and recruiting. As an added bonus, The Flip’s subscribers include many Africa-focused investors, as well as founders and high-level operators of venture-backed startups (to get a sense of our audience, check out our list of podcast contributors).

Writing, learning, and investing in public helps grow The Flip’s audience, which will not only help with additional deal flow, but can accrue value back to its portfolio companies, as well.

This too has implications on timing. Despite the above, I recognize that it will be harder to get into later deals (e.g., seed round or post-YC) and that my job will be to identify good companies as early as possible. I need (and plan) to write checks at this very early stage and at a point in time in which other funds may still find companies too early. That is, I think, a competitive advantage.

From a strategy and company-building perspective, I think I can help in my own, unique way, as well. When I launched The Flip, I set out to create content that was widely applicable to entrepreneurs across the continent. That meant not just focusing on Nigeria or South Africa or Kenya, but identifying and interviewing a diverse set of contributors across markets, sectors and stages of business.

Back in season two of the podcast, we published an episode exploring Japanese investors’ interest in African tech. The opportunity for a fund like Kepple Africa Ventures is not just that they have the ability to connect dots between African startups and Japanese corporates, it’s that they are uniquely positioned to know which dots to connect. I think the nature of creating content for The Flip - a narrative-style podcast, in particular - allows me to see trends and connect dots that others may not see.

Let's build together

A couple of weeks ago, I was privileged to be profiled by Wimbart’s Africa Media Spotlight. They asked me what I would be doing if I weren’t doing The Flip. Here’s how I answered,

If I weren’t doing The Flip, I think I’d like to be a VC. I used to joke that I wish I could get paid to network – and I suppose I kind of made that happen! – but I really like having a breadth of conversations and working relationships with founders, developing a point of view, and being able to (hopefully) add value to the important work they’re doing. I think that’s somewhat comparable to the work of investors, as well.

The good news is that I get to do both. If The Flip’s mission is to help tell better stories about an environment in which there are a lot of misconceptions, I see The Flip Capital as a natural evolution of that mission, in using The Flip’s platform to help give startups the best possible chance of success.

So if you're fundraising, please get in touch, and let's build together.

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✌️ Justin