Fast Forward Fund
4140 Parker Rd., Allentown, PA, United States
Overview
Fast Forward is a venture studio—and early-stage fund—that builds and backs companies to unlock prosperity in Africa through technology. Fast Forward’s venture studio selects up to 10 ideas and founding teams annually—with priority on platform and infrastructure plays—in sectors including (but not limited to) B2B, Fintech, eCommerce, Edtech, Healthcare, Logistics, Deep Tech, SaaS, Future of Work, and Blockchain. Fast Forward recruits dynamic entrepreneurs advancing concepts we believe will fast track to scale to at least 10M people and achieve >$10m ARR value in 3-5 years. As a fund, Fast Forward invests pro rata in future rounds of venture studio companies and makes select investments in pre-seed African startups. At Fast Forward, we put startup founders first. African entrepreneurs founding successful tech companies offer huge potential for exponential impact across the continent. African founders have the ability to scale business and social solutions, modernize economies, improve day to day lives and create jobs and upward mobility. Africa’s founder class can also bring additional benefits to the continent through philanthropy and positive political reform.
- Total investments
- 2
- Lead investments
- 0
- Investments · 12mo
- 0
- Active investors
- 3
Sector focus
- Business Development
- Consulting
- Software
- Venture Capital
Investment portfolio
- VENCO
Participated · Seed · Dec 2022
Venco is a Lagos, Nigeria-based technology company offering an all-in-one platform for property owners, property managers and residents to run residential and commercial communities. Its platform simplifies bill payments, visitor access, issue and emergency management, and utilities vending while automating collection and reconciliation of dues and payments to improve receipts and margins for property owners. For residents, Venco provides self-service tools for visitor control, issue management and utilities vending, and embeds financial services including insurance and credit facilitation for rent, service charges and household spend. The company plans to use the $670K pre-seed funding to build out its credit delivery infrastructure for rent and household spend and to expand into additional cities and countries across Africa. Venco’s solutions aim to reduce the cost of service delivery and increase convenience for communities. The company was co-founded by Chude Osiegbu (CEO), Reagan Mbitiru (CTO) and Uzochukwu Alor (COO).
- Bumpa
Participated · Seed · Oct 2022
Bumpa offers mobile-first digital tools for micro-retailers to manage sales, track inventory, accept payments, and operate their businesses at the point of sale. The company targets micro-merchants facing operational constraints such as fragmented logistics and informal workflows, positioning its product to add structure to existing informal commercial behaviors. Bumpa is described as operating in Nigeria and sits at the point-of-sale layer relative to other commerce platforms. Financially, Bumpa has raised $4.2 million across two funding rounds, including a $4 million seed round in October 2022 led by Base10 Partners. The recent undisclosed investment from Jobtech Alliance was made after the alliance's landscape scan of digital services for MSMEs across Sub-Saharan Africa. The announcement did not provide revenue, user metrics, or specific plans for the new capital.