Business
Serena Williams’s Firm, Others Invest $3.3m In Nigerian Data Company Stears
Serena Williams’s venture capital firm and others are backing a Nigerian data and insights firm, Stears, in a $3.3 million seed round.
Eko Hot Blog reports that the round is led by MaC Venture Capital with participation from Serena Ventures, Melo 7 Tech Partners, Omidyar Group’s Luminate Fund and Cascador.
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In a statement, Williams credited Stears for strategically thinking of how to boost the investment community in Africa.
“One of the main reasons I invested in Stears is not because of my love and appreciation for Africa, but because Stears has strategically thought of how to increase the investment community on the continent,” the Tennis legend, who recently retired from playing professionally said.
“They’re aware of the complexities and have leverage with data and technology and I truly respect what they’re doing.”
Alison Stillman, Serena Ventures’ founding general partner, said the firm fought “tooth and nail” to get into the round, which was challenging because it came together in September when Williams was playing in the US Open.
Stillman noted that Stears data products would prove valuable to her firm and others hoping to invest more in Africa.
”We have this whole thesis about how important Africa and the ecosystem is going to be,” she said. “But we also know that data is really hard to find right now.”
Marlon Nichols, the Managing Partner of MaC Venture Capital, tweeted that Stears’ data capture and distribution approach will be vital as the world looks to trade closely with Africa.
“@MaCVentureCap is bullish on African startups. I’m thrilled to share our latest investment in @StearsInsights. Stears’ approach to data capture and distribution will prove critical as the world looks to trade + work closely with Africa,” he said.
.@MaCVentureCap is bullish on African startups. I’m thrilled to share our latest investment in @StearsInsights. Stears’ approach to data capture and distribution will prove critical as the world looks to trade + work closely with Africa. Via @TechCrunch https://t.co/lDeiXk3lWg
— Marlon C. Nichols (@MarlonCNichols) October 11, 2022
Stears, based in Lagos, offers data collection, production, advisory and analysis services. Its products include Stears Insights, the company’s flagship digital publication, which provides analysis-driven content to its subscribers.
A cross-section of the Stears team (Photo: Stears Website)
The company was launched in 2017 by four co-founders who met during secondary school at Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja, Nigeria, and at the London School of Economics and Imperial College in the UK.
In a post on Stears’ website on Tuesday, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Preston Ideh, said the company made its breakthrough during the 2019 elections when it built Nigeria’s first real-time election datasite. That datasite brought data provided two million users, which boosted its popularity and brought in the investors, Ideh said.
Thereafter, Stears had its first fundraising round of $650,000, led by Omidyar Group’s Luminate Fund and backed by Future Africa and CcHub, according to the firm’s CEO.
“At that point, we knew we had something special, channelling all our expertise into our first insights subscription product, Stears Premium,” Ideh said.
He stated that, despite the expert consensus that Nigerians would not pay for articles, the Stears Premium launch was successful.
Subsequently, the data provider gained enterprise customers such as the UK Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office, the European Investment Bank, the British High Commission in Nigeria, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) and the US Embassy.
“Every day, we improved our ability to answer crucial questions and collect hard-to-find data,” Ideh wrote.
The Stears co-founder disclosed that the new funding will expand the company’s intelligence team into Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt.
“It means developing local expertise that cannot be replicated with remote offices,” he said.
“To become the most trusted source of data and insights, we have to do three things that haven’t been done in Africa before; first, identify all existing sources of data; second, design a shared language to understand all the data; and third; combine these datasets to create proprietary views of the African market that don’t exist anywhere else.”
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“Our mission has always been to be the world’s most trusted provider of African data and insight,” Ideh added in an interview with Bloomberg.
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