Blog - Corniche Growth Advisors

17 Apr 2024

Can mezzanine finance work for your startup?

Mezzanine finance is a hybrid debt equity instrument that is being increasingly used by technopreneurs around the globe, in different forms and use cases, as it is largely non-dilutative of their equity, usually does not require their personal surety and can be easier to acquire than either bank deb...

17 Apr 2024

How Safe Are SAFE Agreements?

Credit: This article by Itay Sagie was published in Crunchbase News on April 16, 2024. In the world of early-stage fundraising, the allure of the Simple Agreement for Future Equity, or SAFE, often seems like a no-brainer choice for entrepreneurs. Designed as a founder-friendly vessel to sail the c...

12 Mar 2024

VC-driven: startups acquiring startups

In my view, the global trend of “startups acquiring startups” is almost entirely VC-driven, most commonly on the sell-side but also on the acquirer/buy-side. More than 80% of acquired VC-backed startups sold to another startup since the beginning of 2023, equating to 766 companies globally, ac...

11 Mar 2024

Founders, here’s how to deal with exploding term sheets

Credit: Rob Moffat, Partner at Balderton Capital as published on sifted It is 10pm on Wednesday, Feb 21. You are a founder raising funding. You have got to know VCs over the last few years and had increasingly intense conversations with them over the past few weeks. They have asked you lots of due d...

12 Jan 2024

Will our technopreneurs manage to raise or exit in 2024?

2024 is building up to be an interesting year given the conflicting indicators, particularly in VC capital supply and deployment, whilst exits for founders and VC’s rely on steady and strong stock markets and M&A activity. Starting on the capital supply side of the equation; VC fundraising in ...

12 Jan 2024

Reflections on Africa Fintech 2023 – It’s harder to raise capital in small markets

The unfortunate reality on a global basis is that it is harder to raise capital and scale a startup in smaller markets. This is even more true in heterogeneous Africa where it is often harder to scale across regions and countries. The “big 4” countries in Africa accounted for 94% of Fintech fi...

17 Nov 2023

Shopping around for startups – the Pre-PE buyout opportunity in the VC world

There is a growing new class of buyout funds on both sides of the Atlantic, doing Pre-PE buyouts in the later-stage VC world, taking advantage of the liquidity crunch to buy promising startups at a discount, with the objective of transitioning them into viable PE assets. These opportunities are en...

17 Nov 2023

Why Fintechs and incumbents need to partner to deliver financial inclusion

Fintechs are driving the next wave of financial inclusion in Africa and other emerging markets, but they need to partner with incumbent market participants, banks and telcos in order to be successful. Why do the incumbents need Fintechs and vice versa? Where does this leave our technopreneurs in ter...

24 Oct 2023

Central Bank Digital Currencies will open new opportunities for Fintechs

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) have the potential to empower technopreneurs by offering improved financial inclusion, reduced transaction costs, enhanced security, transparency, access to international markets, and financial stability, of particular relevance in developing markets. What exa...

24 Oct 2023

Keep constructing those exit ramps

The best advice to technopreneurs is that exiting your company should be the culmination of an ongoing “strategic outreach” throughout the life of your company, and not something that only begins when you start thinking of exiting. It’s about using the clear understanding of your company’s u...