The Washington DC-based venture capital firm Openner is now accepting applications from Egyptian startups, through which it aims to identify brilliant founders with brilliant ideas.
Once on board, Openner aims to expand and scale them locally, regionally, and globally through its local accelerator.
Applications are open all-year round, as no specified one-size-fits-all programme will be implemented across all 50 selected startups.
Each portfolio startup will be subject to a custom-designed programme tailored to its needs, combining cash injection with growth resources while focusing on the startup’s product development, tech development and distribution.
This means that startup founders will be able to fully concentrate on sales and customer acquisition. In the meantime, functions like marketing, engineering, UX/UI and public relations will be provided by the accelerator and its partners.
Openner is a pre-seed and seed venture capital firm focused on investing in technology-based startups globally, and has invested in over 100 startups. Entering Egypt with its accelerator programme is set to enable the firm to invest in 50 local startups.
Openner has deployed $25m in over 100 portfolio companies in the US since the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2016, with an aggregate valuation of $2.95bn.
The accelerator helps transform pre-seed and seed startups with a minimum viable product (MVP) into growth and/or acquisition-ready. This is proven by its strong global performance track record in successfully raising Series A funding for 90% of their pre-seed and seed investments.
Their primary focus is to work with startups to help them build sustainable, resilient and scalable businesses.
“We want startups to organically grow into revenue generating companies without having to raise funds, match them with a strategic investor when they are ready for rapid growth and position them as acquisition-ready,” said Ash Rofail, Founder and General Partner of Openner. “We have a very strong and proven track record building companies that have exited or have become leaders in their target industries, with 10% of our portfolio companies exiting within three years of operation.”
Rofail added that Openner is entering the Egyptian market because it believes in the country’s geographic and cultural centrality, and its promising tech talent.
Openner has historically co-invested with Andreesen Horrowitz, NEA, Sequoia, Khosla Ventures, YCombinator, Goldman Sachs and several other global top-tier venture capitals (VCs). Its portfolio companies received follow-up investments from ExxonMobil, Mastercard, CitiVentures, and other multinationals, as well as from dozens of Tier 1, US-based VCs.
Openner accelerator offers seed funding, technical product development, business development, legal, operations, back office as well as a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) among other services.
This is in addition to strategic guidance from top international executives who are mostly exiters and repeat founders, a path to fundraising, licensing deals and acquisition through its publicly traded company in the US.
