Dear Impacc friends,

We've had a heated summer at Impacc (the pun might even be funny if the reality wasn't so sad): we’ve completed 2 new investments, including our first investment in the creative industries, a sector we’d been watching for some time, and our first fintech, which helps businesses access the loans they need to grow. We’ve also launched a new website that does a better job of explaining what we do. But first, the startups:

HustleSasa: What a concert has to do with jobs

Africa’s creative industries are often underestimated. Peng Chen sees things differently. So do we. That’s why we’ve invested in his company, HustleSasa, a digital ticketing platform.

Africa is full of creative talent, but there are still far too few ways for people to earn a living from it. That’s exactly why Peng founded HustleSasa.

The platform supports major festivals with 15,000 visitors, but it also works for a small pop-up event or an 18-year-old founder’s first fashion sale. Last year, HustleSasa processed around half a million tickets for more than 2,000 events. Peng estimates that every 10 tickets sold create roughly 1 gig job, in security, at the entrance, in catering, stage construction or technical production.

Peng is a cool guy, and the business is clearly working. But what excites me most is that we’re now active in the creative economy. Agriculture and healthcare, the two pillars of our portfolio, remain essential. At the same time, they can reinforce the familiar story about Africa: there is hunger and disease, so “people need these things”. HustleSasa is about something people want, not only something they need. The appetite for culture is enormous. We’ve now found a way to turn that appetite into jobs, incomes and dignity.

That seemed like a good enough reason to celebrate the signing over Chinese hotpot. Next time, I’ll know what those dark-red sauces are hiding and won’t make the same mistake again.

Celebrating our signing with the HustleSasa team over a hotpot in Nairobi

Flowt: Helping good businesses access the credit they need

Flowt Intelligence is now part of our portfolio as well. The company was founded on an all too common observation: a business can have a sound model and real opportunities to grow, yet still be unable to access the capital it needs. Often, the issue isn’t that the business is not creditworthy. It’s that proving its creditworthiness takes too long, costs too much and relies on processes that don’t fit the reality of African businesses.

Flowt is building a marketplace that connects African businesses with lenders. The crucial part happens before the loan decision: a company connects its accounting software to Flowt, and the platform analyses its financial data within a few hours. It then creates a clearer picture of how much financing would make sense and why. Lenders receive structured information and have far less manual work to do.

For founders, this creates a more realistic chance of securing finance. For lenders, it makes the decision easier. And for businesses with a good model, it opens a door that has often been closed.

This is a somewhat unusual investment for us because we’re coming in at a very early stage. But Flowt fits our portfolio too well to pass up: it could eventually help us provide loans to some of our own portfolio companies. And it already seems to be working. Since we signed, Flowt has arranged and disbursed its first 3 loans.

Flowt and Impacc still fit on one sofa

A new front door for Impacc

We’ve just rebuilt our website, and I discovered that I have alarmingly strong opinions about buttons, fonts and the exact shade of orange. Fortunately, my colleague Kristian Munsche made sure the site would have to do more than just look good.

The new website should make it easier for founders, donors and partners to understand how Impacc works, how our model works and why jobs sit at the centre of everything we do. Above all, it gives more space to the stories behind the numbers: the people building companies in difficult markets, the teams supporting them and the people whose donations keep the cycle moving.

You’re the first to get a look: www.impacc.org. As always, I’d love to hear your feedback.

The Impacc cycle as per our new website

All the best from all of us at Impacc,

Till