In partnership with Africa Startup Challenge, the University of Buea and private equity partners, we operate an incubator which is designed to accelerate the growth of startup companies. It’s well known that there’s a problem with seed capital in Africa and Cameroon is no exception. We’ve spoken with many enterprising young hackers who’ve found that funds were simply unavailable or local investors demanded absurdly high equity stakes in their businesses—at times as much as 60-80%.

In response to this, incubators have begun to spring up around Sub-Saharan Africa, many loosely based on Paul Graham’s popular Y-Combinator model. In this model, small investments of seed capital (between $5000 – $20,000) are made in the early stages of a startup in exchange for a share of equity in the company. The startup founders are provided with a workspace, advice, oversight and between 2-6 months to develop their idea into a functional product or service.

In contrast to this model, Limbe Labs does not necessarily take an equity stake every company we fund. We recognize that each founder is unique, as are their business ideas and capital needs. Therefore, we make use of a flexible range of investment tools, such as small loans with low fixed interest rates. Another alternative funding stategy we use is project work in exchange for seed capital. Startup founders are matched to a commercial software project of an appropriate size (2-3 months) and they are paid a high monthly salary while gaining valuable experience doing client work. At the completion of the project they receive a lump sum payment, providing them with enough capital to bootstrap a business venture.

Coupled with seed funding, we provide startup founders with a professional office space, broadband, services and the support they need to grow their ideas into sustainable businesses. Watch our blog for news about startup founders we’re working with, competition announcements and so on.