If startups in West Africa still do not find their place in the regional economic landscape, it may be because the incubators operating in the region are not efficient. It is this premise that prompted the young Gabonese entrepreneur, Roland Ulrich Guissony, to launch Meromorf.
Rethinking the model of African startup incubators. This is the goal set by Meromorf, a startup / investment fund that wants to serve young African entrepreneurs. The idea of its young founder, Roland Ulrich Guissony, is simple and precise: “Today, the main concern of African entrepreneurs is access to finance. Our idea is therefore to take advantage of the web to form a community of African entrepreneurs who will help each other and decide on relevant projects that deserve to be funded “. This community will also be made up of experts who will bring technical and academic know-how to the candidates. But that’s not all. The idea is to also launch a mobile application to build a database of promising entrepreneurs to make it easier for investors to identify innovative projects.
For the moment, the project is still at the preliminary stage. A Crowdfunding campaign was launched on the Ulule platform to collect the modest sum of 1,099 euros. According to Guissony, this is only the “finalization of the proof of concept phase”, or in other words a proof of confidence. The next step is to raise awareness of the platform through workshops and meetings in Île de France and Libreville in Gabon, around the themes of entrepreneurship and innovation in Africa with the aim of feeding the database. .
“We hope that in 3 years, we will have found an incubator model that will be more efficient than what is offered today,” admits the aspiring entrepreneur.
Once this phase is completed, Meromorf will begin its fundraising. The young entrepreneur aims to raise 1 million euros within 5 years. A sum which will initially supply some 500 micro-projects with high potential.
The project is now presented in several competitions to make people talk about it. In a few days, it will be presented at HEC SEED Entrepreurship Summit, the event organized by HEC Paris. After this competition, Guissony intends to embark on a tour of the countries of West Africa in order to “capture the demand and then develop the adequate supply”.
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