Why I’m joining others to invest $3.3 Million In Nigerian startup – Serena Williams

Nigerian financial data and intelligence startup, Stears, has concluded a fundraising seed round of $3.3 million with investments from Serena Ventures, the venture capital firm owned by tennis superstar, Serena Williams, and other investors.

The funding round was led by MaC Venture Capital, with participation from Melo 7 Tech Partners, Omidyar Group’s Luminate Fund, Cascador, and Hoaq Club.

Stears provides subscription-based data and insight to global businesses and professionals, allowing them to make smart decisions about African economies and markets by leveraging publicly available macroeconomic and financial data, its proprietary datasets, and Stears’ analytical expertise.

In 2019, Stears built a real-time election database for Nigeria’s 2019 presidential election. The company plans to relaunch the database in time for the 2023 elections.

Stears was founded by four Nigerians from different professional fields, Micheal Famoroti, an economist; Bode Ogunlana, a software engineer; Preston Ideh, a corporate lawyer; and Abdul Abdulrahim, a data scientist. They started the company as a way to address the lack of information and data-driven insights in Nigeria.

Speaking on the investment, Serena Williams said the company has shown an appreciation for the issues involved in problem-solving for professionals.

“Better and more transparent business and financial data is expected to lead to more investment on the African continent. Stears has shown a deep appreciation of the complexities involved in solving this problem for global professionals. Through a combination of technology and data, Stears is well placed to leverage the massive data opportunity on the continent,” she said.