Nigerian intelligence start-up, Stears Inc. was launched in 2017 by four school mates, Michael Famoroti, an economist; Bode Ogunlana, a software engineer; Abdul Abdulrahim, a data scientist; and Preston Ideh, a corporate lawyer, who met during secondary school at Loyola Jesuit College, Nigeria, and later at the London School of Economics and Imperial College in the United Kingdom. After its launch, one of the famous outstanding exploits recorded to have been done by the company is creating Nigeria’s first real-time election tracker, which drew two million unique users during the 2019 general election cycle.
Recently, while reviewing the business, the company is said to have been obsessed over the problems they have set out to solve. Acknowledging that they know that the market wants more than just articles, however well-researched. They have decided to learn from what their users want. They have now said their goal is but is not limited to, building Stears 2.0 in 54 African countries.
Iterating that a continent with over 1trillion dollars economy of over 1 billion people needs deep, reliable, regular streams of data, not just articles or reports, Stears is therefore positioning to be the foremost and most trusted source of data and insights in Africa. To provide this, they have a plan for execution which include focusing on making proprietary data, models, tools, and forecasting directly available to users.
It was in that light that a seed round funding was opened led by Mac Venture Capital and had participation from other companies including Serena William’s Serena Ventures, Melo 7 Tech Partners, Omidyar Group’s Luminate Fund, and Cascador in a short while, and closed after accumulating a huge 3.3million dollars.
The Chief Executive Officer of the company, Preston Ideh, in a public interview expressed excitement at the development and assured that the funding will translate to the expansion of the company to other African countries. The statement read in part, “We’re excited to announce that we have closed our seed round funding of $3.3M led by @MaCVentureCap, with participation from @SerenaVentures. Expressing how this translates, she said, it means they can be trusted and a lot of people believe in their vision.
Also, Serena Williams in an emailed statement stated that she did not invest in the company because of her love for Africa, but rather, “because Stears has strategically thought of how to increase the investment community on the continent. They’re aware of the complexities and have leverage with data and technology, and I truly respect what they’re doing,” she continued.
Cumulatively, adding an initial pre-seed round of $650,000 in 2019, the financing round places Stears’ total funding at $4 million.
We love to see Nigerians take bold steps!
