CASE STUDY | BUSINESS ANGELS
Empowering Female Angel Investors: How Tiye Angels & Strategy Tools are Transforming Egypt’s Investment Landscape
About Tiye Angels
Tiye Angels, Egypt’s first women-focused angel investment network, was launched in December 2019 under USAID project in Egypt. It is currently supported by Business Egypt, USAID funded program. The legacy of support empowers Tiye Angels to continue fostering a thriving ecosystem for female founders and investors in Egypt.
The network aims to bridge the gender gap in Egypt’s investment landscape by increasing funding for women-led startups and encouraging women to become investors. Named after Queen Tiye, Tiye Angels provides financial capital, mentorship, and training to empower female entrepreneurs and investors, fostering economic inclusivity and gender parity in Egypt’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Background
Egypt is country of contrasts: ancient wonders alongside a young and vibrant population – of 110 million people 60% are below the age of 30. The startup ecosystem has made great strides in recent years despite Egypt facing significant challenges that impact business operations, such as currency issues, complex regulatory environment . These challenges have led many entrepreneurs to look beyond the borders and expand to the Gulf region.
Despite these obstacles, there has been a substantial increase in support structures such as incubators, accelerators, and venture funds over the past decade. Women-led startups, however, continue to face additional barriers in accessing finance and networks, particularly outside major cities like Cairo and Alexandria.
In an effort to address these challenges, Tiye Angels, a network focused on creating more female investors to then support and invest in female entrepreneurs in Egypt, organized both an Investment Readiness Program as well as an Angel Investor Masterclass in collaboration with the Strategy Tools team.
Supported by Business Egypt a USAID program, the programs aimed to enhance the knowledge and skills of potential investors, particularly women, and foster an environment conducive to gender lens investing.
The initiative was spearheaded by Christine Sedky, the network manager of Tiye Angels, and Nashwa Habib, who leads entrepreneurial activities for women.
“The program has not only empowered me with the skills, knowledge, and insights needed to excel in the world of angel investing but has also given me the confidence to embark on my journey with a deep sense of purpose.”
Accelerated Learning in Just 3 Days
In October 2023, Christian Rangen, Rick Rasmussen, and Henrik Amstutz from Strategy Tools spearheaded the Angel Investor Masterclass and Investor Readiness Program, leveraging their extensive expertise in the venture capital and startup domains.
In preparation for the program, the Strategy Tools team collaborated closely with the Tiye Angels team to custom design material that catered to the participants’ needs and align with the nuances of the local investment landscape.
Over three immersive days in Cairo Egypt, a diverse cohort of participants – including seasoned and aspiring investors, ecosystem stakeholders, and startups – embarked on a journey from idea conception to IPO, enriching their understanding of the complex angel investing and startup fundraising landscape.
During the Scale Up Angel! Simulation, participants were immersed in the complete business angel and startup fundraising journey. They delved into angel investment strategies, mastered portfolio management, honed skills in supporting founders, fine-tuned capital allocation strategies, analyzed term sheets, structured deals, navigated mark-ups and down rounds, crafted effective board structures, and strategized exit plans.
“The masterclass was very interactive, and goes very deep on the knowledge. The content was very much aligned with the stage of the investors participating and accommodated different backgrounds and investors with different levels of maturity. It was very inclusive. The way the learning is accelerated in a gamified way was also kind of incredible to watch,” said Christine Sedky, one of the organizers of the program.
“It was really engaging, informative, most importantly, really fun! I think the participants really enjoyed it and it’s been great building a sense of community among the investors,” added Nashwa Habib.
Condensing the entire founder’s journey into two days of simulation made for a fast-paced, intense, yet rewarding learning environment for the team at FI and Accenture.
“It was a quite a steep learning curve, especially if you didn’t have a background in the startup landscape – but by the end of it, I was really able to understand what that meant and how that actually comes into practice. It’s a really fun way to understand various parts of running a startup and to be completely engrossed in a new world,” revealed Nirmitee Mehta, another participant at the masterclass and a strategy consultant in private equity advisory, Accenture.
“This was one of the best training programs I have ever taken. Very well-crafted content, tools, healthy space to think, negotiate and reflect, smooth organization and the Scale Up Angel! simulation experience was super.”
Impact
The Business Angels program organized by Tiye Angels yielded several significant outcomes, contributing to the growth and development of the startup ecosystem in Egypt, particularly for female entrepreneurs. Below are the key outcomes of the program:
Increased Knowledge and Skills
Participants gained a thorough understanding of the angel investing process, including how to evaluate startups, the importance of due diligence, and strategies for post-investment support. Post-program, potential investors, especially women, felt more confident in their ability to make informed investment decisions.
Strengthened Community
Participants benefited from the diverse experiences and backgrounds of their peers, leading to a richer learning experience. Experiencing the Scale Up! Angel simulation as a team also fostered a strong sense of community among participants, creating networks for ongoing support and collaboration opportunities.
Increase Awareness of Gender Lens Investing
The program raised awareness about the unique challenges faced by women entrepreneurs and the importance of gender lens investing. Several participants expressed a commitment to prioritizing investments in women-led startups, contributing to greater gender diversity in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Actionable Outcomes
Startups that participated gained insights into what investors look for, helping them to better prepare for future funding rounds, ultimately making them more investor-ready.
Investors left the program with actionable strategies to implement in their investment activities, enhancing their ability to support startups effectively.
Increased Engagement
Many participants expressed interest in continued engagement with Tiye Angels through follow-up workshops, networking events, and additional training sessions.
Positive Impact on the Ecosystem
The program contributed to the expansion of resources available for startups in Egypt, with more knowledgeable and prepared investors ready to support entrepreneurial ventures.
The success of the program in Egypt has the potential to influence similar initiatives in other regions, promoting gender lens investing and the development of startup ecosystems across the Middle East and North Africa.
Long-term Collaboration
Due to the program’s initial success, Strategy Tools and Tiye Angels have stayed in partnership and are now working on a new, expanded program, to be launched in Q3 2024.
“It was a really cool workshop, a lot of learning, significant interaction and great fun”
Facilitator’s Reflections
by Christian Rangen, CEO, Strategy Tools
Active business angels are a foundation to any successful startup ecosystem around the world.
From London to Dubai, Sydney to Cairo, angel investors and angel networks are growing and developing at an ever-faster pace. Angels play a vital role in helping early-stage founders reach problem-solution fit, product-market fit, implement good governance and raise significant venture capital financing.
At the same time, angel investors play a key role to support more female founders and drive more positive impact through startups.
In Cairo, Christine and the extended team at Tiye Angels has been doing a remarkable job to build out and activate a vast network of both new and experienced business angels. These angels – as often is the case – come from all walks of life. Successfully exited female entrepreneur, real estate developer, incubator manager, former banking executive, media and communications consultant, venture capital manager and students and more.
Yet, a common challenge is that many angels do not have the tools, experience or network to seriously step into their roles as angels – and create significant financial value from their angel investment portfolios. Equally, few angels have a clearly articulated strategy, a clear portfolio framework and a deep understanding of how they can add value to their investments (hint; it may be challenging, but the right angel investors can add incredible value to their startup investments. We can teach you how).
To get an invitation to travel to Egypt and work with this impressive group of early-stage investors was truly a pleasure. Based on extensive discussions and deep insights (thanks to all our sources and experts), we designed a very interactive, experiential masterclass to teach all the basic principles of angel investing. Our starting point for the design was “what does it mean to be a ‘good’ angel investor”. Around that problem statement, we then designed the content, the activities, the exercises and the toolkit.
Around thinking was simple; being a good angel is so much more than simply being an investor. You want to work with, support, engage, challenge, coach and mentor founders – or maybe use your network to open doors, find customers, recommend board members and secure follow-on investors. But how can we teach this through a short masterclass?
Our solution was to bring in the highly successful Scale Up Angel! Simulation and build the Masterclass around this as the core element. In Scale Up Angel! participants are split in two groups; angel investors (in training) and first time founders. Over the three days, the founders focus on building their companies (case companies provided for the Masterclass) and angel investor focus on investing, providing value and helping the startups reach successful exits.
The core insights here is for the angel investors to realize what an incredibly important partner they can be to the founders, and directly, through their experience, network, access and resources, they can make or break the success of an early-stage company.
Second, we pulled together the first ever Angel Investing Toolkit for an Egyptian audience.
This powerful, visual toolkit contained 18 strategy canvases, all selected to provide Egyptian angel investors with angel superskills. From understanding the many types of angel investor, to setting your own angel strategy and strategy tools to support founders, the visual canvases was the second building block of the Masterclass.
Third, we selected a series of mini-lectures and guest speakers, providing insights and expertise to a few, targeted topics during the Masterclass. Board composition, cap table math, investment syndicates, ESOPs, fundraising strategies and exits were key topics explored in these mini-lectures.
Combined, I believe we were able to design and deliver a robust, high-impact program; a program supporting diverse, gender-balanced angel investors, with the tools, experience and insights to become better angel investors – and drive value creation in their portfolios. Central to this was both the Scale Up Angel! simulation, the Business Angel Strategy Toolkit and the lectures, but none of this would have been possible without the leadership and guidance of Christine, the board of Tiye Angels and the immense engagement from the very, very actively engaged participants.
Thank you for the invitation, Egypt. We can’t wait to be back.
Tools We Used During the Scale Up Angel Masterclass
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