Your Techstars Venture Capital Weekly Digest is here! (Issue #49)

Check out the infographic below to see the robustness of the startup community and the wide range of industries that these companies represent during the ongoing fight against COVID.

The venture capital scene in Africa has consistently grown, with an influx of capital from local and international investors reaching unprecedented heights in recent years. To understand how much growth has occurred, African startups raised a meagre $400 million in 2015 compared to the $2 billion that came into the continent in 2019, according to Africa-focused fund Partech Africa.

Many executives that want to initiate corporate venturing activities or that are dissatisfied with the performance of their existing corporate venture capital (CVC) units struggle to answer the question of how to set up a CVC organisation for success.

Despite this low proportion, there were some early-stage companies that raised significant amounts in 2020 that were founded and led by Black entrepreneurs. For this feature, we looked at larger Series A and Series B rounds last year that went to Black startup founders. Here are some of the companies we think are worth highlighting during Black History Month. 

Data indicates that this founder group is a fairly diverse one. A Crunchbase survey of rounds of $100 million or more to U.S. companies at Series A and B stage between January and mid-February found that 30 percent of these investments went to teams with female or Black founders.

More and more startups are getting investments through convertible debt instruments. Here’s everything you need to know about convertible debt, how it works, and how it affects your cap table. The…