$168K, 300+ People, 30 Days: Unlocking African Startup Funding Of An Unusual Kind

It’s January 21, 2021, and for the most part, it feels like just another Thursday; that day of the week with an unspoken universal reputation as the unofficial last workday of the week; because Friday is basically pre-weekend with a pinch of pretend-work and a chunk of TGIF.

However, for the folks at Amitruck who have been having a go at logistics in Kenya for the last 21 months, it was to be no regular Thursday.

On this day, the startup embarked on a fundraising journey of an unusual kind: raising EUR 100 K (USD 120.4 K) by taking loans (from as little as EUR 50.00 or USD 60.25) from just about anyone in any part of the world, and committing to a repayment plan of 5 percent interest in exactly 12 months.

And it does get a little bit more interesting, because Amitruck was actually on the verge of closing a sizeable pre-seed when it launched this mass-borrowing effort.

The startup was to eventually announce the said pre-seed in the middle of February while extending the duration of the said mass-borrowing effort which had yielded around USD 90 K from 200+ people at the time.

Why take so many small loans from so many people when a substantial amount of funding was already en route? Uncommon circumstances. It's a little complicated.