Maxime Bayen’s Post

🌡 "Children born in North Africa and West Africa in 2020, under a 1.5°C warming scenario, will be exposed to 4–6 times more heatwaves in their lifetimes compared to people born in 1960" Global Center on Adaptation This is a growing threat for the continent, and the opportunity for startup founders to tackle a massive problem that requires a mix of "tech and touch". ❄ For instance, the air conditioner is almost 100 years old, but it hasn't evolved much. It works pretty much the same way, it's often unaffordable and by the way, it represents around 10% of the global electricity consumption. And while there are about 1.5B AC units worldwide, it's expected to be 3x more by 2050! If you are a startup founder building a solution in Africa aimed at making people more resilient to heatwaves, we at Catalyst Fund would love to talk to you and possibly fund you. Just drop me a note with your pitch deck 👉 maxime@thecatalystfund.com

Awesome crowd and vibes at HackSummit today in Lausanne! Very proud to bring the African ecosystem perspective to this event focused on climate tech, with Maelis Carraro on stage earlier talking about the opportunities of investing into climate adaptation startups in Africa. And each time people ask us what exactly are climate adaptation innovations in Africa, we have at least 20 good examples to share already, straight from our Catalyst Fund portfolio: 🌳 Sand to Green ♻️ Bekia inc 🌾 Farmz2U ⚕️Assuraf | Insurance, Simply ☂️ PaddyCover 🌱 Visual and AI Solutions (VAIS) 🪨 Octavia Carbon 🚑 Eight Medical | Techstars ‘23 🍅 Farm to Feed 🌿 Agro Supply ☀️ NoorNation 🏥 Medikea 🪰 BioBuu 👨🌾 MazaoHub ❄️ Keep IT Cool 🛰️ Tolbi 🍃 THOLA 🥜 Zebra CropBank 🚮 Scrapays ⚡️ Earthbond

👋 Hey LinkedIn friends! One of our Catalyst Fund portfolio startups, NoorNation (Egypt), has been shortlisted to compete for the Greentech Startup of the Year North Africa Aware by the Global Startup Awards. 👉Now we need to get a ton of votes to push them across the 🏁, can you help? It takes a second to vote. Simply hit the link below, write your name, email and submit 👇 https://lnkd.in/d4vCTfZT cc Ragy Ramadan, REP® NoorNation, Javier Linares Maelis Carraro Karen Serem Waithaka

Off to Geneva today/tomorrow and Lausanne Thursday/Friday for an exciting HackSummit!! If you are in town this week and are a founder building climate tech solutions in Africa or an investor curious or active on the continent, Maelis Carraro and I would love to chat with you!

👋 Hi LinkedIn People, I am looking for a firm or a team who can provide very high quality fractional CFO services to several early-stage startups across Africa (up to 10 different countries). Experience working with fast growing startups is a must. 👉 Is that you? You know anyone? Please comment or DM 🙏

🚞Taking a (couple of) train(s) next week to take part in a very exciting event in Switzerland 🇨🇭. Maelis Carraro and I will be speaking at the leading climate tech focused event HackSummit on the 13th-14th June in Lausanne and taking advantage of the trip to also be in Geneva on the 11th-12th June. Looking forward to meet many amazing climate tech founders, investors and global ecosystem players! If you are also attending or you are in the area next week and keen to discuss, collaborate on Catalyst Fund journey to scale a portfolio of 40 startups building a more climate resilient Africa, please ping us and let’s chat! 👉 maxime@thecatalystfund.com More on the event: https://lnkd.in/ecDm6pdc

Shortly after I graduated from business school (many... many years ago... yep), as I went on to work in management consulting (like most people after business schools back in the 2008's), one of my best friends and roomate told me he was starting a business in the field of insect-protein. I thought (and told him) he was completely crazy. Fast forward to today, I couldn't be more proud to share our investment with Catalyst Fund into the Tanzania-based startup BioBuu that upcycles organic waste from municipalities and factories into nutritious, cost-effective animal feeds and organic fertilizer using black soldier fly larvae and windrow composting. What Kigen Compton, Matthew Haden and the team at BioBuu are building (and have already built!) is nothing short of amazing. As it's always the case with all our investments, our Venture Building team, led this time by Sydney Thiam, has already started supporting BioBuu for several weeks. cc Maelis Carraro Karen Serem Waithaka Hangwi Muambadzi Vikas Raj Tara Guelig Malika Anand Javier Linares ps: wondered what happened to my roomate? well, he co-founded in France what became one of the only unicorns in the insect-protein space globally. Bonus point if you can guess his name in comment 😊 https://lnkd.in/eJqdedtM

Is something changing in climate tech in Africa? 👇 ⚡ Historically, over the past 5+ years, Energy (mainly solar energy) has always been the main sub-sector within climate tech startups funding in Africa. Think companies like Sun King, Bboxx, d.light. These typically represented 60%-75% of all the climate tech funding any given year. However, since the beginning of the year, this ratio has dropped to around 40% on the back of other climate tech sub-sectors growing: 🌾 Agriculture: large deals this year included Apollo Agriculture, Complete Farmer, Tomato Jos 🛵 Mobility: with deals this year like Roam, BasiGo or Dodai 📲 Fintech: a good example here is the recent PULA deal Definitely an encouraging trend we are closing following at Catalyst Fund with already 19 deals (...and I hear a 20th one could be announced very shortly 😉) in Africa across no less than 9 different sub-sectors within Climate Tech! ...and we want to back even more startups in this critical sector, so don't hesitate to drop me an email with your pitch deck: maxime@thecatalystfund.com 📧