The Fast Forward Idea: What Ideas are Worth Building

At Fast Forward Studios, we’re committed to backing and building the best, and most impactful solutions for Africans. But how do we evaluate the best ideas?

As a Venture Studio, Fast Forward is constantly iterating and evaluating many ideas, whether for investment or building. Quite often, we get questions from founders and investors alike about the kinds of projects we take on. In this piece, we itemise the trigger elements that make ideas stand out to us.

Although we are an impact-driven organisation, it is also important to note that Fast Forward is also profit-driven. In fact, we believe the two are not divorceable concepts.  Building for impact invariably leads to providing value-driven solutions that drive revenue and profit for organisations.

But what does this impact look like?

Accelerating a digital Africa 

The last twenty years have seen Africa play catch-up to the rest of the world in the race for digitization. While progress has been rapid, there is still a lot more to be done. For context, internet penetration on the continent still stands at just 40%, compared to 67.4% and 84.4% in Asia and South America respectively. As a consequence, other aspects of the digital economy (e.g. payments, commerce, digital media consumption, education, etc.) are also lagging compared to other regions in the world.

However, the beauty of digital innovation is that given the right conditions, its growth can be exponential. At Fast Forward, we look out for ideas that accelerate the growth of a digital Africa whether it requires the adoption of new technology or reducing the barrier to access of current solutions. In the same way the fast-forward button on old record players allowed users to skip a few frames, we look out for solutions that enable African businesses and individuals to skip a few steps in the digital innovation curve. For instance, Bumpa—a portfolio company—allows business owners to set up a website and list products for free, encouraging them to adopt digital channels to increase the reach of their business.

Prosperity Creation

Internally, there was a debate on whether to name this prosperity creation or market creation. We ended up going with prosperity creation because it is essential to Fast Forward’s mission and we believe it is a more succinct term for what we aim to achieve. At Fast Forward, prosperity-creating innovation captures both market creation and job creation. Essentially, these are solutions that make people wealthier, either through the creation of new market verticals or by equipping individuals and businesses with the tools required to take advantage of already existing opportunities. 

According to the Christensen Institute, Market-creating innovations transform complicated and expensive products into products that are simple and affordable, making them accessible to a whole new segment of people for whom there was always underlying demand, but no adequate solution on the market. We look out for these characteristics in the ideas that we fund.

Classic examples of prosperity-creating startups are TalentQL and sister company AltSchool. The first trains and connects top-level software engineering talents with top companies around the world. The latter equips people looking to learn tech skills with the knowledge required to get their first jobs. While the immediate impact of both companies is evident to see—increased productivity and access to better opportunities for individuals, the long-term impact is even more exciting. The talents being groomed at TalentQL and AltSchool will go on to be backers, founders and operators in 5 -10 years that shape Africa’s image and reputation globally, the future of the ecosystem and drive innovation. That kind of impact is what excites us at Fast Forward. We’re particularly excited about the creation of jobs that allow people to earn $1000 and above as we think that’s a figure that allows the average African to live comfortably. 

Market Opportunity

In addition to the quality of impact, another lens through which we screen ideas is the scale of its impact. After many years of building and funding startups, we’ve come to understand that some ideas, no matter how well-intentioned and well-designed, just do not scale because there’s no market for them. While there is still utility in creating some of those solutions, our sights are firmly set on the ideas that maximise impact.

We consider ideas that can scale to reach 10+ million people within five years the ideal fit for our portfolio. These don’t have to be consumer products though. We believe infrastructure products sit firmly in this category and may even fit better than consumer products. By funding and building the rails for future innovation, we are able to maximise our impact on the market. Examples of these kinds of businesses already on the continent include Flutterwave, MFS and Paystack. By accelerating multiple ideas like this for different overlooked sectors, we can maximise our impact of driving digital transformation on the continent.

Potential for returns

As experienced operators, we understand the pitfalls associated with the growth-at-all-cost model. As such, even though we will be pursuing high-growth ideas, we will also prioritise business fundamentals. This means we will primarily work with businesses that have good unit economics or ideas that make money from day one. We will work with entrepreneurs that focus on “boring” but essential things like revenue generation, operational efficiency, month-on-month repeatable growth focus, aligning towards scale and feasible exits etc. In terms of raw numbers, we expect the ideas we work on to be able to reach $10m in ARR within 3-5 years of operation.

Parting thoughts

While this is not an exhaustive list of the things we consider when evaluating startups, it is a good starting point for entrepreneurs and investors looking to approach Fast Forward. Ideas that can become a competitive advantage are also welcome.

There are also a couple of ideas we consider red flags. Me-too ideas i.e. ideas copy and pasted from other markets without concern for local context or ideas similar to other successful products without significant difference in execution are red herrings for us. We also run from hammer-looking-for-a-nail solutions. If there’s no market for it, then it’s not worth building. And if you’ve built it already, follow Kevin O’Leary’s advice, “If you can't make money after 36 months, AND there's no path (or pivot, emphasis ours)  to making money, it was a hobby, not a business. Shut it down”.

Unlocking prosperity for Africans is our mission at Fast Forward, and any idea that does that is always worth talking about. Think you have an idea worth building? Reach out to us here: hello@fastforward.fund