Acumen Angels supports entrepreneurs when they need it most
Our 2024 Acumen Angels awardees are a powerful reminder of the importance of backing entrepreneurs with early-stage capital when their ideas are stilltaking form.
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Abosede Lewu knows the problem all too well: In her native Nigeria, women die during childbirth at one of the highest rates of any country in the world. This, despite the fact that Nigeria has the largest economy in Africa and one of the fastest growing economies on the planet. So Abosede launched the Keep All Mothers Alive Project, a technology-driven initiative to equip traditional birth attendants with digital health tools and modern antenatal care training. Their app has already impacted 400 birth attendants directly serving over 100,000 women.
It’s a good idea — one that’s capable of transforming maternal care across Nigeria, perhaps all of Africa — if Abosede can negotiate the myriad challenges that come with being an entrepreneur in the early days of an impact-driven enterprise.
Abosede is one of 25 of our 2024 Acumen Angels cohort — an inspiring group of next-gen leaders and entrepreneurs who are bringing innovative solutions to historically excluded communities. These solutions range from vertical solar panels in Spanish farmlands to climate-smart seed banks in Ethiopia; from mobile training hubs that educate women in rural India to a tech-enabled platform connecting low-income textile makers in Colombia with fashion brands across Latin America.
Click here to see the full list of our 2024 Acumen Angels awardees.
What all of these entrepreneurs share in common is a passion to change the world for the better, a solution with the potential to do it, and the need for time and support to develop that solution into a viable company ready for a seed round of investment.
Why Acumen backs early-stage entrepreneurs
Across the investment landscape, philanthropic and grant capital are increasingly shifting toward mid- and large-scale investments, prioritizing ventures that have already proven their ability to scale. But what about the early-stage entrepreneurs tackling poverty in the toughest markets — those still refining their ideas, testing their models, and laying the groundwork to bridge the innovation gap in the most underserved markets?
Acumen Angels provides early-stage capital to extraordinary entrepreneurs from our Acumen Academy alumni community that we call the Foundry — leaders whose character, competence, and moral imagination drive them to build innovative solutions for underserved communities in some of the hardest markets.
Over the past six years, Acumen Angels has awarded $4.6 million to 99 early-stage entrepreneurs. To date, awardees have impacted over 23 million lives, created more than 87,000 jobs, served over 780,000 paying customers, and raised over $42 million in follow-on capital after receiving the Angels award.
Unlike traditional early-stage funding, Acumen Angels offers simple, trust-based capital intended to give early-stage entrepreneurs the financial and community-based support to test and refine business models with great potential to grow and scale.
We invest across the capital continuum to help transformational companies grow from seed to scale
Our Acumen Angels program fits into our larger work at Acumen to provide entrepreneurs with the right support at the right time. Sometimes this means large infusions of capital to help a company scale. Other times, it means going even earlier than early-stage capital. Indeed, each of our Acumen Angles awardees starts as a participant in our Fellowship and Accelerator programs through our Acumen Academy. Here, they commit to a six-month to one-year program where they refine their leadership skills, build resilience, and reaffirm their commitment to building models that uphold their visions for a world without poverty. Upon graduating, they join the Foundry, our global alumni community of impact-driven leaders who share and learn together.
Only after this deep engagement can individuals become eligible to apply for the Acumen Angels award — a program designed much like a “Friends and Family” investment round. As entrepreneurs continue to grow and cement themselves in our community, they gain access to scale-focused opportunities that bring greater visibility, credibility, and support to their work.
Case Study: From Angel awardee to Acumen investee
Buffy Okeke-Ojiudu is the founder of Zebra CropBank, a social enterprise constructing last-mile storage infrastructure to tackle food waste, improve farmer livelihoods, and transform agriculture in Nigeria and beyond. In a country where more than 17 million people experience food insecurity, yet $8 billion in food goes to waste each year, access to proper storage and processing facilities is crucial for the future of Nigerian agriculture. CropBank is building storage and processing facilities that make it more efficient, accessible, and transparent for Nigerian farmers to manage, store, and monetize their produce.
Buffy’s trajectory across Acumen’s continuum of support demonstrates our approach:
- In 2019 Buffy became an Acumen Fellow, developing leadership skills, building relationships, gaining trust within Acumen’s community, and committing to his vision for Nigerian agriculture.
- In 2021, he received the Acumen Angels award, using it as early-stage capital to test assumptions and build initial systems.
- Today, CropBank is an Acumen investee as part of the Trellis agriculture investment initiative. According to a 60 Decibels report, CropBank is providing first-time access to storage solutions for 99% of its customers, with 56% of users reporting increased incomes.
Buffy Okeke-Ojiudu, Founder of Zebra CropBank“In our case, we want investors that are like family. It’s not just about the investment, which is awesome. But in our case Acumen also helped us think about our solution.”
Since receiving the Angels award, CropBank has won the Global Startup Innovation Award in the Better Production category of the United Nations World Food Forum and the prestigious title of World Food Forum Innovation Of The Year.
Following capital and support from Acumen Angels, CropBank has achieved:
- 895% increase in direct lives impacted (380 before; 3,781 after).
- 24,900% increase in funds raised ($5,000 before; $1,250,000 after).
“This investment [was] a groundbreaking moment for us, as it signifie[d] our inaugural investment in an Acumen Fellow-founded company,” said Adekemi Ajayi, former director of Acumen West Africa. “This strategic move underscores our dedication to empowering local entrepreneurs in their mission to address deeply rooted poverty challenges on a global scale, while also reaffirming our commitment to our Fellows, who embody the principles of moral leadership. By supporting enterprises founded by Acumen Fellows, we are harnessing the power of local solutions with a global impact.”
Acumen Angels portfolio at a glance
Like Buffy, several other Fellows and Acumen Angels awardees have gone on to grow their solutions through follow-on investment along Acumen’s capital continuum and beyond — proving that early-stage capital, when paired with trust and long-term support, creates real opportunities for growth and scale. Entrepreneurs across the Acumen Angels portfolio have reported a more than 240% increase in follow-on capital after being awarded Angels capital.
While the risks of providing early-stage awards are real, our experience shows they’re worth taking: 97.8% of Acumen Angels awardees have exceeded, met, or partially met their intended award goals. Only 2.2% have shut down or failed to meet their objectives.
As Acumen Angels continues to provide catalytic early-stage capital, we see an opportunity to springboard the next generation of entrepreneurs who will build sustainable, inclusive markets where others might see risk or despair — entrepreneurs like our 2024 cohort. They are a powerful reminder that building solutions to poverty starts with believing in and supporting the right leaders at the critical, earliest stages.
Learn more about the Acumen Angels program and read about the 2024 awardees here.