Your Friday date with Sena💌

Hello, Sena here! It’s Friday again, and as always, I have so much to share that I hardly know where to begin.

Are you aware Future Studio will be at Gitex Lagos? Yes, alongside government bodies, private sector leaders, and international organizations, we’ll be leading a delegation of 10 startups to proudly showcase Benin’s innovation to the world.

This is a huge opportunity to show what Benin founders are building, build powerful networks, and bring back opportunities and partnerships that will benefit the entire ecosystem. If you’d like to attend as a guest, you’ll find all the details below.

For now, I’ll let you dive into the rest of the updates I’ve prepared for you.

Latest News:

• Degas Limited, a Tokyo-based agri-fintech company, pledged to invest $100 million over the next four years to build an AI-powered agricultural hub in Ghana. The AI-powered hub will connect farmers with credit, seeds, fertilizer, and transport, and track crops from planting to market. It will cut waste and raise yields in a country where farming employs over a third of the people but is often held back by poor storage, bad roads, and reliance on rain. Smallholder farmers in particular struggle to get loans or move produce quickly enough to avoid spoilage.
• The AGIA-PD Fund, led by Africa50, has secured $118 million in its first close on the way to a $400M goal. Backed by global partners like AfDB, KfW, FCDO, BOAD, and the Soros Economic Development Fund, the fund will channel blended finance into renewable energy, sustainable transport, ICT, and other green infrastructure projects across the continent. As Africa50 CEO Alain Ebobissé put it: “From ambition to execution,” this is green infrastructure in motion.
• AyaHQ is raising $10M to supercharge Africa’s Web3 scene! Half of the fund will back early-stage startups, while the rest will go into building a founder campus in Accra (and another in Kenya). With a unique “shared equity” model and growing partnerships, AyaHQ is betting on collaboration as the future of African blockchain innovation.
• Uncovered Fund and Monex Ventures have launched the UMAIP fund, a $20 million venture capital pool targeting Africa and the Middle East. Initial checks of $100K–$500K will go into 30 startups, with up to $2M reserved for follow-on rounds. Expect a strong focus on fintech, retail, mobility, logistics, and climate tech, especially in Egypt. A bridge to Japanese expertise and partnerships.

Insights:

Case studies

Walmart’s Hidden Startup Playbook

Walmart just reported Q2 earnings, and the headlines were all about a small earning miss and a stock dip. Boring.

The real story? Walmart is secretly running like a startup inside a 60-year-old retail machine.

• E-commerce is up 25%
• Marketplace sales jumped 17%
• Membership revenue rose 15%
• Advertising grew 46% (their fastest-growing segment)

That’s not “retail pace.” That’s startup-scale growth, inside a $600B company.

Here’s what founders should take away:

1. Leverage what you already own. Walmart isn’t building new warehouses from scratch. They turned 4,600 stores into mini-fulfillment hubs, unlocking 3-hour delivery for 95% of U.S. households. Lesson: distribution is an unfair advantage if you know how to repurpose it.
2. Don’t just sell products, sell the platform. By opening its Marketplace, Walmart expanded SKUs without touching inventory. In startup terms: they stopped being the product and became the infrastructure.
3. Data is the real margin. Their ad business is tiny compared to Amazon, but it’s growing 46% YoY with fat margins. Why? Because Walmart owns the shelf, the shopper, and the data. That triangle is priceless.

Walmart is no longer “just” a low-margin grocer. It’s becoming two businesses:

• The old retail engine (slow, steady, low margin)
• A new digital ecosystem (fast, sticky, high margin)

The big question: Will investors start valuing Walmart like a grocer, or like a digital platform?

Because if the market hasn’t caught up yet… that’s the real opportunity.

Product-Market Fit Insight

Retention Beats Revenue (Every Time): If you can’t keep them, you didn’t win them. Simple.

I measure product-market fit by one thing: do your customers keep paying, month after month? Surveys can lie. Twitter hype can lie. But bank accounts don’t.

Breakdown:

• World-class benchmark: 90%+ retention, but i prefer 70%.
• Don’t wait a year to see if you have it—find an early signal.
• That “early signal” should predict whether they’ll stick.

Opportunities:

• Applications are open for Techstars Spring 2026 Accelerators

Selected startups receive $220,000 in funding, hands-on mentorship, and lifetime access to Techstars’ global network of investors, experts, and alumni—plus $4M+ in partner perks. On average, Techstars graduates go on to raise $1M+ after the program. Apply by November 19.

• Applications for Future Studio Pre-Entrepreneurship Bootcamp

The drive to build is one thing; but turning it into a real, scalable business takes the right structure, mentorship, and community. That’s exactly what the Future Studio Pre-Entrepreneurship Bootcamp is designed for.

In just 4 weeks, you’ll gain clarity, sharpen your entrepreneurial skills, and develop the foundation needed to build a globally relevant startup. Spots are already filling fast in this first cohort.

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Early bird slots (203,900 FCFA) are almost gone, after which the fee rises to 327,500 FCFA. Register now or contact info@futurestudio.bj for details.

Events:

• The stage is set, the startups are ready, and the energy will be electric! Today, five Beninese startups are pitching their game-changing ideas at Epitech Cotonou from 6 PM. Don’t miss your chance to be part of the action, network with innovators, and cast your vote to help pick the winner. Register now before it’s too late
• GITEX Nigeria 2025 – Happening this year’s lineup the Tech Expo & Future Economy Conference (Sept 3–4, Eko Hotel Convention Centre, Lagos), and the Startup Festival (Sept 3–4, Landmark Centre, Lagos). Registration is now open.
• Moonshot 2025 – Lagos, Oct 15–16 - Join Africa’s leading founders, creatives, and tech leaders for two days of forward-thinking keynotes, panels, and networking. Early bird tickets are 20% off—secure your spot today.

Start-up Spotlight:

If you live in Benin, especially in Cotonou, you’ve probably dealt with housing agents before. Maybe you were shown homes that looked nothing like the photos, or discovered they were already taken…just so the agent could collect the “frais de visite.” Maybe you were ghosted, or worse, scammed.

Does that bring back some bad memories, or make you anxious about your next house hunt? If so, you’ll love the solution our Startup of the Week is building.

1. What is Locapay and what inspired you to create it?

Locapay was born out of a personal story that became a collective struggle. In 2023, when I came to Cotonou for an internship, I experienced what too many tenants experience: scams, false promises, abusive landlords, lost security deposits... Within a few months, I found myself trapped twice by an opaque system with no recourse. These experiences left a lasting impression on me and gave me a single obsession: to prevent anyone else from going through the same nightmare.

That's when I reconnected with Arsène Amadoudji, an old friend who had become a real estate agent. As I shared my story with him, I realized that this was a much bigger problem: tenants were losing money and peace of mind, while landlords were struggling to find reliable tenants and secure their income. So we decided to fight back together. With Arsène, Julian, and Christian, we put together a team and started building Locapay.

Our goal is simple: to offer a reliable and transparent solution where tenants can find and pay for their housing safely, and landlords can manage their properties and collect rent without stress.

2. What was your biggest challenge as co-founders, and how did you overcome it?

The most difficult challenge was gaining trust. In a market where almost everyone has been cheated by a fake agent or a shady middleman, how do you convince people that a digital solution can make a difference? How do you get people to accept the idea of online payments when the country has seen so many fraudulent schemes and Ponzi collapses?

Added to this was the mistrust of traditional real estate agents, who saw us as competitors.

We decided to tackle these obstacles methodically, separating the problems and moving forward gradually. Rather than trying to transform everything at once, we chose to start small, listen, share our own experience, and prove through use that Locapay delivered concrete results. Every landlord who received their first rent payment online, every tenant who found a scam-free place to live, became living proof that our model worked. Trust was built step by step, through transparency and word of mouth.

3. Looking back, what lesson would you have liked to know before you started?

We learned that it's not necessary to start with a perfect product. The mistake would have been to stay behind our screens imagining users' needs and designing a solution that, in the end, doesn't solve any real problems. What matters is to start with the essentials, test directly in the field, gather feedback, and build the product step by step on that basis.

4. What has been your best team moment so far?

One of the most memorable moments was when Locapay went live on the Play Store and App Store. On that day, an idea born out of frustration and discussions among friends became a reality accessible to everyone. But another milestone was the very first rent payment collected via the platform. It was tangible proof that our work had not been in vain, that Locapay had moved beyond the concept stage to become a useful and practical tool.

5. What advice would you give to young founders who want to start their own startup today?

We would tell them not to look for the perfect idea, but to start with a real problem that they have experienced themselves or seen around them. We would tell them not to isolate themselves, because a startup is built on the strength of a team united by a common vision. Above all, we would remind them that entrepreneurship is a long road, full of doubts and obstacles, but that every small victory, accumulated with perseverance, ultimately changes the game.

Download the Locapay app here and follow them on social media.

Fun Content:

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And that’s a wrap! See you next time. Bye for now!