TechCrunch+ roundup: Africa investor survey, biz model basics, video marketing tactics

If your marketing plan doesn’t include TikTok, YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels, well, can you really call it a marketing plan?

Video content is vital for driving early engagement, which is why growth expert Jonathan Martinez (formerly of Postmates, Uber and Chime) shares four tactics for getting started:

• Leverage creator marketplaces.
• Produce short-form videos.
• Build lasting creator relationships.
• Cross-pollinate your videos.

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“If you’re entering 2023 without a video content plan for your startup, you will be missing out on a significant resource for creating brand awareness and reaching more consumers,” writes Martinez.

To find more growth marketing tactics and strategies you can implement on your own, check out his recent five-article series:

Thanks very much for reading TC+ this week,

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

How to manage third-party cybersecurity risks that are too costly to ignore

Every early-stage startup relies on third-party vendors to handle some aspects of their operations: No one wants to build a shopping cart, credit card processing or ID verification app from scratch.

But now that third-party data breaches are a regular occurrence, teams need to make managing that risk a part of their day-to-day operations, writes Jon Siegler, co-founder and chief product officer of LogicGate.

“No matter how well you clean things up, the reputational hit to your organization will continue to cost you in lost business down the road,” he writes.

After a record 2022, 8 investors explain why it’s ‘still just Day 1’ for Africa’s startup ecosystem

Despite the downturn, Africa had a record year in 2022: 1,100 investors poured $6.5 billion into the region’s startups, reports Tage Kene-Okafor.

To learn more about “what drove such volumes when the rest of the world was reining back the collective enthusiasm of 2021,” he interviewed eight investors:

• Kola Aina, general partner, Ventures Platform
• Zachariah George, managing partner, Launch Africa Ventures
• Olumide Soyombo, co-founder, Voltron Capital
• Stephen Deng, co-founder and managing partner, DFS Lab
• Karima El Hakim, country director, Plug and Play Egypt
• Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, founding partner, Future Africa
• Maya Horgan Famodu, founder and partner, Ingressive Capital
• Kyane Kassiri, partner, RaliCap

Dear Sophie: Will published articles boost my odds of getting an O-1A or H-1B visa?

Dear Sophie,

I’m the founder and CEO of a startup in Istanbul, and I’ve heard that articles in publications about an entrepreneur or a startup can be a big plus when applying for an O-1A or H-1B visa.

Is that true? Which publications are valid? Should they be tier-1 or in English? Thank you for your help!

— Tenacious in Turkey

Pitch Deck Teardown: Spinach.io’s $6M seed deck

Before the pandemic, engineering teams typically started their days with face-to-face standup meetings so members could coordinate efforts and track each others’ progress.

Once those sessions became remote, Spinach.io developed a service that integrates with project management tools like Jira and Slack, as well as online meeting tools like Google Meet and Zoom.

“What we were trying to do here is really solve a very specific use case for engineering teams that follow the Scrum Agile development process,” said co-founder and CEO Matan Talmi.

Last August, Spinach.io raised a $6 million seed round; here’s the pitch deck they used:

• Cover slide
• Team slide
• Problem slide
• Mission slide
• Product slide
• Traction slide
• Customers slide
• Investors slide
• 18-month plan slide
• Thank-you slide

Think about your business model as part of a VC pitch

No one needs an MBA to craft a credible business plan, but if you want an investor’s attention, you’ll need to demonstrate a solid grasp of the fundamentals.

Haje Jan Kamps shares a framework for developing a plan slide for a pitch deck that focuses on five aspects:

• Cost of goods sold
• Customer acquisition cost
• Lifetime value
• R&D cost
• Pricing model

“Breaking those numbers down and presenting them the right way can greatly benefit how you tell your startup’s story to investors,” he writes.