About us

We’re a community of 250,000+ changemakers across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Central-Eastern Europe, and Asia who are passionate about making a difference in emerging markets through entrepreneurship and technology.

As an international consulting, education and impact investment company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, our work spans 90+ countries with 12 coworking hubs around the globe. We support the world’s most ambitious and dedicated entrepreneurs in growing and scaling their businesses to create meaningful and lasting change.

The focus of our work is to identify promising entrepreneurs heading up high-growth companies in emerging markets, and to provide these ventures with customized and responsive support to help them develop profitable companies that can have a broader impact.

Seedstars partners with governments, developmental financial institutions, foundations, corporations, entrepreneurs, and investors to build sturdy and healthy entrepreneurial ecosystems that drive purposeful social and economic development. To do this, we use our global cross-sector expertise, and we harness the power of our international community.

Our story

Seedstars was founded in 2012 by Pierre-Alain Masson and Michael Weber, two friends from Geneva who connected over their passion for entrepreneurship and building companies from scratch. Some time after, Alisée de Tonnac, joined the team and together they launched Seedstars World, a global pitch competition to discover the most promising early-stage high-growth ventures, in order to build the largest entrepreneurial community in emerging markets. Benjamin Benaim was later added to the team to drive forward the company building activities of Seedstars.

In the following years, investment specialist, Charlie Graham-Brown, began the branch of Seedstars focused on investing in ventures with high-growth potential and supplying the portfolio with socially dedicated businesses from various industry sectors and geographical locations, which perfectly complemented the purpose of the Seedstars World Competition.

Seedstars continued growing with the creation of our Seedspaces, dedicated entrepreneurship hubs where ventures can have a physical space for coworking, networking and learning. In fact, many of the entrepreneurial programs that Seedstars and our partners run, take place at the Seedspaces in Lima, Mexico City, Abidjan, Lagos, Cairo, Dar es Salaam Nur Sultan or Yangon.

Today Seedstars has grown into a global community that believes in the innovative potential of emerging markets. We aim to contribute by running the Seedstars World Competition, Seedspace hubs, various acceleration and growth programs and, at the same time, investing in high-growth companies from Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Central and South Asia.

In 2020, Seedstars has reimagined several of its physical activities into new online formats. In this way we continue to enable entrepreneurs in emerging markets through virtual programs, events and competitions, by connecting them with expert mentors and investors without geographical barriers. For this purpose we also launched a storytelling hub called Seedstars Life, where we bring the spotlight to the change-makers who too often go unnoticed.

Our vision

With 85% of the global population living in emerging markets, we see not only billions of opportunities to take, but also billions of lives to improve.

Great ideas and talent exist everywhere, not just in the Silicon Valley. Capital, business support, and access to networks, on the other hand, do not.

We envision a world where every talented and determined entrepreneur has access to the resources that they need to grow their business and create a lasting impact in their communities.

Our ‘Theory of Change’

Our ‘Theory of Change’ describes the impact that we wish to see in the world and our understanding of how we will contribute to that change. It is a workframe that we have built in order to measure our intended impact when it comes to the developmental space.

This framework is built around the goal of contributing to economic development in emerging markets by means of two long-term outcomes:

Increasing jobs in emerging markets;

Delivering social impact

Our key ways of working include:

ITERATIVE LEARNING

In Seedstars, the iterative learning process is an explicit part of our Theory of Change. Its key underlying purpose is to allow us to adapt to the challenges we identify in our geographies at a pace that matches the operating norms in entrepreneurial markets. We share our own experience of being a high-growth business ourselves, and we facilitate a collaborative process of information sharing and learning amongst all our stakeholders.

FOCUSING ON THE 6%

To achieve our vision of building thriving entrepreneurial systems and creating social and economic development, we focus on the 6% (NESTA). The “6%” refers to the discovery that while high-growth ventures account for only 6% of all businesses with employees, they account for over 50% of new jobs in the economy. High-growth companies are also highly scalable and their products tend to be innovative and disruptive.

INVESTING

We identify and leverage partners to create opportunities for education and funding of high-growth enterprises. Seedstars also invests in these enterprises at the seed stage providing growth support along the way to scaling.

POWER OF COMMUNITY

We believe that the most important aspect of a business is its people. When we invest in companies, we invest in the entrepreneurs that have built them and leverage our global community of mentors, investors and business experts to provide the most valuable support possible.

Our values

GET SH*T DONE

We move the needle. We are changemakers in passionate pursuit of advancing entrepreneurship -- but we don’t just ‘do’ for the sake of doing. We focus on the right things, progressing on that which has the biggest impact.

IN EXPERIMENTS WE TRUST

We operate in complex and uncertain markets. We’re doing what no one else has done before. To that end, we push the boundaries of our current knowledge through focused learning and data-driven experiments.

INDEPENDENTLY TOGETHER

We’re on a mission bigger than any of us. We work in sync to achieve our goals and move towards our vision, but we also value independent thinkers.

OUT OF THE COMFORT ZONE

We’re movers and shakers trying to challenge the status quo. We boldly try new things and take risks.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

We’re not driven by profit, but we understand that money keeps us alive and helps us move towards our vision. We understand the financial implications of our decisions and we value our resources.

HACK THE SYSTEM

We move fast with less resources. We believe we can find our way around any problem by thinking outside the box.

KEEP IT SWISS

We are committed to creating the ultimate value for our customers and partners and delivering it on time and with attention to detail, in line with the highest quality standards.

NO EXCUSES

We deliver on our promises and are accountable for our actions.

Portfolio companies

We’re on a mission to impact the lives of people in emerging markets through entrepreneurship and technology. The companies we invest in make it happen. We also build our own high-growth companies from scratch and invest in scaling solutions that solve the most critical issues in emerging markets. We roam the globe to back the best, regardless of geography, ethnicity, or gender. In the last decade, we have connected thousands of entrepreneurs around the world and across sectors with funding, mentors, and partners.

SEE ALL COMPANIES

Useful links

CODE OF CONDUCT

Our Code of Conduct provides ethical and behavioural guidelines for all members of the Seedstars network, including companies and personnel, on which we base our everyday decisions.

PRIVACY POLICY

We take your privacy seriously. Our Privacy Policy explains how Seedstars collects and uses personal data, and it describes the rights you have with respect to your personal data.

Let’s impact emerging markets together

Having the biggest positive impact in emerging markets is our mission and purpose as a company.

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