Seeing A Bigger Need
The founders of Flat6Labs initially sought to launch a Series A venture capital fund to invest one million dollars into later stage companies, but quickly found that there were not that many Series A deals available. Instead, their application page was flooded with many compelling investable ideas and seed stage startups in which they could provide extensive business and technical assistance. With the inherent risks of early stage investing, the team knew they would need to invest in many companies across a wide base of opportunities with a subset of them creating the returns needed to justify the overall effort. These were the roots of the system that is now Flat6Labs. Though it seems like an accelerator program, at the core rests a team of seed fund managers who are optimizing for real economic returns.
Flat6Labs aligns its interests with the entrepreneurs it supports. By creating value for entrepreneurs, the team at Flat6Labs also creates value for its investors. When entrepreneurs win, Flat6Labs wins, and investors win. From this perspective, all activities, from ecosystem engagements and angel group support to mentorship and other efforts, work to create more successful companies and entrepreneurs.
Ten years ago, Flat6Labs launched in Cairo, Egypt, with just one accelerator program. The key early on was educating and slowly bringing more players into the ecosystem. Going it alone wouldn’t work in the long run and a broader ecosystem would be needed. Flat6Labs played the role of the ecosystem-builder. The effort since then has included reaching out to universities across Egypt to support student entrepreneurship, adding service providers, such as lawyers, accountants, and auditors who understand startup needs, creating Egypt’s first Angel group, advocating to governmental entities to explain needs of entrepreneurs, and sourcing corporates to engage more with startups.
Recently, Flat6Labs successfully focused exclusively on supporting female entrepreneurs and increasing participation in its ecosystem. This included raising awareness, education, and inspirational sessions for females across the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region, particularly in Egypt. An additional focus has been on social impact businesses. Partnering with donor organizations, Flat6Labs operates a pre-acceleration program for social impact startups, which now feed systems like StartEgypt and Flat6Labs Ignite in Tunisia.
