With the growth of Web3 across the African continent, tech startup founders are increasingly looking for the best solutions to succeed in the novel ecosystem, bearing in mind the intricacies that novices in the industry encounter.

Nigerian Web3 startup, VestPi has invested to consultancy and servicing, especially by providing comprehensive marketing solutions to enhance the cash flow, community, and all other aspects that Web3 entails for startups.

It also specializes in due diligence analysis and advisory services for Web3 projects and recommending the best opportunities to venture capitalists and investors, as well as tokenization and creating transparency in the projects that it works with.

The startup partners with major firms to provide comprehensive marketing solutions for established and newly incubated projects. It also works with partners to do audits of smart contracts, and currently deals with five companies.

VestPi CEO and co-founder Patrick Idungafa, who is a graduate of computer engineering from the Caritas University in Nigeria, was previously neither well acquainted with Web3 nor had much knowledge of the crypto ecosystem. But this changed with his introduction to these emerging technologies.

How VestPi Started

“Actually, I personally got introduced to the whole Web3 and crypto space in around 2020. This was at a time when the market was rallying for the beginning of the bull market,” Idungafa tells NODO News. in an interview “Before then I only heard about crypto, Web3 and bitcoin, but these concepts never really caught my attention, until 2021 when the boom happened and everyone was excited about it.”

At the time, he completed the compulsory Nigerian Youth Service, and was working for Chaindustry; a DoToEarn company in Nigeria.

While working with Chaindustry, he was to later, also, work for SPLABS, a blockchain hub operating in countries across the globe including Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan, which specializes in creating GameFi, metaverse, and Web 3.0-based platforms and products with experience building on BNB, AVAX, ETH, MATIC, and GATE.

Through those exposures as he was the community manager and marketing lead, he got the comprehensive experience and understanding of what crypto and bitcoin was all about, and how Web3 marketing works.

Having been in the space and seen how there was a lack of quality marketing agencies out there, he decided to do something and together with his cofounder, Christof Cloette , they founded VestPi .

“In 2020, I switched over to the Web3 space from the SEO writing job I was doing at the time. And then I started off as a writer and community moderator within the crypto space at Chaindustry,” he tells NODO News. “Ever since, I worked as a community manager and rose through the ranks to become the chief marketing officer for Chaindustry and another personal project I’m involved by the side; providing community support, community building, influencer marketing, and every other marketing service.”

He proceeds to indicate that he has since been successful with over 15 projects especially within Chaindustry and SPlabs, assisting it with support for community, marketing, and partnerships.

He, thus far, has almost three years of experience in community building, marketing, and business development within the crypto space.

Having worked with a lot of influencers and marketing companies and upon discovering a lot of them were scammers decided to setup his own agency which he can provide counseling. And it’s during the course of these developments that he met Christof Cloette , the COO and co-founder of VestPi.

After sharing ideas, the duo realized that they both were interested in the technology, and sought to bring their knowledge of the Web3 technology to Africa, bearing it in mind that the continent had great potential for good Web3 projects but lacked the agencies to support it.

Helping Africa Attain Tech Independence

“Many African projects seem to always have to look outside of the continent for assistance for tasks as simple as attracting the right investors, building their community up and keeping them engaged, listing on an exchange, getting tokenomics done, market making services or even marketing services,” he tells NODO News. “Oftentimes the continent would look abroad for such services. But we want to bring all that knowledge and know-how to Africans.”

He notes that VestPi works with its clients’ projects right from the inception and the conceptualization of the idea to its implementation and launch.

“Personally I’ve previously worked on 7 projects. The most recent which is still in it early stage is a Trustless On-demand sharing Mobility As A Service. We’re still finalizing on that site,” he reveals to NODO News. “But that being said, I have had the knowledge of setting up a Web3 project right from scratch – building the tokenomics, setting up the pitch decks in a way that is attractive for investors and then launching it.”

With VestPi, Idungafa says, this is the same strategy that the startup uses when dealing with its clientele. It sets up and incubates projects from the beginning by having discussions with the founders to find out all that their projects entail, before bringing in its own contribution.

“We sit down with the founders, look at what they have and bring our contributions to that. We then structure it according to our knowledge and experience to what we’ve seen, what we know and what happens within the crypto space. We then partner with some VCs that I’ve previously made connections with,” he says.

Idungafa adds: “Once the project has been set up in a way that is feasible -and sort of advertising for
VCs- we introduce the VCs to these projects. Most of them actually seek to reach into the African space, and see what they can get out of the African region. We want to also explore and make sure that since the opportunities are there, we provide the service to bring African projects to investors who are looking to invest into them.”

Free Crowdsourcing for Funds

And even in cases where the project doesn’t get the requisite funding, he notes that, with its huge pool of partners and launchpads, VestPi helps do free fundraisings through dedicated platforms and in the end, the projects get at least 50% to 70% of what it initially sought.

Sometimes funding becomes a challenge for some projects and in this case, Idungafa notes, that VestPi follows the same strategy it normally uses, but then deploys a launchpad initial Dex offering (IDO). IDOs, he says, are currently quite common and popular and are seen as the next big thing in the Web3 space.

“And of course, there are many launchpads out there, some which are not even profitable, some which seem to be scams. Because of such issues, VestPi facilitates the negotiations with the launchpads,” he indicates.

“We read the terms of engagement with the launchpads and do research on them if they are not in our databases. And when we feel safe and know that the project can get something out of the IDO through this launchpad, we facilitate its launch.”

This, Idungafa infers, demonstrates VestPi’s commitment to guiding and moving along with the project from its initial stages until it grows.

In the coming few months, the startup is working on building its client base, and making its presence known within the African Web3 space. It also plans to integrate the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology especially on the marketing aspect of its services.

For Idungafa, Africa largely remains left out when it comes to Web3 discourses and this requires to be fixed. Africans need to be convinced why Web3 and blockchain herald the future as they provide solutions to the challenges that the continent contends with.

Africa needs to have its own trusted and verified crypto exchanges through which Africans can do their crypto exchanges.

-Edited by Shigeru Sato