African Web3 Startup Raises $6.45 Million in Pre-Seed Round, Serena Williams' Investment Firm Participates

An African startup, Nestcoin, said it raised $6.45 million in a pre-seed funding round in which tennis’ star, Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures took part. The startup, which was launched in November 2021, plans to use the capital raised to educate, build and invest in web 3.0 applications.

Facilitating Crypto Adoption

Nestcoin, a Nigerian startup that plans to operate and invest in Web3 applications, recently announced it had raised $6.45 million in pre-seed. Leading the funding round were venture capital firms, Distributed Global and Alter Global.

Also participating in the funding round were U.S sports personality Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures, Alameda Research, A&T Capital, MSA Capital and 4DX Ventures.

According to a report by Forbes, the startup, which was co-founded by Yele Bademosi and Taiwo Orilogbon, plans to use the funds raised to facilitate the adoption of cryptocurrencies. Nestcoin also plans to use the capital raised to fund the building of a platform that allows content creators to earn while educating the startups’ subscribers.

Speaking after the announcement of the capital raise, Bademosi explained why he believes that Nestcoin is going to be a better undertaking than Bundle, a fintech which he launched in 2019. He said:

The goal was to be present in 30-plus African countries and have millions of users.

The Evolving Crypto Market

While Bundle did become one of the biggest locally established crypto exchange platforms in Africa, it still could not meet Bademosi’s goal of being present in several countries. In fact, according to a report, by the time Bademosi left Bundle, the startup was only live in just two countries, Nigeria and Ghana. It had less than 100,000 active users, the report added.

Bundle’s apparent inability to meet some of Bademosi’s goals eventually convinced the co-founder to launch another startup in November 2021. Meanwhile, the report quotes Bademosi explaining how the crypto market has evolved.

“The first iteration of crypto products were trading products. The second iteration has been more around decentralized finance and non-custodial trading of financing activities. The current situation of crypto, and now more like applications that everyday people use and love, whether it is like consumer applications, finance apps, entertainment, gaming, but these applications now have the potential to reach millions of users across frontier markets. And that’s sort of what we are trying to do with Nestcoin,” Bademosi explained.