A Tour Around West Africa

One of our portfolio companies PipIT made a tour of West Africa over the last several days.  They blogged about their journey here.   PipIT is a financial inclusion company.  They make it painless for unbanked immigrants to send money home to pay bills for their families.  The general reason they are unbanked is regulation, not because they are credit risks.  They are attacking the $640B international payment market.

I think PipIT CEO Ollie Walsh said it best,

If you are looking to develop a international market, it can’t be done at any volume from your office. You need to get out, get into the market, meet people face to face, build relationships. From there you can build your business.

You can send email and they can ignore or delete it.  You can call, and with today’s phone technology, calls are far easier to ignore.  We really love the convenience of virtual, but nothing beats that human interaction.  Nothing beats hearing it fresh from your business partners.

I really love what companies like PipIT and Holberg Financial are doing so it’s fun to be on their cap table.