While studying at the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford, a group of graduates noticed how difficult it was to get data and information on Africa’s largest economy and their home country, Nigeria. Each had different yet complementary skills — Michael Famoroti, an economist; Bode Ogunlana, a software engineer; Abdul Abdulrahim, a data scientist; and Preston Ideh, a corporate lawyer — and in 2017, they launched a media startup to address the dearth of information and data-driven insights in the West African country.Â
Five years on, this startup, Stears, is announcing a $3.3 million seed round led by MaC Venture Capital. Serena Ventures, Omidyar Group’s Luminate Fund, Melo 7 Tech Partners and Cascador (Empowering Economic Growth Foundation) participated. This news is coming two years after Stears raised $650,000 in pre-seed funding. Last month, it was one of the 60 startups to get accepted into the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund 2022 cohort, which included some non-dilutive funding.
Stears started as a media publication focused on financial news and insights in Nigeria. Its flagship subscri …
