Invest in Sycamore

🌍 🏦 ⏰ Connecting African SMEs to credit and secure lending within 24hrs

EARLY BIRD TERMS: $100,000 LEFT

$0

reserved of a $50,000 goal
INVESTMENT TERMS
Future Equity
 $5M  $4.5M valuation cap
Early Bird Bonus: The first $100K of investments will be in a SAFE with a $4.5M valuation cap

Highlights

1
Previously raised $100k during our Pre-Seed ✅
2
📈 Over 15k existing customers! | 🚀 3k active borrowers with over $5M in loans disbursed!!!
3
🗓 Over 629k revenue in 2021, MRR~ $80K, with a retention rate of 55%
4
♟ Expansion plan throughout Nigeria and...

Our Team

We (the founders) have been small business entrepreneurs before and we know how difficult it is to get access to credit. Sycamore was out of the need to solve this problem we faced - how small businesses can access loans in good time.

Achieve more with Sycamore!

We (the 3 co-founders) stumbled on this idea while studying at the Lagos Business School while reviewing small businesses in West Africa. Turns out that getting reliable and quick access to financing is one of their biggest problems, as only 1% of the total credit given to the private sector gets to these businesses annually. We had also seen some of our class mates who were business owners face this same issue up close. That is how Sycamore was born.

Sycamore is an online peer-to-peer lending platform, which connects lenders to borrowers, with the aim of empowering individuals and small businesses financially. Our platform also makes it very easy for friends and family to manage loans with each other.

There are over 40 million small businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa, facing a credit gap of over USD330 billion. Sycamore's marketplace of lenders and proprietary risk assessment through our P2P platform makes it possible for these businesses to get working capital to grow their business within a day.

For individuals, we make it possible for them to disburse and manage loans given to friends and family. Through the Loan Friends feature on our mobile app, people can lend to friends on their contact list, while the app does all the hard work of reminding the borrower and debiting the account on the due date. The lender can even charge interest if she wants. Over 55% of credit obtained by people in West Africa is gotten from family and friends. We think it's high time this common practice is digitized and made easier for people. 

Tell me more...

Our goal is to capture a small portion of the $331 billion credit gap for small business loans in Africa


We have quite a few competitors in our current market some might say. However, our proprietary technology, talented team, and talent retention sets us above the competition.

1. A highly talented team. All members of our senior team have had work experience from leading organizations in their fields and can compete globally

2. Proprietary technology developed internally, and intangible assets we own. For example, our unique product "Loan Friends" has been trademarked, giving us exclusive use of this title.

3. An excellent culture, which has led to a highly respected workplace that attracts talent, and less than 2% of staff turnover. Only 1 person has left Sycamore for another business and he returned to work with us after a few months!

Traction Slide

Our growth has been largely organic, driven by mostly word of mouth and the quality of service. That's why we have been able to disburse of $4 million to thousands of customers, with less than $200,000 in equity funding.

We are also glad to have built a cashflow positive business, in barely over 3 years of doing business. This is part of the reasons we believe we can do so much more, with the right funding and investors on board.

Our new product "Loan Friends", pretty much digitizes the lending and borrowing process which most people do manually today. The cool thing about this product is that it solves a very big problem many people face today: how to manage and collect loans with friends (and family)

Our next big product is a "Buy Now, Pay Later" play, which we plan to roll out to specific sectors, that do not currently have access to selling to their customers on credit. We already have a healthy database of businesses that we work with. The plan is to reach 100,000 customers within 12 months of launch.

Current Round Updates:

We are raising $500,000 at a valuation cap of $5 million. We have already secured $200,000 for this round, and are sourcing $100,000 from external VCs. We would like our Community and Wefunders to raise the $200,000 balance on Wefunder

We will be using the current funds from this Community Round to build out our technology, data, and sales team for our upcoming expansion. As well as build out our marketing and customer acquisition funnels. 

Our goal within the next 3 years, is to be the P2P lender of choice across Africa, with presence in over 20 countries.

Sycamore has enjoyed organic growth since inception thanks to an experienced and skilled team, technology that works, and a focus on solving real problems for Africans. Sycamore has also been cashflow positive from day 1, and has already yielded returns in multiples to initial investors. By joining us as an equity investor, you would be solving an important problem on the African continent, while making great returns on your investment. 

Overview