Four African firms are among the 156 initially listed as taking part in the S22 batch of the famed Y Combinator incubator in Silicon Valley.
This year’s S22 class of the Y Combinator program, which helped launch businesses like Airbnb, Coinbase, and Dropbox, will culminate in a demo day in September.
Four of the 156 businesses initially registered for S22 have already confirmed their participation, making W22’s batch of the accelerator the one with the most African participants, with 24 startups from the continent.
They include two from Nigeria, the food delivery service Chowdeck and fintech company Pivo, as well as the Ghanaian auto parts distributor Garage Mobility and the Kenyan payments platform Patika.
Over the course of the program, more are anticipated to be confirmed.
Alumni from Y Combinator include European royalty, including Flutterwave, Paystack, and Kobo360 (not to mention Cowrywise, MarketForce, Kudi, WaystoCap, WorkPay, Healthlane, Trella, 54gene, CredPal, NALA and Breadfast).
The accelerator has a murky place in the continent’s startup environment, but entrepreneurs praise it for its beneficial effects on their companies.
