Hello, and welcome to today's edition of Founders International, where we give you the update on startups and technology from outside of the US.

Here's what we have in store for you today:1. Funding for startups in Africa just got a big boost2. This home service software company has some insane metrics3. Another Canadian newsletter creator absolutely killing it

Read time: 2 minutes and 59 seconds

Story of the day

A large investment firm is coming back for round two of investing heavily in the Africa ecosystem. Like me with my wife's baking. Always coming back for seconds.

Partech, a global venture capital firm, just closed their second Africa focused fund, Partech Africa Fund II, at a whopping $263 million. The craziest part? It's not even the final close.

They say investment demand is so big into the fund from current LP's and other people trying to get into the action, that they expect to have a final close of the round at about $300 million total. They are very bullish on the fact that the Africa Tech sector was one of the very few, if not the only, VC markets to boast net growth funding in 2022. Globally, VC funding fell by 35% over the same period.

We covered that in a past issue, which you can find here: 

The firm also released a report stating their whole thesis and covering the trends and data that supports their mission. That can be found here.

This is the third fund the VC has launched in the last two years, and their reach outside of just the Africa fund now spans 4 continents, 38 countries, 210+ companies, and has a total of over $2.5B AUM.

They plan to invest in about 20-ish companies within the new fund, focusing mainly on Series A and Series B stage companies. Areas of interest are retail, insurance fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), and health tech, with tech enabled companies in the sectors being the focus since they think they are best positioned to disrupt these industries.

Company of the day

If you have ever worked a blue collar job, or specifically anything around home services, you probably know of Jobber.

Side note, and possibly controversial opinion, I think every person should have to work a blue collar job or service industry job. Learn what it really means to put blood, sweat, or tears into a job (hopefully not the latter), AND give you an appreciation for the air conditioned office jobs we have.

This startup out of Canada has built a platform for home services professionals to book customers and manage all of their workload around those jobs, and just announced a raise of $100 million. But, that's not the reason it's of focus today.

The reason, is this company has some pretty insane metrics:

• In the last two years, it has doubled it's users to 200k users

• $13 billion has been billed and collected via Jobber’s platform in the last year from across 27 million households

• It spans across 50 categories such as HVAC, lawn care, plumbing, and many more

• Revenues are up three-fold in the last two years and are now in excess of $100 million annually (This is crazy because this means they are making more per customer, sign of a great company when people want to spend more on it)

• It has been PROFITABLE since it was founded (although that changes now with this funding since they will focus on growth)

• NO layoffs of its 600 employees, and they are looking to hire more

• But, Jobber has made only around $100 million from $13 billion in gross sales

And they are bullish on still what is to come. There are around 6.2 million home service businesses just in North America, and around $600 billion is spent annually on home services, meaning a lot of room yet to grow.

Jobber is jobbing it's way right into unicorn/decacorn territory, and the best is yet to come for this company.

"Oh Canadaaaaaa🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦"

Founder of the day

Cool person of the day is looking a lot like our friend Zain Khan from a couple weeks ago. He is Canadian, he runs a sweet newsletter business, and has a sharp twitter profile picture.

Meet, Jamie Northrup of the Minimalist Entrepreneur. Jamie is running a little empire focused on helping entrepreneurs monetize your passion through minimalist side hustles & digital assets.

And why should you trust him? Well, he is doing it himself. His newsletter boasts more than 1,300 subscribers, and to compliment that, he has a store of digital products and courses that help you do things from growing on Twitter, to starting a print-on-demand e-commerce store, to even a Kindle direct publishing business.

His one mistake? Not using Beehiiv for his newsletter.

But, we can let that slide... Unless you want to switch to the dark side??

He is living proof that not all startups need to be "sexy," focused on some big problems, and that you definitely don't need venture capital to make it. And, that sometimes simple is what brings in those dollars.

So, if you are interested in getting a newsletter about 3 quick & valuable resources that will help you make more money online, check him out.

Also, must I say again? "Oh Canadaaaaaa🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦"

And that's all for today, if you want to get more follow us @Founders_Intl, or respond to this email. Yes, we respond to all emails, including yours. Try us.

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💯 Freaking sick dude🤷‍♂️ Meh, do better next time😑 Bruh, I might unsubscribe after reading that