On Our Platform: Polo Leteka Reveals How To Attract Investors To Your Business
Access to business capital is a real challenge for many entrepreneurs.
Many business owners are under-informed about what it is that investors are actually looking for in a great investment.
Respected private equity investor, IDF Capital founder Polo Leteka, shares with us what it is that investors are looking for in a viable business.
To access her recipe, and more from other Heavy Chefs, sign up to our learning platform HERE.
There’s no other place on earth that is as prime for investment as Africa. At Heavy Chef, we speak often about the fact that the entrepreneur of the future is African. The neverending social and infrastructural challenges we consider our curse may well turn out to be our biggest blessing yet because where there’s a problem, there’s a need for a solution - and ultimately an opportunity for entrepreneurship.
Investors know this very well. They are trained to recognise the signs and they’ve read the writing on the wall. In the past couple of years alone, Africa has turned out tech unicorn after tech unicorn, as investors, local and international, look to be part of investments that can make a real impact. Polo Leteka is one such investor. The South African private equity legend understands very clearly the potential that tech has to build and empower Africa and its entrepreneurs.
“I always say to people that the beautiful thing about being on the African continent is that we've got a problem for every solution. The problems that we face as a continent, for me, those problems are actually business opportunities and they just require enterprising people to identify those problems. To define them very, very clearly and find a way of articulating them such that the next person can see your vision, they can understand it, and they can also see the 'how' of it”.
Polo is particularly proud of investing in African solutions for African problems. A renowned entrepreneur and private equity investor and the Chairman and Founder of IDF Capital, a South African based entrepreneurial financier and advisory firm, Polo has contributed towards changeling investments into SMEs across South Africa. Like most investors, she is an accountant by training, specialising in accounting and auditing, corporate finance, investment banking, public policy formulation, venture capital and private equity in the SME sector. With over R 1,5 billion assets under management, IDF Capital has been managing and administering funds for various corporate and institutional clients for over 12 years. As a level 1 BBBEE contributor, Polo’s firm is 100% black-owned and more than 80% black women-owned.
Empowering other women by investing in their businesses is something Polo is very intentional about. In 2015, she co-founded the AlitheiaI DF fund to continue investing in high growth businesses across Sub-Saharan Africa that are women-owned and led.
“I grew up in South Africa where if you're black and you're a woman, you're not going to get anywhere in life - we all know the sad story - and you are surrounded by a lack of inspiration, really. So I lived in the USA in my head, I watched every movie you can think of, I read every magazine - I lived vicariously through their stories and that's where I got to see black achievement. That's where I was able to crystallize in my mind what black wealth and black success look like because these were role models within that society. In particular, Oprah Winfrey's story stuck with me - she was able to use her position and her wealth to improve the lives of other people, I was exceptionally inspired by that.”
Not that Polo herself is any less impressive. Very early on in her career, she was tasked with leading the process of developing South Africa's first-ever Codes of Good Practice on Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment - a Government policy seeking to transform the South African economic landscape to be more reflective of its population demographics. Her groundbreaking work has changed how corporate SA interacts with the rest of the economy and she is consequently considered a thought leader in areas of economic transformation and development in South Africa.
Polo is also an accomplished public speaker and a regular contributor to thought leadership articles on transformation and entrepreneurship. And if she looks familiar, it’s because you’ve seen her on your TV screens quite a few times - she was part of Dragon’s Den South Africa, the local edition of the British show where entrepreneurs get to pitch their business ideas to win investment. Polo is also the co-author of a book entitled And For All These Reasons…I’M IN, a manual for entrepreneurs who want to be investor-ready.
Her ultimate advice to budding entrepreneurs?
“Be fearless. Be bold. Be courageous and just go out and do it. And you really will figure it out as you go along. You don't have to have it all figured out now. Yes, do your research, but don't wait for a perfect ‘Yes! I have now figured it out,’ - by the time you figure it out, it's too late. Ten other people have and they've already started. So just get on with it.”
Fresh on our learning platform this week, Polo Leteka shares with us what it is that investors are looking for in a viable business. She unpacks the perfect pitch deck, due diligence and much more in a recipe on Investor Readiness here.
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