A free Africa VC due diligence tool built on operator experience. Six dimensions covering the Africa-specific assumptions that survive every pitch meeting but rarely survive deployment. Run a deal in under 10 minutes. Output: the questions to ask before you wire.
GON is the operator intelligence layer for African private capital - built from twelve years inside the distribution stack, maintained against primary institutional sources, and validated against real deal outcomes.
v3.2 - April 2026This is not a scoring tool. It is a structured challenge built on twelve years of operating digital products across African markets. It surfaces the assumptions that survive every pitch meeting because they live below the line of the financial model.
It works by forcing specific inputs across six dimensions. Vague answers trigger gates that tell you exactly what you do not yet know. The memo output gives you questions, not verdicts. A deal that clears all six dimensions is not approved - it is adequately stress-tested on these six.
This tool improves through use. Every war games retrospective and every piece of investor feedback makes the benchmarks sharper. If it missed something on your deal, the feedback form at the end of the memo tells us. That gap becomes the next version.
If you are filling this in to look good, you are wasting your time. The tool rewards honesty and penalises polish.
Three required fields. The memo output is calibrated to the specific market, sector, and stage you enter here.
Operator benchmarks are most specific for Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cameroon, Nigeria. Other markets use institutional source benchmarks.
"The cost of the distribution model is one question. Whether that model is defensible is a different and more important question. In African markets a well-capitalised competitor can replicate an agent network in six months by paying higher commissions. The moat is not the channel - it is what makes the channel exclusive."
Enter the exact number the founder claims. If they gave a range, enter the midpoint.
A margin without a stack breakdown cannot be validated. Each intermediary - agent, superagent, telco, bank - takes a cut before revenue reaches the company.
"The regulatory risk most founders describe is government action against them. The risk most investors miss is regulatory capture by an incumbent - a telco or bank with regulator relationships using licensing conditions or delays to disadvantage a competitor. In Francophone West Africa, this pattern is more common than direct government intervention."
Depending on a partner's licence (e.g. operating on Orange Money's e-money licence) creates a risk that is not reflected in the founder's cap table or financial model.
In WAEMU markets, BCEAO Instruction 001/2024 restricts exclusivity arrangements. In Ivory Coast, ARTCI (artci.ci) has enforcement history. Knowing the incumbent's regulatory playbook is part of the diligence.
"The exit question has two parts. Who would buy it - and is it buyable? In African markets, the gap between a growing company and an acquirable company is large. Informal governance, unclear cap tables, and related-party structures that would fail a multinational's due diligence are common at early stages."
Africa's exit-to-investment ratio was 0.2x in 2024 (AVCA 2025). Secondaries hit a record 26% of exits. An exit thesis without named acquirers is a hope, not a thesis.
"Demographics are not demand. And first-time paying customers are not recurring revenue. The question that predicts whether unit economics hold at scale is not whether someone paid once. It is whether they came back without a promotion or a founder intervention."
A 2024 systematic review found WTP surveys overstate actual willingness to pay by 23-29% in collectivist cultures. Enrollment gaps of 30-50 percentage points are documented across African markets. Source: Bayked et al., Frontiers in Public Health, 2024.
Copia Global (Kenya, 2024 shutdown) publicly stated free delivery as a feature in their TechCrunch Series C. When unit economics required removing it, order frequency collapsed. The subsidy removal test is the most direct demand validation for logistics and e-commerce models.
"Experience predicts understanding. Network predicts survival. The three moments that kill African market companies - regulatory intervention, banking relationship crisis, key distributor defection - all require phone numbers, not just experience."
Ivory Coast and Senegal share a currency and have different operating environments. Nigeria and Ghana share a language and little else operationally. Regional experience does not substitute for country-specific depth.
"For a USD or EUR fund investing in local-currency revenue businesses, the return is a function of the exit multiple and the currency trajectory. A business that grows 40% in NGN terms can return nothing in USD terms if the naira depreciates 50% over the hold period. Nigeria 2023 is not a hypothetical."
The NGN lost approximately 70% of its value against USD between 2022 and 2024. The EGP lost approximately 50% in 2022-2023. CFA franc markets carry lower FX risk due to EUR peg, but repatriation cost is still a return driver.
Check your answers before generating the IC memo. Click "Edit" on any section to go back and change inputs.