Seedstars is a Swiss investment firm with the mission to impact people’s lives in emerging markets through technology and entrepreneurship. Seedstars does so by investing in early-stage startups, providing training to entrepreneurs and ‘wantrepreneurs’, running programs together with corporates as part of their innovation agendas and working alongside governments to achieve their employment creation goals and help them with developing disruptions within the agriculture, finance, education and health industries. Seedstars has established 14 physical spaces around the world in order to be more present with the local ecosystems. These spaces, branded as Seedspaces, offer coworking, coliving, networking and meeting points for entrepreneurs, digital nomads and regular business travellers in different cities around the world. Seedspaces are present in Dar es Salaam, Lima, Cairo, Lagos and Abidjan, Mexico City, Nur Sultan, Yangon and Geneva (where the organisation’s headquarters is located).

In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Seedstars launched Seedspace Dar es Salaam - the largest entrepreneurship hub in the country in mid 2018. The hub is responsible for activities in Tanzania as well as East and central Africa. Since its establishment, Seedspace Dar has been recognised as a one stop training centre and working space for technology entrepreneurs, especially young university graduates (or as we refer to prospective entrepreneurs, ‘wantrepreneurs’). It has been the hub’s main goal to connect our ecosystem with the world and shed light on local entrepreneurs in Tanzania.

The hub is also known for its community diversity. For example, 35% of community members are from established organisations with more than 5 years of operations. The other 45% are start-ups with under 2 years of operations and who are mostly in the product- market fit search stage. Such companies also get access to various training programs and support as well as access to our working spaces and meeting rooms. The remaining 20% represents digital nomads, travellers, freelancers and private consultants who usually bring in specific technical knowledge to the community. The community has a 5.5 to 4.5 ratio of male and female with slightly more males than females: Tanzania is a Swahili speaking country, but almost 100% of local Tanzanians in the hub speak fluent English, which simplifies communication between local and international members in the space. 

‍

‍

Seedspace Dar has been operating with entrepreneurs beyond the Dar es Salaam metropolitan area. Recently, together with other partners, we launched an entrepreneurship program with agricultural entrepreneurs in rural villages in the South and Eastern parts of the country. The program aims at supporting and providing exposure to ‘wantrepreneurs’ in these regions to strengthen their business knowledge and validate agribusiness ideas that would then be supported with mentoring and funding for selected projects. This year, Seedspace Dar es Salaam also launched the Seedstars Investment Readiness Program supported by Southern Africa Innovation Support, helping entrepreneurs in 10 countries from across Sub-Saharan Africa attain investment readiness stages, hence simplifying their fundraising efforts. The hub has also set a landmark becoming the first hub in the country to run an equity-based acceleration program. The program saw more than USD 250,000 invested in 5 startups from Tanzania, Botswana and Uganda.

In December 2018, Seedspace Dar hosted the Seedstars Africa Regional Summit bringing together major key stakeholders, startups and high quality mentors from all over the continent to Dar es Salaam. The event hosted more than 400 people and was a culmination of the Seedstars World Tour for Africa, a year long tour to 25 countries searching for the best technology startups in the region. It was during this time that the coliving apartments wing for the hub was launched.

The Seedspace coliving space consists of 19 fully furnished apartments, with private kitchen, private bathroom and fast wi-fi and was officially launched in the centre of the Tanzania tech district, Silicon Dar es Salaam. The coliving space hosts people from all over the world, bringing international exposure to the hub and the coworking community. The hub has currently hosted more than 600 people in the last 20 months of operation.

‍

‍

The coliving activity in Dar es Salaam is pivotal to the financial sustainability of the hub as a whole, which is complemented with the coworking and acceleration programs. Seedspace Dar es Salaam has understood it is essential to keep these activities running as they create competitive advantages for the business model, while also enriching the value proposition to the community and attracting the attention of major players in the startup ecosystem.

The space has forged partnerships with a variety of organisations to host their travelling employees, supply different services and co-hosting events. The hub is largely known for hosting high profile organisations working in the technology and development sectors. Last year, the hub hosted the World Food Programme global accelerator in partnership with The Melinda Gates Foundation at Dar es Salaam. We have previously hosted guests from partner global organisations such as Fondation Botnar, Taxify, Andela and Access Bank. Recently, we have hosted a few guests from the investment community at the coliving space. With the presence of the first equity-based acceleration program in the country run by Seedspace, the investors get exclusive access to have discussions with 7 startups taking part of the program.

We also ensure to employ local suppliers and partners for the maintenance and operations of our spaces. For example, 90% of the furniture at the space is locally made from a local partner. We have outsourced services such as cleaning, maintenance/repairs, and technical products such as wifi, TVs and laundry machines to partner companies. Each apartment is also beautifully decorated with Tanzanian artists’ pictures on the wall.

The space has been able to create direct and indirect employment. It has further ensured financial sustainability for the hub as it contributes to the general cost of operations for the hub. Having a sustainable coliving space alongside our startup ecosystem not only confirms our long-term commitment to support them with knowledge and investment but also is proof to them that we are entrepreneurs ourselves and we practice what we preach. Seedspace Dar es Salaam has also recently opened a brand new restaurant, the Silicon Lounge. The restaurant aims to bring together the internal community (coworkers and colivers) with the external community. To put it simply, we can’t inspire entrepreneurship if we are not entrepreneurs ourselves.

‍