MAGIC fund raises $30 million, to give $100- $300K cheques to founders in emerging markets

 MAGIC Fund, a global collective of founders that backs other founders to solve business challenges has announced a $30 Million Fund II raise to continue backing early-stage startups. A third of the fund was contributed by its founder Global Partners who share its unique vision and approach to supporting early-stage companies

With a proven track record and an expanded vision, the team at Magic is planning to use its new fund to back more early-stage companies. It announced that it will be writing checks between $100K and $300K in early-stage companies across different sectors and geographies.

“We have a keen focus on startups that build infrastructure while delivering a quality customer experience, especially in emerging markets. We are already accepting pitches from founders through our website, and are very excited to bring some money and magic their way!”, it said in a statement.

Since debuting in 2017, Magic has been creating a profile of strategic partners and has invested in 70 companies using its first funding round. Similar to AngelList’s Spearhead, the founders-backing-founders model ensures that startups receive capital from helpful advisors, and it also compensates the investing founders for their advice.

With a unique practice of equity and inclusion, more than half of our founders on the fund are Black, and a third are Women. And, they are dispersed geographically and industrially.

Some of these include Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel, Tim Draper, Ace & Company, Rappi’s Andres Bilbao, Octopus Ventures’ Kirsten Connell, Paystack’s Shola Akinlade, Flutterwave’s Gbenga Agboola, and Katie Lewis, among others.

Some of the companies Magic backed since its pre-seed and seed-stage include Novobank, a simple business banking platform that just raised a $40.7 million Series A, Payfazz, an Indonesian fintech startup that raised a $53 million last July, Frubana and Mono, a Nigerian fintech startup that raised $2.6 million in May.

According to the statement, the structure of the fund is best suited for the said mission because “as founders, we often have the best access to early-stage deals but sometimes lack the personal capital to invest. That’s why it was imperative to build an infrastructure that enables us to invest in and support other founders”.

To improve efficiency and ensure that Magic delivers maximal value to its portfolio companies, they revealed that they now have a dedicated back office team. Team members include Francis Sani, Olufunmilola Soewu, Jesse Ovia, and led internally by the Operating Partner, Matt Greenleaf.

Speaking on the new raise, Adegoke Olubusi, Managing Partner at MAGIC fund and Helium Health’s CEO explained that the group is quite excited about its strides so far:

“The vision for MAGIC is going back to how early-stage venture capital began, which is, founders investing in other founders and supporting them through the journey. We’re going to keep scaling this up as much as we can, across different geographies and industries, and we’re very happy for the headstart we already have”, he said.