Cascador, a ground-breaking accelerator programme helping mid-stage African entrepreneurs grow their businesses and improve their leadership skills by working with successful American and Nigerian entrepreneurs, has announced programme details and the opening of 2022 applications.
Cascador launched in 2019 and is now in its fourth year. The programme has elevated three successful cohorts of entrepreneurs and their companies through a unique blend of education, mentoring, pitch training and personalised support, driving over $7million in capital raised by past Cascador fellows.
Abimbola Adebakin, CEO of Advantage Health Africa and MyPharmacy, an alumni from the first Cascador cohort in 2019, shared, “Attending Cascador and being a Cascador fellow helped me to have the confidence, stability and patience to attract investment. We raised pre-seed capital of $1.2million.”
Dave DeLucia, US-based biotech entrepreneur, Cascador Co-Founder and CEO of Immunext, discussed the program’s impact, saying, “Every Cascador faculty member and mentor is driven to help African entrepreneurs succeed by leveraging our years of experience and knowledge base.”
“It was founded to fill a notable gap in the accelerator space between start-up oriented programmes and accelerators for more mature businesses that extend capital and take equity upon acceptance. Many of our fellows have participated in early stage accelerators and use Cascador as a springboard to fast track organic business growth or to prepare for global accelerators like YC, Harambe and TechStars. It really meets a unique need,” DeLucia noted.
Its participants are mid-stage entrepreneurs with at least 2 years in operation. They should have annual revenue from sales that exceeds $50,000 per year or have raised at least $250,000 of capital.
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This is the third year that Lagos Business School will host the Cascador program on campus. Chris Ogbechie, Dean at LBS, one of the pre-imminent business schools in the world, shared, “Partnering with Cascador is very aligned with our philosophy as an academic institution. LBS’s educational approach is grounded in active student participation and the case study method, and our goal is always to develop business leaders with strong ethics, professionalism and management skills. With a multinational faculty and strong alumni base in the Lagos area, Cascador is an accelerator programme we whole-heartedly support.”
The 2022 Cascador programme will be hosted at Lagos Business School in Lagos, Nigeria from October 31 – November 4, 2022. Participation is limited to 10 entrepreneurs, and the deadline to apply for this year’s cohort is July 1.
Interested applicants can learn more at www.cascador.org and on our YouTube channel, or begin the application process.
Cascador is an annual, no-cost program focused on business scale. Accelerator curriculum is designed for mid-stage African entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and their leadership skills by working with successful American and Nigerian entrepreneurs from a wide range of industry sectors, backgrounds and geographic locations. A one-week annual intensive in-person program is augmented with preparatory exercises, self-awareness coaching, and is followed by 6 months of mentorship. Interested applicants, partners, sponsors and prospective faculty can learn more and contact the Cascador team at www.cascador.org.
