Helping Madica’s pre-seed startups bridge the scaling chasm

The Solution

Strategy Tools collaborated with Madica to design a Scale Up! program that would transform their founders into fundraising pros.

The program kicked off with two preparatory webinars on the Founder’s Journey and Investment Instruments and culminated in a 2-day Scale Up! simulation that kick-started Madica’s week-long Lagos immersion trip.

Activity revolves around the board, where teams roll dice and land on different squares representing opportunities to earn revenue or investors, or representing costs or unforeseen events.

The experiential program we designed guided founders through the entire lifecycle of building and scaling a venture — from early-stage funding to strategic exits — driving them to develop skills, knowledge, and operational muscle through navigating challenges at each funding stage.

Inside the simulation, participants worked in teams of three as co-founders of a fictional company, playing the role of CEO, CFO and CRO. They encountered hundreds of investor prospects and had to select the investors that aligned with their scaling goals. The CFOs were tasked with closing funding rounds and keeping on top of financial information (to remain prepared for the occasional surprise audits!)

Friendly competition between teams created a vibrant environment with some collaboration (teams traded investors and resources) and strategic competition (teams quickly started exploring acquisitions, with one M&A happening before the end of Day 2.)

Teams quickly learned that every decision carried a consequence. That pressure – simulated but very real – drove them to perform, and learn quickly, the exact learning experience Madica was seeking.

Team Farm2Connect finalising their cap table after their exit to Khumo Learn. For a startup with $12M ARR but with a well-developed Pan-African infrastructure, their exit represented an opportunity to realise returns for the founders and early investors, while unlocking growth potential they weren’t able to achieve on their own.

Impact & Outcomes

The Scale Up! Masterclass is designed to help startups learn how to raise financing, scale, and build better companies. It is a unique and powerful learning approach that puts founders in the driving seat in a simulated environment, where they learn by doing (and sometimes failing!)

Team Aquatrax’s exit cap table. This team originally intended for a $700M exit, but ended up achieving a $2bn+ exit.

“It was very interesting to take a step back from day-to-day operations and reflect on fundraising strategy, exit planning, and related topics. Even in a simulated setting, I learned a great deal about the fundraising process and the connection between financial metrics and company valuation. This exercise helps any founder become more familiar with financial concepts and develop strong business acumen.” – Ahmed Chaari, Co-founder and CEO of Anavid

In a context where less than 5% of African startups make it to Series A, our goal was to partner with these founders to not only expand their understanding and ambition, but to equip them with hard skills to navigate the complexity of growing an African scale-up.

After two days, the founders could map out a long-term capital strategy and structure multiple rounds of financing while managing growth, investor expectations, and dilution. They learned how to design and rebalance their cap tables, and crucially also learned how SAFEs and CLAs convert to help them better manage their funding choices as they scale beyond the early stages and as they all get closer to raising their first priced rounds.

Some of the most impactful outcomes came from funding stages and tasks the founders were less familiar with. Completing an Outcome Canvas from the perspective of their prospective investors helped them understand the investor perspective and align their growth plans with investor expectations.

Building boards and responding to Board requests to build value creation strategies, exit strategies, and common equity incentive plans helped founders develop management muscle.

And perhaps most valuable for this group of founders, scaling beyond Series A showed them how aggressively focused on growth they need to be to build a large, enduring company.

These teams came together quickly. They learned to think strategically under pressure, in roles they’re not used to taking. We challenged CTOs to step into the CEO role, CEOs to try their hand at being CFOs, to hopefully help them build a more rounded perspective of what’s required to scale a top-performing startup.

Chidalu Onyeso, CEO of Aquatrax in the simulation, mid-negotiations

“The Scale Up simulation was great for forcing me as a founder to think about all the different components of scaling a business from the perspective of my potential investors against the decisions of my founding team. I was strategizing how to build revenue and growth against how we fund that growth. It was really fun, but it was also very thought-provoking – especially with time constraints and additional terms and key milestones in play.  Would recommend to anyone who wants to take textbook VC terms and scenarios and really understand the implications in an active learning environment.” – Chidalu Onyeso, Founder & CEO, Earthbond

Facilitator Notes

Working with some of the most driven and visionary founders across Africa through Madica has been a privilege. These are the entrepreneurs building the next generation of tech companies that will power the continent’s economic and social transformation.

Historically, access to capital and structured learning for early-stage founders in Africa has been fragmented, with less than 5% making it series A. Many have raised their first rounds, but few have had the opportunity to truly understand how to manage investor relations, structure long-term capital strategies, and build towards meaningful exits. This is changing.

We are now seeing more sophisticated investors, larger syndicates, and founders who are better prepared to navigate complex deal structures. Yet, with that progress comes higher expectations: investor readiness, financial discipline, and a deep understanding of capital strategy have become essential.

This is exactly why we designed and delivered the Scale Up! program with Madica — to accelerate founder learning through lived experience. The Scale Up! simulation compresses years of fundraising, strategy, and negotiation into days. Founders experience what it means to manage dilution, align investors, plan multiple rounds ahead, and protect value through to exit.

As a facilitator, coach, and trainer myself, I find Scale Up! to be one of the most powerful experiential tools available to develop real-world investment readiness. It brings strategy, funding, and leadership together in a way that theory never could.

Simulating real life is powerful. That’s why we have been busy developing Scale Up Africa Rising, to adapt the globally successful Scale Up! simulation to Africa’s unique venture landscape — integrating local funding realities, syndication patterns, and ecosystem challenges. Launching in Q1 2026, this will equip founders, investors and ecosystem developers with the tools, mindset, and frameworks to scale companies in Africa’s innovation economy.

— Vishal Shah

In my work with founders and across the VC ecosystem, I’ve seen how frequently they are expected to just figure things out and fail fast without much support. This is where the Scale Up! Simulation makes a really big impact. I usually describe it as real life, modelled and intensified. It was great to see the Madica founders throw themselves into the training, and not only have a great time while doing so, but also gleaning important lessons they could bring back to the everyday reality of building their startups. What particularly resonated for me was hearing founders express how much they got out of working on – and living out – the later stages. Observing pre-seed and seed founders developing intentional, long-term approaches to company building was encouraging. My personal belief is that understanding the full founder journey equips founders to better navigate and manage the growth ahead – and the Madica founders proved that out for me. As Scale Up! Africa Rising launches in Q1 2026, I’m excited to see thousands of African founders being empowered and enabled to scale. Our continent is full of potential, and it’s a privilege to get to bring scaling tools and resources to help unlock that potential.

— Rumbi Makanga

Conclusion

The Madica collaboration shows what’s possible when world-class founder support meets experiential learning.

By turning fundraising and strategy into a real-time simulation, founders didn’t just gain knowledge — they developed practical skills that they can bring to their startups immediately, and scaling muscle that will serve them well as they grow their companies. They emerged from the program ready to build scalable, fundable ventures capable of thriving in Africa’s fast-moving investment landscape.

Key Insights

• Experiential learning turns complex, technical know-how into tangible, bite-size lessons.

• Founders gain practical mastery in fundraising instruments, term sheets, and long-term capital strategy.

• Visual tools like the Outcome Canvas and Funding Roadmap help founders craft crucial long-term strategies in digestible ways.

• Guiding early-stage founders through the entire Founder’s Journey from start to exit helps them prepare for what’s to come as their companies grow.

Vishal Shah with Yousel Elsamaa, Khumo Learn CFO, and Madica Managing Partner Emmanuel Adegboye.

“The experience with the scale up simulation was very unique. As founders in this region we have very limited exposure and experience navigating our journeys beyond the early stages. This simulation was an amazing opportunity to learn from realistic scenarios what to expect and live through it up until the exit scenario. We’re also provided with structured ways of planning for these scenarios which better prepares us for when we one day reach this point.” – Yousef Elsamaa, Co-Founder & CEO, Daleela

About the Client

Madica is an early-stage investment program supporting African startups with capital, coaching, and capability-building. Through its hands-on approach, Madica develops high-potential founders into globally competitive, investment-ready leaders, driving inclusive innovation across Africa.

Madica Founders post-simulation!

About the Facilitators

Vishal Shah has facilitated programs globally with Strategy Tools, on scale up strategy, venture capital fund strategy, corporate transformation strategy and ecosystem development. Clients include funds, accelerators, VC associations, government innovation agencies and Ivy league Universities. He is the founder of Edtech Access which aims to develop an inclusive Edtech Ecosystem, both in the UK and globally, through open innovation challenges and Venture Programs for Startups and Scaleups. He is also a Curriculum Author for UK Degree Programs delivered to about 13,000 students this year.

Rumbi Makanga is an entrepreneurial strategist with a breadth of experience across the tech and VC ecosystem as an operator, founder, investor, and ecosystem builder. With a career spent scaling and investing in startups across the globe, Rumbi is a sought after advisor and coach for innovative, fast-growing startups. She is the founder and Managing Director of Irikore, a strategy advisory firm working with clients across the innovation ecosystem. She is a Global Partner with Strategy Tools, running programs to help organisations do much better at strategy.

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