Building for the People Traditional Systems Often Miss

Building for the People Traditional Systems Often Miss

The next wave of technology isn't just about creating new possibilities.

It's about making existing opportunities available to more people. The companies that excite us are the ones closing that gap. That's one of the reasons we were excited to welcome Retailloop, Stayonn, and MiBuks to the portfolio.

At first glance, these companies couldn't be more different.

One serves retailers.

One serves consumers.

One serves informal businesses.

But they're all solving a similar problem: expanding access.

Retailloop

For years, advanced retail technology has largely been available to the biggest players.

Large retailers can invest heavily in data, automation, forecasting, and AI-driven decision-making. Smaller retailers often can't.

Retailloop is working to change that.

By making AI-powered retail infrastructure more accessible, they're helping SMBs operate more efficiently and compete more effectively in an increasingly digital world.

As AI becomes a core part of business operations, ensuring smaller businesses aren't left behind becomes increasingly important.

Stayonn

Most people don't suffer from a lack of apps.

They suffer from having too many.

Messaging lives in one place. Payments happen somewhere else. Shopping happens on another platform. Identity, social interactions, and services are spread across dozens of disconnected experiences.

Stayonn is taking a different approach.

The company is building a unified platform that combines communication, commerce, finance, and social experiences into a single ecosystem.

Whether or not the future ends up being one app or many, the team is focused on a very real problem: reducing friction in how people interact with digital services.

MiBuks

One of the most striking statistics we came across while reviewing MiBuks was that more than 80% of MSMEs in Sierra Leone operate informally. Many keep no written records, have limited access to formal financing, and struggle to build the credibility needed to grow.

MiBuks is designed specifically for these businesses.

The platform helps users track sales, expenses, inventory, and debt while creating a digital transaction history that can support future credit access. It is built for local markets, supports multiple languages, and is designed to be accessible for users with varying levels of digital literacy.

What stood out to us wasn't just the product. It was the scale of the problem and the potential impact of solving it.

Helping small businesses become visible within the financial system can create opportunities that extend far beyond software.

Why This Matters

We spend a lot of time evaluating startups across different industries, and it's easy to focus on sectors, trends, and technologies.

But sometimes the most interesting companies are the ones expanding access.

Access to better tools.

Access to better systems.

Access to opportunities that were previously unavailable.

Retailloop, Stayonn, and MiBuks are approaching that challenge from different directions, but they're all working toward the same outcome: helping more people participate in the future of the digital economy.

We're excited to back these teams and follow their journeys as they continue building.

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