The napkin
Forty-five minutes in a room. You draw the thing, we argue with it, nobody writes a deck.
Day oneCr4fts co-founds companies out of our Nairobi workspace. We bring $$, six months in residence, and the people to build it. You bring the obsession.
Rolling intake — pitch whenever you’re ready.
How it works
Most of what we sketch dies at step two. That is the point — killing an idea in a fortnight is cheaper than killing it in a year.
about 4 in 5 ideas stop at step two — good
Forty-five minutes in a room. You draw the thing, we argue with it, nobody writes a deck.
Day oneThirty customer conversations in three weeks. We try hard to kill it, and usually we manage.
Weeks 1–3A desk in the Nairobi workspace, $$ in the company, and the studio around you.
Month 1Our engineers and designers, your call on every decision. Real software, in front of real users.
Months 1–4We lend you the network. Customers who actually pay, or we stop and say so out loud.
Months 4–6Residence ends, the company leaves with you. We keep a minority stake and our phone on.
Month 6Into the company at incorporation, for a minority stake. Not a loan, not a grant, not a prize.
No fee. No retainer.A desk in the Nairobi workspace and the whole studio within shouting distance of it.
Nairobi, in person.Builders and designers in house, on your problem — brand, product, and the thing that ships.
They ship, not consult.Our operator relationships, lent to you. Your first customers come off our phone, warm.
Warm, not cold.Ventures
A few of them here. The rest, and what each one is actually doing, are on the ventures page.
AI-powered collaboration for in-house counsel, so legal stops being the bottleneck.
Notarisation without the queue, the stamp, or the trip across town.
Company formation anywhere in the world, without a lawyer in every jurisdiction.
An AI-native EMR that keeps caregivers and the people they care for in one shared record.
A doctor reachable at the hours the appointment never gets booked.
Wellness and care for the underserved — low cost, without dropping the quality.
Convictions
The queue for the obvious idea is long and expensive. The one nobody is standing in is neither.
By the time a category is hot, the interesting part of it has already been priced in.
If four other funds already agree with you, you are not early. You are on time, which is late.
It flows to the same cities, the same founder archetype, the same ideas everyone agrees are safe.
The pattern describes what already worked. It is a poor description of what will.
A ten-year fund life is an accounting decision. It is not how long a good company takes.
“They spent the first fortnight trying to talk me out of it. That was the most valuable thing anyone did for me all year — and the idea survived.”
Notes
Why Africa Cannot Skip the Infrastructure That Makes Artificial Intelligence Work
Why Venture Capital Systematically Misprices Frontier Markets, and What It Costs
The Invisible Companies That Venture Capital Cannot See
Send us the drawing. Genuinely — a photo of the napkin beats a twenty-page deck, and we read every one within a week.
Rolling intake · no application form · a reply within a week