Nigeria Startup company, Stears receives fund backing from Serena Williams, others

A group of graduates from the London School of Economics noticed how hard it was to obtain data and information on Nigeria.

The graduates from different backgrounds, including an economist, software engineers, data scientists and a lawyer, launched a media startup in 2017 driven by the scarcity of information and data-driven insights in Nigeria.

Five years later, Stears announced a $3.3 million seed funding led by Mac Venture, Serena Serena Ventures, Omidyar Group’s Laminate Fund, Melo 7 Tech Partners and Cascador.

The funding comes two years after the startup raised $650,000 in the pre-seed round.

In September, Stears was one of the 60 startups accepted into Google for Startups Black Founders Fund 2022 cohort, which included some non-dilutive funding.

The company began as a media publication dedicated to financial news insights in Nigeria.

Its subscription product, Stears Premium, has content ranging from news and opinion pieces to investigative pieces and deep dives which educate the general public on issues around business, finance, economy, government and policy in Nigeria.

The $100 subscription product saw considerable usage among readers, especially employees in finance-related institutions across Nigeria.

Some of its subscribers include financial institutions, fintech firms and others.

According to the company, its userbase has grown from organic traffic at around 6.5 per cent month-on-month, doubling its total number of users over the last year.

Co-founder of Stears, Preston Ideh told TechCrunch that an important part of the company’s business model is pushing out high-value subscription data products like news and forecast models.

Contrarily, the low-value end would be news that allows customers’ readiness to spend to change as they go along the spectrum.

Stears Premium, including introducing other products like Stears Pro and Stears Advisory, has seen it metamorphose into a data and intelligence firm.

Trends and issues like GDP and inflation drive content at Stears. The company is planning to aid its transition from insight to a data company, rejuvenated by the new investment; the firm is planning a strategy modification for the premium product.

The company’s data scientist, Abdul Abdulrahim, is working with international development institutions, financial institutions, institutional development, and other financial firms to create an exclusive database that doesn’t exist anywhere else.
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