I first met the Mstudio team in 2023, the year the studio launched, during my first trip to Abidjan. Their thesis immediately stood out. Led by Cédric Mangaud, the CEO, and Leslie Ossete, the COO, Mstudio set out to replicate the success of proven business models from Nigeria and Anglophone Africa in Côte d’Ivoire.
The idea is straightforward but ambitious, and is meant to close the gap in innovation and funding between Francophone West Africa and its Anglophone neighbours. Mstudio focuses on solutions for the informal economy by building mobile-based startups that help transform and structure these fragmented sectors.
To get the founders to build these startups, Mstudio recruits through multiple pipelines: existing startup founders, top talent from high-growth startups, diaspora professionals, and what the team calls “high-potential students or executors.” Every founder begins with an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) phase, where they validate an idea, build a prototype, and pitch to an investment committee.
If the idea passes, Mstudio provides financial backing. While I like Mstudio’s thesis, the risks are hard to ignore. A business model that works in Anglophone Africa does not automatically translate to Francophone markets. There are local regulatory frameworks, cultural nuances, payment behaviors, and infrastructure gaps that could pose challenges. The informal sector is massive, but monetisation is tricky, and many operators run on razor-thin margins, making it difficult to extract sustainable value without breaking the model.
For this week’s Ask an Investor, I caught up with Ossete to understand how the last two years have been for the studio and its thesis.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What problem was Mstudio designed to solve?
We decided to go with this model because we thought African VC was concentrated in the Big Four countries (Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt), and to attract international VCs to Francophone Africa, we needed a better structure—quality of ideas, cap tables, investment readiness, etc.
We felt the venture studio model was the most appropriate because it’s hands-on and high-level, compared to incubators or accelerators, which are short-term and more about mentorship. The startup studio model has a full-time, senior team working day-to-day with the startup. It also has a co-founder relationship with founders, which incubators and accelerators don’t. In Francophone Africa, there was a greater need for higher operational support than elsewhere in Africa. That’s why we created the venture studio.
The second part is that Francophone Africa itself is an interesting market. In Francophone West Africa, we have a common language, a relatively stable common currency, and, despite cultural differences, it’s a homogeneous region with a common central bank and shared fiscal/accounting regulation. It’s an opportunity not to be neglected by VCs.
We felt the venture studio model was right to capitalise on that and create deal flow prepared for international investment. For example, all our startups are incorporated in Delaware, which wasn’t common before. Startups didn’t usually make the effort to meet international VC standards—but we do, making matches between VCs and local startups more feasible.
Do all the business models you copy work?
We try to identify as early as possible when a model isn’t replicable. For example, Tuzo (T-U-Z-Z-O) was modelled after Bumpa in Nigeria, a SaaS for online merchants. We copied everything—the target market, the playbook. We had an app enabling merchants to sell products, open online shops, integrate payments, and delivery. But no one was willing to pay for it.
As much as we built the technology and saw comparables succeed (e.g., in India), in Francophone Africa, subscription fees aren’t cultural. Card payments aren’t developed like in Nigeria; merchants mostly use mobile money, which lacks infrastructure for automated debits. That made subscription models very difficult. We overlooked that.
Even though users were using the product, they weren’t paying. We pivoted to social commerce in the beauty vertical. That shows it’s not because a model works elsewhere that it will work here.
Now, we’re strict on early traction by the end of the Entrepreneur-in-Residence program. That Tuzo example was invested in without validated monetisation. Now, we require some revenue in three months. If no one is paying, there’s no business.
We’d rather extend the program to validate revenue than rush into investing, only to realise later the model doesn’t work here. We stop projects early if they don’t show market fit.
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What’s your cutoff mark for finding market fit? How long do you wait?
That’s a good question. During the three months, we give €15,000 to test, go to market, and iterate. At this stage, we haven’t taken equity yet, so it’s a risk.
We also have actual costs—our team’s time, resources, and office space. We spend about €250,000 per year per startup, so about €60,000 over three months. It’s costly. That’s why we try to stop bad projects as fast as possible.
How much do you invest in startups?
There’s an investment of €500,000 ($588,000) in each startup from M Studio. This investment is in-kind. We’re not giving them cash but giving them resources to thrive. We invest €500,000 in kind, and in exchange, we take 25%. Most startup studios take 20–40%, so we’re on the lower end, positioning ourselves as founder-friendly.
Alongside this, we co-invest with our fund, which is designed to inject actual liquidity. Along with the €500,000 in-kind, the fund invests €250,000 ($294,000) in cash in exchange for 12.5% equity. So in total, the pre-seed round at M Studio is €750,000 for 32.5% shared between MStudio and the fund.
That’s how we’re structured. Every startup that passes through our model benefits from venture-building support and direct VC investment. These are standardised terms that allow us to go faster. We do a joint investment committee with the fund—no separate committees. We also align on the areas and types of founders we want to invest in. This allows us, in three months, to do a pre-seed round.
In three months, the startup must demonstrate a minimum viable product (MVP) and early traction. This three-month period in our program is called Entrepreneur in Residence. We give the startup €15,000 to do tests and market evaluation. At the end of these three months, we will have a joint investment committee with the fund to invest the €750,000 ticket.
What has your traction been like?
Today, M Studio has contributed to around 70% of early-stage deals in Côte d’Ivoire. We’ve really become a creator of startups that raise money. Over the past two years, we’ve represented 70% of pre-seed and seed, and I believe Series A as well. We’ve more than doubled the number of startups that raise money with our model.
Also, when we compare the time it takes for them to raise, pre-seed rounds used to take around 12 months or more. We do it in three months—reducing it by more than 50%, helping entrepreneurs raise and go to market faster.
How do you pick your founders?
We strongly believe in complementary pairs: one founder from the diaspora/international, and one local co-founder.
When teams were only local, we hit limits. When teams were only diaspora/expatriates, also limits. Together, it’s the best of both worlds. The local co-founder knows the market and people, usually more operational. The diaspora co-founder knows how to speak to VCs and has execution and fundraising skills.
We like a repeat entrepreneur. Someone who has already launched a startup, exited or failed, but is willing to try again. An example is the CEO of an Ivorian fintech who exited and is now launching a new fintech with us.
We also like someone who was not a founder before, but chief of product, engineering lead, etc. Knows startup messiness, iteration, and has the mindset. We’ve had ex-Uber, ex-Sokowatch people.
Our third option is a good student. Usually diaspora, strong academic background, consulting/finance experience, structured. Young, less risk-averse, and willing to leave Paris or London to return to Africa. We attract them through inbound/outbound communication, direct LinkedIn outreach, and partnerships with universities, entrepreneurial clubs, incubators, and accelerators.
Why do you think only diaspora can help with fundraising? If you find a good business with only African founders, would you skip it?
Abidjan is not Nairobi or Lagos. The tech talent isn’t as developed. Local entrepreneurs are often more small-enterprise minded, want to earn fast, have side businesses, and may not focus fully on a startup. Most don’t speak English. We’ve even put co-founders in English classes.
There are exceptions, but generally, locals know the market deeply but lack the language and soft skills for VC fundraising. Similarly, some diaspora founders are great operators, some not. Exceptions exist, but we’ve learned this model works best here.
In time, as the ecosystem matures—with studios, companies like Wave, Jumia, etc.—there will be a new generation of tech-minded local founders. But for now, we leverage diaspora experience.
Many global ecosystems were built by returning diaspora—India, Nigeria, and Kenya. We’re applying that here too.
What type of assistance do you offer to startups?
We have two different branches. We have our studio, which provides technical support to staff to help them grow. Then we have our fund, which is an external venture capital pool to co-invest with us in our startups.
On the technical assistance side, we’ve built a team of experts. We are currently a multidisciplinary team of 14, ranging from growth, corporate finance, legal, go-to-market, product, UI/UX design, etc. We’ve built a playbook of more than 100 tasks that a startup needs to execute to launch and scale. This ranges from “create your pitch deck” and “do your financial projections” to very practical things such as “how to fire an employee” and what the law says about X or Z in Côte d’Ivoire.
It’s a fully online platform. Entrepreneurs have access to it, and it’s updated in real time with all the learnings we have as we progress. It’s also using artificial intelligence, because we are building AI agents to automate the majority of tasks, so they can be done faster.
There’s also the community we bring. We believe startups cannot fight alone. They need corporate partners to build commercial partnerships, universities to source talent, and VC funds to raise money at pre-seed and later stages. We have this community we call our “friendly VC community.” It has more than 50 VCs, the most active currently in the Big Four, and we’re basically telling them to come look at Francophone Africa through MStudio.
So MStudio is positioning itself as a trusted partner for VCs that mostly know Anglophone Africa but are intrigued by Francophone Africa and want to start investing, with qualified deal flow.
On technical assistance, we also organise masterclasses and events. So for all that, we bring consulting, advice, the network, and the doors we open at high levels—government, corporates, VCs, etc.—plus the expertise of our team, which has more than 40 years combined experience in VC and tech in Africa and abroad.
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