In Egypt’s rapidly maturing startup ecosystem, one persistent problem continues to frustrate both investors and founders: inconsistent, fragmented reporting practices. Now, a public-private collaboration led by Egypt’s Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (MSMEDA), with support from the World Bank and a coalition of top venture capital firms (VCs), is hoping to change that.
The initiative has launched a unified startup reporting platform, dubbed AYA, built in collaboration with US-based Visible.vc, a global leader in investor relations software. The platform aims to standardize how Egyptian startups communicate key business metrics to their investors — bringing long-awaited structure and clarity to a notoriously chaotic process.
“We’re excited to enhance Egypt’s investment attractiveness by offering the transparency and reporting infrastructure investors need to confidently deploy capital,” said Mazen Nadim, Managing Partner at Foundation Ventures, which is leading the initiative on the VC side.
AYA is being rolled out in coordination with some of Egypt’s most active investment firms: Algebra Ventures, Sawari Ventures, Shorooq Partners, Endure Capital, Camel Ventures, DenVC, LoftyInc Capital, DisrupTech Ventures, and the Climate Resilient Africa Fund. Together, they represent a significant portion of Egypt’s venture activity, particularly at the seed and early stages.
The platform will collect and organize performance data across a set of agreed-upon metrics, such as revenue growth, customer acquisition and retention, burn rate, and fundraising milestones. Visible.vc is adapting its global infrastructure to fit local workflows, with the first national rollout expected by the end of Q2 2025 and a unified investor report scheduled for mid-2026.
Currently, founders often juggle multiple investor demands — each requesting different data formats, timeframes, and performance indicators. AYA intends to simplify this, giving startups a single place to track, update, and share key information with all their stakeholders.
Reporting as a Signal of Founder Quality
While administrative in nature, performance reporting is playing an increasingly strategic role in Africa’s investment environment. A recent report from Wimbart, a communications agency for African tech, found that 88.8% of investors now see the quality of startup reporting as a strong indicator of a founder’s suitability for follow-on funding.
“A founder’s ability to report regularly, transparently, and with clear performance insights is now almost as important as their pitch deck,” one early-stage investor noted.
The data also reveals rising expectations from investors. In the past 18 months, over 70% of VCs surveyed said they had raised their reporting demands. This was driven by increasing concerns about startup stability (33.3%), the need for better oversight (25%), and risk management (16.7%), among other factors.
However, there’s a disconnect: while 93.9% of founders acknowledge the value of investor updates, only 42.4% believe their investors understand their businesses or markets well enough to fully appreciate the reports. Many founders also cite the time burden of producing detailed monthly updates as a major challenge.
Interestingly, investor preferences are shifting from monthly to quarterly updates. In 2023, nearly two-thirds of investors received monthly reports. By 2024, that number had dropped to 27.8%, while quarterly updates rose to 50%. This may reflect a broader attempt to reduce the reporting burden while still maintaining visibility.
AYA aims to strike that balance. By providing templates and automated tools, it reduces the manual effort founders spend generating custom reports — without compromising on detail or rigor.
According to the initiative’s backers, standardizing reporting is not just about making life easier for startups and investors. It’s also a strategic move to position Egypt as a more investable market in the eyes of international capital. A data-rich ecosystem, they argue, will be better able to attract foreign direct investment and institutional funds that demand visibility and accountability.
What Will Be Reported — And Why It Matters
Under the new system, startups will report a uniform set of metrics that may include:
- Revenue growth (monthly or quarterly)
- Burn rate and cash runway
- Customer acquisition, churn, and LTV
- Unit economics and profitability
- Team updates (hiring and attrition)
- Product and market milestones
- Fundraising history and future needs
For startups, this promises efficiency — a single, consistent report for all stakeholders. For investors, it enables performance benchmarking across portfolio companies, clearer risk management, and more confident follow-on decisions. For Egypt’s VCs and the tech ecosystem as a whole, the reporting data could eventually inform policymaking, donor strategies, and market mapping.
Yet implementation will be key. One tension highlighted in the Wimbart report is founder reluctance to share sensitive data. Around 12% of founders cited confidentiality concerns as a reason for withholding full transparency — a concern amplified by previous high-profile governance issues across the continent.
Toward a Culture of Transparency
Still, the consensus is growing that transparent reporting is no longer optional. As capital becomes scarcer and investor scrutiny increases, founders who fail to report consistently may find themselves edged out of future rounds.
“Ultimately, this is about building trust,” said a VC participating in the AYA rollout. “If you want your investors to show up in tough times, you need to show them what’s going on — the good and the bad.”
The launch of the AYA reporting tool is an experiment in building that trust at scale for Egypt’s leading VCs. Whether it succeeds will depend on how effectively it balances the needs of startups, investors, and the broader ecosystem. But the ambition is clear: to make reporting not a chore, but a competitive advantage.