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Material Bank
Material Bank is the world’s largest architectural and design-focused material resource library. It is the only place for architects, interior designers and design professionals to search materials from leading brands on a single platform and, with the click of a button, receive samples by 10:30 a.m. the next day. Founded by Adam Sandow in 2018, Material Bank is backed by investors that include Bain Capital Ventures, Barry Sternlicht, and Raine Ventures and is headquartered in New York.
FOUNDED:2018
FOUNDERS:Adam Sandow
iAfrica 3 weeks ago 1 min read
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South African startup Carry1st, a mobile games publishing platform that enables global gaming studios to unlock the untapped African market, has raised US$6 million in Series A funding to help it scale further. Launched in 2019 and based in Cape Town, Carry1st is a mobile games publisher serving the first generation of African smartphone users that has so far reached over 1.5 million users across the region. The company provides a full stack publishing solution, handling distribution, localisation, user acquisition, marketing, customer experience, and monetisation for its partners. Carry1st’s Pay1st platform is an embedded fintech solution which consolidates the most well-adopted payment methods in six African countries, allowing customers to pay in their preferred way. Carry1st raised a US$2.5 million seed round last y
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Cordel Robbin-Coker, Lucy Hoffman, and Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu started Carry1st in 2018 to publish mobile games and interactive content for Africans. One of their games, Carry1st Trivia, got a lot of buzz in 2020 with about one and a half million downloads.
In the three years since its launch, Carry1st has also become a medium for bringing mobile gaming from global companies to Africa. The Cape Town-based company realised that developers have had problems with distribution and payments in Africa.Â
They decided to solve that by embedding a fintech solution, Pay1st, on their platform. Pay1st features popular payment methods from six African countries, giving African gamers on Carry1st the ability to pay how they want.