/Graveyard/Cango (formerly SafeMotos)

Cango (formerly SafeMotos)

App-hailed motorcycle taxis in kigali

🇷🇼 Rwanda 🇨🇩 DR Congo Travel & MobilityShut down

Epitaph

“Here lies Cango, which began as SafeMotos. It scored moto-taxi riders on telematics and ran half a million trips before Kinshasa grew 260% a month. Enthusiasm never became cheques: $180,000 of a $1m round arrived. The safest ride it ever called was the one to the exit.”

Overview

Born: 2014 (Year)
Died: January 2020 (Month)
Lifespan: 6 years
Fate: Shut down
Headquarters: 🇷🇼 Rwanda
Category: Travel & Mobility
Stage at death: Seed
Primary cause: Funding or runway

Death certificate

Timeline

2014Founded
Barrett Nash and Peter Kariuki launch SafeMotos in Kigali, using telematics to route passengers to safer moto-taxi drivers.
2019Equity round
A seven-figure round closes from an international consortium including investors in Silicon Valley, Europe, Dubai and Australia.
September 2019Rebrand and expansion
SafeMotos becomes CanGo Africa and launches in Kinshasa, DR Congo, after 500,000+ trips in Rwanda; 1,000 Kinshasa trips completed within weeks.
December 2019Peak
Over 4,000 trips a day in Kinshasa, growing 260% month on month, but the targeted US$1 million SAFE round fails to close by year-end.
22 January 2020Closure reported
Disrupt Africa reports CanGo Africa is shutting down, with only US$180,000 of the US$1 million target committed.
25 January 2020Founder's note
WeeTracker publishes Barrett Nash's full note to investors explaining the decision to close after six years.

Autopsy report

Why did Cango (formerly SafeMotos) shut down?

SafeMotos was an on-demand motorcycle taxi company founded in Kigali, Rwanda in 2014 by Barrett Nash and Peter Kariuki, matching passengers to moto-taxi riders through an app and using vehicle telematics to score and select safer drivers. After more than 500,000 trips in Rwanda it raised a seven-figure equity round in 2019, rebranded as CanGo Africa in September 2019 and expanded into Kinshasa, DR Congo, positioning itself as a Central African super-app. In January 2020 the founders announced they were closing the company after failing to raise a targeted US$1 million SAFE round; only about US$180,000 had been committed. Nash's note to investors said that while "investor enthusiasm and interest has been high, it has not translated to checks being written."

What Cango (formerly SafeMotos) attempted

A safety-differentiated motorcycle taxi hailing service. Rather than compete purely on price, SafeMotos instrumented its bikes with telematics, scored riders on driving behaviour and routed passengers to the safest ones, in markets where moto-taxi crash rates were the core consumer objection. As CanGo the company set out to broaden into a super-app, keeping Rwanda as an "innovation lab" for e-bikes and on-demand delivery while making Kinshasa (a city the founders compared to Lagos before Jumia or Nairobi before Uber) its main growth market.

What worked

More than 500,000 completed trips in Kigali before the rebrand. A seven-figure equity round closed in 2019 from an international consortium spanning Silicon Valley, Europe, Dubai and Australia. Roughly US$1.1 million raised in the SafeMotos era. In Kinshasa, 1,000 trips within weeks of launching in September 2019, rising to over 4,000 trips a day by December 2019 at 260% month-on-month growth, performance the founders described as making them the most successful startup to emerge from the region of Central Africa.

Early warning signs

The company entered late 2019 needing US$1 million in SAFE commitments by year-end to be Series A ready in 2020, and reached January 2020 with only about US$180,000 committed despite what the founders characterised as high investor interest. The founders also judged Kinshasa "among the most hostile environments on earth" for a business and one that could not be made to work on thin capital.

What happened

In January 2020, six years after launch, Barrett Nash published a note to investors announcing that CanGo Africa would cease operations. The targeted US$1 million SAFE round had not materialised; the roughly US$180,000 committed was, in the founders' judgement, not enough to grow responsibly, and the alternative (bootstrapping through a pivot) was rejected because Kinshasa required real capital to succeed. They chose to wind down while sufficient cash remained to pay employees properly. Disrupt Africa reported the closure on 22 January 2020 and WeeTracker published the founder's full note on 25 January 2020.

What future founders can do differently

Verbal investor enthusiasm is not capital, and a round is not a round until the money clears; a plan that depends on converting interest into cheques by a fixed date needs a fallback that does not. Winding down deliberately while there is still cash to pay the team is a decision founders can make on their own terms, rather than one made for them three months later.

Lessons for future builders

Verbal investor enthusiasm is not capital, and a round is not a round until the money clears; a plan that depends on converting interest into cheques by a fixed date needs a fallback that does not. Winding down deliberately while there is still cash to pay the team is a decision founders can make on their own terms, rather than one made for them three months later.