Tired of inconsistent and often confusing VC reporting standards? Don’t worry, things are about to change. The Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (MSMEDA) is launching a unified portfolio reporting platform in partnership with American startup reporting platform Visible.vc and a consortium of local VCs, Foundation Ventures’ Managing Partner Mazen Nadim told EnterpriseAM. Backed by the World Bank, the initiative aims to set a standard for venture capital reporting across the country in a bid to attract more foreign investment into Egypt’s startup ecosystem.

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The new platform will standardize how metrics are defined and calculated, giving both companies and investors improved visibility and transparency, Nadim told us. Metrics are tailored by sector — such as logistics, e-commerce, and fintech — each with its own “north star” indicators and standardized formulas. The unified system enables apples-to-apples performance comparisons and eliminates time lost to duplicated efforts or misaligned calculations. “This initiative will support Egypt’s startup ecosystem by streamlining reporting for startups, enabling them to deliver clear, consistent data without sacrificing focus on their core operations,” Algebra Ventures Managing Partner Karim Hussein told EnterpriseAM.

The new standardized system will also establish consistent formats to address the fragmented startup reporting landscape, where different requirements from investors force startups to prepare customized reports, while creating inefficiencies and inconsistent data across the market. These reports will then be on the platform, which will serve as a central hub that offers startup portfolios and performance reports to general partners and potential investors.

This a big step improvement from Egyptian startups relying on Excel to report performance, often laboriously building custom KPI sheets for each investor — a fragmented system that made comparisons difficult. “The biggest problem was that the type of reporting varied from one fund to another and from one company to another” and “each investor had their own metrics and calculations,” Nadim explained.

Coordination efforts are being led by local VC fund Foundation Ventures, who are liaising between all the parties and negotiating with Visible.vc, to coordinate platform design and standardize performance metrics across industries. Alongside Foundation Ventures are other familiar faces to the local startup scene, including Algebra Ventures, Sawari Ventures, Shorooq, Endure Capital, Camel Ventures, Climate Resilient Africa Fund, DenVC, DisrupTech Ventures, and LoftyInc Capital, according to Waya.

And financial backing is coming from the World Bank and MSMEDA, with the two co-sponsoring the initiative by subsidizing part of the subscription costs for participating general partners, Nadim told us.

It’s hoped that the new system will help attract investment at home and abroad. With consent from GPs, anonymized data collected via the platform will be used to generate bottom-up research reports — created in collaboration with a third party. These reports will be distributed both locally and internationally to boost investor confidence and attract foreign direct investment, we were told. “Fostering transparency and consistency, enhances trust and credibility with international investors,” Husein told us.

It will also free up time for startups to concentrate on building up their company, as startups are currently often “juggling varied reporting requirements,” Hussein said. “This standardization enables all startups to focus more on their growth and core business goals rather than managing multiple reporting channels,” he explained.

Looking ahead, Nadim believes the program could serve as a model beyond Egypt. “We think there’s going to be a flywheel effect across other markets,” he said, particularly in regions looking to improve internal governance and attract capital through transparency.

The platform is expected to fully launch by the end of the month, with the first ecosystem-wide data report planned for release a year after standardized collection begins.

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