Olumide Soyombo is one of the well-known energetic angel buyers in Nigeria tech startups and Africa at giant. Since he started angel investing in 2014, Soyombo has invested in 33 startups, together with Stripe-owned Paystack, PiggyVest, and TeamApt.
Today, the investor is saying the launch of Voltron Capital, a Pan-African enterprise capital agency he co-founded with Abe Choi, a U.S.-based entrepreneur and investor.
Voltron will probably be deploying capital to roughly 30 startups, principally in pre-seed and seed-stage throughout Africa, in a bid to “address the severe lack of access to early-stage funding for African tech companies.” The ticket sizes will vary from $20,000 to $100,000, specializing in startups in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and North Africa.
Soyombo is likely one of the few founder-cum-investors on the continent, regardless of his firm not being the normal VC-backed startup the world has change into accustomed to. In 2008, he began Bluechip Technologies with a good friend, Kazeem Tewogbade as an enterprise firm that gives information warehousing options and enterprise functions to banks, telcos, insurance coverage companies. Some of its greatest purchasers embody OEMs like Oracle.
Non-traditional startup founder to an angel investor
Six years later, the pair determined to enterprise into tech, a comparatively nascent trade in Nigeria on the time and commenced investing in startups through LeadPath, an early-stage agency they launched in Lagos, Nigeria. The thought was to take a position $25,000 and take the startups via a three-month accelerator program culminating in a Demo Day. The plan was to run LeadPath like Y Combinator nevertheless it didn’t take off as deliberate.
“In 2014, three months after we found out that there was no investor to put them in front of. So you’d have to write another check yourself,” Soyombo stated humorously over the telephone. “We shortly noticed that the accelerator mannequin didn’t work, so we began investing individually. It’s humorous how issues have modified since then.”
LeadPath grew to become a particular function automobile (SPV) for the pair to hold out their angel investing offers. And over time, Soyombo has launched a number of SPVs for a similar function. So, why do issues in another way now by making a fund? Soyombo walks me via one of many processes he has used to fund offers over time to reply this query.
As an influential determine in Nigeria’s tech ecosystem, Soyombo has entry to virtually any necessary deal out there. “I get the privilege of seeing many offers earlier than most individuals see them. I’ve constructed that community inside the startup ecosystem and status as an angel at all times prepared to assist. So clearly, that helped me see many offers very shortly,” he stated. Often, his deal flows are full of startups in search of six-figure pre-seed to seed investments. Say, for example, a founder is seeking to elevate $300,000, Soyombo can usually make investments $50,000 of his personal cash. And based mostly on his notion of the startup’s progress prospects, he can select to deliver his associates and acquaintances on board to fill the spherical.
This casual method is what Soyombo desires to make formal through a structured format the place every particular person or organisational LPs will get entry to his deal circulation concurrently. The investor believes corporations will get capital faster this fashion. And the fascinating bit is that his work in company Nigeria has allowed him to entry non-traditional capital which implies a few of the buyers that use Soyombo’s deal flows are outdoors the standard Nigerian tech investing panorama.
He sees his job as somebody bridging the hole of angel investing between his company associates and colleagues who haven’t usually invested in tech and startups that want their cash.
“There’s a bit of FOMO now,” he stated. “People, together with excessive internet price people, inform me to hold them alongside anytime I’m investing, after which I’ve startups in search of capital as nicely. But then once more, I’m not attempting to get a full job by managing a full fund which…
