"It wasn't just an overnight thing. Seeds were planted."

Claude: Maya Horgan Famodu is one of the most impressive people I know. In 2020, Ingressive Capital, the venture capital fund she founded, raised a cool $10.2 Million to invest in early-stage African start-ups. Her second fund is targeting an even cooler $50 Million. And she’s investing wisely. The companies Ingressive has backed include the Nigerian fintech leader Paystack; it’s now valued at more than USD 1 billion. She has advised tech companies like facebook, Twitter and the iconic accelerator Y Combinator.
But she did ...

Claude: Maya Horgan Famodu is one of the most impressive people I know. In 2020, Ingressive Capital, the venture capital fund she founded, raised a cool $10.2 Million to invest in early-stage African start-ups. Her second fund is targeting an even cooler $50 Million. And she’s investing wisely. The companies Ingressive has backed include the Nigerian fintech leader Paystack; it’s now valued at more than USD 1 billion. She has advised tech companies like facebook, Twitter and the iconic accelerator Y Combinator.
But she did all that without having a rich mummy and daddy – she grew up in a trailer park in Minessota – for those of you not familiar with the state, it’s known for lakes, forests, prairie lands and for reaching minus 20 degree celsius in the winter. She only met her father – who is a nigerian pastor when she was in her twenties looking to build a business in Nigeria – anyway I’ll let Maya tell you more about it. Every conversation I have with maya is fascinating – and here she talks about how she got started in VC in Africa, and how she convinced people like Alex Ohanian – he founded Reddit and also happens to be married to Serena Williams – as well as people like Jack Dorsey, the Twitter guy, to come to the continent. She also talks about how it’s getting more difficult to spot talent in Africa now – and that was really insightful – listen to the end. I think Maya is one of a new generation of African Americans who see their mixed background as a superpower and expertly straddle what it means to be both American and Nigerian. Here’s our conversation

Welcome to Limitless Africa, this is a rare occasion that we have a repeat guest, we have Maya Horgan Famodu with us. She was in season 1 and is back for Season 2. We want to go a little deeper this time and dial into your personal story a little bit. Let’s go way back and tlak about your background specifical specifically your double consciousness, that how WEB Dubois would have called it. The fact you’re american but your also nigerian and specifically how you were raised by your mother in American and then as your wrot in this wonderful Medium article how you met your father in your twenties. So I know it’s a lot but please try and unpack it for un chronologically.

[4.02] Yeah, so first I’m going to reference this thing that has made me feel so seen and understood in the last year. And it’s this concept of a third culture kid, which I, there’s a whole sort of sub community that subscribe to this new way of existing. And it’s essentially like a global citizen. So I am not, I’ve been 10 years, almost 10 years now in Lagos, in Nigeria. And, you know, the first aid team growing up in rural Minnesota, and then popped all over the world living everywhere from Madagascar, to Trinidad to New York, and then Benin, Nigeria, I’m not, I’m here long enough to no longer subscribe to the American ethos. And I’m too American to be quite Nigerian. And so this concept of a third culture kid is all this sort of mixed people or people who are from one community and then raised in a separate one, who are not one culture or another, but are actually this new, hybrid. And, yeah, it’s been really interesting. And it feels really good not to have to try to force myself into a box anymore, because I can’t and I don’t, anyone who has any questions. Just Google Third Culture kid, there’s, you know, books and therapists and communities and support groups, and, you know, Facebook groups, all about the concept. And I’m so grateful for it.

In any case, separate from that is me coming to Nigeria at 23, to launch my business and to live with my dad for the first time. So my dad went back to Nigeria, when I was super young. And I didn’t grow up with them, I grew up with my my mom, very, very poor in a trailer park in rural Minnesota, and really built all that I have, from the network, to the community, to the capital, to the investments really independently, my mom was 23 years active duty. So a gunner on top of the tanks and Iraq and like a military veteran. And that was her life, she also does art. And my dad on the other side has been a pastor in Nigeria since he came back to the continent. And he’s actually at Mountain of Fire. So like, really, really religious on one side, really, really sort of nationalist on the other side. [6.18] And it was interesting coming to Nigeria, for the first time. And with the understanding of I’m launching this company, I have these, I have these foreign relationships, and these people who trust me and our people in positions of influence, and also can function as really successful ambassadors that are based throughout the western world. And they believe in me, and are willing to come to Nigeria with me and do business with me where they haven’t done it before, for these big, you know, globally known organisations. And to be balancing that at 23. And doing work with like GitHub and Y Combinator and Google and Facebook and all those guys.

And then at the other side, living in Nigeria and getting to know my father through the lens of business, as I’m doing business, and he’s coming along to meetings sometimes or you know, I’m staying with him to. That to be our basis for building our relationship together.

[7.09] Nigeria was has been it’s a very ageist it’s a very insular, it’s very nepotistic and quite sexist community. And so I come at 23, female, very American sounding, don’t really look like I fit in anywhere. And then I’m trying to convince these, you know, big ‘ogas’, big businessmen across Nigeria, that I am bringing foreign investors and I’m bringing capital and I’m creating these structures, and I’m actually going to raise a venture capital fund. And I’m actually going to raise from them where they’ve never invested in VC before. And sometimes, you know, I call it “the suits”. So sometimes you just need to have somebody who looks familiar to the people that you’re pitching to in the room with you. So sometimes I’d have my dad come to business meetings and just sit down. And I’d say like, oh, yeah, he’s he’s the one running the organisation, me, I’m just the PA Yeah, I’m just the assistant, I want to speak on his behalf because he’s so big, he’s not going to speak himself. And then I just needed you know, somebody in the room with me, and then it so it was interesting to have, like, I know, the space, you know, neither my parents even know what a balance sheet is. They’re not in finance, in any capacity or business in any capacity. And so to be running the organisation, but and then also getting to know him, and him seeing me in business and getting to know that side of me as the first side of me. And then also like jumping around and travelling all around it. It was it was a really beautiful and really interesting experience.

And I learned a lot and enough that people started coming to me randomly, just personal friends like, Oh, hey, I know that you met your dad. And you know, you lived with your dad for the first time when you’re in your 20s can you advise my friend who’s going back to Liberia to meet his or her father for the first time? Or hey, I have a friend in Senegal. She’s going to go meet her dad. She’s never met him before. Hey, I have a friend in Nigeria whose dad you know, was really sick in the hospital. He’s never gone. can you advise him and so it just started being personally contacted by people.

You’d be surprised the number of Africans who have African fathers who have children in the US and have some either strained or they had they were forced to move back or something complicated such that the children are sort of not able have this deep craving to get to know this whole side of themselves that they’ve never had the opportunity to allow to flourish before. And then these people end up sort of doing their Mecca and coming back to the continent in their 20s. Like, I’m not the only one. And I’m not, there’s actually a huge number of people who feel that intense need to come home.,

Claude:
[9.45] I guess there was a then unknown young man called Barack Obama who wrote a book called Dreams from My Father, around searching for his father and what his father meant to him. In Barack Obama’s case, his late father had actually come to the United States as a student. When I talk about your chronology, I want you to take us back to how your parents actually met. Did your dad also come as a student, as many Africans do to the US? What was the spark for that relationship? And we’d love to hear about that.

Maya:
[10.13] Yeah, yeah. And so before we’ve talked about that, it’s actually interesting. When I was in college, I went to school in Monterey College, Fairmont colleges in Southern California. I did undergrad at Pomona, and then a pre law programme at Cornell. But when I was in, when I was in LA, sometimes I’d hang out in like downtown and hanging out with the, you know, cool kids of LA. And for a while, we were hanging out a lot at YOLO estates with like Drake and his team. And it’s very interesting, because he had also had your he had a very interesting relationship with his father over time, they weren’t close. And then, you know, he, when he started his business, he became close to his dad. And then he was also getting to know him during the business era. And then, you know, Cardi B came to Nigeria, and then her husband also had gotten to know his dad recently. And so it’s just, it’s interesting, those stories were popping up. And I had actually had some interface with some people who were quite public, who had gone through the same sort of experience, I felt all the more than need to sort of tell the story and even advise or share it with them and be like, Hey, if you need help, here’s what I did. [11.20] But in any case, going back, and the story of my own family, so my grandfather’s from Ogoun State, Alicia Remo, it’s a little village outside of Ogoun state, which is neighbouring Lagos. And then he married three women, and those three women had many kids. And a number of those kids collectively in one sort of group effort, including my father decided to move to Minnesota for higher education. So Minnesota has a really great refugee programme and a really great immigrant education programme, because it’s like, who wants to move to Minnesota, they’re just nobody’s going there they have, they’re just really excited to get people to even want to come and study there. In any case, there’s a lot of Nigerians who take advantage of the education programme there. And so you know, Mayo Clinic and University of Minnesota, and so my dad and a bunch of his brothers moved to Minnesota, and they actually all settled down with like Swedish Minnesota women in Minnesota. And that’s you had this new generation of mixed kids. [11.25] And it’s interesting, because, you know, my mom’s blond hair blue eyed, like my whole family, my growing up, I was the only person of colour in my school until the end of middle school, beginning of high school. So I didn’t grow up knowing black people outside of my immediate family until I was in my teens. And so that even in and of itself, adding a new dynamic, and it really felt like, you know, us as the mixed kids, we were like increasing the population of colour in Minnesota, generally, it was a white growing up,

Claude:
[12.55] At some point,you just became curious about your African family of African heritage. And that can really translate into an interesting business as opposed to just travel, which is what most mixed race Americans actually do when they want to discover their African ancestry, they just travel. And they spent a month or a couple of weeks with their father or mother’s family. And they leave it at that you decided to actually become a reverse immigrant the other way, as we call it, a repat, but born in the United States. So tell us about that. Because that’s one time I met you and but I want to be unpacked from your perspective as well.

Maya: [13.42] Sure, I’d love to hear to hear that. I know from my perspective, so I I had as soon as I turned 18, I left for college in Southern California, growing up in Minnesota, and everyone you know, when I’m from the country like to see where my mom and child are live right now, there’s 1200 people and like, it’s probably just hundreds of tiny, tiny place, especially in all this like very, very small. So I grew up in a small town with cornfields and and horses and cows like I trained horses growing up, but that was my childhood experience. So when I wanted to acknowledge the guidance counsellor at the school had no idea of schools outside of the like force the state schools in the surrounding area, and I knew that I wanted to go to a private high ranking liberal arts school. And so yeah, I had to that journey, I was really independent and ended up getting a full ride scholarship. Come to Pomona College. And then from the first semester I met this girl with this amazing singsong accent and I was like, I want to come home with you, where are you from? She’s like, Oh, I’m from Trinidad. And so I ended up going to Trinidad was living off and on in Trinidad in LA through college, then New York, and San Francisco then was doing research for an extended period and Madagascar.

[14.59] And so I had these global experiences where I, there was the connectivity and you know, as a mixed person, and as somebody who’s multicultural, and sort of a third culture kid and a global citizen, it is very easy to fit in everywhere, you know, you kind of look like you could be half of whatever, wherever, whatever country you’re going in, it’s interesting to have that experience, but never be really from there. And so I always had the like, I’m assimilating, I feel a new sort of appreciation for being a person of colour having been raised in Minnesota. But then the other part still missing of where are my roots, and coming to Nigeria, for the first time was, like, before, I had had the feeling of, you know, seeing marketing campaigns that were solely featuring people of colour, black men, black women, and we’re not impersonating whiteness, and then having a new understanding of, oh, this is beauty.

[15.57] And, you know, even even within that, I used to think I was such an ugly little baby. Like, I used to think I was such an ugly kid. And then I ended up living when I lived in Trinidad, and then in Madagascar and coming home and going through my childhood, yearbooks, etc, looking at myself, I mean, like, being like, oh, my gosh, I was beautiful. I just was comparing myself to my mom, or, you know, my, my aunts and uncles and my family in America and all that I knew as the ideal of beauty growing up. And so that transformation was really helpful. And then coming to Nigeria, and actually just finally feeling that feeling of home.

[16.31] And I can also say, there was a, I couldn’t sleep like I graduated from college, and I was working in private equity research. And I remember not being able to sleep at night, because I was thinking of needing to come to Nigeria and needing to start build something in tech. And, you know, and Andela. I saw I saw the first articles of your first raises, and I had Google Alerts on for Africa and tech, and anything that came up, it would just, I couldn’t stop talking about it, I could stop obsessing about it. I couldn’t stop, stop trying to convince our clients to adopt, you know, African early stage tech or African tech into their thesis. And this was a decade ago, it wasn’t cool in 2013 2014 2015, to be talking about venture capital in Africa. But it was something that was so deeply ingrained, it literally kept me up at night, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, it was all that I was focusing on.

[17.20] And of course, part of that was reestablishing the relationship with my father and coming to the continent, and really growing in this essential part of myself and really wanting to, to really nurture that. I still had Nigerian family in Minnesota, but it’s different to really come back to Nigeria itself. And then on the other side, really understanding this, this wave as it started to emerge and feeling the connectivity to this transformation that was happening across the continent, it felt divine in a number of different ways.

Claude:
[17.54] I remember the very first person who introduced us, because over the years, and I said, it’s been almost a decade, at least a dozen people have said, Oh, I need to introduce you to Maya. I said, Well, I really know her. Well, the very first person who actually introduced us was my friend Jonathan Cropper. And I remember he said, You are going to love her. She’s just like you. She’s very ambitious. She’s very much a global citizen. And she has this great vision around African technology and how to bridge the gap between Africa and America. And that’s when we first met because obviously, at that time, I had started investing in Africa as an angel investor and creating young entrepreneurs programmes. And when we first met, you were bringing Silicon Valley leaders to Lagos and maybe other African cities, as well as a way for them to discover, I guess the possibilities for investment in Africa. Can you tell us about those early trips, don’t realise it might have been very difficult to put together those trips and get those Silicon Valley leaders to be, you know, to feel comfortable travelling in Africa, but also investing in Africa. What was that like in the beginning?

Maya: [19.05] Yeah, I mean, it looks like an overnight thing. And people were like, Ah, it’s because she’s American. She had such an easy time. But people don’t know I literally was emailing Michael from Y Combinator. Who used to run who was head of Y Combinator. I have

CLAUDE
to say, a Y Combinator is an incubator slash accelerator, one of the leading ones in the US. So yeah, I think we just need to clarify that for some of our listeners who might not be familiar with Y Combinator.

MAYA
I would mass email him and message him maybe at least once a month, maybe like every other week for years, maybe two years before he finally commit to coming to Nigeria and get hub didn’t have a presence in Africa. And First it started with their CSR department. And then it started with their bizdev. Department. And then it started with their expansion department. And they finally understood the like the technology and technical skills department, they finally understood the opportunity in Africa. Same with figma, we they launched across Africa with impressive Tech Stars, their CIO came their head of TechStars, Atlanta, etc, etc. [20.10] We had Dave McClure and the 500 start-ups gain at the height of their of 500 start-ups popularity, we had Facebook, we did work with Google for developers, Facebook blockchain, a number of these, these guys, we brought their teams out, New Relic executives, USAID, etc. We brought their executive teams out. And mind you this is when I’m 23 and 24. Because I started the fund at 25. [20.40] And so I spent those years convincing the the most influential corporations and venture capital funds that I could find across Silicon Valley, literally going door to door like it wasn’t like, I send an email, and they’re like, Yeah, I’d love to go to Africa, you know, I would sit in the offices, I’d sit in the, in the sort of waiting rooms of these executive firms, until they would sit with me, sometimes it would take a day, sometimes I have to go back multiple times. [21.11] Sometimes I would just wait until they left and then strike up a conversation with one of the partners that I was able to recognise. Or sometimes I would able, I was able to send a LinkedIn message and then they would take a Zoom. And then I’d have to consistently follow up with, you know, quarterly calls or monthly calls with them for sometimes years at a time. So it wasn’t just an overnight thing. It was a seed, there was a series of seeds that were planted, and then nurtured for years.

Claude: [21.38]: And how did you pitch them? I want to get too aggressive. But I’m really interested in the genesis. How did you pitch these leaders from these accelerators? You mentioned TechStars, 500 startups, Y Combinator, and these big companies Google meta, which at that time was called Facebook, you know, what was the pitch? Because it was Terra Nova for them?

Maya: [22.00] Yeah, yeah. Um, the beginning was. So I mean, I had it, I had various time he liked the suit, like this, you like the suit eventually was able to find something that resonated with them. But for some, it was: hey be the first in Africa, you have 1.2 billion people, the fastest growing consumer classes, 75% of them under the age of 35, 80% Plus mobile penetration, like the bay Bay, tap, and now you’re going to miss out. And we’re gonna be second to China to Russia to other countries, not only but you’re also going to be second to your competitors, we’re already starting to look at the continent. So starting to lay the groundwork of establish loyalty now. So you will have lifelong customers and high moats around your launch and expansion over time as these target demographics come to the purchasing power, the age where your products are really well irrelevant, and they can be big buyers. [23.00] So that was a good sell for a number of the corporates, they understood that and they understood that once they came.

And some of them over time, like after GitHub was established after a number of these other clients came and then actually started making money in Africa and actually established new business lines in Africa, and understood what was blocking them from expansion. [23.20] The original was, or it was sometimes that and the other one was just coming to comic transformation in Africa, because a lot of people at that time now people understand venture capital and tech investing, and there are developers in Africa, people are even sourcing from Nigeria, etc, for technical talent. But back then it was really, most of the exposure Americans had with Africa was send $1 a day to a starving kid and blah, blah, blah, you know, and just this idea that these totally incompetent people that are, you know, can’t read and running around with spears, and even some of our clients when we would host these investment tours would be like, oh, I need bullet proof vehicle. I need armed guards, you know, like, Where’s My Water coming from? Like, was there food? Was there food, you know, you know, and needed clarity on all these things. It’d be on all these things. And when they come they’re taking Ubers to get coffee with their new friends, you know?

[24.15] So it’s really more than anything else in Ingressive Advisory and you have to you have to remember when I was 23, I tried launching a $50 million Africa fund like that was probably more than cumulatively all of the venture coming into Africa at its time. And so try doing that that didn’t do I didn’t get terribly far. So that’s why I launched the advisory company.

And that pitch for the advisory company was, hey, investors, hey, technology businesses, I will take you to Africa, I will show you the high quality investment opportunities, I’ll help you make your first five to 10 investments on ground, I will help you establish private sector and public sector relationships. [24.57] And then over time, you’ll see how profitable Africa is and how incredible the market opportunities are here. And over time, you’ll see I know what I’m talking about and will invest with me. So don’t do it. I’m not asking you to do anything right now, aside from calm, and I will show you I will make you money now. And then you can invest with me later. [25.14] So that’s really what the what the sort of purpose of Ingressive Advisory the first business really was. And I understood the need for ambassadors, so to get the most influential people in Silicon Valley to come to Africa, and to tell to tweet even, you know, Michael, or Jack Dorsey, or these guys even just tweeting, wow, look at the incredible entrepreneurs across Africa that created FOMO. Like, wait, how am I missing out on Africa, I don’t have an Africa strategy. And that also demystify a whole continent that people had no connection points.

Claude: [25.47] I like how you mentioned FOMO, was in fear of missing out. And the way that you did it, you started with the advisory by literally leveraging relationships in order to educate some of these leaders in Silicon Valley. And not just in Silicon Valley, but all over the tech scene in the United States. And then the long game for you was really to launch Ingressive as a venture capital firm. So that’s one thing we have in common, because I’m also now a venture capitalist with the Equity Alliance, and we only invest in women, or people of colour, who are either venture capitalists or startup founders. But you came with a very specific purpose. When you launch Igressive out of Lagos, you obviously leverage these relationships, and you have built relationships with African founders. But how does one actually get started with a venture capital fund, and raise that first million that allows you to actually invest in tech startups in Africa?

Maya: [26.52]
Yeah, well, it’s not easy. Let me tell you that. The for me, I knew at the beginning of launching the company, at the beginning of launching Ingressive Advisory, that what I was intending to do was launch a venture capital fund. So everything was Ingressive Advisory was just building the proof case, for Africa. And the proof case, that Maya knows how to pick great opportunities, and get you into great opportunities, and then also support you and support them over time. And so those were really all I was trying to prove. So every investment tour that we organised every partnership or business relationship that we organised every every every company, for whom we agreed to run their African operations, it was all under the guise of building trust, so that we could raise from them and leverage that ambassadorship for Africa over time.

So as I mentioned, I tried raising the fund at 23 Didn’t get super far built up two years with Ingressive Advisory, bringing, you know, just building goodwill, bringing these guys to the continent, showing them high quality investment opportunities, and making that making connections, helping them make investments, et cetera, et cetera. And then in 2020, and then she doesn’t want when I was 25. and tried again, watching the fun. And it was slowly but surely, you know, a few of our first clients from Ingressive Advisory transitioned over to the first investors in the fund funded Why did you lower your target? By the time you were 25? Yeah, I learned my target I was at first just focus on raising a $5 million fund and then a $10 million equity.

Yeah, and you know, we fund one I had well over 1000, live phone calls and meetings with potential investors. But the thing is, I pitch to anyone and everyone, every person that I spoke with was a potential investor, which is something that I would recommend not doing because it’s exhausting. And you end up wasting a lot of steam, it’s like essentially using you have a bow and arrow and you put 20 bows on the arrow and you shoot them without without aiming. And then you hope into Target versus you have one arrow and one bow and you spend like five minutes really focusing on the target and then you hit it. And so with fun to my my biggest lesson is to really define My Tam. Like who my demographic who am I really focused on as far as my potential limited partner, and then also working through the network of those who have worked with me over the past five, five to 10 years and understand my ability to make investments my ability to support companies etc, etc. I can do the intros or help with fundraising from that perspective too. So being able to leverage my relationships.

Claude: [29.50]So we need to take a step back and really explain to our listeners how venture capital actually works for us. You raise money from investors, then you invest in companies. But tell us a little bit about that approach. Just again, so our listeners can know how this venture business actually works.

Maya:[30.10] Yeah, absolutely. So the way that it works is or the way that I did it and the way that you can do and also, here’s a couple of hacks, so to raise your first fund, a lot of times they’re like, You need to have an anchor investor, you need to have like a really big institutional investor that comes in as your anchor, and then you can raise the rest from you know, he denies that Only offices whatever you want I didn’t do that because who’s going to invest in a 25 year old American accented woman invest Sitting across Sub Saharan Africa and venture capital and that wasn’t even a thing And so I raised from My former clients and Ingressive Advisory with whom I built trust I’m those who I also thought for some of the highest grade is taking globally To understand building a new market Greenfield sounds like cop tech got our tech men in Coming from Silicon Valley literally created something out of nothing and new factories. And now we have a number like Jack Dorsey. He’s an investor, Alexis Ohanian, from, from Reddit, etc. We have a number of these big tech people who build something from

Claude: Jack Dorsey being one of the founders of Twitter, who was the CEO of Twitter.

Maya: Yes, Twitter and Square. And yeah, Alexis, now from September 6, inform me about it. And Michael from Y Combinator and Jason from TechStars, that, you know, a lot of these a lot of these people. And I knew that I needed to focus on investors that had a really high risk appetite, and had built the retail market. So those are the new relationships, in addition, and I position to, and it was a VC fund in general, as I mentioned, they say, Oh, you have to raise funds to show investors, I was like, okay, so all that has to happen is I have to have a big amount of capital. And then all the investors at that big amount of capital agree that the LTA or that the documents were using to, to establish the PC fund, they agree to, that’s all gonna have to do because really, that’s like, if you can get say you’re raising a $10 million fund, and you can raise $5 million from individual investors, all them say, Great, I agree to the LPA, as in the limited partner agreement, great, I agree to all the all the terms for your investment documents, and then you close on that, that’s literally the same thing as raising from an anchor.

So that’s what I did in fund one and now fund two, I raised from individual investors from, you know, on fund one we raised from agent eyes and family offices. And the interesting is we had the Nigerian sovereign wealth fund kind of fund that if you’re talking about an authority, we’re the first, you know, straight care VC that they ever invested in. But they were the last final investor, the people who really believed in us and got us off the ground were clients from our former business, as well as these Silicon Valley type, or African telco type, who understood building an entirely greenfield markets and had an affinity for young people trying to do something innovative. And so those were the people that I raised around, I called them my anchor. And then I could raise actually, from the institutionals. It’s interesting if it actually worked in the reverse on both funds for invest capital.

Claude: [33.17] But you mentioned these high net worth individuals, family offices, which I would imagine are mostly these American tech entrepreneurs, and business leaders that you mentioned earlier. You also shared that anecdote around bringing your father to some of these investment beings. We were trying to raise money from people at a school in Nigeria, so you raise from the US but you also raise from Nigerian individuals, not just the Nigerian Sovereign Wealth Fund, right. Tell us about raising money in Africa, because it’s known to be a lot more difficult than in the US where a lot of Americans are just used to investing in very high risk venture funds.

Maya: [33.59] Yeah. One thing I also realised is if I have to, so definitely on on the business side, so what I was wanting Ingressive Advisory and was trying to sign agreements or establish professional relationships with a lot of the you know, business titans in traditional industry from Africa, I would bring my dad and leverage his, I guess him being the ’suits’ in Ingressive Advisory, but on Ingressive capital, I really started focusing on I can’t say that I closed with anyone who didn’t and couldn’t believe that a young woman could launch successfully run a VC fund.

So I’d say the people who actually backed me on the VC fund I didn’t have to hide from and it’s interesting is even though you know, I tried to hear my investors along because things that I do you know, Maya and Ingressive we’re separating them now, but especially the beginning, Maya and Ingressive are relatively synonymous. Some things that I did reflected on the business and some things that were Ingressive reflected on me and so from the beginning I even you know before I published that how did you follow up with percent of your 20s that article I read about my investors Hey would you feel comfortable publishing this I know I want to know if it’ll negatively impact perception.

All my investors collectively were Like we absolutely support that as this is an important piece that needs to go out and if there’s an investor who doesn’t support it they shouldn’t be involved in your Fund. This is your reality and your truth. And so I found from the beginning, that the people who actually came along, Yeah, I didn’t have to hide the important parts of myself.

Claude: [35.48] But there is a part about being a solo GP, being a solo GP, which is a solo general partner that feels very lonely, right, it was you trying to raise a fund from a lot of people who didn’t know. And then there’s another part, which is you looking for great founders and great companies to invest in. Can you tell us about some of the companies that you invested in out of that Fund 1 that you mentioned, and how you identified these entrepreneurs? Because many people have lost their shirt investing early in African tech.

Maya: [36.29] Yeah, how to identify great entrepreneurs and start-ups on the continent? Now looking back, it was relatively easy to see the people who were humble, and had an idea about product market fit and had real traction. Now it’s become increasingly difficult and it’s actually easier to invest in Greenfield markets, when there are less opportunities than in developed markets where there are hundreds or even 1000s in each sector, you know, 20 competitors for every deal you’re looking at.

Because back in those days… you know, Paystack Ezra and Shola founding paystack There weren’t 50 other paystacks. These guys were relatively you know, those who went on to succeed in their respective verticals. They were relatively one of one maybe one of three. And you could tell because also, you could tell who the winners were because all you had to look at was metrics. At the time when we invested in Paystack, They had told us….

Claude [37.29]: Tell us what Paystack is just to clarify for our readers. Yeah, listeners, I keep saying readers, I mean, listeners.

Maya: Paystack is like it’s the Stripe for Africa, and they were acquired by Stripe, and it was one of our first fund investments and fund one. And in financial technology, yes, in the financial technology sector.

And when we invested in Paystack, they had about a 17% default rate on their payments and then less I think they got close to 10. And this was in the first you know, 24 months of business. And then you look at interswitch, which at the time I think they had between a 25 and a 30% default rate.

So the inner switch was an incumbent; it was like a big, essentially like it was essentially like a bank at the time, a big popular bank, the first FinTech of its kind. And then paystack where these hustler founders who just started something scrappy, who had better technology with lower default rate and a better user experience than essentially quote unquote the Bank of its sector.

So at the time, you know, those in those early those early investments, the Bamboos, the Tezettess, the Jet streams, you look for the winner in the space, who, of course they need to be focusing on a billion dollars tam but within that we invest in post traction businesses and so we’re watching these companies to see who actually whose customers actually love them are actually raised raving about them on on social media.

Paystack in month zero through 12. Their customers were raving about them and solving their problems for each other online. When you don’t even need to have customer service because your community is so engaged with your product and so defensive and protective. If anyone says anything bad 20 People are gonna swarm in to protect the brand. That is how you know that there’s something there and there were a lot of really great companies at the time.

Unfortunately, because Africa was so nascent, and there were so few of us, it was really an altruistic society sometimes, you know, had we not been as altruistic, we never would have survived. We never would have built you know. Other ecosystems can can are okay, and this sort of zero sum or, like independent but here the village mentality, the tribal mentality that exists naturally in Africa of like being in everyone else’s business of trying to help everyone and like, figure out what they’re doing and get them involved. That has always, that has always existed naturally across the continent. And we saw it all the more in the technology sectors and I really believe that’s a core part of what facilitated the rapid expansion of technology across Africa.

Claude: [40.47] How do you get to choose which firms to invest in knowing what you know now? And how do you actually connect with these start-ups?

Maya: [40.16] Yeah, so I can start on the ladder first of how we connect with start-ups. So this year, if you’ve seen any of my online video content, I started doing a series. The team, we’re using content as a means for deal sourcing. So we’re doing a lot of how to for early stage founders. Basically, we want to be in the back pocket of every early stage founder or anyone thinking about starting a company so that when they go to raise funds, we are right there already. And we’ve seen it actually have not only that impact, but also getting into oversubscribed rounds, where founders are like, Hey, I’ve been sharing your deck or EBIT, excuse me, I’ve been sharing your information. And I’ve been sharing your content with my team. We are already working with Ingressive indirectly. And we’d love to sort of formalise that relationship. And so that’s been a really great deal sourcing channel. Also, people don’t realise and yes, I know a lot of there are a lot of different firms, trying to launch funds and trying to come into the ecosystem, but not too many actually have been successful. You know, there’s still a billion plus people in Africa, there’s still 10s of 1000s of startups across the continent. You know, we need we’re still at a dearth of capital, especially in this market where institutional global investors are getting excited about Africa because there’s been a contraction in the market. The first thing that they’re cutting is international. And so you know, for the early stage VCs that exists and the late stage VCs that exists, we need everyone who are active capital, like active tech writers to be coming into the market. So I I wouldn’t say that I would say my life and my job gets easier. With obviously there’s a critical mass but my life has gotten easier to have allies in the ecosystem that are co investing and helping support companies that we back and Africa. It takes a village to raise a startup and it doesn’t make sense to have sharp elbows and being the be the only investor tried to be the only VC on a cap table. It makes sense to have allies, you know, especially when we’re going to pan Africa expansion. And so it’s only I would say it’s only been good for us. And especially in this down market. We haven’t fortunately had the problem of you know, not being able to get into rounds or not being able to meet our target. Ownership. If anything, great companies are increasing and capital is actually moving quite a bit slower.

Claude: [42.46] I’m wondering now that more and more people are looking to invest in Africa in the venture space in which you and I actually operate. What are some of the actual and some of the overstated unique risks that venture capitalists face when they consider investments on the African continent?

Maya: [43.05] Yeah, I would say some of the overstated risks is people are so worried about oh my gosh, what about political instability? What about civil wars? And what about chaos? You know, Africa has historically been chaotic. And I was like, ah, please look at America. What’s happening now look at you know, what’s happening across Europe. So people have a very outdated you know, Africa really invest. I’m making a broad statement about the continent but most of the largest GDP, I mean, Egypt is an outlier. Oh, Rwanda is an outlier. Kenya is an outlier. Some of these sort of tourism rich countries do make an effort to invest in their marketing and influence their perception but places like like Nigeria, I mean, Don has increased in recent years, but historically, not so much. The blog, not so much, you know, Senegal, not so much. African countries really don’t invest very much in their global marketing and PR in the way that Western nations absolutely do. And so I can say most people are just generally uneducated, because the only content and the only stories that are being told, are not by the countries themselves and the people who exist in those countries. Fortunately, social media has really changed that and democratise access to the consumption of content. But we still are combating those sort of historical misrepresentations of the continent and what actually happened, you know, people would have no idea that there are skyscrapers in Kinshasa, or that Lagos downtown has yachts and you know, all of this and private islands and those sorts of things.

[44.39] And so that’s that that would be the the, the the political instability the you know, if I come and do business is the government just going to come overnight and take away the company. No, those things aren’t real. There are, you know, we do live in a federal republic. There is stability, there is predictability. A lot of these countries are encouraging FDI and so there’s only increased stability and transparency in business and I can say something that is misrepresented and something that investors over like have a little bit too much competence in like foreign investors who are not based on the continent is the the, the understanding of the market dynamics in order to invest in a company that can really grow it’s like, oh, Nigeria, 200 million people you know, about a 2000 per capita GDP you know, growing quickly, everyone has a mobile phone GDP growth rates across Africa are in the you know, high single digits, low double digits, this will grow you know, this will be a massive middle class market, you know, in the next in the next few years. And so, this product will make sense. [45.44] There are so many intricacies to distribution to consumer demographics to like the the shifting and transforming socio economics of key markets of key tech markets across Africa, of consumption habits, of consumer behaviour, generally, that’s so differ from the Western world. And I really see that when when foreign investors are coming into the ecosystem. They’re making all these broad assumptions like oh, this worked in, in the USA, this worked in India, it’s gonna work in Africa and there are things that are materially different that require somebody on ground and who understands that the nuances of the local market.

Claude: [46.21] I often talk about the many things that you and I have in common Maya we’re both African. We’re both American. We’re both venture capitalists, which means that we both invest in early stage tech startups. And I have realised that we also both invest in health tech companies, which is technology companies that are trying to solve for some of the biggest health challenges. And as somebody who’s invested in health tech companies in Africa, can you tell us about some of the companies you’ve invested in and then also, do you think that these kinds of new technologies can help to overcome Africa’s health care inequality?

Maya [47.02] Yeah, yeah, thank you for that, you know, the and I’m by no means a healthcare expert, but we do certainly invest in so the three sectors where we invest this FinTech marketplace in wellbeing generally, which does include some aspects of health care. And so I can say that our broad sort of general themes lie around the sort of embedded the where FinTech meets health care. So like insurance products, but that the general African as they exist today, would engage with so model. So as you see insurance penetration across Africa is particularly low, you know, when, when most countries across West Africa are still spending about 70% of their income on just food generally, you know, insurance is not high on the priority list. However, you know, health care related matters and hospital expenses do become sort of detrimental and and life changing expenses when they do come about so there is the need for insurance products. People do engage with a health care system, but it’s quite reactive as opposed to proactive so so in that space where we can meet consumers where they are currently and different sorts of cash upfront models or different business models that allow for sort of easing the burden burden or like loans related to health care expenses. So it’s not necessarily a recurring expense that people really struggle to justify, but it still can ease the burden of those big expenses when they are those hospital expenses when they do come up. There’s also just bringing transparency to the market. So genetic biobanking like just, you know, it still baffles it’s still absolutely baffling to me that you know, what is it 1/3 of of DNA across the across the world comes from Africa, but there really have not historically been testing for pharmaceuticals done on African bodies, like typically, you know, build tests on European or Asian or American bodies, and then and then and then distribute those drugs globally, and then be surprised when there are adverse impacts on target on specific communities around the world. And so just purely collecting of DNA and information and precision medicine tailored for African bodies, that in and of itself, so just bringing transparency to the healthcare system and bringing equity to the healthcare system is something that’s really interesting to us generally. And then I have I have my own thesis around well being and that’s, you know, we have with decentralised education with with since COVID times people are getting access to employment remotely. They don’t have to come into an office, especially for those core technical roles. And then we’re seeing a lot more digital nomads based on the continent who are earning in foreign currencies and based across Africa. And you have these people who now have a disposable income and then also can pass that disposable income around their to their family, their immediate, their direct and their indirect family. And so all of a sudden you have this rising middle class that’s coming. As we’re seeing everything else happen globally with the market. And with this class, people care about health, they care about the food that they’re consuming, they care about wellness, they care about mental health. And so I personally am building a thesis around this sort of digital nomad technical community, Africa that’s exploding this youth demographic who care about general wellbeing. And so that’s that’s sort of like the third category within healthcare that I think is really interesting and will be meaningfully growing in coming years.

Claude: [50.49] So, one of the things that you’ve been very public about on Instagram is your life in Nigeria. And I realise it’s been more or less a decade since you moved to Nigeria that you’re working and living in Nigeria. So how has your life changed in the past decade now that you’re based in Lagos?

Maya: [51.11] Yeah, that’s really interesting that you should ask that. As I’m just coming on. 10 years, yeah, a decade in Legos. So So with my very American accent, as you know, grew up in rural Minnesota. And for the first you know, 18 years of my life, and then the last decade has been in Lagos Nigeria, with with my dad’s side, so the formative years childhood etc, in Minnesota with my mom’s side. And then now, the last 10 years in Nigeria with my dad’s side. It’s been, you know, it’s really interesting I learned this concept a year ago called The Third Culture kids and I felt so seen and I felt you know, I didn’t have because I’m really not my value system. My my just culture generally my habits. My preferences are not Minnesotan. I love and adore my childhood friends. We still talk you know, almost every day I’m still really close to the people I grew up with. But we don’t like our day to day or habits or these things are not really we’re quite different. And then even in Nigeria, my value system, my culture, my preferences, my lifestyle is very different from a traditional Nigerian, and it’s some it’s like kind of, if you like you have two separate pieces of paper and you ripped them up into a bunch of pieces and just grabbed a handful of one piece of one paper and grabbed a handful of the other paper and tried to like make a beautiful paper mache, you know, drawing of some quarter or some sort of art piece, and that is my value system. And that is my cultural preferences. And that is my, you know, the way that I show up in the world and it’s not Nigerian, it’s not American. It’s some combination of the two. And it’s been really difficult historically to to be trying to conform to one or the other. And, and recognise like, I just I can’t because either way, you have to clip clip wings and either way you have to make accommodations and fit in a box that’s not meant for you. And so I think that now, you know, I’m transitioning, you know, in my 30s now like, wow, I have the freedom and the ability similarly to pioneering the path for sort of women in venture capital and Africa and helping encourage women of colour to get into the finance space. I also have the path to do that and creating this sort of new generation of identity of people who feel really comfortable being dynamic and themselves fully, and putting themselves in environments where they feel very safe and very seen and feel that sense of belonging and inclusion. And so, I’d say it has been an interesting journey. I have spent a lot of time trying to fit into places and I finally come into my self and being like, I don’t I don’t have to try to fit somewhere I can just exist and draw people who resonate with that third culture kid mentality and who have alignment in those ways. I can hold space so that they can be drawn and seek and find camaraderie and a community that feels aligned with them. So that’s where I am now. It’s definitely it’s been an adjustment. It’s been a journey. But I feel very settled and very rooted in this authenticity of where I’m at now.

Claude: [54.24] Thanks to Maya for such a fascinating interview. Please rate and review it on Apple or Spotify – it helps get the word about Limitless Africa out there. And if you enjoyed hearing from Maya and you think your friends or your colleagues might too, please share this episode with them. That’s how this podcast will grow.