Operating companies, investments, and projects to build the global South’s technology future
Currently living in South Africa → previously based in London, Lagos, Nairobi, Los Angeles, Abidjan, Geneva, and Cairo
Operating + running companies
- Currently working on BLE$$ (South African mobile money)
- Exited my first company to Warner Music Group a few years ago
- Have supported companies such as Cashi (Sudanese mobile money) and Wave (West African mobile money)
- Led an Accel-backed asset financing business in Kenya (it didn’t work) and worked as a fractional CFO/CSO across the Mary Oppenheimer and Daughters portfolio
Investing
Currently lead One Day Yes (Africa’s largest female-focused fund) and deployed ~$40m+ before this
Feel market dynamics > everything = take high conviction positions in companies working at the inflection point of paradigm shifts
Angel investing in companies where I can improve the odds of success
Consumer payments
The largest outcomes in emerging markets are consumer internet companies (largely fintechs with direct network effects)
Helping the South African Reserve Bank create regulations (SARB PEM FPS) that make it cheaper for consumers to pay
Food
- Food access is the largest unsolved + inefficient part of Africa’s economies
- Africans spend ~40% of their wallet on food → key to generating outsized outcomes in ↓ARPU markets
Human capital
Educating Africans is important to me → had a scholarship (Oppenheimer fellowship) which fundamentally transformed my life trajectory
Interested in projects that encourage really smart people to work in societally important fields which currently lack smart people (something I convey to Harvard students)
How can we use technology to extend the leverage of schools (given demand > supply)?
Dreams + beauty
We need more high conviction young people thinking about society-level beauty → am involved with to.org and OMT in serving this purpose
Belief in progress is reflexive
People who regularly teach me things
Guy Spier, Rebecca Oppenheimer, Drew Durbin (Wave), Jeffrey Williams (Young Thug), Kevin Efrusy (Accel), Kennedy Odede (SHOFCO), Rick Owens, Ahmad Hammouda (Thndr), Nina Saeed (Cashi), Salma Hayek, Hakeem Belo-Osagie, and Nick Hughes (M-PESA)
Contact
I generally don’t do interviews or public events; I prefer to write things down instead (sometimes reachable via LinkedIn)