Most investors decide whether to back a startup after a pitch, a handful of meetings and several weeks of due diligence. Victoria Olayide Adesanya, founder of VOA Venture Partners, an Africa-focused venture capital firm, demands something more before writing a cheque: she wants to spend six months working inside the business.
VOA backs startups building the financial infrastructure that moves money into and out of Africa, with a focus on founders from the African diaspora. Adesanya said she bets on the parts of fintech most people never see, pushing back on the idea that African fintech is crowded.
She calls the market young and says financial infrastructure, mostly business-to-business, is full of gaps. Two of VOA’s portfolio companies show what she means. Blockradar lets fintechs offer stablecoin wallets through an API without hiring blockchain engineers. REasy helps small businesses in Francophone Africa pay suppliers in China and Dubai and handle the shipping.
Before starting the firm, Adesanya spent over a decade in finance, including roles at Barclays and Credit Suisse and advisory work for investment banks such as Morgan Stanley. Adesanya spends six months inside a company through VOA Build, a programme the firm has been piloting with a handful of companies this year. VOA works with a startup as an extra go-to-market strategist, with no investment, and the only goal is to grow revenue.
Originally published by TechCabal.