- African VC Decoded
- Posts
- 003: How You Can Be a Value-Add to African Tech Start-Ups
003: How You Can Be a Value-Add to African Tech Start-Ups
Helping the African diaspora invest in early-stage businesses on the continent
Jemimah Orevaoghene
July 10, 2025
Hi! I’m so glad you’re here. |
I’m Jemimah Orevaoghene, an early-stage investor in the venture arm of one of Wall Street’s top investment banks. I started angel investing in African startups as a Yale sophomore, working a $17/hr job and saving $1,000 each semester to invest. During holiday breaks back home in Accra and Lagos, I hustled to find more founders for my next investments —no nepo baby funds, no old money or new money support system, just grit, hard work, networking, and Grace. My mission is to equip you weekly with all the information and tools I needed when I started my journey many moons ago. I’m very active on socials, so feel free to connect there and lets grow this community. Hope you like it here! |
Friends- it’s been a minute! Grateful for the community and everyone who held space for as I completed a successful pro-bono project for the firm. But we are so back. |
In a previous edition of the newsletter, we highlighted 3 things you need to be able to do to be a great Angel investor: 1) Find good companies When you’ve found and have gotten into the company you are excited about, it is time to roll up your sleeves because this is where the real work begins. What you should be dreaming about is not the TechCrunch or Crunchbase announcement of the fundraise, but the sheer amount of work, grit, and collaboration that it will take to help this company survive. In today’s newsletter, we will explore how you can tangibly add value to your African startup portfolio companies. Along the way, we will sprinkle in anonymous quotes from African founders on how some of their favorite investors have helped expand their concept of what adding value means. |
1) Apply Your Day Job Skills
“I didn’t know what a “UX” designer was at the time or why Google was willing to pay her so much for that skill. However, I figured if she was good enough for Google, she was good enough to tell us her ideas on how to have more people visit the app and increase engagement.”
When it comes to adding value to an African tech company, the key is not to overcomplicate it. You do not need to learn and master a whole new skill before applying yourself to your companies. Think about what you do in your day-to-day professional work. What is the broader function and the key skills + tools used there that are applicable in another company? That is your zone of genius.
Are you a lawyer IRL? What will it look like to volunteer during the weekends to read your favorite tech company’s founding documents and contracts and raise any red flags in the documentation?
Are you a growth analytics/ marketing-focused person? How can you help startups optimize their SEO for visibility and market themselves better online to their target audience?
Hopefully, these ideas get your juices flowing because whilst the company and application are different, the skills and expertise needed across the board stay the same. Other functions to think about are investor relations, sales and marketing, administration, thought leadership etc.
This was how I expanded my network and built a reputation of helping African founders be able to raise capital. Given I spent all day in financial models, I offered to tick through their models and financials for those who were looking to raise, ahead of them sending the data to investors. We always caught many errors that would have perturbed the fundraise; founders were so grateful, they introduced me to their other founder friends and the cycle continues till today.
Other functions to consider |
|---|
Product Management |
Marketing and Presentation |
Sales |
HR, Hiring and Referrals |
Legal |
Engineering/ Product Dev |
Thought Leadership |
2) Your Feedback and User Experience Matters
“The group’s feedback made us realize our product was not as differentiated as we thought. We had to rethink our ENTIRE sales and marketing strategy. By the end of their feedback, it was clear that we had built a sophisticated product that had many features, but users were not willing to pay for it.”
Start-ups are founders’ babies, so often, objectivity is not always possible. When looking to support an African startup, objectivity and perspective are two of the best things an outsider can offer. Many companies go under because they build phenomenal products with sophisticated features that no one is willing to pay for.
An easy way to add value to an early stage company you’re invested in is to download the app / go on the platform and use it as a real user. Write down any observations on bugs, errors, what worked, and what the pain-points of using the product were. Include feedback on the product offering, especially if you’re the target audience, and highlight features you preferred from their competitors. This type of feedback in invaluable and you will be shocked how many of these errors often go unnoticed. By doing this, you help founders be able to refine the products and solve any technical issues ahead of real customer frustration.
3) Aligned Investments and Introductions Go a Long Way
“She didn’t cut a check for our angel round, but she introduced us to local investors as well as several Middle Eastern investors that ended up filling our Seed and Series A rounds. I don’t think she realized she helped save our company.”
Most early-stage startups die when they run out of cash and are unable to fundraise. At these early stages, most of this cash burn is going into product development and founders are often unable to pay themselves. Product development alone can prove quite costly, especially for non-technical founders, and founders will often find themselves needing to raise capital and will approach you.
Hopefully, by now on your angel investing journey, you have decided your investment thesis, including what sector, stage, proof points, and business model you believe in.
Whilst you should keep an active deal pipeline of interesting investment opportunities, don’t be afraid to say no. A big value-add here is not just saying no, but offering to make warm introductions to other angels or aligned investors who are actively deploying capital. In addition, any media time and exposure you can help the startup secure is invaluable. This could come in the form of blog posts, viral moments online or even a connection to reporters in your network. By giving a startup visibility, you increase their chance of successfully raising capital and help make marketing dollars more efficient
**Note the emphasis on investors who are actively deploying capital and aligned investors. Many founders speak of getting the ‘run-around’ from funds and investors (i.e, investors spend 6+ months in diligence only to be rejected at the end of the process for reasons that should have been communicated in month 1.)
Whilst introductions are helpful, you want to make sure there is synergy for the founder and investors by making sure the startup falls within their investment thesis. This will help both parties avoid wasting time.
There are additional frameworks for adding value but in the spirit of not over-loading, we will talk through them in another letter. In our next newsletter, we will touch on the touchy subject of the realities of running a business on the continent and why some of your favorite startups have closed up shop. |
The Mission: Africa is one of our last frontiers of real economic growth, and the diaspora will play a significant role in funding this growth
Until next time,
Jemimah