Emerging market startups face a dual challenge: a scarcity of early capital and a gap in operational know-how. As a co-founder of Velocity Digital – an Africa-focused investor collective – and an entrepreneur myself, I’ve learned that simply writing checks isn’t enough. Founders need investors who act like partners, blending capital with capability from day one. This “founder-first” framework means moving beyond funding to provide hands-on support, mentorship, and ecosystem connections. In this essay, I’ll share how we apply this approach in African markets, drawing on personal experiences with our portfolio companies (like Chowdeck, Talstack, and Waza), insights from diaspora engagement, and lessons from models like Y Combinator, Microtraction, and Future Africa.

Beyond the Cheque: Redefining Investor Value-Add

Traditional early-stage investing often stops at capital provision, but in Africa’s nascent ecosystems, capital must come bundled with capability. A founder-first investor asks: What do these entrepreneurs need to succeed, beyond money? The answers range from product strategy coaching and talent recruitment to market access and regulatory navigation.

Successful accelerators have long embraced this ethos. Y-Combinator, for example, doesn’t just fund startups – it works intensively with founders on their ideas and connects them with a robust alumni network and investor base. Its goal is to dramatically accelerate a startup’s trajectory in a few months by improving the product, growing the user base, and refining the fundraising strategy. This model underscores that money is just one input; mentorship and networks are equally critical outputs of the investment. In African markets, where first-time founders may have limited exposure to global best practices, this support is even more pivotal.

Regional funds, such as Microtraction, have explicitly built their mission around filling both the funding and mentorship gaps. “Microtraction was started in 2017… to bridge the funding gap by providing early financial support and mentorship for entrepreneurs”. In its first fund, Microtraction backed young founders at a time when virtually no one else would write them checks, essentially jump-starting ideas that lacked traction or pedigree. However, just as significantly, Microtraction’s model evolved to include a Community Fund that provides a “community of champions” – venture-backed founders, sector experts, and investors from around the world – to support its portfolio companies actively. As they put it, “We do not only write a check, we ensure that founders… have the best possible support and backing from a global team to realize their ambitious outcomes.” This ethos, which they dub “Founder Love” as their North Star, captures the essence of being a co-traveler in a founder’s journey.

Future Africa, a pan-African fund led by former entrepreneurs, takes a similar stance. “We are not just investors. We are operators with decades of experience… We serve entrepreneurial leaders with capital, coaching and a growing community of advisors… working side by side to build businesses” in Africa. By deploying what IyinoluwaAboyeji (Future Africa’s founder) calls “capital + coaching + community,” the fund acknowledges that emerging market founders benefit immensely from seasoned guidance and networks. The goal isn’t to micromanage founders, but to be so aligned with them that the investors feel like an extension of the founding team – a concept I describe as offering co-founder-style support.

Velocity Africa’s model emphasises community support alongside funding. We regularly host fireside chats, mentorship sessions, and industry networking events for our founders, leveraging our network of experienced operators. This hands-on approach builds trust and accelerates learning in our portfolio.

Case Studies: Founder-First Support in Action

Abstract principles come to life when we examine concrete examples. In our Velocity Digital portfolio, we’ve seen how a founder-first approach can catalyse startups to reach milestones that money alone couldn’t achieve.

• Chowdeck (Nigeria) – Launched in 2021 as an on-demand food delivery platform, Chowdeck faced the daunting task of cracking logistics in Nigeria’s hectic cities. Founder Femi Aluko was inspired by the speed of Dubai’s food delivery apps and believed that Nigeria could achieve the same level of efficiency. Early on, Chowdeck didn’t just need funding – it needed strategic guidance to streamline operations and scale supply. We worked closely with Chowdeck’s team to optimise their delivery network, drawing on our diaspora mentors who had scaled similar services at Uber and DoorDash. By focusing on local needs, such as onboarding small neighbourhood restaurants and ensuring reliable 30-minute delivery windows, Chowdeck built a reputation for speed and affordability. Chowdeck serves 600,000 customers across eight cities, with approximately 2,000 restaurants and 6,000 drivers on the platform. When Chowdeck raised a $2.5 million seed round (with participation from Y Combinator and top global funds), it credited not only the capital but also the operational playbook we helped craft for enabling its explosive growth.
• Talstack (Pan-African) – Talstack is a people-management and upskilling platform tackling a very localised challenge: African companies often struggle with talent development and retention. While the idea of enterprise training software is global, Talstack had to adapt content to the African context and overcome scepticism about online training. Beyond our investment, we actively connected Talstack’s founders with diaspora professionals in Fortune 500 companies who volunteered as guest instructors on the platform, bringing world-class insights to local workforces. This diaspora engagement not only enriched Talstack’s curriculum but also signalled to corporate clients that the platform had credible, globally benchmarked content. The result was faster enterprise adoption – companies saw Talstack as more than a SaaS tool; it was a bridge to global standards for their employees. The founder-first support here meant leveraging our network to embed capability (expertise, content) into the product itself.
• Waza (Nigeria) – Waza’s story exemplifies the impact of early mentorship and global networks on a fintech addressing cross-border payments. Co-founded by Maxwell Obi in 2023, Waza aims to help African businesses pay their suppliers abroad quickly and affordably. We met Waza’s team when they were just an idea with a pilot. Rather than wait for “traction,” our syndicate invested pre-traction on the strength of the founders’ domain experience (Maxwell had worked at a remittance company, and the CTO was an ex-Revolut engineer). More importantly, we swung into action, opening doors: we introduced Waza to Y Combinator partners and advocated for their acceptance, knowing YC’s network could greatly amplify their reach. Indeed, Waza joined YC’s Winter ’23 batch, and with that backing, later raised an $8 million seed round co-led by Y Combinator, Norrsken, and others. Throughout, we continued to act as “extensions” of the team – advising on regulatory strategy (one of our Velocity co-founders is a banking regulation expert), and connecting Waza with banking partners across Africa and Asia. By the time of its seed round, Waza wasn’t just a startup with money in the bank; it had a robust strategy and network moats that came from intensive investor involvement. The founder, in interviews, cited how those early introductions and advice gave Waza an edge over better-funded but less-supported competitors.

These cases share a theme: Capital alone wouldn’t have unlocked such progress. It was capital, combined with capacity-building, that enabled these startups to reach product-market fit and scale faster. In each instance, we approached the investment as if we were joining the founding team in a capacity-building role – whether as growth strategist, talent scout, or business development lead – until the company could fill those functions itself. By treating founders as partners rather than portfolio assets, we built the trust needed to provide candid feedback and hands-on help.

Trust-Based Syndicates and Diaspora Leverage

One unique lever in African markets is the power of diaspora engagement. Many of us in the investment community are diasporans or have studied/worked abroad (I write this as an MIT Sloan MBA candidate from Nigeria). We recognise that the African startup ecosystem can benefit from diaspora capital and expertise. Still, it must be channelled in a trustworthy and efficient manner, given that many diaspora individuals aren’t on the ground. This is where syndicates built on trust come into play.

African founders-turned-investors, such as Bosun Tijani of CcHUB, have pioneered syndicate models to tap into diaspora networks. As TechCrunch reported, Nigeria’s diaspora remittances account for over half of all remittances to Africa, primarily going towards family support and consumption. Tijani’s insight was to redirect some of that into startups by creating the CcHUBSyndicate. The syndicate enables Africans in the diaspora who are passionate about nation-building but not wealthy enough to be traditional limited partners (LPs) to co-invest alongside an experienced lead, such as CcHUB. Essentially, the diaspora backers trust the lead to vet deals and manage their investments. This trust-based syndication unlocks new capital and also brings those diaspora investors closer to the startups as advisors or connectors. At Velocity, we’ve mirrored this approach: our angel syndicates often include professionals from London, New York, and Dubai who have roots in Africa. They not only invest but also often volunteer to mentor founders or open doors in their companies. For instance, a Nigerian ex-Google engineer in our network became an informal advisor to a health-tech startup we funded, guiding their engineering team on building a scalable architecture. This in-kind contribution came simply because we invited diaspora investors to be part of the journey.

Trust is the currency here. Investing at the pre-traction stage (often pre-revenue, sometimes just a prototype) requires immense trust in the founder’s vision and integrity. It’s not uncommon in our syndicate for an investor to say, “I’m in because I trust you and your judgment of this founder.” That trust flows downstream because we operate with high transparency and alignment, and founders, in turn, trust us to have their best interests at heart. They are more willing to share struggles, ask for help, and take advice, knowing we’ve staked our reputations on them. We’ve built what I call trust-based syndicates, which resemble a close-knit support group as much as an investment vehicle.

Importantly, diaspora engagement as operational leverage isn’t just about money – it’s about skills transfer and network bridging. We encourage our diaspora investors and mentors to spend time on the ground with our startups when possible (even virtually). I’ve seen a Nigerian-American product manager at a FAANG company do weekly calls with a local fintech founder to refine their app’s user experience for the Nigerian market – a form of mentorship that arguably can be more valuable than the capital provided. These exchanges also build a two-way bridge: diaspora individuals feel a deeper connection and sense of ownership in Africa’s development, and local founders gain global perspectives. Over time, this could mitigate “brain drain” by creating a brain circulation network, where knowledge flows back to the continent.

Learning from Accelerators and Local Pioneers

Our founder-first framework stands on the shoulders of those who have championed founder-centric support models globally and locally. Y Combinator set the template: standard early investment plus a structured program of guidance. One of YC’s biggest contributions is proving that a batch model and alumni community can massively amplify a startup’s chances by creating an environment where “everyone around you – the partners, other founders, alumni, guest speakers – wants to help your startup succeed. That community-driven uplift is something we emulate at Velocity Digital through cohort-based mentorship. We organise sessions where newer founders can learn from slightly more mature founders in our portfolio – creating an internal knowledge loop akin to YC’s infamous alumni network on “Bookface.” The idea is to institutionalise knowledge-sharing so that each new founder isn’t starting from scratch in figuring out term sheets, hiring, or scaling tactics.

Local early-stage platforms have also taught us valuable lessons. Microtraction’s approach, for instance, highlights the value of having operators as investors. Their team, being ex-founders themselves, shares an entrepreneurial mindset and “are ready to stick with you through the ups and downs. This peer-like relationship makes their founders more comfortable being transparent, a critical factor, since concealing problems can be fatal in a startup. We’ve adopted a similar stance: as an investor, I openly share my own founder experiences (including failures) with our portfolio to foster candour. After all, a founder-first relationship means celebrating the highs and owning the lows together. One of our founders commented that engaging with Velocity “feels like having an honorary co-founder who brings a check” – a description we wear as a badge of honour.

Future Africa’s model demonstrates the scalability of the founder-first approach. By assembling a diverse advisory community around its startups, Future Africa has demonstrated that even as its portfolio grows, it can maintain high support per founder by leveraging a wider network. We’ve taken a page from that book by forming an advisory council for Velocity – experts in growth, engineering, policy, and more, whom we can deploy as needed to a startup facing a challenge in their domain. For example, when one of our investees, a digital agriculture startup, encountered policy hurdles, we tapped a friend in the diaspora who works in agritech policy to guide them through the process of engaging with regulators. This approach ensures that we don’t dilute the quality of our support as we scale our investments.

Finally, local ecosystem leaders, such as FutureAfrica and CcHUB, as well as emerging angel syndicates, underscore that investing in Africa is not a zero-sum competition but a collaborative endeavour. It’s common for us to co-invest alongside these players and share notes on how to help a company. We’ve co-led rounds where Future Africa brought their community members in, and we provided close mentorship to the founder – the startup effectively benefited from both our strengths. The old VC model of arm’s-length, purely financial involvement is giving way to a more collaborative model in Africa, one where investors form a support ecosystem around the founder.

Toward a New Equilibrium: Founders at the Centre

The founder-first framework is not about hand-holding or coddling founders; it’s about empowering them with an edge – the edge that comes from knowledge, connections, and moral support that they wouldn’t have if money were the only input. African startups often operate in environments with significant infrastructure deficits and market frictions. By bridging capital with capability, we help our founders navigate these challenges more deftly. The ultimate vision is to create an equilibrium where every dollar of funding in Africa is “smart money” – capital that carries multiplier effects in know-how and network.

In practical terms, this means investors must be more involved (and founders should expect that). It means spending that extra hour reviewing a pitch deck or making that introduction to a potential customer on the founder’s behalf. It means celebrating wins together and troubleshooting failures together. It also means building trust-based relationships that can weather the inevitable storms of startup life.

The impact of this approach will be measured in the success of the startups themselves. A founder-first, capability-rich investment might help a great idea become a great company when it otherwise would have faltered. As an illustration, consider the results: our Velocity portfolio companies that received intensive support have gone on to achieve significant milestones (from Chowdeck’s seed round with international investors to Klas’s expansion to over 40 countries), validating that global capital now views them as viable and scalable businesses. The founder-first model helped de-risk these companies by fortifying their foundations.

In emerging markets, where every startup is effectively blazing a new trail, having a guide who’s seen similar paths elsewhere or can rally others to help can make all the difference. The future of African innovation depends on more than just pumping in money; it hinges on nurturing complete entrepreneurs who have not only the funding but the skills and support system to build lasting businesses. As a co-founder and investor, my commitment is to continue bridging these gaps, ensuring that when we write a check, we’re also rolling up our sleeves, side by side with the visionary founders who will shape tomorrow’s Africa.

About the Author

Toritse David is a Nigerian innovation strategist, entrepreneur, and thought leader with ten years of experience driving entrepreneurship, digital transformation, and ecosystem development across Africa. She co-founded Velocity Africa, a venture-building and investment platform supporting high-potential African startups. A Legatum Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she focuses on innovation-driven entrepreneurship and ecosystem mapping and currently serves as president of the MIT African Business Club.