Olumide Soyombo, one of Nigeria’s active angel investors, has launched Voltron Capital, a Pan-African venture company to improve access to funds for African tech startups.
Soyombo, who has invested in 33 startups, including Stripe-owned Paystack, PiggyVest, TeamApt, etc, since he began investing in 2014, co-founded Voltron Capital with Abel Choi, a U.S. based entrepreneur and investor.
In an interview with Techcrunch, Soyombo said Voltron be investing in about 30 startups, mostly in pre-seed and seed stage across Africa tech space in order to “address the severe lack of access to early-stage funding for African tech companies.”
He explained that investment will range from $20,000 to $100,000 with focus on startups in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and North Africa.
Soyombo started investing in startups via LeadPath, founded with a friend Kazeem Tewogbade in 2014, after taking the startups through a Y Combinator-like three months accelerator program. However, he quickly discovered that there were no investors to pitch the new startups to. Therefore, LeadPath started writing another check to ensure the startups get started.
“In 2014, three months after we found out that there was no investor to put them in front of. So you’d have to write another check yourself,” Soyombo stated. “We quickly saw that the accelerator model didn’t work, so we started investing individually. It’s funny how things have changed since then.”
Speaking on his reach in Nigeria’s tech ecosystem, he said “I get the privilege of seeing many deals before most people see them. I’ve built that network within the startup ecosystem and reputation as an angel always ready to help. So obviously, that helped me see many deals very quickly.”
Soyombo who sees his job as bridging the gap that existing between African tech startups and access to funds, said the perception of tech investing changed when Stripe acquired Paystack and Flutterwave attained Unicorn status, suddenly everyone is scared to miss out.
“There’s a bit of FOMO now,” he said. “People, including high net worth individuals, tell me to carry them along anytime I’m investing, and then I have startups looking for capital as well. But then again, I’m not trying to get a full job by managing a full fund, which is why we’ve structured it this way.”