North African Startups Among Targets of New $1 Million Fund by San Francisco’s Sherpa Ventures
Backed by a host of notable founders and angel investors, the fund has hit the ground running with two investments already made.
From the tip of South Africa, all the way to the coasts along the Mediterranean, entrepreneurship and innovation are sprouting all over Africa. Granted, the ‘African ecosystem’, as it were, lacks the interconnectivity of, say the MENA ecosystem, but a recently launched $1 million fund from Sherpaa Ventures serves as another example of the continent attracting more and more interest from abroad.
As Sherpaa’s first Africa-dedicated foray, the ‘Basecamp Fund’, as it has been named, is targeting pre-seed tech startups and has already made two investments, in Nigeria's OnePipe, a platform that aggregates APIs for financial services as well as large institutions, and Boost from Ghana, a working capital and retail distribution platform.
Based between Singapore, Kenya and the US, Sherpaa’s founding trio consists of investment veteran, Aaron Fu, ex-Uber Africa launcher, Alastair Curtis, and ex-IROKO executive, Nikhil Patel. They have recruited the likes of Twiga Foods co-founder, Grant Brooke, and investors, Emilian Popa and Lexi Novitske, in their goal of helping startups scale up.
“We are a supportive and collaborative community – a community of capital, expertise and experience who have built and operated some of the strongest startups on the continent and across the world,” said Aaron Fu of the fund. “We can’t wait to partner with extraordinary teams in the region, to realise the power of one generation of startup operators in Africa investing in and sprinting alongside the next generation.”
For more on Sherpa Ventures and the Basecamp Fund, click here.
