Ingressive Capital, a leading venture capital firm focused on supporting and empowering African startups, is proud to welcome two seasoned professionals to their team.
Anthonio Pinheiro joins Ingressive Capital as COO and Investment Partner while Nela Ekpenyong steps in as a Portfolio Support Partner.
Anthonio over the course of his career has been privileged to work in the Agriculture, Construction and Technology sectors. In all these roles, he has built teams that have accelerated business growth by leveraging data and technology to streamline processes and workflows to drive cost optimization and improve the user experience while managing both internal and external stakeholders at various levels.
In the last 5 years, he worked at Andela as Director of Global Operations, Head of Global Operations, and Director of Talent Delivery.
Nela is an experienced, versatile social entrepreneur with a history of working with leading African philanthropists, social investors, and philanthropic and entrepreneurial organizations.
She is a development professional, passionate about democratizing access, building bridges, driving knowledge and raising capital for talented African entrepreneurs. Nela is currently an investor in 54Gene.
These two new members will bring a wealth of experience, passion and expertise to their respective roles in driving growth in Africa’s tech ecosystem by identifying promising investment opportunities and guiding startups towards growth and success while also playing a crucial role in providing strategic guidance and support to the portfolio companies.
In a recent chat, the new team members shared their vision for Ingressive Capital and how they plan to leverage their expertise to support and scale the next generation of African startups.
Anthonio’s focus would be much more on operations, the firm’s portfolio support function and investment at Ingressive Capital while Nela will support Ingressive Capital portfolio companies through its platform, expert network and c-suite talent acquisition.
Pinheiro envisions transitioning from scrappy VC to institutional VC without losing touch with the company’s values and culture. He hopes to serve their portfolio companies better by helping them scale their business during pre-seed and seed stages while building seamless, efficient and timely processes internally to move the company’s business forward.
Nela on the one hand hopes to have more streamlined communication with its portfolio companies to support their institutionalization and increase the effectiveness of Ingressive’s communication.
On the role of Ingressive Capital in shaping the future of tech-enabled companies in Sub-Saharan Africa, Pinheiro stated that he sees the company as a growth catalyst and its role is to help tech-enabled companies within the pre-seed and seed stage grow effectively by being a reliable partner i.e providing capital, providing strategic intros, being a thought partner during these critical years.
For Nela, the VC industry is undergoing a period of transformation and innovation – It’s clear that companies that seek to generate network effects and create value through interactions among their users are growing faster.
Ingressive has always sought to differentiate itself beyond writing checks and managing portfolio operations.
Stating further, she asserted that Ingressive Capital is an ecosystem builder via our Ingressive for Good non-profit that trains over 100k African youths a year; its fund and LPs are building a community as well as tracking the progress of its exited founders. According to Nela. the company’s best deals come via founder referrals.
The duo believes that success for Ingressive is based on two themes (Internal and External) regarding strategies in supporting portfolio companies’ growth and scale.
Explaining the internal aspect, the duo said that Ingressive is impactful to the company’s growth from Pre-seed to Series A through a multi-pronged approach which includes post-check support i.e. during the 100days after its 1st cheque, “We work with you to close gaps we identified during due diligence and your key focus areas”. Then there is an Ingressive Expert list followed by Ingressive Community.
The external strategy refers to Ingressive’s Capital Net Promoter Score, a reliable rating that ensures that portfolio companies recommend Ingressive Capital to new founders.
On balancing the financial return goals for investors with its social impact goals, Ingressive capital support companies looking to change the lives of everyday Africans in different ways which include creating a product that solves a significant problem, creating jobs, giving Africans a place to grow and improve their skills and giving back to their communities i.e donations, training, etc
“To achieve this, these companies need to be successful i.e. make profit and scale the right way which leads to returns for our investors.”
On assessing the potential of a pre-seed or seed-stage company and what factors Ingressive Capital consider when evaluating investment opportunities, these things are their focus:
- The Market: How big of a problem is it, and how many people need it solved in Africa and the world?
- The solution: Why would people continue to use this solution
- The founder: Why does the founder want to solve this problem? Why is it this important to them? Essentially what drives them
- What’s the end game? Are they going IPO, building for acquisition or looking to build a private company
According to the duo, the items listed above positively impact the Country’s GDPs and communities directly or indirectly.
Ingressive Capital is intentional with its support for diversity and inclusion, “We are data-driven, and our employees are rewarded based on merit, we also strive to create an inclusive environment for all employees. We firmly believe a diverse team outperforms a non-diverse team and share this internally and externally.”
On how Ingressive Capital helps its portfolio companies, “We help our companies with a variety of challenges ranging from Employee branding, Follow-up finding, regulatory compliance, Go-to-market strategy, and Being a listening ear. We are partners to our portcos.”
Finally, the duo advice entrepreneurs seeking investment from Ingressive Capital and how they can position themselves for success in the competitive landscape of tech-enabled startups in Africa to understand the following:
- Be realistic with your valuation
- Critically assess your business and understand your Strengths, Weaknesses
- Opportunities and threats
- Follow this sample pitch deck template
- Practice
Featured Image: Anthonio Pinheiro, COO/ Investment Partner (Left), Nela Ekpenyong, Portfolio Support Partner (Right)
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