Investor Profile: FirstCheck Africa — Thesis, Cheque Size & How to Apply

FirstCheck Africa is an early stage venture capital fund backing technology driven startups in Africa with at least one female founder or co-founder. Launched in January 2021 by Eloho Omame and Odunayo Eweniyi, it was created to tackle the venture capital gender funding gap on the continent and to become the preferred early stage investor for diverse founding teams. Eloho is also a partner at TLcom Capital, while Odunayo is co-founder and chief operating officer at PiggyVest.

Investment thesis

FirstCheck Africa argues that the most successful scale companies of Africa future will be technology enabled and will have more diverse leadership, including significantly more women, at their helm. It points to a stark gap: around one in three early stage tech startups on the continent has a female founder, yet less than 2 percent of capital goes to all female co-founding teams and just 10 percent to gender diverse teams, according to figures published on its own site.

Sectors and stages

FirstCheck Africa is sector agnostic and welcomes applications from any industry, although its investments tend to cluster in retail and consumer, financial services, education and healthcare. It invests at pre-seed and seed stages, and it will not write a first cheque after a company seed round. Its debut fund is $10 million, and with a $2 million commitment from TLcom Capital it invests $12 million as a single pool of capital. It now invests up to $250,000 as high conviction first cheques into early stage rounds. Its geographic focus is Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt and Ghana, where it says it has the deepest experience and networks,.

Notable portfolio / track record

FirstCheck Africa portfolio shows the breadth of its thesis. In financial services, it backs Cleva, which provides US dollar banking products for remote workers and freelancers, and Knabu, which builds settlement infrastructure for fintechs and banks. In commerce, it backs Kola Market, a business to business ecommerce platform for retail small and medium enterprises in Ghana, and Jumba, a Kenyan platform for purchasing and financing construction materials. In consumer and health, it backs Uncover, a digital first skincare brand for African women, Akiba Digital, a South African credit infrastructure company, and Healthtracka.

How to apply for funding

Founders can apply through the Submit a pitch route on the FirstCheck Africa homepage at firstcheck.africa, which asks for basic information and a pitch deck. The firm says every founder goes through the same first screen, whether they arrive by warm introduction or direct application, and that it tries to respond to each submission within a week. At pre-seed, it will consider companies as early as idea stage, but it likes to see a committed team, early market feedback and a product mock up or functional prototype. At seed, it looks for a launched product customers love, strong growth, signs of product market fit and attractive unit economics, with $10,000 or more in monthly revenues as a guide.