Participated · Series A · Aug 2022

Pezesha is a Kenyan fintech that began by providing merchant lending to retailers and later expanded to offer working-capital facilities. The company has partnered with eCommerce platforms (notably MarketForce) to improve customer inventory and distribution. Pezesha recently received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to deploy data science, machine learning and other advanced computing technologies to streamline and enhance its lending capabilities for small businesses in sub‑Saharan Africa. Financially, Pezesha was involved in a six‑month legal dispute with MarketForce over outstanding debts that led Pezesha to file a liquidation petition in September 2023. The two firms reached an out‑of‑court settlement after leadership met at the Harambeans Global Summit in March 2024, with MarketForce agreeing to use intangible assets valued by Pezesha to settle the debt. Leadership from both sides said the episode underscored the need for better communication and cooperation going forward. Pezesha is a Kenyan fintech that has built a scalable, API-driven digital lending infrastructure and credit-scoring technology that enables traditional and non-traditional finance providers to offer working capital to MSMEs. The company integrates with partners such as Twiga and MarketForce and currently works with more than 20 partner companies. To date Pezesha has enabled loans to over 100,000 businesses, offering loans up to $10,000 at single-digit interest rates with typical repayment terms of one year. Founded in 2017 by Hilda Moraa, Pezesha is expanding beyond Uganda and Ghana into Nigeria, Rwanda and Francophone Africa as it scales its embedded finance offering. It plans to create a $100 million financing opportunity each year by tapping local and international banks, high-net-worth individuals and decentralized finance. Pezesha says it is profitable, raised seven figures last year, and initially received 20% of its pre-seed investment from local angels.

Led · Seed · Feb 2022

WingRiders is building a decentralized exchange (DEX) operating on the Cardano blockchain, positioned as an infrastructure piece to address problems that have affected Ethereum-based DEXs. The platform supports a majority of wallets with integrations ranging from light to full clients, with Nu.fi given as an example. It allows users and other dApps to exchange tokens, provide liquidity, and stake to earn interest. WingRiders emphasizes full privacy for investors and enables trading via a lightweight non-custodial NuFi wallet; the entire exchange can run within a browser. The project is powered by VacuumLabs and aims to avoid high gas fees and failed transactions seen on other networks. Financially, the company secured seed funding to support its build-out.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2021

Launched in Q3 2020, Flare Network is built on a Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) consensus and is designed to serve as a high-performance, Turing-complete layer for decentralized applications. Its core value proposition is enabling first-generation blockchains that lack native smart-contract functionality—including XRP, Dogecoin, Stellar Lumens and Litecoin—to run trustless, programmable applications. The network achieves this through interoperability features and its native Spark (FLR) token, which is scheduled for a large-scale airdrop to eligible XRP holders. Management positions the platform as a way to ‘unlock’ dormant value across these legacy ecosystems by bringing DeFi and other Web3 utilities to their communities. Although operating metrics such as users or revenue have not been disclosed, the project has attracted high-profile strategic investors, suggesting significant market interest. CEO Hugo Philion emphasizes that the fresh capital will accelerate ecosystem development and broaden chain integrations.